Personally, I don't care what a magazine that barely existed a century ago has to say about the decade it just missed or the generation that hasn't yet spoken.
Out of nomenclature we'd all love to be the roaring "Whatevers."
I passed out in my hotel room for a few hours, walked around and ate some rice and beans. Touring is fun but it's extra tiring because you want to get something out of it, but you also want to have a great trip. I get picked up somewhere around 10 and we go to some ridiculously overpriced restaurant to pick up the publicist. We go to a Casino where there's a Dewars party which is great, because I hate Dewars.
Somehow we got the info wrong, so we go to the roof of the casino and there's a crazy party as the sun sets over the caribbean. There are gorgeous women every where in cute dressed and platform heels. And they're all going downstairs. "That's it folks."
I don't even have time to explore the pool and the various sun chairs and little hang out areas.
So we go downstairs where they're having a party in the hotel bar. I stand around by a chair and drink Dewars 12 (which I can actually stand) while the publicist talks in my ear, "Man, look at the way everyone's looking at you. They know you're famous, but they don't know what for."
That's pretty much how I feel too.
It's helps that I'm a foot taller than these people and I'm wearing sunglasses indoors at night.
We leave the party and end up going to a million places. Eventually one of them comes up to the promoter I'm with and tells him to take his hat off. He refuses on the grounds that he has a $200 bar tab. He's also just as white as me and he does this hilarious thing: when he gets in trouble in Puerto Rico he speaks English and when he has to yell at someone else for something he speaks Spanish. On the way home that night the cops had blocked off the road to my hotel and he screams, "We're staying at the Grand." in English. They don't know what he's saying. They let us through.
The other great thing was I met this Puerto Rican homeboy from Hartford. Hartford actually had a larger Puerto Rican population than Puerto Rico does. Only this time since I am a recovering Hartford Courant reporter and celebrity DJ I get mad props from a Hartforican. The bouncer tells him to take his flat-brimmed hat off and I say, "That's bullshit. Clubs in Puerto Rico have rules just to keep out Puerto Ricans."
We go to the bar where I'm gonna DJ on Saturday. I was told the party would start at 8 because they have problems with the cops and get shut down early. It's fucking 4:30AM on a Thursday and the place is packed. I also haven't slept in a few days (Weds was one of those 7AM inspiration mornings that writers dream of) so I'm delighted when the promoter says, "You wanna get out of here?"
Turns out that "out of here" meant to an all night dance club. I could describe it to you. But if I told you the name and what time I got home I bet you can make it up yourself.
At 3:30 I was taken to a Univision studio to tape a segment about my set on Saturday. I asked the guy the name of the show and he told me. It made no sense to me. He did this real affected, Telemundo-style overacting and said, "It's like saying 'Holy sh--' like someone interrupted you."
I had to stand there for probably an hour before anything happened. It was a variety show national for Puerto Rico, so whatever. I told them I was ready to go in and do make up and they said to wait. After another half hour eleven shirtless dudes walk out from back stage. They all have the kind of abs that we now call "the situation."
So even though I'm there an hour I never get to meet my segment producer. It turns out she also isn't even there that day and this show is falling apart anyway. I later find out that my interview was the last one my interviewer would do on that show.
"Yes, ask me how I feel about the Latin club culture and gay rights."
He said something in Spanish.
And I replied, "El espíritu de la música dance es el espíritu de la esperanza y sólo se ha mantenido vivo en Estados Unidos gracias a los clubes latinos y los clubes gays. Tú no tienes que ser gay para apoyar los derechos de los gays, así como no tienes que ser puertorriqueño para haber apoyado la causa de Vieques."
(The spirit of dance music is the spirit of hope and it only survived in the US because of Latin and Gay clubs. You don't have to be gay to support gay rights any more than you have to be Puerto Rican to support Vieques.)
We did it a couple of times off my laptop and I did fine. I don't speak Spanish very well. And neither do Puerto Ricans.
Finally the only way to convince them to let me do this was to write out the entire script, put it on a flash drive and load it into the camera.
We sit down, lights go rolling, quiet on the set. I start doing the Spanish thing and I doing fine until I have to say, "Yo describo mi trabajo como dance rock porque uno ambo ri?mos."
"What's up with the prompter?"
They want me to just roll with it but then we hit another. "... ? de la noche." They stop entirely and take a few minutes to clean up the script. Y'know, since I'm fucking reading it.
