About Brandon Mendelson

About Brandon Mendelson

Brandon Mendelson with a signed program from Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s Beethoven’s Last Night (or as he calls it, Beethoven Vs. Satan)

Introduction To Mediocrity

I grew up in Monroe, New York. My family moved there to get away from the assholes that inhabit Long Island.

The only thing I kept from the Island was my love for the New York Islanders, a team that embodies mediocrity.

I barely graduated from Monroe-Woodbury Senior High School. I had no commitment to academic success, didn’t want to be there, and hated everyone I went to school with. I did; however, hold the stupid belief that being involved in a ton of extracurriculars would get me into NYU, despite a piss-poor GPA of 77.0

Alfred State was the only college that accepted me, and I didn’t even apply there. My Dad sent them an application after I told him I wasn’t applying elsewhere and that other colleges were “bullshit”.

That was a rare moment between my Dad and I because my parents … were not always around.  My older sister, Melissa, raised us.

For every good thing Melissa did, my older brother Brad undid. Born dead and later revived through magic, Brad has issues, many of them, including severe OCD.

Brad’s daily routine consists of throwing everything out, putting what’s left away to be thrown out later, going through your stuff, checking the mailbox twenty-seven times, and carrying conversations with himself. If you did anything to disrupt his routine, Brad would get angry, Hulk-angry, so none of us did anything.

Between the MIA parents and Brad, I was functionally retarded until college.

What Do I Remember From College?

Enough to collect the best stories and put them in a book entitled, Astonishing Tales Of Mediocrity. I have no idea of if / when that book will be released.

5 Things I Want To Do Before Pulling A Hunter S. Thompson

1. Live in Los Angeles.

2. Sleep with Halle Berry. or Amber Stevens. Or both … At the same time.

3. Consistently reach The New York Time’s Best Seller list with each book release.

4. Get those other scholarships set up at SUNY Potsdam for Lillian Cohen, Esther Mendelson, and Louis Mendelson. Full Ride scholarships. That also means upgrading the existing Oscar Cohen scholarship to a Full Ride.

5. Perform stand-up comedy. In terms of live performances, I’m hoping to land somewhere between a Hicks and a Carlin, but I’ll settle for landing above a Mencia or Dunham.

After that? Someone’s wiping my brains off a cabinet.

Post-College Dickery

In my transition from undergraduate to grad student, I worked for a syndicated ABC television show and CBS’s U-Wire division. All while taking graduate classes at SUNY Potsdam. Not a great combination, I wound up leaving the Organizational Leadership program with a semester to go.

U-Wire consisted of sitting for six hours each day tagging hundreds of stories from college papers across America. It sucked, but it was also the perfect job because I barely had coworkers and you could watch all the porn you wanted.

Telecommuting is awesome!

The TV show? It’s something to forget, but hey, it got me in IMDB!

I also flunked my LSAT … Flunk is too weak of a word. I bombed my LSAT so hard the walls shook in the scoring center and three law school admissions officers committed suicide in protest.

I avoided the GRE after vowing never to kill again.

For a lot of boring reasons, I needed a break from Potsdam. Faced with limited alternatives, admissions offices like their bullshit test scores, I went to UAlbany to work toward a Ph.D. in American History, which I will complete after I’m done with Social Media Is Bullshit and its sequels.

The books get priority because job options for someone with a Ph.D. are limited.

Let’s just say I’m more likely to become a stripper at Scores.

When I left UAlbany, I traveled across America and promoted the early detection and prevention of cancer. This project is now referred to as “A National Story Of Minor Significance” and will likely be the subject of the second book. It also started the process that lead to the creation of the High Five Tour and my first book.

I also started work on Dracula And Kittens, which you can learn more about on this blog.

What Am I Doing  Now?

Praying to George Carlin that I get a book deal. Until then, I’m finishing my degree at SUNY Potsdam. It will only take a semester, and I can use the degree to get a “real” job while completing the Ph.D if all of this fails.

That way, if Social Media Is Bullshit never comes out – or fails horribly – I can live a quiet life of mediocrity somewhere, just like the Islanders.