Storytime

It occurred to me, as I sat on the bed with a glass of wine, that he was probably at the wedding about now. I imagined him making small talk, wearing a shirt and tie somewhat uncomfortably. I imagined the girlfriend had made him leave his Blackberry behind and that he kept touching his pocket reflexively, wanting to check it. He is smiling wearily as he's introduced to one person after another, maybe happy when he can commiserate with another guy about baseball.

I closed my eyes and imagined that he wished he were somewhere else, barely able to keep up the facade. Maybe he thought about me - just for a second - touching his pocket where his Blackberry would be. He probably wears the tie well, despite what he thinks. Maybe there are questions about when he's going to marry the girlfriend. They've been together a while now, after all. He thinks about how life seems to be happening to him, a tide that's sweeping him along quite without his realizing it.

None of this is true, of course. This is my version of him, the version that I've created to fill in the gaps. I sit in my empty apartment, nursing my glass of wine, and imagine him at the wedding. It gives me some solace, some part of him that I can understand, even if it's inaccurate. What is real is me, sitting on the bed, looking mournfully at my own Blackberry whose flashing red light has begun to rule my life. It's sort of romantic, is it not, the idea that he and I were in the same time zone, that he was thinking of me just as I was thinking of him. Romantic indeed. And entirely a fiction.

I take comfort in thinking of life as a series of stories. It affords me a measure of control. I can have a hand in crafting the details that go unspoken. It gives me a way to possess a part of things that would be otherwise beyond my grasp. So I imagine him at this wedding - further details of which I have not - and I smile to myself, feeling gratified that I can have an imaginary version of him to call mine. I have little hope of ever getting that close to the real one. That's the gap that stories can bridge. Maybe it's a leftover tendency from being an only child, this propensity to create fiction in the spaces of the real. If nothing else, it seems to serve me well enough in the moment. It makes me feel less alone.

This is all very melancholy. Some stories are like that. As long as I think of myself as the protagonist - the one character in the story who is expected to experience change - then I guess all is well. It's a comedy, I keep telling myself. So maybe it will all work out, in a way that I least expect. Isn't that how stories usually go?

It looks great on paper!

I got an auto-reply email from Tom this afternoon that said: "I'm out of the office for WMA Volunteer Day. Try the cell if you need me."

Say what? The entertainment industry is known for many things, community service not really being chief among them. So color me a little surprised that one of the biggest agencies in the country apparently compels its employees to forgo their usual responsibility of generating money for their overlords to sort through donations at the Salvation Army. Is this sort of thing supposed to boost morale?

Of all the strange things I encountered during my tenure working for The Man, mandatory company-wide volunteering was not one of them. Last week at my decidedly non-corporate office we did have the annual event called Celebrate G's Birthday - we took Gwyther out for BBQ and then gave him cupcakes. That boosted morale, especially the part where we had drinks at 1:00PM on a Thursday. But I suspect this is something altogether different.

Under no such mandate, Leslie still volunteers a few times a month for New York Cares. Ostensibly she signed up to met new people - up until that point she had been mostly relegated to hanging out with my friends, most of whom have substance abuse problems and maturity issues. So she opted to sacrifice large portions of her weekend, in the hopes of expanding her group of friends. At one point she was drafted into a program that took kids from a group home on day trips to various places in the city. She was told that she needed to provide lunch for her assigned kids, who were technically poor despite the fact that they could apparently afford a Playstation PSP. Somewhat shady, this. Now she organizes a group of socially awkward misfits to do grounds keeping at a nursing home in Lower Manhattan. That ends up costing her money as well in gardening supplies, and apparently the only interesting person she's met wears South Park t-shirts and curses out old ladies who get in his way when he's clipping the hedges. But...good karma? Right?

None of this is doing much to sell me on the idea that I ought to cater to the community. Not that I haven't already done my time. When I was in high school, I hung around with a bunch of girls who took the whole Jesus thing rather seriously and was thus completely willing into signing up to work in the local soup kitchen once a month. There must have been some sort of Stockholm Syndrome to blame. But then again I did many things in high school that would later seem wildly out-of-character, like being blonde and having crushes on gay boys.

We were not responsible for actually cooking anything we brought to the soup kitchen, much to the good fortune of the patrons. Our only task was to stand on the line and dispense the industrial-looking green beans with strained smiles. At the time I was blissfully naive of the potential danger I was in. Many, many episodes of Law & Order have since have taught me that all homeless people are unmedicated schizophrenics who are one wrong look away from stabbing you to death.

Why would any adolescent do anything that could even loosely be considered work for no money? Because it looks good on your college application. I was reminded of this constantly by my academic advisor. Despite the fact that I had had an actual part-time job since I was 13, I was taking 3 languages and I reguarly made standardized tests my bitch, it was patently understood that no university worth incurring massive student loans would so much as look at you without the requiste amount of volunteering. So off to the soup kitchen I went once a month for all of my junior year. I guess it worked. I do have a lot of student loans.

Much like my propensity to chase after boys that like musicals, my willingness to give of myself seemed to magically dissipate once I got my college acceptance letter. At this stage of the game, I am mercifully finished with the process of academic judgement, and my work-mandated charity is pretty much limited to donating autographed Shinedown drumheads for auction. But it's good to know that the William Morris Agency is keeping the lovely concept of involuntary volunteering alive and well.

"LA Ink" - The longest hour of my life

Previously in the life of Kat Von D:

• Kat does many realistic portrait tattoos of dead babies, grandparents.
• Kat threatens the masculinity of Ami James by virtue of her mere presence.
• Kat ditches inexplicable, trolly husband.
• Kat loses roughly 25 lbs, probably at the behest of network executives.

All of which seems much more interesting than anything that happened on Monday night.

I watched "Miami Ink" more regularly in the first season that I do now, but I always liked Kat. She seemed low-key and cool, and I thought it would be fun to go drinking with her and Kelly Clarkson. And she is tall, which I appreciate. So I was happy that she has her own show, and I'm thoroughly fascinated with watching the motley parade of folks getting tattoos. Seeing people justify why they want a dolphin holding a rose - graffiti-style - to commemorate their divorce (they're FREE now, you see!) is always entertaining.*

But, for the love of gawd, how did it actually take 42 minutes (excluding the airtime devoted to the GEICO cavemen) for the following to occur:

Walking around Hollywood. So edgy! So awesome! It's like the "Welcome to the Jungle" video where Axl gets off the bus and is seduced by the glamorous rock and roll underworld. Also heroin. Except Kat isn't shooting up in the bathroom at the Whisky - she's meeting with her contractor. Dude, talking about construction is almost as rad as WATCHING IT HAPPEN. But don't worry, there will be some of that later. But Kat's contractor has full sleeves and wears an ironic fedora so it's totally edgy.

To be fair, Kat does do a tattoo for Eric Balfour, whose character on "Conviction" was cute and charming and evidently nothing like how he is in real life - which is sort of a tool. His tattoo is a skull with butterflies, which somehow represents that he really digs living in LA - because it's awesome! Kat agrees that LA is awesome. The design is based on (wait for it) the album art for HIS BAND. Of course he's in a band. They show a brief clip of Eric Balfour's band - wow, OK. Do not want.

Kat walks around LA some more, and it's still awesome! She tries to convince Corey Miller, one of her mentors, to come work at her shop instead of his. Even though his shop actually exists and hers...not so much right now. Corey makes like he won't do it, but we've all seen the print ads, and so we knew how that's going to end up.

Seriously? We're only 20 minutes in? Dude.

Then it's off on a countrywide "search" to introduce us to the other artists that have already been hired. Many shots of planes taking off and other cities that are not as awesome as LA. Which is obviously why Kat is able to get them to pick up and move pretty easily. I mean, her argument is basically, "Dudes! I'm opening a shop in LA - which is awesome, by the way! Come work for...I mean, with me! In my shop! That doesn't exist yet!" She could sell ice to Eskimos, that one.

Kat does another tattoo (we're up to 2, if you're counting and you shouldn't bother) - a half-sleeve consisting of (I am not making this up) the LA skyline. What? LA has a skyline? I wasn't aware of any building there having more than 5 floors. Kat explains that she really wants to do a good job, since she would be totally dissing the awesomeness of LA if every little detail isn't perfect. Truly, I had no idea that the LA skyline was so distinctive. But I do not for one second question it's awesomeness.

