Anyone who looks at a newspaper on a regular basis has almost surely read something about the annual World Youth Day festival that’s scheduled to wrap up later today, July 20, in Sydney.

Earlier this week, it seemed as if every international news outlet on earth had either printed, posted, or broadcast some sort of comment about the Pope’s historic apology to those victims of sexual abuse who’d suffered at the hands of a Catholic clergy member. Most everyone seemed to have a similar opinion about the apology, which seemed to go something like this:

“Sure, it was an historic event, and yes, it was certainly a start. But it didn’t go anywhere near far enough.”

Incidentally, beginning this Thursday and running through the end of the weekend, the city of Sydney will be hosting a convention of quite another sort - the 2008 Sexpo, which bills itself as a “Health, Sexuality & Lifestyle Expo.” From what I can gather, this isn’t strictly a sex or pornography convention, but rather an event meant to broaden people’s perceptions about the joy of sexuality itself. According to the Sexpo’s website, “The aim of the exhibition is to allow adults to access frank and accurate information on [health, sexualty, and adult lifestyles] all in one convenient location.”

At any rate, the American porn star Belladonna will be appearing at this year’s Sydney Sexpo for the fifth time. Apparently she decided to fly in early for the event, and just this past Friday, she managed to land herself a bit of press in the Daily Telegraph, a respected Australian broadsheet. “Porn star offers free sex advice to priests“, was the title of the July 18 article, which explained that Belladonna had offered to give away 300 copies of her own films to the priests of the Australian Catholic church.

Here’s what she had to say: ”The Pope has indicated he might apologise to victims of sexual abuse and that is a positive thing to do. But unless he follows up with some practical advice that addresses the sexual needs and desires of clergy, the problem will simply continue.”

Belladonna has always been one of our favorite porn stars here at YP Media. After all, she’s an extremely successful entrepreneur who operates her own production company, and she’s only 27. And although I don’t know much at all about the way business is done in Southern California’s porn industry, I’m sure Bella’s career was not an easy one to create. In other words, she’s clearly one of the business’s most fascinating characters - she’s probably one of its most intelligent, too.

Of course, it’s highly unlikely that the Pope or the Australian Diocese will be taking Belladonna up on any of her offers. According to the story in the Daily Telegraph, ”She also offered to donate some of her own time to help set up a ‘meaningful set of exercises for priests to help them deal with sexual tension and stress.’” 

But still, what a great lesson about the advantages of guerrilla marketing! Belladonna had a bit of a laugh, she made a political statement, and she got her name in probably dozens of international newspapers and websites, at all once. Of course, it’s quite likely that none of that would have happened if Bella wasn’t a well-read and inquisitive sort of person - the sort of person who makes it a point to keep her eye on world affairs and current events. If you’re involved with entrepreneurship or small business on any level - global or otherwise - you should be doing the same. And by the way, one of the easiest ways to do that is to read the Economist, which has tons of free content online at Economist.com.

I often have such an incredibly difficult time explaining to people exactly what I mean by the term Young Pioneer. A Young Pioneer, for instance, isn’t just any ol’ entrepreneur. It’s an entrepreneur who is absolutely filled with extreme and total passion for his business. It’s an entrepreneur who believes so strongly in his vision, that he’ll often make decisions that don’t necessarily seem guided by his quest for money. Or to put it another way, a Young Pioneer is doing what he’s doing - whatever he’s doing - because he absolutely has to.

He’s not doing it to get rich, although many Young Pioneers do eventually become very wealthy. He’s certainly not doing it to get laid, although conveniently enough, most women are understandably attracted to truly passionate people.

He’s doing it - whatever it is - because it’s what he was put on this earth to do.

But still… that’s not entirely clear, is it?

I don’t know about you, but I’m a visual person. I almost always need to see something with my own eyes before I really understand it. And that’s why the second Johhny Cupcakes webisode, which was just posted to the video-sharing site Vimeo, completely blew my mind: It’s essentially a short film about extreme passion in action. In fact, before you watch the video, which is a sneak-peak inside the Melrose Avenue store that’s scheduled to open on August 2nd, read Johnny’s brief post, which is underneath the screen.

