Joe Friend is a Los Angeles based author, musician, podcaster, screenwriter, and voice actor. In addition to his creative endeavors, Joe is also a media & entertainment executive and digital media & marketing consultant.
This site is equal parts portfolio and running stream-of-conscious. For something more specific, Choose Your Own Adventure below.
jf3co, LLC works include:
The Story of My Friends
Film Podcast with Bryan & Joe
The Robot War
Joe Friend Band - Eastern|Pacific EP / Golden Sun (Remixes) / Seven|Seven
Venice Beach Love Affair - Hours Until Monday / Hours Until Monday (Remixes)
... plus a number of award-winning screenplays, scripted and unscripted television pilots, novellas; please request loglines via query to [email protected]
More from Joe | Instagram | LinkedIn | IMDB | YouTube
The Robot War | Web |  Amazon | Instagram | Facebook | ComiXology | YouTube
Joe Friend Band | Web | Apple Music | Spotify | Soundcloud | Instagram | Facebook | Bandcamp | Napster | YouTube | GeniusÂ
The Story of My Friends is a general-interest “call-in” talk-show led by host Joe Friend and his rotating cadre of questionably sane guests. TSOMF covers topics including fire dancing, astrophotography, juggling for a Guinness World Record, hypnotherapy, escaping a hospital, mining for gold, producing a musical, dancing naked with witches, yoga faux pas, artificially inseminating prized dogs, creating a board game, surviving in prison, driving a Corvette across the country, giving a woman a stroke, shooting a good friend, and much more; all with the message: Life Is Better When We Talk.
Part Talk Show, Part Game Show, A Little Too Much of Joe - The Story of My Friends
Hackery Daiquiri - A Free-Writing Exercise of Beginnings Written During a Tropical Storm in Puerto Rico...
Rebecca turned on the light.
Robert lay on his back on the plush carpet ensconced tightly in one of her hoodies. His head and shoulders angled towards her in the doorway. He was half in the hallway. On his belly lay an opened styrofoam clamshell To Go container of leftover fried shrimp and cold french fries.
He pushed with his feet, sliding on his back, while eating soggy shrimp, tails and all, into the room; a shocking red trail of cocktail sauce staining the carpet.
It was October.
The Phillies had just won the pennant.
"What are you doing?", she asked.
He did not reply.
Brigand Pete stomped the length of the ship from the forecastle to the captain's quarters, ruminating how this unlikely path of his has taken him from the wood outside of Londontown to this warm Mediterranean sea.
The quartermaster opened the door for him. It seems his worthy opponent was finally ready to surrender the ship.Brigand Pete first made eye contact with the Lady Fairlane, still strong and defiant in her shackles, who gave him a look of utmost disgust, not the long, yearning looks from their more youthful time together.
"I am told the captain will surrender now, milady."
"The captain is dead," she spat.
Brigand Pete removed finally his attention from the Lady Fairlane to acknowledge the captain. True enough he hung limp in his shackles. He would captain this cursed galleon no more.
Brigand Pete turns to his quartermaster and states: "Captain Fairlane is to receive full honors and a burial at sea. Inform this to the remainder of the captive crew and set the expectation that they are to be in full dress in attendance." Brigand Pete pivots, then pauses, forgetting something... "Oh, and set the Lady Fairlane free."
A waft of gunpowder and splintered timber blew in through a porthole. The call of an albatross comes in on the breeze.
Jonathan galloped into the room like a cowboy.
He had just removed his shirt, whipping it about, prior to flossing it back and forth, ass to crotch, between his legs.
Hermione looked up from her needlepoint; it was an Urban Outfitters vintage stating "Pussy Makes Me Dizzy".
April rain blew splatter in through the window, perpetually stuck slightly open from old, swollen paint.
Hermione sneezed twice - it was mold season - and gently placed her project on her knees. She then gathered a balled up sock from Jonathan's side of the bed and pegged him with it.
"Get the fuck out of here and go do something productive," lackadaisical despite the harsh words.
"I am being summoned to dance! I am being summoned to dance!" Jonathan continues cantering down the hall as both Pomeranians, Luther and Vandross, join the reverie yapping at his heels.
The TV talked about how to make a donation to a family who had just lost everything in a fire.