Oh, PS, Kat is really glad to be back in LA. Because it's her hometown. And because LA is amazingly awesome. Those of us who don't live in LA...well, we can never truly understand the awesome awesomeness that is LA.

Is it over? Finally? Thank God. I mean, it's not like TLC isn't going to rerun it 150 times before next week's exciting installment - when Kat gets to watch more construction in action (rad!) and sit around at sidewalk cafes with her newly relocated staff. Because the shop? Still? Not so much.

* I have tattoos, and I intend on getting more. So I feel fully entitled to pass judgement on people who get completely asinine - albeit well-executed - body art. Especially people who make it my business by getting said body art on national television.

Virtually reality

In my spare time, I'm reading a novel about the music industry.

Like most of the books I've read since college, my mother sent it to me. I don't read nearly as much as I once did. I really don't have the time - unless I'm trapped on airplane with 5 hours to kill and my movie choice is something involving Adam Sandler and/or talking animals - and the idea of sifting through the enormous stacks at Barnes & Noble exhausts me. So I rely on Bling Judy, who is an avid reader, to pass along books that she think might interest me. She tends to stick to things she knows I like, and most of the time she's not wrong - with the possible exception of the book she sent by the girl who lived in New York City, describing how she paid off her astronomical credit card debt by begging money off strangers on the internet. I mean, seriously - fuck her and her Gucci shoe habit. I feel sorry for her not at all.

This particular book, while intriguing on the surface, was a similar gamble. I almost never read fiction, first and foremost. So I'm already biased going in. And I haven't finished the book yet, so it's probably unfair of me to pass judgement. But if you want to step up and fictionalize my everyday experience, you're opening yourself up to a whole world of judgement.

It's not a novel in the traditional sense of having a linear storyline, only that it's made up. It's really a series of short stories focusing on one character, each of whom have a different perspective of the music business - the performer, the label drone, the fan. A critical blurb touts that it has "an insider's touch to its depiction of the music industry and its denizens." Hmm. OK. I noticed that the author was in a band. Not a band I had heard of, and I've heard of things that never see the light of day beyond, say, the lead singer's mom's stereo. So I was a little suspect as to how insider the touch was really going to be.

The first chapter is about a 26 year-old A&R rep, condemned by the back cover as "arrogantly hip." For the most part, I cringe at fictional depictions of the music business - especially things like A&R, which is often put on par with being Mick Jagger, and this was no exception. A&R is not a hard gig, but it's a cruel one. Your value rests solely on how much weight your opinion holds on any particular day. Job security there is not, and much of your time is spent in crappy rock clubs or being criminally insincere. On the other hand, it's not that I haven't encountered a fair share of people my own age who act especially entitled to their padded expense accounts and dubious clout by virtue of their American Apparel hoodies and having their picture taken at the right parties. But it's the exception, not the rule.

A few years ago, I was in the Los Angeles office of Atlantic Records, who employed me at the time. It was my first time there, and I was making the rounds, putting faces to the people I communicated with on a daily basis. One of my last stops was the VP of A&R, who hadn't signed anything of real importance - most recently a band called Audiovent who's primary allure was that it contained the brothers of two of the guys in Incubus. But nevertheless he had a large office and unlimited supply of complimentary soft drinks, no doubt. Standing by his desk was a ruddy-faced kid, younger than me, probably about 19 or so. The department intern, I thought.

"Oh, have you met Kevin?" the VP asked.

"Hi," I said to the kid, extending my hand. "I work in the New York office." To be honest, I felt vaguely superior. I was only an executive assistant, but people knew me. After all, I had just walked into the office of the VP of A&R without knocking. While I had neither business cards nor any real influence, at least I didn't have to share a desk or spend my entire day stuffing padded envelopes.

"Kevin is our newest A&R rep," continued the VP. At this, Kevin smiled awkwardly and looked at his shoes. "He helped bring Audiovent to us."

This was the first time I realized that my very expensive college degree was no match for smoking weed with the brother of the guy from Incubus, as far as qualifications.

As I recall, Kevin was neither arrogant, nor especially hip. As the ideal demographic for pop music skews younger and the heavyweight executives get older, there occurs a frantic scrambling to latch onto anything or anyone who carried any semblance of relevance. So obscenely young and inexperienced people are hired, and their opinions are afforded an outrageous level of weight. Sometimes this goes to their head. But more often than not, they are shitcanned inside of a year when "restructuring" rolls around.

If anything, I'm a little amused to witness how an artist perceives the thoughts and motivations of those of us who work on this business side. Those of us who have to be somewhere every morning, sit at a desk and go through the motions of hawking art. Maybe we seem arrogant or self-important, incapable of understanding the artist since we must be analytical of mind and pretty much without a soul. We are, after all, agents of The Man.

Part of the artifice of the novel is how, on the surface, it's a series of independent vignettes about particular characters, the stories are all woven together in subtle ways. Central characters from one chapter pop up in the background of another as I read on, giving the whole thing a sort of loose structure. That's the one thing that I think rings true. This is a small world, this business - and a caste system in some ways. At the larger companies, unless you have a certain title, your usefulness is stripped down to whether or not you can be sent to Starbucks for lattes at 3PM. On the other hand, a person's overall clout is really nothing more than an illusion that can be crafted. It's all about getting your name out there, making sure everyone knows that you're a force to be reckoned with. I need to get better at this, I admit. My personal glory is never a concern, and I'm terrible at networking. My people will not be calling your people, and working a room gives me hives. But sometimes a reputation happens on its own.

Exhibit A: I was at a release part at the Hudson Hotel, thrown by Atlantic Records. It was a year or so after they had laid me off. Someone introduced me to Keith, who managed the Atlantic street teams. I had never had cause to deal with him while I worked there, but I had heard his name in passing. I shook his hand.

"Oh, wow, I've heard of you, " said Keith reverently. "They still talk about you. You wouldn't take shit from anyone."

There's also a healthy amount of self-loathing among almost all of the characters I've met so far in this book - the A&R guy is apathetic about his job, the rock star hates his fame, the label president feels like an inhuman dream-crusher, the sound engineer mourns the wife and children he left behind. I have to say, I have my moments of self-loathing, and they never have anything to do with my chosen line of work. Usually it's the result of stuff I do when I'm drunk. I mean, honestly - I've never met anyone who felt so resoundingly trapped in a gilded case littered with broken CD cases that they couldn't pack up and go work for a PR firm. This line of work is not as glamorous as it's often made out to be (we use a lot of Excel spreadsheets just like everyone else - sorry to disappoint), but I know that I wouldn't be happy doing anything else. At this point, I'm not sure I'm really qualified to do anything else. Besides, I think I still have some remnants of my soul left.

What struck me this weekend, as I finished the chapter about the newly signed band member who struggles with the suicide of his ex-girlfriend (replete with shout-outs to Natalie Merchant, natch), is how utterly depressing the whole book felt. All of the characters seemed so painfully isolated. There is no mention of them having friends, and especially not friends within the business with whom they can commiserate or laugh about its inherent absurdity. This is the biggest fiction of all, at least given my own experience. The friends I've made over the course of my tenure in the music industry are my surrogate family, sometimes only because they can most acutely appreciate the singular experience of what we do. "It's like being in Vietnam," I sighed to my lawyer friend. "You can try to explain it to people who weren't there, but they can't really understand what it's like."

This all sounds quite romantic, I suddenly realize. How trite. That wasn't my intention. Every Tuesday at my office I have to take out the trash. There are certainly days when I question whether or not it wouldn't be better to move to Minnesota and work at a truck stop. At times I go home feeling like I had a productive day, but more often I find myself exhausted by the struggle of fighting against an industry where logic goes to die. It's like any job.

"You should write a book," Mike said to me once. More than once. We sat next to each other for three years, tortured in similar ways by the unglamorous and often ridiculous mechanics of selling music for a living. "You can't make this shit up."

Maybe I will write a book someday. Except it would be non-fiction. And it would be a comedy, I think. After all, it's only entertainment.