So then I'm told that we're taking up too much time and if we can't get it done they might cut the segment. That really helps my Spanish improve. I get nervous. I get some of the lines. The other bullshit actors are yelling at the guy interviewing me, telling him to ask this or that.
Then we agree that he can interview me in English and he'll translate, so I have to sit there like a moron at a UN summit. Then they stop rolling the prompter and they leave it on the part where they say where I'm playing and when because the interviewer keeps screwing it up.
If this were any normal TV show they'd piece it together, but this is maybe the last show of a local news channel. They just want to string together their hour of shit.
On the final take I hear them introducing me and the audience-in-a-box starts cheering. So I stand up, they cheer louder. I raise my hand and they cheer even louder. I start waving to people like I'm the biggest thrill this laugh track ever had in its life. I do my thing in Spanish and then we do the interview that I can't stand that everyone wants when they meet someone who worked with LG. "Is she crazy?"
"Yes. And I'll tell you the craziest thing about her. It's that she's not playing Puerto Rico this year!"
"How do you describe your style?"
It's not on the prompter but I take a deep breath and say, "Yo describo mi trabajo como dance rock porque uno ambos ritmos. Voy a tocar mi mezcla de Satisfaction, de los Rolling Stones, con algún material inédito de LG, y inclujo..uh..." And I pause like I'm going to stutter. "Como se dice--OONTZ OONTZ?"
"Uh... no se..I don't know. What is this?"
"Si, la music de house. OONTZ OONTZ."
"That sounds good."
"It is," I turn to the camera which still has the prompter, "And you can this it: Sabado en la placita de Santurce...."
I never caught the segment, but about five hours later it aired and they used the cut where the moron says the wrong date. I tweet in Spanish about how they got the time wrong and all the little monsters in Puerto Rico retweeted it right away. Thanks, amigos!
When I landed there was a kid camped out at the airport with his camera so he could get a picture. Problem was I tweeted the wrong time because I was wicked drunk and couldn't count. The kid ended up waiting there for a few hours and then going home.
I felt really bad so I opened up my twitter app and went to write an apology and I had a million mentions. Everyone linked to the interview I did, they told me how excited they were for Saturday. They all want to party with me in broken-English.
My friend took me to my hotel in Conado a block and a half from the beach and that's when I realized I've become a spoiled pussy. The hotel was just okay. Like it had a casino, but it was under construction, it had a pool but it was already in the shadow of the hotel itself. The ground floor smelled like Puerto Rican take-out and that great fart of a stench wafted into the elevator. I had a balcony room on the eleventh floor with a half-functioning TV, a tepid refrigerator (no minibar to have myself a little look-but-don't-touch) and the shower curtain rod had an infectious rust that never washed off your hands. In short I was disappointed because while on tour in Puerto Rico: they put me up in a Puerto Rican hotel.
I had 3 hours to myself and I went straight to the beach where I forced my way through the end of Wuthering Heights. And not the interesting, poetic ghostly end. I have never read a book so admired before that so clearly needed heavy editing.
But the problem with touring solo is that when you don't have back up dancers or a girlfriend with you, you have to think of things on your own like bringing toothpaste and how to rub suntan lotion on your back. I have a very hard life.
So for a long time a friend of mine has been telling me he would fly me to Puerto Rico so I could DJ in the place he owns. We both had bands that had crossover with each other at various times. He moved to San Juan last year to start a new place and my answer has always been like, "Let's see the ticket."
Touring for me is an important part of my master plan, so I am often willing to break even (or worse) if it means getting out of the Lower East Side. I play in Williamsburg and they say I'm too dancey, I play in the meatpacking and I'm not dancey enough. But then when I tour I get to play exactly what I want.
This friend of mine still keeps an apartment in Gramercy so whenever he comes to visit we always have the same conversation. On Halloween he came up and met with my old singer, but he came by where I was DJ'ing so that we could have this same conversation over and over again. Only this time he had gotten sponsor.
Before my trip I did two interviews back to back with two different papers. I told one that people who wanted to request songs or say anything should follow me on twitter. They article went up about two hours after I said it and when my plane landed there was a local fan camped out all day to take my picture as I got off the plane. That day in the local paper was a picture of a DJ and a famous singer with the pull quote, "You don't have to be gay to support gay rights anymore than you have to be Puerto Rican to care about the people of this oppressed island."
The only problem was that I took the red-eye (for DJs) which means I went to see my friend's band on wednesday and he proposed to his girlfriend halfway through. Moby plays bass in the band and we were both wearing the same outfit (who wore it better?) and I stayed later than I wanted to drink champagne with the happy couple and do shots with my Fairy God Mother.
