It was Jess Jin’s birthday. If you’ve been following me for a while then you’d probably seen her styling Chinese food during one of my many cookbook shoots (tho she was never paid she just wanted to eat free food) or making dumplings at one of my many parties. I think she’s my best friend but I’m not sure cause I keep getting annoyed by her smartest kid in class energy but every time I yell at her she always responds with surprising kindness and she’s always down for pretty much anything from running point on all of my dumpling making parties to pretending to be my girlfriend one year during my birthday party and while I give a very moving speech about how lucky I am to have such a gf she’s making out with a bunch of dudes behind my back and the whole party had to keep distracting me by showering me with compliments and well wishes while Jess and Josiah Johnson and John Elliott get to thrupling. She should be really easy to appreciate but I’ve just got too deep a bias against child prodigies so whenever I’m back on the fence about her, I just remind myself of our first hang: she met up with my homies and me for dumplings and beer. We were in the middle of trading really gross stories and she just jumped right in with some graphic story about some gnarly shit that she witnessed living in SF’s tenderloin. After she finished the story there was a pause, she looked around the table and said “this is fun, you guys are fun.” Well so are you Jess Jin so are you.