The single parent

(DISCLAIMER: This is more of an writing exercise than my usual conversational rant. Which is not to say that it's any less true. I've been working with it, on and off, for about 3 months. I will never be happy with it, but today seemed like an apt day to finally stop tinkering and post it.)

My father is dying. Slowly. Statistically.

He had a 1% chance of not making it through his last surgery, but a 90% chance that this recurrence of his cancer will kill him, quickly. His kind of cancer usually has a 5-year survival rate, and his first episode was two years ago.

He called to tell me all this a few months ago, as I was driving down an endless stretch of desert highway in California's central valley. It was the first time I'd spoken to him in almost year.

Before I was born, my father wanted to name me Darryl if I were a boy. My mother says this only would have happened over her dead body.

When I was 6 years-old, my father taught me how to ride a bike. "Don't be a afraid of it," he said. "If you're afraid of it, you'll fall down." I fell down a lot. He showed me how to swing a bat, forcing my right elbow up and always telling me to follow-through. I was good at softball, and he was proud of me.

When I was 9 years-old, I used to take the bus to my after-school program at the YMCA, even though it wasn't all that far. The day that I missed the bus and nervously decided to walk, a fire engine pulled up as I was waiting to cross Purchase Street. My father waved to me and lifted me aboard. We rode together to the YMCA, and he let me ring the siren.

When I was 13 years-old, my father moved back to his hometown with his wife. He left me with my grandmother, instructing me not to tell my mother. The custody arrangement had been acrimonious and, as the primary guardian, my father was not supposed to leave the state. Fifteen minutes after the car left the driveway, I called my mother. I started at my third grammar school a week later.

My father sometimes writes me letters. They are always on yellow legal paper, torn from a pad that he keeps on his dining room table. His handwriting is in all capital letters. He tells me about the weather, my cousin and her kids. He always ends with "be careful."

When I was 18 years-old, my father stopped paying child support. He refused to give me any money for college since he felt there was no reason I ought to waste my time with such an expensive school. The campus at UNC was lovely, he'd said, and I could live with him.

Whenever I visit him in North Carolina, my father tells me how much cheaper it would be for me to live there instead of New York. He says I must have forgotten what trees and grass look like. He glares disapprovingly at my tattoos. He talks a lot about his will, what furniture I can have, if I want it. He enthusiastically tells me stories about his friend Jeff's two little girls, his adopted grandchildren of sorts. They adore him, his wife agrees. They are smart and talented and say the sort of funny, precocious things that 5 and 8 year-olds do. I've noticed that he has more framed photos of them in his house than he does of me.

When I was 24 years-old, my father called two weeks before Christmas to tell me he had cancer. It was raining, and I was walking down 2nd Avenue to my tiny studio apartment that I could barely afford. It was rare, this cancer, he told me. I should think about coming to visit - that is, if I had the time.

A few weeks ago, I turned 27. My father didn't call to wish me "happy birthday." There had been complications with his surgery, and he was in the hospital much longer than the projected 10 days. When I called to thank him for the card he sent, he sounded tired, beaten, but still unwilling to admit that both of us were just going through the motions. "I love you," I said reflexively before hanging up. "Bye," was his reply.

My father is dying. He is a chain smoker. He has congestive heart failure.

Today is his 59th birthday.

Use as directed

As a rule, I am unconcerned about my weight. Nevertheless, this morning I was checking my body mass index online, which I do from time to time so as to confirm that I'm still squarely hanging out in the Overweight category. On the same site, I noticed an add for Miller Lite. Did I know, the girl wearing the bikini seemed to be asking (via Flash graphics), that a Miller Lite has only 96 calories? Way less that my usual summer drinks choices, like those diet-killing pina colodas.

Why is anyone who's counting her calorie intake so much as looking at beer? Don't these people have sprints to run? I won't even drink beer because I prefer my liquor to go down a little smoother than something that tastes like liquid bread. I had half a Guinness once and my body couldn't bear to accept anything else for at least 36 hours - not food, not booze, not sincere compliments. Nothing. And I'm the sort of person who considers nachos with chili as a viable meal option.

Now this really isn't new. I can't be the only one who remembers the ad campaign that Bacardi was running a few years ago where they were mighty proud of themselves that Bacardi & Diet Coke only had 66 calories. And probably the most ridiculous thing was that the commercial showed two guys in a bar being all, "Oh, sweet, I don't need ruin all that ab work I did this morning! I might even have a second drink tonight! High five, bro!" Then they pretend that they want anything to do with ladyparts. And scene.

Manorexia goes mainstream! My question was always, "Why are we following these two douchebags around the bar? Aren't there some hotter guys over there, drinking whiskey and playing air guitar to Def Leppard?" Those are the people I want to be drinking with. I really don't want anyone who's legitimately concerned about how many calories are in a rum & coke blocking my access to the bar. Leave the alcohol for those of us who aren't fanatical about carbs, resistance training or obeying the voices who say you're not good enough until you can fit into Chip & Pepper jeans.

I'll let you in on a little secret - liquor in general tastes pretty bad. This is reason why I don't do shots until strongly coerced. Well, that and because vomit tastes pretty bad too. So I'm not drinking that scotch because it's tasty and refreshing. Certainly not to wash down my Lean Cuisine panini. I drink scotch because it's not as sickeningly sweet as, say, raspberry vodka and because it's the straightest route from sober to Not Sober, in all its varying degrees. And, more often than not, I will close out my night of scotch at 3AM with 2 slices of pizza - which definitely has more than 66 calories.

Now, of course, my BMI still has me in the Overweight category. I guess it's possible that if I started drinking Miller Lite, I might be able to whittle myself down to a socially acceptable waist size. However drunk is more fun than skinny.

Sensitive White Guys

I admit it, I can't get enough.

Throw in the ol' conceptual video as a kicker and, sweet mother of Mary, I don't wanna be right.

Welcome to my Friday night

How does anyone live without cable?

Rock & roll time

"I could just go back to my office for another two hours." The girl in the sweater set was bitching to the security guy outside the club last night. "It says 8:30 on the ticket."

I was waiting to pick up my will-call tickets at the window. No list tonight. I was keeping it real, standing on line with the rest of the proletariat. No pass, no laminate, no call to the tour manager to be whisked onto the bus. For all outward appearances, there was nothing to set me apart from the sweater set girl and her friend who were causing a scene and demanding to see the club manager. Except that I understand how rock shows operate.

Because of the usual crew I hang with, I guess I take for granted that there really are people out there who don't understand the concept of "rock & roll time." Sure, there's the time that's printed on the ticket. It's a guideline, folks, not an absolute. If the advertised start time says 9:00PM, depending on the club, that could mean anything from 11:00PM to the following Tuesday. Once we had a showcase for a band at Piano's. They told us our set time would be 9:00PM, so we naturally figured that meant around 10:00PM. In fact, our set time was 9:45PM, and the band didn't go on until almost 11:00PM. We were not amused, but no one demanded to see the club's manager. Rock & roll time, it happens. The band's lawyer did almost get into a fist fight with the sound guy, but that's an entirely different story.

This seemed to be the situation last night: Sweater Set and her equally straitlaced friend were there to see the headliner, a guy named Ari Hest who is apparently signed to Columbia Records. She felt quite put out by the fact that there might be other music happening besides Ari Hest, thus his set wouldn't start until 10:30PM - maybe. Clearly it didn't occur to her that she might enjoy the other music being offered, hence where she continued shrieking to anyone who would listen that it was totally unfair that she had to wait in the club for two! whole! hours! Ari Hest must have really awesome pyro or something.

On the other hand, I couldn't really sympathize since I wasn't there to see Ari Hest.

The Damnwells were playing.

Occasionally people ask me if I'm friends with the Damnwells. I'm not, despite the amount of zealous hyping I do on their behalf. I've never even met anyone in the band, not even bumped elbows at the bar. It's been a while since I went to any show that didn't involve either people I know socially or where my presence was required by the nature of my job. Work shows are entirely a different vibe - even if I like the band, I can never really like them too much because of the unspoken code Thou shalt not enjoy that which thou commissions. There is also a lot of talking shop, bemoaning the quality of the mix or where in the set the band played the current single. The having of the fun is minimal at best.