So I got to the airport, somehow, good and wasted in my three-piece suit. I forgot my passport and then I remembered that Puerto Rico is not another in another country. I checked my email and for some reason I had a million people following me on Twitter, which I pretty much never use. So I tweeted, "Getting on the plane now, landing at 9:10."
Then I went to Terminal 5, which I can't help remember as the terminal where I once lost someone I loved. I passed out in one of those weird, children's library sofa loungers they have there. A miracle woke me up as my flight was boarding.
I was probably at school in Ohio when I first heard it. I had gotten home from waiting tables, had my nametag still on. My roommates were all gone. I had the apartment to myself. It was a Friday night after a long week.
I sat down on the couch and thought about which Wes Anderson DVD I could watch in bed. Then I heard it. Like the howling before the beat drops in "Thriller."
The other night I had gotten done with all of my bullshit early. I had a full on night off, which pretty much never happens. I was in bed reading Wuthering Heights and then I heard it again.
It's close to midnight and something evil's lurking in the dark Under the moonlight, you see a sight that almost stops your heart You try to scream but terror takes the sound before you make it You start to freeze as horror looks you right between the eyes You're paralyzed
I could ignore it. But before I know it I'm on facebook trying to see what everyone's doing. Theo had a date and was looking to meet up afterwards at Freddy's.
I'm in my jeans and checking to be sure I have my keys and the next thing I know it's 4AM.
Sunday night rolls around like an ex-girlfriend circling the block. I want to stay in because I've earned it. But it's my old roommate's birthday.... And it's just down the street... You could just stop by for a little while...
You hear the door slam and realize there's nowhere left to run You feel the cold hand and wonder if you'll ever see the sun You close your eyes and hope that this is just imagination, girl! But all the while you hear the creature creeping up behind You're out of time
The nice thing about going local is that it will keep me from having to drive through the rain all the way to Williamsbeard for Solomon's going away party at the bowling bar. I just have to go into Park Slope to Lucky 13, which is a dive where my friend Amber gogo dances. It is decorated pretty much exactly like my room was decorated in high school, minus the scene-mandated wall of flyers from shows I may or may not have been too.
(When I threw show I always brought a stack of flyers to the event day-of because I thought hardcore could use the equivalent of a program. This was also important because the difference between a scenester and one of those scenester wannabes is that the first question people ask you when they come over and see your wall of flyers is how many of these shows have you been too? Also, the great thing about pretty much any scene is the feeling that it has disappeared, if you save your flyers long enough people will be like, "Ohmygod, you saw Warzone??" Even though you hadn't really heard of Warzone until you went to the show.)
But then right around the time we're wrapping it up at his birthday party (thank god I didn't skip out: all of his work-friends were at work and his girlfriend had band practice so it was just me and another dude. We had a blast because we all like having opinions) I get this text. "Good crew here. U better come by."
I like Solomon and all. The reason I like him more is that we've bartended together, which is a special kind of relationship. I pretty much spent all last winter bartending terrible shifts with him, taking turns being the dude who had to be outside on the roof, and then taking our shit-pay and blowing it at Macao trading.
The thing is: you can skip someone's birthday party if you are real friends and you'll take them out some other time. But you can't skip they're going away party because that just means that you're not real friends and you won't visit and you're probably glad that they're leaving.
I should just stay home. Problem was: the cast of characters at the party is exactly the people I should stay away from. Most of these people should probably be deleted from my phone.
They're out to get you, there's demons closing in on every side They will possess you unless you change that number on your dial Now is the time for you and I to cuddle close together, yeah All through the night I'll save you from the terror on the screen I'll make you see
Not only have we all worked together, but they've basically stood by through the shittiest part of my life. These are the people from the megaclub where I used to work. The girls are all bottle-service whores who hate me because I am not that nice to them. The guys are all bartenders who are in very state of unemploy, meaning I have to buy them drinks.
Also, since I have a rule about girls I work with I should probably have a rule about not hanging out with girls I used to work with. What with not being able to hold a job.
Ashley was there and told me all about how terrible I was on TV in Canada. There's one girl who got me fired (briefly) because she misunderstood me. She thought I told her to go fuck herself. But what really happened was she was scamming drinks for her boyfriend and I'll told her to tell him he could go fuck himself. She came. With her boyfriend.
Also, when I cleared up this misunderstanding they rehired me and fired her.
