Sophomore year of college Valentine's, I was "dating" a cute, blonde, and not-so-into-me punk rock boy. He had called to say that he wanted to come over to my apartment and see me that V-Day night, and I was sure it was so he could proclaim his love and probably surprise me with a romantic gift, even though we'd spent the previous weekend in his hometown together and it was iffy at best. Beginning weeks before, I had set about painstakingly making him a hand-painted wooden box as a Valentine's Day gift — the top of which was a mosaic of tiny multicolored pieces cut from magazine pages [...]

I'd just been dumped and was doing that “I'M FREE, I'M SAYING YES TO EVERYTHING” thing you do (it's known as going full-Eat Pray Love in some circles) and so said yes to being in a CHARITY DATE AUCTION for AFRICAN CHILDREN (that's literally all I was told, and I'm still not sure which African nation's youth benefited from my humiliation). I spent all day getting ready, and I thought I looked really fly. Then I got there and drank a Long Island Iced Tea because I only had $5 on me, and the only person who bid on me was a creepy friend of my roommate's — there [...]

During the summer of 1970, a young Rolling Stone writer named David Dalton had the Almost Famous-like experience of traveling with 27-year-old Janis Joplin on the Festival Express tour, just three months before her death. The tour, which traveled Canada by chartered train and was basically a nonstop party/jam session, included acts like The Band, The Grateful Dead, Buddy Guy, Sha Na Na, and Eric Andersen (who's pictured below with Janis and her purse in Winnipeg). A soon-to-be-released film written by Dalton about their experience together (and directed by Penelope Spheeris), Gospel According to Janis, stars Zooey Deschanel as Joplin.

The book that inspired the film is Dalton's paperback, Piece of My Heart. Available [...]

Two days into an eight-week job in Southern China (at age 20), I went to a theme park in Shenzhen that featured all the incredible wonders of the world (Great Wall, Eiffel Tower, etc.) in miniature. I was feeling very lonely in a land where I didn't speak the language and was going to be on my own for eight weeks, so I sat down in front of miniature Ankor Wat and started to cry. A bus of Chinese tourists promptly pulled up behind me and unloaded, and I was either interpreted to be a feature of the park or such an incredible sight to see that they all [...]