But I have no stake in The Damnwells. They just make me happy. I know, that's really uncool, maybe less cool than secretly listening to bands we manage at my desk. But that's just how it is, and I've made peace with it. It makes me a little relieved that I haven't turned into one of those dead-eyed cogs in the machine who just shrugs everything off as "not horrible." There is something deeply hopefully about their songs, a clear-eyed realism tempered with the idea that somehow it will all be OK, if not quite how you planned it. These songs aren't cynical and yet not above a well-placed middle finger when needed. I always walk away from a Damnwells show feeling better than I did before I went - even the one at the Knitting Factory where there was no air conditioning and I was standing in a puddle of my own sweat. Or the one at Mercury Lounge that started two hours late. Even those were worth it.

"I got married a couple of weeks ago," Alex Dezen said between songs. A smattering of applause. "Actually...some of you were there." He used to live in Brooklyn. There were some guttural shouts, presumably from his groomsmen. Possibly the officiating minister.

"Right, well, I wrote this song after I met my wife. But before we were fucking."

This a large part of the reason why I adore this band.

They ended the set with "Sleepsinging" - as they often do, I guess since it was (in theory) the radio single from the album that Epic released and then mostly ignored. It used to seem odd to me that they would close a generally upbeat, energetic set with a song that seems to be about rejection and disillusionment.

"I will never change," Alex Dezen wailed. "No."

I couldn't tell if he was having a good night or a bad one. From the moment the band stepped onstage, he had been possessed of a furious energy that I don't think I've seen before at any of their shows. He seemed intent of giving the best goddamn performance ever, whether you liked it or not.

"Will you ever change...No."

Maybe it's not such a sad song. Maybe it's a happy song with a healthy dose of perspective. Sometimes clarity is about accepting that things are not always perfect, people will let you down, and life is hard. Choosing to be happy despite all of that goes a long way.

I'm not sure that I need to be friends with The Damnwells. They've done enough for me as it is.

Can we get some weed over here? STAT!

I make no secret of the fact that I'm a bit retarded for the Stereophonics.

I'm also strangely attracted to Kelly Jones, which I find surprising only because he's roughly the size of a 12 year-old girl. But when his hair is on point and he gets his strut on, he's pretty much like sexy from concentrate. And his casual whiskey-and-cigarettes habit seems to be working in his favor, much in the same way it did for Paul Weller. In fact, I would not be at all surprised to find that he was generated in a lab using some closely-guarded Weller DNA. Unlike Paul, though, KJ's vocal range is about as big as his waist measurement. But he's smart enough to only sing that which he knows he can make his bitch. Often without even breaking a sweat. Part of the reason why he's a little fox is the sheer effortlessness with which he, for instance, shows up the Black Crowes with their own song.



This is not to say that I will buy everything the Stereophonics machine tries to sell me. There is the unnecessary cover of the Rolling Stones' "Angie" - a song not even the dulcet rasp of Kelly Jones can endear to me. There is the hero worship of John Fogerty. Not to mention the song about the white trash wedding. But, much like his hair, when KJ is on point, he can make almost anything work.

My favorite Stereophonics album, as it turns out, was the one KJ wrote when they were all really, really high. As you do. It was full of dirrrty blues-rock about making out / breaking up with the laydeez. I loved every aspect of it - the hair, the wearing of scarves, the back-up singers. It was critically maligned across the board, although no one could deny that it spawned the "Maybe Tomorrow," the Best. Song. Ever.



I have 4 different versions of it. I never get tired of it. I love it acoustic, electric, solo, in a house, with a mouse. Really, the only thing that could make it better is if Kelly Clarkson covered it. It firmly cemented KJ as someone whom I would follow, if not blindly, than at least willingly enough to excuse the time he went onstage dressed like Hunter S. Thompson.

But then the next album came out, and there was an unfortunate dearth of back-up singers, keyboards and, apparently, marijuana. KJ was now all about leather jackets, wearing sunglasses onstage like a pocket-sized Bono, and one-word song titles. They made a bunch of wonky concept videos, one of which involved Jesus at a fashion show and KJ singing mostly in falsetto. It's not as bad as it sounds, but it was still not as great as I wanted it to be. I'm not even going to get into my distaste for "Doorman," which now seems to be a permanent fixture in the live set. Or the fact that someone I often point to as a gifted lyricist actually came up with "Suck my banana / Suck it with cream." Yeah. Let's not talk about that.

KJ now seems fairly determined to churn out a new release every year, reinventing the band in the process. So I was holding out a faint hope that the album that's due this fall would be somewhat of a return to him serving up some sex with that violence. Maybe a little more introspective, as opposed to punk songs directed at the bouncer who wouldn't let you into a club because doesn't he KNOW that you're Kelly Motherfucking Jones?

Apparently? Not so.

At this moment, I'm underwhelmed by "Bank Holiday Monday," which is evidently the first single in the UK. It's fast and shouty and seemingly devoid of any bump to go with its grind. I'm intrigued by the idea that "Daisy Lane" is a Beatles-esque track about a stabbing, so points there. They played "It Means Nothing" at the BBC's Radio 1 concert recently, and while I like the melody line, it seems to be a weak attempt at recapturing "Maybe Tomorrow." Except that it goes in circles and isn't half as lyrically interesting.



And did they really write a song about the war? Seriously? DO NOT WANT.

Come on, KJ. Be mama's little sex pixie again! Let me find your bong and pour you Crown Royale until you start dressing like Keith Richards and wailing about those bad, bad women who broke your heart.

But, if I'm going to be completely honest? I would listen to KJ read the Boise phone book while accompanied on the sitar by a drunk monkey. And so...I will buy the new album the day it hits iTunes, and I will learn all the words to the song about the stabbing. I will sing those words loud and proud when KJ and his cohorts, Big Rich and Javier The Happy Drummer, come back to the Bowery Ballroom to unleash their singular brand of slightly-less-sexy rock panache. Sans back-up singers, of course, but what can you do?

However I will be going to the bar during "Doorman."

Playlist: Summer 2007

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On the occasion of my (almost) on-time departure

The Borders bookstore was woefully unable to meet my needs. I don't like bookstores in general. anytime I go into the massive Barnes & Noble in Union Square, I feel like the huge stacks are going to overwhelm my psyche. There is just too much inventory, and I need to employ blinders just to get what I need and escape with my sanity.

But in my slapdash preparation this morning, I completely forgot to bring any reading material for the plane. I had read my monthly regiment of fashion magazines at the nail salon on Tuesday, and I dislike magazines generally. Once I'm updated on shoes and lip gloss for the season, I'm good to go. I had meant to look through Leslie's collection of books that she keeps under the TV - there's quite a variety, from analysis of sex workers to Hemingway - but I didn't think of it. I had gotten home late last night, and I was mentally wringing my hands over what I had decided to bring to LA for the weekend. I almost forgot underwear altogether, and it's really not that kind of trip.

We haven't had Internet at work for the last few days, and the new server was being installed this morning, so I wasn't in too much of a rush to get to the office. Still, I forgot to grab a book, which left me wandering through the annoyingly tiny Borders in Terminal C, across from the duty-free store.

I stood in the Biography section, since that's always my preferred genre. Fiction is hit-or-miss, and there are too many choices. It's like trying to pick an album based solely on the artwork and that rarely works out. Books are about as expensive as CDs at this point. Either way, I was not in the mood to take a $20 crap shoot. There was much less selection in Biography - I didn't want to read the David Hasselhoff autobiography, nor the life and times of Ghandi or that girl who gave blowjobs to all those rappers. And those were pretty much my options. There were a few books by authors whose names I didn't recognize, but I'll pretty much read anything about anyone's life. On the other hand, they all seemed to be very serious and "inspiring," according to the press blurbs. I really wasn't in the mood for that either. So I went to my gate with no book.

No luck on distraction from the movie - it's that one with Hilary Swank that's exactly like the one where Michelle Pfeiffer teaches the ghetto kids the importance of book learning. Except Hilary Swank doesn't get the benefit of cred in the form of Coolio. I do not doubt that someone will get shot and that person will be a completely innocent party. I've seen "Lean On Me." I know how this goes.