I can't imagine a bigger group of worse people. As an example, I ran into Soy and she was in the middle of a hilarious story and here's all I caught, "...So my gynecologist called to give me the reminder call saying not to have unprotected sex 24 hrs before my STD test and I said, 'Do I have time right now to finish up or should I stop?'"
So we left Gutter en masse and walked to Brooklyn Ale House, which is a good old shitty Williamsburg bar. It was about 2AM by then and none of us had eaten so we all besieged the buckets of unshelled peanuts, dropping the shells on the filthy floor. The bartender was this short muscly dude who had on an eyepatch. You could tell it wasn't for show. The only thing about an eyepatch is that it's like another version of a lazy eye, meaning I always look in the wrong one.
It's also another one of those bars where you can't tell if the bathroom needs to be cleaned or it's just a bar that smells like a bathroom.
The foulest stench is in the air The funk of forty thousand years And grizzly ghouls from every tomb Are closing in to seal your doom
And though you fight to stay alive Your body starts to shiver For no mere mortal can resist The evil of the thriller
For me, seeing other DJs is like that scene in "Big" where young Josh Baskin rifles through a new pack of baseball cards. I'm there just going "Need it, got it, got it, need it, got it, got it."
Criminology on cop shows teaches us that there is an element of selfish pride wherein the criminal wants to get caught. This says to me that Tiger Woods wanted the high-fives associated with totally nailing a bunch of hot girls. Most men that I know who cheat would be mortified if a website published a pantheon of nasty girls they've hooked up with (instead of his already-attractive girlfriend).
"You must be good at blackjack bc tonight you're going to put all your cards on the table and you won't stop hitting on them til you get '21.'" -me to my roommate via text on her way to her work party where she told me she was going to make out with her intern.
The bartenders at the club I work at now have gotten "Shots" fever. And I do not get tired of the song. I've made a lot of mistakes in my life, but having made a career out of drinking and playing records is not one of them.
Last night I was feeling pretty terrible on my way into work. It had been a long week and I'm leaving on tour after one more gig. But I stopped outside of the club, took my backpack off, straightened my tie and took a deep breath. I painted a big smile on my dumb face and walked in there as happy as I should probably always be. High fives to the bouncers, fists in the air from all the bartenders.
When I was younger and had to write my resumé, Microsoft Word demanded that I add an "Objective" and so I figured most of the people that were looking to hire me weren't the brightest readers so I just wrote "Objective: to get a job in my field and look forward to work every day." Actually: I did this because my objective was by far the only thing of note on my resume.
I have that job currently. I could lose it any time, but for now I'm going to remind myself to enjoy it.
Gold Lion (Nick Zinner Remix)
Yeah Yeah Yeah's
10:48:15 PM EST
Gold Lion (Diplo Remix)
Yeah Yeah Yeah's
10:48:16 PM EST
Shots - LMP
LMFAO Feat Lil Jon
10:54:34 PM EST
Boom Boom Pow (ft. LMFAO Party Rock Remix)
Black Eyed Peas
10:57:21 PM EST
The Jacksons - Can you feel it
Dance Club
10:59:10 PM EST
This month day 10
Cansei de Ser Sexy
11:02:19 PM EST
Banquet (Phones Disco Edit)
Bloc Party
11:06:41 PM EST
Run Rudolph Run
Chuck Berry
11:07:42 PM EST
The Beatles
Daniel Johnston
11:14:19 PM EST
deceptacon flirt
DJ
11:16:02 PM EST
Birthday
The Beatles
11:16:47 PM EST
Ur So Gay
Katy Perry
11:19:36 PM EST
Stupid Girl
Garbage
11:20:26 PM EST
Under Pressure (NY is Dangerous)(Featuring David Bowie)
Queen
11:24:06 PM EST
Sandcastle Disco
Solange
11:25:12 PM EST
Maps
Yeah Yeah Yeah's
11:29:35 PM EST
The Party's Crashing Me
Of Montreal
11:33:36 PM EST
Girls & Boys
Blur
11:38:04 PM EST
Let's Make Love And Listen To Death From Above
CSS
11:40:09 PM EST
I Don't Want To Get Hurt
Donna Summer
11:42:13 PM EST
Tik Tok
Kesha
11:45:40 PM EST
That Girl
Tender Trap
11:49:57 PM EST
White Lines (1983)
Grandmaster Flash
11:52:22 PM EST
The Power Of Love
Huey Lewis & The News
11:54:23 PM EST
Shots - LMP
LMFAO Feat Lil Jon
12:02:08 AM EST
I Gotta Feeling
Black Eyed Peas
12:03:35 AM EST
Low
Flo Rida & T-Pain
12:06:42 AM EST
Bucky Done Gun
M.I.A.