It was hard to keep track of these things any more, thought Hermione.
Lester stood outside as if frozen. Despite the cool, his palms sweaty on the knob. He could not bring himself to complete the simple act of the necessary half rotation to open the door. He imagined her, on the other side of the door, shushing her lover with a lovely forearm and listening intently for more of the structured sound she thought she heard; the sound of Lester's untimely arrival. Lester knew, despite the paperwork, despite the newly-established illegality of this simple act of visitation, despite his monomaniacal intent, she had not yet changed the locks; being helpless at that sort of thing, she would always say that some things were 'his job' with a laugh. Lester tightly gripped the old, drab green army surplus trenching shovel in his other hand - the hand of his good shoulder, his strong hand - and held his breath listening; the way he saw it he was free to add a few things of his own to the His Job list these days. No one to laugh him any more.
After a period of time, after the thumping of blood in his ears calmed to a gentle susurration, after his vision refocused to the tiny pinpoints of tunnel vision that had been driving his actions of late, after he calmed the sticky sweet whisky breathes catching between his dry, inflamed teeth, Lester flung the door open with a shocking crash. The door stuck immediately in the drywall. His eyes slowly acclimated to the dark. The room was empty. The house was empty.
Sepulturero expanded his encapsulation to shoo away the thickness of atmospheric midges, then immediately dimmed it once more so that a Phased Entry could be calculated and executed by the suit. By design, Mars has no doors that open to the inhabitable outside. His corporeal form split, then each piece split again, happening exponentially, until it could pass sufficiently through the lattice entry portal. The atoms of this gateway phased to pull at matter aligned to the right pattern, drawing him in; for every lock there is a key.
Generosity commanded her field of vision to accommodate the entirety of the woven canvas living quarters and note his entry. She was conjuring through the DMZ. The Lucifer module was in her grasp. She had the renegade AI pegged to a spitting mad, white hot ball. Photons were draining from the rest of the space, leaving her surrounded in preternatural darkness.
Sepulturero coalesced, then dusted off the fine, gray ash of hapless midges now decommissioned."We do not know enough about this yet to begin to wield..."
She cut him off, "If it continues to consume the atmospherics there will be no more air, our mission will have failed, and we will all soon be dead."
Lucifer suddenly flared causing Generosity to refocus on the task at hand: taming the beast.
The gentle shudder of the ground beneath their feet marked yet another arrival on the rocket pad. More lungs to feed.
Dick opens the door. See Dick open the door. The door is open, Dick.
Dick sees Jane and smiles. See Dick smile. Dick smiles at Jane.
Jane is removing the plastic packaging from a sharp titanium triton she just received from Etsy. See Jane remove the plastic packaging from a sharp titanium triton she just received from Etsy. Jane removed all the plastic packaging from a sharp titanium triton she just received from Etsy.
"Hi Jane," Dick says with a wave. See Dick wave. Wave, Dick, wave.
Jane hefts the triton and in one perfect motion pins Dick to the wall and doorjamb like a marshmallow on a fork. See Dick pinned to both the wall and the doorjamb with Jane's new triton like a marshmallow on a fork, after she hefted it with one perfect motion. Dick is pinned to the wall and the doorjamb by a new triton expertly hefted by Jane.
Do you like marshmallows?
Jebediah shouldered the cabin door open causing the whole structure to crackle, ice in the seams of the loose wood. A build up of snow prevented much more than a side-slipped entry. He first doffed his cloak, then, from outside the door, tossed two freshly killed rabbits in a fine arc onto the center table stained black from the oily smoke of the pine wood smoldering in the hearth.
Kaitlin looked over and smiled as she continued to drop rosemary sprigs into the boiling water of the kettle with one hand while rocking a drafty bassinet with the other.
The jounce of his entry coupled with the heat from the chimney loosed a sheaf of snow from the roof which slid off and dumped upon him mostly down his ragged collar.
They both paused then laughed simultaneously.He shook off like a dog then entered the cabin.
It is a good winter.