These flights seem long, even though it's really only 5 hours or so in the air. We left about an hour late, but the pilot promised that we would have a close to on-time arrival regardless. Something about being re-routed to fly over Iowa. Whatever, I'll take it.

Chris is supposed to take me to some bar that's "completely awesome."

I asked if I would need to change since I'm wearing the decidedly unglamorous staple of jeans, sneakers and one of my 6 American Apparel v-neck t-shirts.

"Oh, it's in a mall in the Valley," he assured me. "You're fine, don't even worry."

"So when you say it's awesome, you mean that ironically." In college, we used to say that TJ's bar was awesome, and TJ's was filled with was depressed travelling salesmen and had a terrible jukebox, filled mostly with Celine Dion and Richard Marx. But they didn't card, which was nice.

Chris considered this. "Yes and no."

So that will be interesting. Going to visit Chris has become more routine over the last year or so. Not that I don't look forward to it, but we do much less planning and hyping in the preceeding weeks. In fact, I haven't really talked to him at all until I called him from the Borders to say that we were (supposedly) going to leave on time. It doesn't matter - he had cleaned and bought liquor. We're all set.

Life 101 with Bling Judy

From what I understand, motherhood is often an aggravating, thankless life sentence. I got Mom some Bob Seger tickets once, though. It's the least I could do.

In honor of Mother's Day, I thought it would be nice to share some of the invaluable wisdom that my mother has passed down to me over the years - sometimes intentionally, sometimes not.

Never put bras in the dryer.

Potatoes are not really a vegetable.

Put no stock whatsoever in what someone tells you. Only believe what they do. In general, people are too lazy and selfish to actually follow through on things they don't really care about.

Never get married. When it comes time (and, make no mistake, the time will come) to kick him to the curb, it's much cheaper if it's not legally binding.

Female pets will tolerate you. Male pets will adore you.

If the straw doesn't stand up in the frozen margarita, it's not cold enough.

Everyone is too busy worrying about their own cellulite to think you look fat in your bathing suit. Get over it. No one is looking at you.

Always make your bed. It will make you feel better when you get home and your bedroom isn't a hellhole.

Thou shalt not wear open-toe shoes unless thou hast had a pedicure.

If you don't know, ask.

It's impossible to own too many pairs of flip flops.

The hardest thing you will ever do is watch the people you love make mistakes. But unless they get hurt, they'll never learn.

No one knows what size your jeans are unless you tell them. Just wear what fits.

Always send thank you notes to family members because you never know whose will you're in.

Your daughter only acts like she's not paying attention you when tell her things. She also wishes you wouldn't wear those pants out of the house.

When cups runneth over

OK, so I have a big rack. It's just a fact, not really a selling point. I didn't ask for it, I was gifted it by top-heavy maternal genetics. I've tried to give some of it back at least twice, but damned if I can come up with $17,000 for surgery. So I'm left with the task of reigning it in on a daily basis.

In general, I buy most of my bras online from UK companies. For whatever reason, the British are the champions of the naturally well-endowed - meaning that they make large bras for those of us who actually need support. I'm sorry to tell you, those girls with free-standing DDs? Did not come by them honestly. Shocking, I know. Two patches of fabric held together with string is not going to cut it for those of us without any choice in the matter.

There's at least one company that actually has a policy of only using models that are at least a D-cup, which I applaud. When you're packing a lot of business upfront, it's really hard to tell what a bra is going to look like when it's modelled by someone who probably doesn't need to wear a bra in the first place. Yes, I'm looking at you, Victoria's Secret.

So I'm all for the employment of bustier models for the sake realism. However, I was a little dismayed to be confronted with this when all I wanted was a new minimizer:



If she actually didn't pay for those, I feel sorry for her.

My dignity is in a plastic bin

George Carlin does a great bit about airline travel.



I watched the whole show so much when I was 12 that I wore out the VHS tape and still have most of it committed to memory. I involuntarily recite the above airline rant to myself anytime I fly. Seatbelt! High tech shit!

I have a mixed relationship with travel. On one hand, I really like being other places. However, the process of getting to other places is never anything except tedious and irritating, filled with a lot of stupid and people pretending to be important. Maybe the only exception would be driving, although I generally take a passive role there as well. My job is to navigate, often with interesting results since being nearsighted doesn't lend itself well to reading highway signs at a distance, and to make sure that the music situation is properly handled. But I've officially decided that I care not for flying. Not at all.

A few weeks ago, I got to LaGuardia maybe an hour before I was supposed to board my flight to Denver. I got in the security line with my carry-on and my "personal item." While I wouldn't consider myself a frequent flyer by any means - I fly maybe 5 or 6 times a year - I still try to make my trip through security as efficient as possible. I wear slip-on sneakers and no jewelry. I take off my jacket and lay it flat in the plastic bucket. I leave my bowie knife/handgun/taser at home - something that evidently escapes the mind of some folks, which why there are signs to that effect. These are simple things - things that anyone who's been anywhere near an airport since 1990 ought to be well-versed in. So that's why I get highly irritated at these self-important corporate assholes who we're supposed to believe fly every week have to hold up the process. They wait until they're about to walk through the metal detector before the remember they have to take off their shoes, take the $34 in change out of their pocket and take their fucking laptop out of it's case. I watched one guy go through the metal detector about 4 times before they finally let him go without figuring out why it was going off.

But who gets pulled out of line for being a suspected threat to airline security? Yeah. Exactly.

For the second time in my flying career (which started almost 15 years ago, PS), I had my shoulder bag searched. Awesome. They're really taking this whole illusion of safety thing quite seriously. With the air of friendly severity I've become well-acquainted with in the last couple of years, a member of airport security told me to wait so he could get some gloves. Just to complete the overall symbolism of a hand up your ass, I guess.

"Do you have any dangerous materials in here that I need to be aware of?"

No, but I do have quite a few loose maxi pads in there, which - Oh, OK, cool. Just throw those on the table there. Not a problem. Also feel free to unzip every item in there and poke around. Yes, that's where I keep my condoms. Never hurts to be an optimist, right? Haha! I'm so glad we're having this time to get to know each other.

"Well, I for one feel a lot safer now," I said when Officer Precaution was finished.

He gave me blank look, unsure if I was kidding, and told me I was clear to proceed. I guess I should be glad that I wasn't strip searched at a detention center and put on a watch list. I'm hoping that Al Quaeda never decides to start putting explosives in Kotex because then I am so screwed.

Make it so, Number One

Happy Administrative Professionals Day. Hold your head just a little bit higher during your daily Starbuck's run for the overbearing cretin who pays your salary while slowly stripping away your sense of self-worth and hope for the future.

For almost 3 years, I administrated professionally (or assisted executively, depending on your choice of euphemism) for the head of artist development at a major record label. While this was my first full-time job when I finished college, it was my third job in the music industry. Even still, I had no idea what "artist development" was. It seemed more interesting than crunching numbers in royalties, so I wore my nice pants and gave wide-smiling, enthusiastic answers when I met with the human resources coordinator. She explained, with a nervous titter, that my potential boss was "a bit of a character." Yeah, well, I was just coming off a job in metal radio promotion where characters abound. Bring on the crazy.

On my first day of work, Steve called me into his office. He lit a cigarette and put his feet up on his desk. "Listen to me," he said. "There is nothing you can fuck up that I can't fix with one phone call. Nothing. So if you fuck up, and you will, I don't care how bad you think it is. Come and tell me, and I will fix it."

At the time, I took this as a clarification of the limited scope of my influence. So insignificant was I that any mistake I made couldn't really have any real consequences. But, as I would learn over the next few weeks, Steve's assessment had more to do with Steve than me. He was master of his domain. The reason I was there was because I needed to handle the annoying administrative details so that they didn't get in the way of his pressing business of Being Steve.

On the plus side, Steve was pretty self-sufficient, as executives go. He made his own calls, kept his own schedule and generally only utilized me to order his lunch (which he would put on his company card, along with mine), book his travel and creatively manage his expense report to make sure things like $400 worth of strippers for Mick Fleetwood were approved without too much quibbling. In return, I was left to my own devices to do my job of national tour marketing without much scrutiny. Steve and I developed an unspoken understanding that I had his back and he had mine. Even if he spent the majority of his day smoking behind closed doors while I was on hold with a promoter in Texas, trying to squeak out the last two Rush tickets in captivity.