He says: “My parents and select friends think I’m insane for putting so much time, energy and money into my LA shoppe. I really just want it to be a fun, different, memorable experience… Most companies try to cut corners to turn a huge profit, and don’t think twice about making the customers happy via spending extra time, energy & money on attention to details & experience. Well I’m ALL for the little (and BIG) details. It is all about the experience, because at the end of the day we’re all just humans hustling a product to consumers. Why not make it an unforgettable adventure for both parties?”   

Wow. WOW. I can’t even begin to imagine how much money this LA store is going to set Johhny back (seriously, watch the video), but here’s my prediction: The LA Times is going to cover his grand opening, and the New York Times will do some sort of piece on Johnny and his Melrose store within six months - probably in the Sunday magazine. And I’ll bet he sells out of T-shirts during the grand opening, too. After all, how could he not? Supposedly he’s got a bunch of super-fans who are planning to sleep outside the store on Melrose for three nights straight, just to make sure they’re able to get inside the store on the big deal. Unreal. You think maybe Johnny knows a thing or two about customer loyalty that pretty much every other company on earth doesn’t?

• [Click here for the first Johnny Cupcakes webisode]

This is just a really quick note to let anyone who may be interested know where I’ll be - and when - over the next four or five weeks. The short version is that I’ll be leaving for Philadelphia International tomorrow morning, and I’ll be spending the following month in the Philippines. I’m updating the “Manila” and “Around Manila” chapters for the next edition of Lonely Planet’s Philippines travel guide - I’m pretty sure it’s the 10th edition. And thanks to my very kind coordinating author, GB, who happens to live in Manila with his family, I’ve managed to secure accommodation for myself in an actual real house! I’ll be staying somewhere in central Manila, and watching over six cats for a Canadian family of four (or maybe five?) who are going on vacation for a month… or something like that. I spoke on the phone - briefly - with the man of the house, and he seems like a great guy. He’s even offered to pick me up from the airport in Manila, and that seems to me like a sign that this is going to be a wonderfully relaxed and (hopefully) rewarding trip.  

And by the way, if any Manilia- or Philippines-based journalists, travel writers or guidebook authors are reading this, please feel free to get in touch. I don’t know anyone in town, and I’m more than happy to buy you a beer or two (or lunch, or whatever) in exchange for a bit of up-to-date insider-info. Shoot me an email at: dan@youngpioneers.com. I’ll be getting a phone with a local number once I arrive, and I’ll probably be posting that number here, so check back in a few days if you’re interested. In fact, if you’re a Manila-based expat, artist, PR person - or whatever - and you’d like to get together at a cafe or something to talk about local politics or what not, I’d love to hear from you as well. Get in touch at that same email address, above. 

Finally, if I manage to get all my work done early, I’m planning on rewarding myself with a 5- or 7-day trip to either Beijing or Shanghai… or possibly Jakarta, during the trip’s fifth week. We’ll see how that goes…

My most recent bit of Moon Pittsburgh publicity was posted online a little over a week ago at Moon.com. 

It’s one in a series of Q&A interviews between Moon Handbooks authors and their editors; the interview are periodically being posted to the Moon website.

• Click here to read mine, which is essentially a mini Pittsburgh vacation planner.  

Carrie and I finally made it home yesterday evening after driving at a maddening crawl along I-95 through rain so heavy we could barely see more than 30 or 40 feet in front of our car’s windshield.

And yet all things considered, the trip was a raging success. Naturally, there were more than a few worthwhile sights we weren’t able to get to because of my infuriating time-crunch: I’m leaving home again in about eight days to board a flight to Manila, where I’ll be working on an update of the 10th edition of Lonely Planet’s Philippines guide.

This is almost a first for me, by the way: Aside from the two or three months when I had to put my Moon Handbooks Pittsburgh manuscript aside in order to research a few chapters for Lonely Planet Turkey, I’ve never had two guidebook projects to take care of simultaneously. And yet oddly enough, I’m not all that stressed out. Although I certainly should be - the work I’m attempting to juggle here is hardly easy. The simple fact of the matter is that if I’m actually going to get both manuscripts turned in on time, I’m probably also going to have to manipulate some sort of twisting and/or bending of the time-space continuum.