Jim stood giggling at the first closed door after winding his way up to the top of the marble steps in the foyer of the aging mansion. He was not alone. A handful of his friends were with him. They were deep into a psilocybin trip on mushrooms. His friends tried to keep him quiet to prevent him from ruining the surprise; but the idea of the surprise was too fun, too cohesive, too spontaneous, and therefore poorly executed. Jim regained his composure and gently opened the door swinging it wide. The girls, similarly deep in a psilocybin trip on mushrooms, had grown quite tired of the boys Kaiju wrestling in a knee deep swimming pool mere feet from the alpacas, and sequestered themselves in the frilly bedroom. The women surrounded an extraordinarily well-crafted charcuterie plate and nobly took turns selecting a piece like adults patiently waiting to spin the plastic spinner on the board game of Life. They all looked up with the exact same look of exasperation. Jim and the boys wondered at this magnificent setting. No one here designed this space, so the frills were what they were; though the frilly space was quickly determined to be the most haunted... but how did charcuterie happen? It was like stumbling upon playful wood nymphs bathing naked in a spring under a pale moon! And how could they get some? Jim stood with his boys in a chortling, beaming tableau, as composed as they could be under the shifting of circumstances. How much time had passed since they opened the door? They were in the hottest and driest place on earth - the hills of Ojai in September. Erica came over and shut the door in their faces. No words were exchanged. The hallway was dark and cool.
Arthur entered the door. It was a good door. Like the door of his Ohioan childhood home crafted by his father. The front is a long way from there and ages ago. Arthur loosed the fine Venetian knob. Lazy Italians can craft good doors. Elizabeth looked up. She kneaded her hands with tallow. Her right hand red and raw from nights spent mopping sweat off the brows of the injured and the mad confined to the infirmary. Arthur made to speak but stopped because nothing good could come of it. He smelled fresh bread. Paulo, the lame hotel boy, must've brought some by earlier. It would go well with the wine pressed upon him by the priest. Arthur removed his cloak and shook it. Once more he imagined the ashes of the cathedral gently falling like a twilight snow.
Ronnie, naked and holding a newly-opened bottle of champagne, stood as a silhouette in the doorway.
Linda looked up from her dissertation at his midsection and blushed.
Ronnie looked down then back up grinning wide."Linda, if ever we were to make a baby, now is the time!"
His basso profundo exclamation complimented by a peel of thunder that rolled across the congealed July night; there will be a smattering of rain.
"Alexa, play some Jodeci!", she lilted, shoving her dissertation aside.
If Star Trek has transporters, why do they need spaceships? Why can't The Matrix use bunnies for energy? Why didn't the Terminator get a job at the hospital where Sarah Conner was to give birth? I have no idea. But instead of pondering these questions I decided to write a Sci-Fi/Action GRAPHIC NOVEL that is logically flawless and totally possible today.
Santa Barbara is under siege by a massive robot army, forcing a wiseass dreamer to grow up and get the lead out to rescue his girlfriend and a school full of trapped children.
"It wasn’t like the movies. More precisely, how the movies portray their idea of a robot invasion. This event did not contain any humanoid robots with overly complex systems designed to complete the rudimentary task of assassination. It wasn’t some dystopian future where humankind finds itself enslaved to generate electricity for a civilization of advanced robotics. But both are a good place to start in order to look at the difference between fact and fiction. With the idea being to help you, dear reader, wrap your mind around the events that transpired with the hope of defending yourselves when they ultimately happen again. And it will happen again.”
Our cast of unlikely heroes are you, me, your coworkers, acquaintances; what would happen if calamity struck and suddenly the only people you had to rely on were the people at your place of employment… wherever it may be? A drab office, an elementary school, a Coast Guard Station, wildfire firefighting, a marijuana farm, a couple of lazy, corrupt Police Officers.
We follow these ragtag ne’er-do-wells as their town is cut off both physically and electronically from everywhere else in the country - they are on their own and they must get to the bottom of this mystery to prevent further destruction during the smoky chaos of a large wildfire spawned from a surprise robot invasion… that is, if they want to survive.
Here's what Abraham Lincoln said about integrity: "I desire to so conduct the affairs of the administration that if, at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall have at least one friend left — and that friend shall be down inside of me."
And since you're here, here is a refresher on the definition of integrity: the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness; the state of being whole and undivided.
What Lincoln is saying is that he would govern with integrity to the point of losing all other facets of his person given he understands that this trait is most integral (get it) to being a leader.