Because he was 6'3", from Long Island and because he was one of those people who simply didn't give a fuck, people were wary of Steve. He was old school. He had no interest in office politics, so if he thought you were an asshole, he would smile at you and say "You're an asshole." There was not a lot of typical wink-wink, nudge-nudge music industry bullshitting involved. I can understand why human resources was snickering to itself when they sent me off to work for him - clearly they thought he would make me cry inside of two weeks. While there were days when he did irritate me to no end, Steve was really the best boss I've ever had. He respected the fact that I was good at my job, even if he hadn't the faintest idea what I did all day. He just knew no one was complaining to him and interrupting his afternoon nap.

The thing about being an executive assistant is that your influence, at least inside the office, isn't limited at all. The reason executives even have an assistant is because there are things they need to get done that they don't know how to do. Knowledge is power. For all their 6-figure salaries and far-reaching influence, there are moments when you realize the balance of power isn't as off-center as you thought.

After one of the many "restructurings" at the label - the next of these would liberate both Steve and myself to the greener pastures of artist management - we were all packing up to move to a different floor in the building. I had been listening to the whine of a tape dispenser coming from Steve's office all morning as he boxed up all his plaques and assorted office flair.

I was discussing lunch options with another assistant when suddenly the empty tape dispenser came flying out of the office and landed down the hall by the trash disposal.

A minute later, Steve appeared. "Fucking shit," he said by way of explanation. He pointed down the hallway. "Fucking thing is out of tape."

I maintained a straight face, against all odds. "You do know you can put a new roll in one of those things, right? You keep the dispenser and just put more tape in."

He was impressed. "Oh yeah?" He went to retrieve the dispenser from the trash.

Later in the day, I found him cleaning his glass coffee table with furniture spray and his oak desk with Windex.

I miss Steve, I really do.

Just Saying: iTunes = 1, Logic = 0

Some thoughts on today's iTunes homepage:

The Staff Favorites section features Michael Bolton, ABBA and Barry Manilow. Maybe the irony train has finally pulled into that station, or maybe this goes a long way towards explaining why we can't get placement for any of our bands. They just don't like those dirty longhairs.

Lady Saw's new album features a track called "No Less Than A Woman (Infertility)." Everyone needs an anthem, I guess.

After considering the wide breadth of my musical taste, Just For You recommends that I might also like Lindsay Lohan, Teddy Geiger, and a techno reworking of "Walking In Memphis" - which, to be honest, is pretty outstanding.

Buy a Barbie pink iPod nano for your Mom! iPod - $149.00 (plus shipping). Engraving - free. Countless, maddening hours spent on the phone trying to explain to Mom how an iPod works - Priceless.

If found, please call

"I just had my faith in humanity restored," Mark said when I answered my phone. This happened a few weeks ago.

"How's that?" My own faith in humanity is never more than dubious at best.

He said that he'd left his camcorder on the subway, displaying all the practical responsibility that's to be expected of any professional musician. For anyone who has even cursory knowledge of public transportation, the general assumption would be that Mark is pretty much fucked. Thou shall not leave thy shit on the train or said shit shall be stolen. Who actually thinks that someone would find an item of any value and say, "Well, hey now! This isn't mine, and I could probably sell it to my cousin Frank who fences hot property. But I really should find a way to return it to it's rightful owner"?

Meet Mark, optimist at large. The MTA has been aggressively promoting it's new Lost & Found hotline of late, with cute little drawings of all the various things that the MTA thinks you might lose during your commute. Like, you know, your pet cobra.

So Mark went down to the lost & found office. Contrary to the laws of logic, the MTA Lost Property Unit gave Mark back his camcorder. He either had seriously good karma coming to him or we've been miraculously transported to an alternate universe where people in NYC don't all but steal your iPod right off you to sell it for crack.

I tend not to lose things. I was the kid who wrote her name on all her school supplies, even the 99-cent plastic ruler, and kept an ever-vigilant eye on every one of her Matchbox cars. I've managed to hold on to every cell phone I've owned for the last 10 years without dropping it in a toilet or leaving it in a hotel room in Ohio or any of the other reasons why all the guys in any of our bands need to replace their cell phones weekly.

Of course, there are exceptions. I've had stuff forcibly taken from me at gunpoint. Occasionally things just disappear. For the most part, though, any time that I've lost something, it's been a direct result of my own stupidity.

When I was 13 or 14, I went with my mother to Circuit City to look at car stereos (for her, not for me). I was wearing those nylon mesh basketball shorts, which was a mistake - and not just for the obvious, sartorial reasons. Basketball shorts don't have pockets, a functional necessity that designers have even seen fit to incorporate into eveningwear these days. Because I was of the mind that there could be something at Circuit City that I might want to purchase (jumper cable? air conditioner?), I tucked a folded $20 bill - the equivalent of 4 paid hours working at my tedious job at the library - into the waistband of my shorts. This was both a) stupid and b) very obviously stupid, as opposed to bad choices that aren't really evident until after the fact. No, this was just your garden-variety, straight-up dumb. Needless to say, there came a point during my wanderings through the audio section of the store when I realized that my $20 was gone. My mother called me a moron three times in the car ride home.

I used to have a ring that I really liked. It wasn't expensive; in fact, I think it was from H&M. But I got a lot of compliments on it. A couple of years ago, I wore it to a Def Leppard show in Boston, and the drunk girl next to me couldn't stop talking about it for about 20 minutes. As a matter of fact, I got to thinking that she was going to kick my ass in the parking lot after the show and take it. The Def Leppard fanbase has a violent streak, despite all their appearances that they just want to rock it (yeah). That same fall, I was at the the Mercury Lounge for a showcase of yet another thunderingly average band that Atlantic Records had signed. In the bathroom, I took off the ring to wash my hands and left it on the sink. It only took about 5 minutes of watching an underwhelming stage show for me to realize I didn't have it on, but when I went back to look in the bathroom, it was gone. I suspected the rather large, goth-looking girl myself.

Most crippling of all, I once lost my wallet. Not to be confused with the time I was mugged because, I don't know about you, but conceding to a semi-automatic isn't so much a loss - I'm just going to chalk that up as an investment in my personal well-being. When I was in college, I carried one of those shoulder bags without any kind of closure - things fell out of it all the time. Stupid, yes, but moving on. During one of my women's studies classes, I must have kicked the bag under my desk and knocked my wallet on the floor. I didn't even realize it until about an hour after the class was over. Frantic, I ran back to the lecture hall and crawled on my hands and knees under all the desks. It was in vain. You never realize how much of your life you keep in your wallet until you lose it. Concert tickets, business cards, receipts - all gone. I didn't even think of it in the frenzy of cancelling my bank cards, but I had also been keeping my high school IDs in my wallet. They were the things I regretted losing the most. Not because it was an especially flattering picture (it wasn't) or because I had fond memories of high school (I didn't), but they were pieces of my past that I could never replace, unlike my Food Emporium rewards card. That's when it dawned on me exactly what caliber of idiot I was, stopping to consider how some things increase in value only when they're lost. That Joni Mitchell, she wasn't just blowing smoke, was she?

It's not just Mark's recent camcorder incident that made me revisit the ghosts of things lost. Earlier this week, for reasons equally as stupid as nylon mesh shorts or leaving expensive electronics on the A train, I effectively lost a friend who was really important to me. If he ever speaks to me again, I will consider myself lucky, but there are some parts of the relationship I know I can never replace. There is no lost & found for someone's regard. Consequences such as these are a necessary price of flagrant stupidity, and that's what makes this particular loss so much harder than a piece of cheap jewelry or some scrawling in a notebook. People don't simply disappear one day into some vortex, like single socks that make it into the washing machine but don't come home from the dryer. People have to be relinquished in a moment of blind carelessness. And I have no one to blame by myself.

Losing something is a one-sided pain, unfortunately. What's lost is unconcerned; it goes on to a new life. It will get found eventually by someone else who happens to be in the right place at the right time. Maybe someone who better deserves to have it.

PETA is through kidding around

That's one way to make a point.

It's the little moments that mean so much

12: 45pm. The phone rings.