Thankfully though, I’ve been studying time management techniques for months now. I’ve always been something of a procrastinator, and over the past year or so, it’s started to become glaringly obvious to me that if I could simply beat my procrastination habits once and for all, and if I could finally begin to start taking full control of my daily 24 hours, I could easily accomplish incredible things. Which is why a couple months back, I picked up a copy of David Allen’s Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, and even though I’m working my way through the book slowly, I’ve picked up a huge number of tips already.

And then, just before heading off to Connecticut, I did a little bit of research on Philly-area life coaches. I ended up having an hour-long phone consultation with one, and the guy ended up being a huge Tony Robbins fan - my kind of guy, in other words. So whenever I finally manage to put both of these horrifying piles of work behind me, I’ll be getting together with him to talk even more about the lost art of bending time. Can’t wait to see what happens.  

In the meantime, I’ll be sitting in front of my laptop for about 15 hours a day throughout the next week, so if anyone is interested in getting in touch, please do so now - I won’t have a lot of time to talk once I’m on the other side of the world. And do check back here for occasional updates; I’m planning on re-experiencing bits of the Connecticut and Cape Cod trips via blog posts whenever the urge to procrastinate becomes too strong to ignore. The photo at the very top of this post, for instance, represents one of the Connecticut trip’s highlights: the very unusual Timexpo Museum in Waterbury, which is the Timex corporate museum. When I was doing my Connecticut state research prior to leaving home, I kept hearing and reading about the massive Easter Island head that sat on the grounds of the museum, although no one seemed to know exactly why the thing was there, or what its association to the Timex company was. So when I visited the museum, I asked, as responsible guidebook authors are wont to do.

As it happens, the ScandinavianTimex CEO was good friends with Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegien author of Kon-Tiki - he also ”discovered” Easter Island during his expedition. A decent portion of the Timexpo Museum, in fact, is essentially a Thor Heyerdahl exhibit, making it the perfect stop for international travel enthusiasts. Who knew? 

The sixth essay in my ten-part Marriage Without Monogamy series was posted on Tango’s website last night, and according to at least one of my editors, this is by far the best one yet. It’s titled, “The One That Got Away: What happens when an open relationship suddenly becomes closed?”

You’ll have to read the essay yourself, of course, to get the full story, but the piece is basically about a road trip I took to Baltimore with C, way back in the beginning stages of our relationship. An acquaintance from my Seattle days had recently relocated to Baltimore, and this was someone I had always been hugely attracted to. The two of us hadn’t talked in literally years and years, and it seemed to me that she was only reaching out now because she’d just broken up with her boyfriend. This all sounded pretty good to me, of course, and because I was living in Pittsburgh at the time - just a few hours drive to Baltimore - I decided to scheduled a weekend visit.

C, interestingly enough, decided to come along for the ride. Oops!

(Click here to read “The One That Got Away”.) 

A couple weeks ago I was in Cape Cod - I was doing research for a Lonely Planet guide to New England - and after I’d wrapped up my research in the area, I decided to take a weekend off in Boston. I’d only been to Boston once before, but that was way back in the late summer of 1997, and I didn’t even stay in the city for a full 24 hours. I remember walking through Chinatown, and then spending part of the evening in Cambridge, near Harvard Square. So in other words, I didn’t know much about Boston at all.

Unfortunately, my Big Plans for the weekend ended up falling through. I was supposed to get together with a freelance writer friend from Pittsburgh who had relocated to Boston about a year ago for work. But I got blown-off, big time, and in a really embarrassing sort of way. I’m not spilling any of the nasty details, though, so don’t ask. (If you want nasty details, you’ll find those en masse in the Marriage Without Monogamy column I write for Tango.) 

After the weekend in Boston was over, I drove back to Philly, even though I still had a week’s worth of research to take care of Connecticut. Somehow, I’d picked up a nasty case of strep throat during my time in the Cape, and all I could think about was how bad I wanted to spend the next two or three days in bed, with C feeding me chicken soup and popping her mystery prescription pills into my open mouth. And probably because I have a tendency to be nearly as masochistic as I am sadistic, I sent an email to my writer friend in Boston. And while I didn’t actually come out and ask her what had happened, I hinted at it, in a sort of passive-aggressive (but still technically polite) sort of way.