Being reminded of integrity is interesting - it should give you at least a brief pause for you to self-evaluate and consider if you act with integrity; it's hard sometimes, particularly when integrity is blocking your objective. But, going back to the Lincoln perspective, integrity supersedes all objectives, as it is the pinnacle objective.
We are living in a trying time - almost unnecessarily, given the medical advice available to us, and the facts of the many superfluous lawsuits easily dismissed as the charades they were. Why have we made a hard situation harder on ourselves? How have we been influenced to abide or spread baseless harassment? I'm curious how everyone looks to what 'the other' the stranger, the friend, the peer does and still holds themselves accountable to checking their facts, contributing constructively to debates, not committing fallacies in the process of arguing, and not perpetuating lies... in other words, acting with integrity.
Lastly, to close, another Lincoln quote: "What kills the skunk is the publicity it gives itself."
I've started using deodorant again. Not because I have any reason to. But I don't want to forget how to use it. I don't remember it tasting this bad. How much do I eat to get the proper dose?
An association between April 1 and foolishness is first mentioned in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (1392).
The "Whelksman's Tale", featuring La Havre harbor in Normandy, France, tells of a sea snail harvester who gets tricked by a local rival fisherman into amorously pursuing a beached dolphin as a mate, as he is led to believe it's a live, singing mermaid.
The rival, in possession of a prodigiously broad vocal range, lures the poor whelksman with his siren song, and satirical philosophical discourse into, ultimately, professing his love for the dolphin aloud during a local townhall; he is then driven out of his home and business by his fellow townsfolk for this perversion.
The footnote here being the man returns to town and massacres (most of Chaucer is either macabre or ribald) his naysayers with "speares ayn harpoon festooned ay crowne o'shelle" [literally a harpoon with a conch shell tip] on April 1st, thus giving rise to two things we continue to this day: playing tricks on people and the naming of munitions casing as... shells.
An occasional part of my intermittent “In These Uncertain Times” anti-boredom list; you can try this at home!
Lapsang Souchon tea bag
8 oz. hot water
Dollop Pure Life Farm honey -Â https://www.facebook.com/purelifefarm/
4 oz. Homemade almond/coconut milk (3/4 cup raw almonds, 1/4 cup shredded coconut, 3 dates, sprinkle salt, 4 cups water, blend, run through cheesecloth)
To my utter surprise, health, whole and raw food aficionados are completely against genetically modified foods; but I smell opportunity… let's use this "everyone gets a turn" to help influence a burgeoning industry in need. Here’s some genetically modified food would-be smash hits:
We've all seen these commercials for horror movies that, honestly, run together with their banal, rewarmed hogwash, but (to my knowledge) no one actually watches *Mall of American shoppers excluded.
So, let's make a few of our own! The rules: list the elements of your movie that should be featured in commercials and promotional material - pitch it here. I'll start:
Okay, so some pale kid crawls out of a laundry basket then birds or some shit fly out of her mouth. Also there people in the mirrors or something. Â A chesty blonde screams then collapses with her back against a wall. Â Make it happen.
So, like, uhhh, there's this dude walking down an old hospital hallway with the peeling green paint and all and as he walks - ok so the camera is parallel to him and wall - but as he walks he runs his hand on the wall and like black Rorschach looking ink graffiti appears behind him and he doesn't notice.
Sunny, serene clearing in a forest, the camera slowly pans down to grass level - a pigs legs are sticking in the air… we hear a crunching, then - wait for it - four bloody clown faces pick their heads up and peer into the camera.
Zombies invade a strip mall daycare center - next door is the Mexican martial arts studio of Jesus DeChristofer… Jesus rallies his 12 students to protect the strip - but wait… why is Jude opening the back door?
Before reality television provided me with examples of the appropriate response in a variety of situations, I had video games. Here are some tidbits gleaned from my time well-spent. What about you?
If you're a construction worker returning to a job site one fine Monday to find it inhabited by a large gorilla, don't climb the ladder.
If you spend a fearful existence of mindless mass consumption endlessly pursued by ghosts from your past, take drugs, then kill them. Kill them all.
In addition to providing meat and eggs, ostriches can be used to settle archaic and ancient scores.Â