It's my mother. She is driving to her hair appointment in Hendersonville.

"Sarah. Have you ever had one of those days where everything you touch is just fucked?"

A life, in writing

Today is Helene Hanff's birthday. She would have been 91 and probably on her second martini by now.

I first met Helene in 1997, about 2 months after she died. She literally fell on me. It was the end of the day, and I was shelving my last cart of books in the 400 section - languages, for those unfamiliar with the increasingly archaic Dewey Decimal System. The stacks were taller than me, and as I reached up to make room on the already packed shelf, one of the books came loose, hitting me smack in the forehead. It was a slim paperback, old and dusty, the spine held together with clear tape.

Working in a library is monotonous, even on a good day. (On a really exceptional day, the police show up and arrest the local flasher, but that's an entirely different story.) More often than not, I gave in to the distraction of browsing through random books whose covers intrigued me. Generally I preferred the 100s (philosophy & psychology) and 200s (religion) because they had the books about serial killers and astrology, respectively. On this particular day, I was looking to procrastinate before I started to work in the 500s (science - not as fun as deviants and multiple homicide), so I picked up the little book that escaped from the shelf and started flipping through it. It was 84, Charing Cross Road.

It's a simple thing on the surface - the book is a collection of letters, and it's barely 100 pages. Helene Hanff was a struggling writer in 1940s New York City who wrote to the Marks & Co. bookseller in London with regards to finding cheap copies of obscure or out-of-print books. The correspondence eventually lasts 20 years, until Frank Doel, the store's manager and her intellectual soulmate, passes away. They never met face-to-face. As I sat on the floor of the 400s, I felt the burning of impending tears as I finished the last letter, from Helene to her friends on their imminent departure to London - a place she has dreamt of since she was a little girl and is yet to go: "If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me? I owe it so much."

On Easter Sunday in 1998, I did exactly that, feeling the same sense of pilgrimage that I'm sure Helene felt on her first trip to London. It was a bright but bitterly cold day. I walked through Trafalgar Square to Charing Cross Road. The street is winding and narrow with a seemingly never-ending stream of second-hand bookstores and other unglamorous retail. Two older English ladies asked me if I was lost. I sheepishly told them the address I was looking for.

"Oh, the bookstore," one of them said and smiled. "It's just another block. It's still there, don't worry."

It was still there, barely. Empty and all but boarded up. The address was painted in simple, stark white letters. But just above eye level, implanted into the brick, there was a plaque: "84, Charing Cross Road. The booksellers Marks & Co. were on this site which became world-renowned through the book by Helene Hanff."

When I went back five years later, the storefront was gone. In its place was a Pizza Hut. I like to think that they hung the plaque somewhere behind the register, in between the posters for Stuffed Crust Pizza and Cinnastix, but I really couldn't bring myself to go in and find out. Some things are just too heartbreaking to confront directly.

Eventually, 84, Charing Cross Road was made into a Broadway play and a movie, which is pretty amazing for the fact that the letters were never intended to be published at all.

"I never stop being awed by the incredible things that happen to me," she wrote later.

After reading 84, I tracked down everything Helene had ever written, which amounted to another four books and a handful of magazine articles. I felt an intense kinship with her immediately. Not only did she, like me, have an almost giggly affection for all things English, she came to New York with the idea that she would be a playwright. I spend an ungodly amount of money on an education to be a filmmaker. Also like me, she was outstandingly bad at it. So spectacularly inept, in fact, that it was enough to fill her first memoir, Underfoot In Show Business. She managed to write about the business of being a bad writer in such a way that it made me wonder why anyone in their right mind would want to write plays for a living. Writing about not being a very good playwright was so much more intriguing. Writing about life in general began to fascinate me.

Helene was born in Philadelphia, but she's always been my favorite New Yorker. My first apartment on the Upper East Side was only nine blocks from where she lived most of her adult life. I used to walk down 72nd Street on summer afternoons, passing her building and feeling as though I was living a parallel life in many ways. I envied the way she had been able to translate her seemingly ordinary experiences into stories - Letter From New York was a collection of her scripts from the BBC Women's Hour radio broadcast. She had been given 15 minutes every month to capture a snapshot of life in New York City for the English listening audience who simply couldn't imagine real people living in such tall buildings. She was tasked with humanizing an entire city.

Helene gave me a lot of things, not the least of which was an unwavering belief that real life could be made funny or heartbreaking or compelling all in the way the story was told. She showed me the kind of writer that I want to be.

"I wrote my life." She says it almost as though it was a realization that genuinely surprised her. She wrote a lot of things: plays, TV scripts, children's books, letters. But her best writing really came in the way she described her neighbors and their dogs, the difficulty in hosting Thanksgiving dinner in a studio apartment, and how it feels to take the elevator to the top of the Empire State Building when you're deathly afraid of heights. I imagine she was every bit in person the way she was in print - short-tempered, funny, unpretentious. One of my great sorrows in life was that I couldn't be one of the people she took tea with in the lobby of her building. She was continually amazed that people wanted to meet her at all.

In her last book, she begins with her accidental introduction to the work of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, who was responsible for much of her love of English literature: "Q and I first met on a summer morning when I was 18, at the main branch of the Philadelphia Public Library where I'd gone in search of a teacher."

Sometimes the teacher finds you. Sometimes she hits you right smack in the face when you're finishing up your cart of 400s. How fitting.

Smash Hits: Revisited

A couple of years ago, I ran across Ill Mitch. I'm happy to see that he's still going strong, complete with an entertaining video section. Something about painfully broken English and a bad Russian accent never fails to translate (haha, you see what I did there?) into unintentional comedy. Fast and danger, indeed.

Therefore, in the grand tradition of wicked flow from the Eastern Bloc, you please enjoy:

Inspired by a true story

In my last year of college, I enrolled in a creative writing class with much the same zeal as the one-legged man signing up for the ass-kicking contest. I write astoundingly terrible fiction. Well, maybe that's an exaggeration. My dialogue and characterizations aren't too bad, but I have the damnedest time coming up with good stories. And seeing as making up stories is generally the crux of writing fiction, I knew I was in for a long semester. I wasn't usually in the habit of academic masochism, but the class I'd really wanted to take - Memoir: The Art of Writing Life - was full.

I went to my first creative writing class, not feeling very creative, and sized up the 10 or so people who were no doubt majoring in basket-weaving or psychic healing. What I failed to realize when I registered was that the class was offered through the Gallatin School of Individualized Study, the segment of NYU reserved exclusively for the dippy, the navel-gazing, and those who were independently wealthy enough not to need Real Jobs. I liked to joke that I went to barely-college in the film program, but this was a whole other populous of people who were required to do nothing but convince a panel of advisers that doing yoga and taking pictures of clouds entitled them to a degree. At least I had to do my time taking classes with -ology attached to them.

"You're going to be working on one cohesive piece this semester," the professor explained to us. "You're not limited by genre, but I want you think in the long term about creating a complete work." Oh, well, thanks for those parameters. I work much better with boundaries.

Right around this time, I was in the middle of the singular most destructive relationship I've had the misfortune of perpetuating. Thus far anyway. I'm sure there's worse out there somewhere and that I'll no doubt stumble into it eventually since, according to certain medical professionals, I have a lot of issues. But at the time I was spending a lot of time hanging out in the deepest, darkest hole I could have imagined. I wrote about it meticulously in my journals because that was my reflexive outlet and because my friends were fucking tired of hearing about it. I recorded entire conversations, every phone call I didn't have to beg for, the time I was so hysterical on my kitchen floor that I literally couldn't breathe. I wrote it all down in cold, unflinching detail. Part of my self-punishment was to rub my own nose in it.

When I got home after my writing class, I pulled out my journals from the preceding two years and went over the documentation of my bad choices. It was actually pretty compelling reading, if you don't mind the occasional indulgent tangent of self-pity and lots of use of the phrase "fucking asshole." Despite the fact that I wasn't really concerned with clever turns of phrase or witty juxtaposition at the time I was writing, I'd managed to capture a story. It just happened to be true. I was sort of the reverse James Frey without even knowing it. I guess I could have embellished things with a police chase or a healthy heroin habit, but that seemed a little excessive.