12:10:25 AM EST
I'm Too Fat To Be A Hipster
OH SNAP!!
12:15:50 AM EST
Push It
Salt'n Pepa
12:17:09 AM EST
Time To Pretend (Diplo Remix)
MGMT
12:20:02 AM EST
Just Dance (HCCR's Bambossa Dub)
LG
12:25:00 AM EST
Hands In The Air
Girl Talk
12:28:16 AM EST
Thriller - Anton Neumark Remix
Michael Jackson
12:33:55 AM EST
are you gonna go my way (2007 laidback luke remix)
Lenny Kravitz
12:41:44 AM EST
The Party (Feat. Uffie) (LA Riots Remix)
Justice
12:43:05 AM EST
Tricky Sandman (Run-DMC vs. Metallica)
Dj M.I.F.
12:46:42 AM EST
Make Up Sex (Eddie Baez Mix)
Clear Static
12:52:25 AM EST
Big Heavy
Amanda Blank
12:53:51 AM EST
Show Me Love (Radio Edit)
Steve Angello & Laidback Luke Feat Robin S
1:01:07 AM EST
Boom Boom Pow
Black Eyed Peas
1:05:13 AM EST
Reckless
Ice-T
1:07:04 AM EST
Popozuda Rock'n Roll
De Falla
1:10:41 AM EST
Pavaroty
MC Jack E Chocolate
1:13:14 AM EST
Shots - LMP
LMFAO Feat Lil Jon
1:14:53 AM EST
Standing In The Way of Control (Soulwax Nite Version)
Gossip
1:16:24 AM EST
Everyone's A DJ - Hump Day Project Remix
Oh Snap!!
1:18:35 AM EST
I'm in Miami Bitch!
LMFAO
1:23:12 AM EST
Dance To The Music
Sly & The Family Stone
1:26:38 AM EST
Bad Romance!
LG
1:30:08 AM EST
Ribbons Final
Stolen from Myspace.
1:31:06 AM EST
Poker Face
Stolen from Myspace.
1:34:26 AM EST
Just Dance
LG
1:35:51 AM EST
D.A.N.C.E. (Alan Braxe & Fred Falke Remix)
Justice
1:37:18 AM EST
Stop!
Against Me!
1:38:55 AM EST
Are You Gonna Be My Girl
Jet
1:43:10 AM EST
Need You Tonight
INXS
1:46:39 AM EST
She Drives Me Crazy!
Fine Young Cannibals
1:47:32 AM EST
Play that Funky Music White Boy
Wild C
1:49:55 AM EST
White Belts
Make Up
1:52:10 AM EST
Too Hot To Stop
The Bar-Kays
1:53:33 AM EST
Paparazzi (Redlight Remix)
LG
1:56:44 AM EST
Fuck The Pain Away
Peaches
1:59:59 AM EST
Bohemian Like You
The Dandy Warhols
2:02:28 AM EST
Put Your Hands Up For Detroit, Pump Up The Volume
Fedde Le Grand, M.A.R.R.S.
2:04:55 AM EST
Pretty Woman (djnovak remix)
Roy Orbison
2:07:35 AM EST
Ready for the Floor
Hot Chip
2:09:25 AM EST
Empire State of Mind (feat. Alicia Keys)
Jay-Z
2:10:57 AM EST
Such Great Heights
The Postal Service
2:16:46 AM EST
Mercy
Duffy
2:19:17 AM EST
Beautiful Girls (Remix)
Sean Kingston featuring Lil' Mama
2:24:07 AM EST
XR2
M.I.A.
2:27:05 AM EST
Alala (Princess Superstar Remix)
Cansei de Ser Sexy
2:30:36 AM EST
Put Your Hands Up for Detroit
Fedde Le Grande
2:37:34 AM EST
Its Tricky
Run DMC
2:43:28 AM EST
Brow Beaten B Side
Silver Columns
2:46:39 AM EST
Pump It Up
Elvis Costello
2:48:13 AM EST
Why Bother
Weezer
2:53:26 AM EST
Slow Hands
Interpol
2:55:38 AM EST
Last Nite
The Strokes
2:56:21 AM EST
Mo Money, Mo Problems (1997)
The Notorious B.I.G. / Puff Daddy / Mase
2:58:34 AM EST
Ask About Me
Girl Talk
3:02:26 AM EST
Hombre
M.I.A.