The result? Nothing whatsoever. One more blow-off. And probably, one more friend who has pemanently taken me off her proverbial Christmas card list.

Seriously: This has been happening to me a lot lately. For instance: Things will be trotting along just fine and dandy with a particular friend or acquaintance, and then seemingly out of nowhere, the emails stop being replied to, the voicemails stop being returned… and eventually it occurs to me that this person - once a good friend who probably shared a good number of personal and private secrets with me, but now someone who just wishes I would go away - is probably trying to send a great big obvious hint.  

I’ve been asking myself why this has been happening with so much regularity lately, and I was talking with C about it the other day as well, and we came to the conclusion that this is just one of the unfortunate effects of growing older. I’m not sure I even believe that conclusion entirely, but then again, it is true that childhood and adolescence, to some degree, are all about friendships, whereas most stages of adulthood are not. Probably none, now that I think of it.

What I mean is that up until a certain life stage - high school graduation for some of us, and college graduation for others - our friendships, and to a slightly lesser degree our romantic relationships, make up the collective center of our universe. We do so many things with our friends during those life stages - as opposed to doing things alone, I mean - and sometimes we do so many things with big groups of friends. I remember quite often hanging out with large groups of people during my college days, and I suffer from Generalized anxiety disorder, so that’s saying something!

On the opposite end of the spectrum, it’s been ten years since I graduated from college - I’m almost 35 years old, and I’m a self-employed journalist who works out of a home office - and I can honestly say that aside from family gatherings and work-related events, I don’t even remember the last time I hung out with more than two other people at the same time. 

I was lucky enough to have parents who paid my way through college, so even though Real Life and all its attendant lessons didn’t begin for me until the day I was handed my university diploma, I did at least get to enjoy an extra four years of adolescence. And while a large part of me now regrets how irresponsibily I treated those bonus years, another part of me remembers how much unabashed fun I had - just straight-up, no-strings-attached fun. (Thanks Mom & Dad!) But life just isn’t like that anymore, and of course, that’s because I wasn’t living in the Real World during those days. But I’ll tell you what: I’m sure as hell living in the Real World now. 

= =

Anyway, enough of all that depressing stuff. Friends come and friends go, right? At any rate, if you happened to see the title of this post and you’re still reading, I’m gonna guess that you’re either very interested in my personal life, or you’re not familiar with Johnny Cupcakes. (That’s him in the photo directly above, meditating inside a circle of birthday cupcakes. That’s also Johnny in the photo at the very top of this post. He appears to be rolling dough in a kitchen, but take a closer look - he’s actually rolling a Johnny Cupcakes T-shirt.)  

I had never heard anything at all about Johnny Cupcakes until my recent weekend in Boston - I hadn’t even heard the name. But during my last night in town, even though I was feeling absolutely miserable because the strep throat was at its worst, and because I still wasn’t on antibiotics, I forced myself to get out of the hotel and to do a little exploring. I nearly hopped on the subway, because I had a long list of bookstores I was dying to check out in Cambridge. But my hotel just happened to be on the other side of the Boston Common from Newbury Street, which I’ve been wanting to visit for eons, ever since I first started seeing advertisements for Newbury Comics, in fact. So I crossed the park, and by the end of the night I had walked from one end of Newbury Street to the other, and then back again.

If you’ve never had the pleasure of window shopping along Newbury yourself, it’s fairly easy to imagine: Think of a wide, tree-lined, perfectly straight boulevard that stretches on for eight very long blocks - two miles long, in fact. It’s packed on both sides with pricey retails shops, trendy boutiques, cafes, bookstores, upscale eateries, and the occasional office space and apartment building. From what I could gather, the retail value seems to drop along Newbury Street as you get further and further from the Boston Common, which is where Marc Jacobs and Chanel and other boutiques like those are located.