"We can just pretend it's fictional," I said to my professor, when I told her I was going to transcribe my journals rather than conjure up some bullshit. She was skeptical. "Look," I explained, "I really wanted to take the memoir class. Cut me some slack. You don't want to read my fiction, I promise you." She finally relented and told me that it had better be good.

"Why did you decide to use the diary structure?" someone asked when I read my initial synopsis out loud to the class.

"These are actually my journal entries," I replied off-handedly. Everyone stared at me. "Everything really happened. Is happening. Anyway, yeah, let's just pretend it's not real."

Initially this idea was born out of sheer pragmatism. I often tried to make one piece of writing serve two purposes when I could, like when I managed to knock out my term papers for Avant Garde Literature and Studies In Feminism by deconstructing the portrayal of female characters in Brecht's Mother Courage & Her Children. Less work for me in the long run, and given that I was regularly afflicted with bouts of procrastination when it came to assignments, I figured that I would be keeping up with my journals anyway so why not kill two birds with one harrowing tale of angst?

Once a week, we'd have a roundtable reading. When it was my turn, I read several entries, including the ordeal of crying on the kitchen floor. Everyone was supposed to receive a constructive critique from the rest of the class after sharing their work. Normally I do about as well with criticism as with shooting guns, which is to say not very well at all. But for some reason, in this class filled with directionless intellectuals who were judging my capacity to deal with a horribly dysfunctional relationship, I managed to take everyone's comments in stride.

Writing things down makes it seem a little more like someone else's life. It makes it easier to separate myself, to remember that there wasn't much I can do to control events that were already in motion. If I could write it all down, more or less the way it happened, the record could stand on its own. Maybe I could learn a lesson, the way you see someone else trip on a curb and say to yourself, "Oh, I'll watch out for that." It might as well have been happening to someone else. I often tell myself that situations such as these have very little to do with me in the end. I'm not a variable or at all necessary in the equation. There is never a choice that I need to make - things are never offered to me, simply awaiting my signal. Things are often taken away, though, quite without my realizing it.

Maybe that's a cop out. I like to pretend that I exist in a glass box, pounding on the walls and shouting soundlessly when I feel like I'm not getting my way. So I convince myself that I exist in a void - nothing I say or do impacts anyone. No one takes anything to heart. I'm not a blip on anyone's radar unless I crash in a spectacular display of flames and wreckage on their doorstep. At which point they politely sweep up the remains, put it in a box and mutter, "Ugh, what a mess."

"Um, first of all, I'd like to say I think it's really brave that you're doing this," said one girl who was writing an overwrought epic about vampires in medieval France. "But, um, I think you need to focus more on explaining why you - um, the narrator - was upset enough to have that kind of reaction, to be so out of control? It seems a overly dramatic in the context."

I looked at her blankly over the top of my manuscript. "Duly noted. I'll work on it." Why had I been so upset that day? I thought. How can I better dramatize the reasoning behind the closest I ever hope to get to a nervous breakdown?

While it was strange to essentially have my real life and my documentation of such come under literary scrutiny, it became less surreal as the class wore on. Every week I would show up, describe how I felt in my darkest moments to a roomful of strangers, and listen to feedback about how I could make my personal drama more palatable for an audience. By the time the semester ended, I can't say that I handed in a cohesive, complete work. It could only be documented up to a point. I had my manuscript bound cheaply at Kinko's and turned it in. To be completely honest, I can't remember what grade I got. At least I passed. Everything passes.

I've found myself writing more recently - in several capacities - than I have in a long time. Yet again I've started to compulsively write down events, conversations, what someone told me I said because I wasn't so much there when it was happening. Johnnie Walker practices a highly effectively memory wipe more often than not. Things fall apart, people leave (sometimes before they're really gone), I say things I regret, and every night I write it all down. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

So maybe I can just pretend, when needs be, that this is not my life. This is some melodrama that I am simply watching. This is someone else's heart that's breaking. After all, there's nothing special about that. But sometimes it's a good story.

Five Albums You Should Have Liked All Along (A Cautionary Tale)

We've all been there. You're minding your own business, losing a little bit more of your soul to the corporate machine, when you hear the faint strains of quality music drifting over from the next cubicle. Suddenly the otherwise competent, saavy person next to you says, "Hey, I'm really getting into this Frou Frou album - have you heard it?"

At which point it is your right - nay, your very duty! - to laugh in their face or, at the very least, subject them to a withering eye roll. Not necessarily because you are lucky enough to have Captain Calamity on your side to hip you to this stuff 18 months before it gets its turn through the VH1 meat-grinder, making it safe for popular consumption. You must mock this person so they learn not only the important lesson of keeping up with decent music but that you never admit to anyone else that you just bought an album that came out 5 years ago. Denial is half the battle.

Friends don't let friends experience this kind of shame. Get with the program. I won't tell if you won't.


Duncan Sheik / Daylight (2002)
Kind of par for the course, really - Atlantic Records manages to completely mishandle the most commercial-sounding album the guy has ever made. Yes, even moreso than the one that spawned "Barely Breathing" and made it a veritable standard in dentist offices across the nation. I know a lot of people got forever turned off when that song reached ubiquitous levels because, yeah, we get it - you can't find the air. And even if you were able to avoid that, he started churning out that Buddhist-inspired weirdness and getting all tedious and low-fi and making Low look like balls-to-the-wall rock and rollers. But for one shining moment, he got his shit together and wrote some fantastic, unconventionally hooky songs about grown-up relationships, personal reinvention, conversations with Satan, and the strange experience of seeing someone you used to sleep with posing naked in a widely-distributed publication.


Ricky Warwick / Tattoos & Alibis (2003)
When you stop to consider that Ricky Warwick used to be the frontman for The Almighty and wrote songs called "Meathook" and "White Anger Comedown," it makes it all the more amazing that he released a solo album that's a) largely acoustic and b) capably articulates the sentiment of "Here's to your enemies / Be sure that you wish them all the best from me" without the benefit of crushing guitars or the slightest hint of irony. I only became aware of his existence because he was opening up amphitheater shows for Def Leppard...playing acoustic by himself, which is pretty ballsy in front of a crowd that's drunk on Miller Lite and waiting to rock out to "Pour Some Sugar On Me." The first time that I saw him, I had a good laugh over the fact that he started his set with a song called "Mysterioso." Because, seriously? The chorus was "This world is so mysterioso." The burly Irish metal guy was making up words. But I saw a lot of Def Leppard shows on that tour, and at some point that damn "Mysterioso" song got catchier and catchier. Made-up words aside, Ricky Warwick is an excellent lyricist for a man who wears a cut-off denim vest.


BT / Movement In Still Life (2000)
Sometimes it takes a really pretty white boy from Maryland to put some soul back into electronic music. At times, BT is sort of like Trent Reznor after a heavy dose of Zoloft and some excellent highlights. After spending a lot of time trying to make people dance (see also: "do ecstacy in a field") to Sarah McLachlan and Tori Amos - often with mixed results, since college-girl angst + breakbeats = awkward - he released his own album and created a varied soundscape of hip-hop, trance and spoken word (M. Doughty loves those English girls with ghetto names, by the way). Ironically enough for a producer/DJ, it's best realized with his own vocals on the melancholy epic "Shame." Sometimes it doesn't have to be all about pigs and shit and fucking, eh, Trent? Just putting that out there. Sometimes the people just want to get funky. NB: I was kind of torn, to be honest, between this and the 2003 follow-up Emotional Technology. As a matter of fact, get both.


Mike Viola & The Candy Butchers / Falling Into Place (1999)
For those times when you find Fountains of Wayne too self-consciously irreverant and Elvis Costello too much of an asshole, Mike Viola has all your retro-influenced, tie-wearing indie-pop needs covered. As a matter of fact, he rocks a lot more than both of the aforementioned and injects a lot darker edge. Who doesn't enjoy a healthy dose of self-hating with their Wurlitzer? Then again I would probably hate myself a little too if my primary claim to fame was handling vocal duties on "That Thing You Do!"


Moke / Carnival (2001)
England, in general, rocks pretty hard.

Except when we're talking about Mika, in which case it swishes extravagantly and sings in falsetto.

This is not Mika.