Is holiday shopping driving you to drink? Are you feeling stressed, nervous, or sick to your stomach? It's time for an intervention. For one week All Purpose has become The Brand Pharmacy, a cure for all your shopping ailments. The store features tuxedo shirts, leather bow ties, and knits by Filius. CITIZEN:Citizen objects include the black ccPhone and the Shoplifter tote bag. Are silk blindfolds on your holiday shopping list? All Purpose carries lifestyle......

You know you're gonna do it. Don't lie. You're gonna be there in the dark, in the cold, along with all your friends and neighbors standing in line like a dope at 4:50am outside some Big Box store or a mall waiting for some kid to unlock the door so you can buy a $300 plasma tv or a $5 dvd player. It's America and no matter how cool we think we are, we're......

Last Labor Day weekend I desperately needed to escape the disagreeable, torturous heatwave. So I made a last minute decision to fly to Seattle and bumbershoot. As luck would have it, my spontaneity provided for a much more temperate and rainless 70 degree haven. The Bumbershoot Festival has been running 37 years strong and every year it seems to progress into a bigger and better animal. Situated within the spacious Seattle Center amidst the......

So I have this pretty fun tradition (aside from Three Rivers in the holidays), of going camping at Two Harbors on Catalina Island every Labor Day Weekend. The tradition originally began as a Jugglers' Festival, oddly enough, of which I was only a part due to my friend and her husband who are amateur jugglers, and because they are friends with some fairly accomplished ones. There was a juggling volleyball game on one of......

At 21 years old, less than two months new to town, living in my cousin’s back room in the deep valley, making love to a Thomas Guide every night, with zero frame of reference for my situation, I embark on a film career. My first break, an independent film, hires me to be their production secretary. What’s that? I don’t know either. Here’s what I do know. The production office is at 6th and Alameda......

After two years of college I had to drop out for financial reasons. I had stopped talking to my family, and needing loans to pay for school I had no one to cosign for them. Being wary of those bank loans I decided it better to drop out. I went to a temp job and they placed me in an accounts payable position for a non-profit. Nine years later here I am still working......

I've had some frustrating jobs in the past--mostly in retail--but there is nothing quite like the pain and humiliation of stumping for a cause and a minimum wage paycheck. When I was a mere young'un, at 18, I spent six months working as a door-to-door canvasser for Greenpeace. Yes, I was one of those annoying neo-hippie crusader types (mind you, I bathed and shaved and did not spread any funk, unlike some of my......

As I try to do anything but labor on this Labor Day, I reflect on my nearly 10 years working in office jobs to support my freelance habit. So while I spend my 9 to 5s at work-work, I've held myself to certain standards. I believe I act with integrity. I've tried to treat people – regardless of my personal feelings for them – with dignity. And I've worked hard because (besides being a......

Everyone's favorite secretary is set to become the new celebrity face for the self-proclaimed "most erotic lingerie in the world". The upscale, reservation-only, lingerie shop on Melrose, Agent Provocateur has taken the torch from the coke-stained claws of Kate Moss and handed them to Maggie Gyllenhaal, an honor once bestowed upon Kylie Minogue and Dita Von Teese. The UK's Daily Mail has a handful of the photos from the Alice Hawkins photoshoot of Jake's......

I used to work in an extremely uptight government office. My one saving grace was my friend, Karen, who was the only normal person there. We ate lunch together every single day and went out together after work. One day we were talking about how everything men say leads to some sexual innuendo. So I told her about one of my favorite Lynda Barry cartoons where the men only speak in phallic symbols. She......

When i was still a teenager, i got hooked up selling sunglasses on a street corner in Inglewood. It seems like a random job, and it was, but man that shit paid like whoa, paid in cash, and plus i never had to worry about new shades. The sunglass stand was on La Cienega and Arbor Vitae, and it was ran by this weird Italian guy who lived in various motels around town, chain......

By the time I got to Gorky's Russian Cafe, its communist-leaning founder had sold out to a south bay capitalist named Fred. He hired me as a server, promoted me to cashier, then made me manager -- of the 1am-9am shift. From 2-6, I was the only staffer there at the corner of 8th and San Julian downtown. People would come in after Jac Zinder's dance club, or a show at LACE, arty people......

"Hi, this is Jackie Payne with Impact Distributers...I'm just calling to let you know that you have won one of FIVE fabulous prizes!" Yes, I worked phone sales...I was the lowest of the low. In fact, it was not only phone sales - it was a phone scam. When I was 18 I used to work at a place called Impact Distributers in a high-rise in Marina Del Rey. My ex-boyfriend Harlan got me......

For quite some time i was one the guys responsible for illegally installing 200-400 promotional signs on people's property throughout the city (aka street spamming) while i simultaneously monitored 15 "signwalkers" spread out within proximity at various big intersections and freeway off-ramps. A signwalker is a person who is standing on a street corner holding a 10 ft. sign that will direct traffic to the sale we're promoting that particular weekend. You have to......

After graduating high school outside of Chicago, most peers of mine got jobs as lifeguards at the beach, day camp leaders or book worms at Borders. For me, I went straight back to the place I was so excited to leave... to be a janitor for the summer. My high school was not just any public school, it was New Trier, a well tax-funded North Shore suburban institution, standing four stories high (five if......