But if you keep on walking in the direction away from the park, you’ll start to find businesses of a much more interesting sort. Trident Booksellers & Cafe (338 Newbury Street) was one I stumbled upon. (Try the breakfast burrito.) According to Trident’s Website, it’s “the last remaining independent bookstore in Boston proper.” I find it almost impossible to believe that Boston, of all places, has just one non-chain bookstore, although when you consider all the bookshops located right across the river in Cambridge, I suppose it’s not quite as bad as it sounds. But still.

Anyway, I was maybe three-quarters of the way up the street when my stomach started growling, and that’s probably why I noticed a small shop across the road with black awnings. This was Johnny Cupcakes. The store’s logo was a cupcake with crossbones underneath, clearly a play on the skull-and-crossbones design. I’m well aware of the relatively new cupcake cafe trend, and so when I saw the Johnny Cupcakes logo, my initial thought was that I had just stumbled upon the first-ever hipster owned cupcake boutique. My mind was fairly blown at the thought, and even though I am not at all the type of person who would pay $4.00 for a cupcake, I more or less resigned myself right then and there to making a purchase. I was hungry, for one thing. And I was just absolutely floored by the business idea. It’s got to take a pretty heavy set of balls to open a punk-rock cupcake shop down the street from Banana Republic and Ralph Lauren, after all. 

So I ran up the stairs and into the cafe, and the first thing I noticed was the huge amount of unusual merchandise for sale. Really cool designer T-shirts, one-inch buttons - stuff like that. It wasn’t until I had literally checked out the merch lining all four walls that I realized I hadn’t found the cupcakes yet. There were authentic cooling racks lined up in front of a brick wall, but they were all being used to store T-shirts. Even the glass display case next to the cash register held no baked goods - just more T-shirts. That was when I noticed a big sign hanging on the wall. It was filled with text, and once I began reading it, I realized it was a brief history of the Johnny Cupcakes empire itself. The first line was printed in oversized type. It said, “I started this company as a joke.”

I won’t bother explaining the entire story here, but if you’re interested in learning about one of the most unusual T-shirt and merchandise companies in the country, you can read about it yourself by clicking here. And if you live on the west coast, mark your calendar: A new Johnny Cupcakes location is opening soon at 7959 Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. According to the clerk I spoke with at the Newbury Street store, the L.A. shop is going to be full of surprises that won’t be fully revealed until the grand opening on Saturday, August 2, 2008. There’s a slight chance I might fly out for the opening, and there’s also a chance I might be writing about Johnny and his brilliant business for an upcoming issue of Paste magazine, so check this space on August 2 or 3 for photos and updates. (And click here to read my first article for Paste, a brief profile of the world’s most creative ice-cream truck company.)

1. Vampire Weekend 
2. Krav Maga
3. Getting Things Done by David Allen
4. Guerrilla Marketing for Writers by Jay Conrad Levinson
5. www.MoonPittsburgh.com
6. Johnny Bunko

[What to expect from the upcoming Vampire Weekend backlash] [Born Ruffians]

The Moon Handbooks Pittsburgh companion website has literally been in the works for something like 10 months now, and finally - FINALLY! - it’s now live and online. I’d be much obliged if you’d take a minute to check it out, and also if you’d be kind enough to let me know what you think.

As for myself, I’m more or less in love with it. In fact, not only is it a storefront selling discounted and autographed copies of the book - it’s also a fantastic online guide with a great Pittsburgh-places directory. I’m in the process now of gathering together a bunch of merchandise ideas (T-shirts, tote bags, etc.), so you can count on there being all sorts of great stuff for sale on the site before too long.

Please feel free to get in touch if you’re a creative Pittsburgher with something you’d like to sell on the site; assuming there’s a significant enough interest, MoonPittsburgh.com will soon be acting as a retail store for all things Pittsburgh, like books and gift items.  

Q) When you’ve had the same phone number forever, and then you change it, how should you best go about the process of informing everyone who needs to know?

A) I don’t have the slightest inkling of an idea. We’re sort of past the age of sending out mass e-mails, aren’t we? After all, I don’t even know the majority of the people in my e-mail address books.  

Anyway, the point is, I finally decided to get a new mobile number. I thought it might be nice to have one with an area code that accurately reflected where I currently live. If you’d like the number, kindly send a request via e-mail, or simply call me on my old number, which will be active for another two weeks or so.