3:03:56 AM EST
Hercules' Theme
Hercules and Love Affair
3:05:30 AM EST
Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll
Ian Dury
3:07:17 AM EST
I'm Too Fat To Be A Hipster
OH SNAP!!
3:46:43 PM EST
Silver Screen Shower Scene
Felix Da Housecat
10:37:04 PM EST
Madame Hollywood
Felix Da Housecat
10:39:56 PM EST
03 vanity (final)
Stolen from Myspace.
10:42:18 PM EST
When You Were Young (Jacque Lu Cont's Thin White Duke Radio Edit)
The Killers
10:44:33 PM EST
Anarchy In The U.K.
The Sex Pistols
10:49:22 PM EST
London Calling
The Clash
10:49:59 PM EST
Y-Control
Yeah Yeah Yeah's
10:53:48 PM EST
Y-Control (Faint Remix)
Yeah Yeah Yeah's
10:54:12 PM EST
Mr Brightside (RHV Bootleg Remix)
The Killers
10:55:15 PM EST
Girls On Film
Duran Duran
11:01:12 PM EST
The Look Of Love (7-Up Extended Club Mix)
ABC
11:03:56 PM EST
Since u Been Gone
Kelly Clarkson
11:09:01 PM EST
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (OCD Automatic Remix)
Whitney Houston
11:12:02 PM EST
Love In This Club (MSTRKRFT Remix)
Usher
11:13:02 PM EST
Birthday
The Beatles
11:21:34 PM EST
You Came Out
We Have Band
11:23:41 PM EST
Don't Stop Push It Now Bigroom_Mix
Dan Winter
11:28:45 PM EST
Office Boy
Bonde Do Role
11:33:26 PM EST
Robot Rock / Oh Yeah
Daft Punk
11:35:12 PM EST
Vogue (June 1990)
Madonna
11:39:00 PM EST
Smells Like Teen Spirit!
Nirvana
11:41:55 PM EST
Mfsb - Sexy
11:48:10 PM EST
Shots - LMP
LMFAO Feat Lil Jon
11:49:21 PM EST
Low
Flo Rida & T-Pain
11:51:56 PM EST
When Love Takes Over (Electro Extended)
David Guetta feat. Kelly Rowland
11:54:02 PM EST
Bad Romance (Chew Fu H1N1 Club Mix)
LG
11:58:33 PM EST
Everyone's A DJ - Hump Day Project Remix
Oh Snap!!
12:05:11 AM EST
What Happens at the Party
LMFAO
12:09:09 AM EST
Nothing to Declare
Laptop
12:11:24 AM EST
Bucky Done Gone
M.I.A.
12:17:08 AM EST
ABBA - Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (Techno Remix)
Abba
12:20:37 AM EST
Show Me Love (Radio Edit)
Steve Angello & Laidback Luke Feat Robin S
12:24:20 AM EST
Mr Brightside (RHV Bootleg Remix)
The Killers
12:27:22 AM EST
Kids (NT89's do you remember dance my remix?)
MGMT
12:31:31 AM EST
Releasing the Pressure (Hernan Paredes House Mix)
Progressive
12:34:56 AM EST
Boom Boom Pow
Black Eyed Peas
12:36:13 AM EST
Boom Boom Pow (ft. LMFAO Party Rock Remix)
Black Eyed Peas
12:38:52 AM EST
I'm in Miami Bitch!
LMFAO
12:42:11 AM EST
Put Your Hands Up for Detroit
Fedde Le Grande
12:46:20 AM EST
Put Your Hands Up For Detroit, Pump Up The Volume
Fedde Le Grand, M.A.R.R.S.
12:47:59 AM EST
Love Is Gone
David Guetta
12:52:19 AM EST
Love Is Gone
David Guetta
12:54:36 AM EST
Standing In The Way of Control (Soulwax Nite Version)
My friend Ashley is a beautiful girl but she has a butter neck. Like she's stunning and has a cute ass and nice healthy blonde hair. But her neck.
Next month she's moving to LA to make it as an actress/model and I am using all of my resolve not to tell her about her neck. In her head shots you can't see the neck (it droops down her throat like a veil) and in the movies she's been in have all been horror movies, so she's the blonde bitch who dies in the beginning.
The thing is, if someone had pulled me aside in high school and been like, "Brendan you're a funny guy and all but you're never going to make it as a writer."
"Really?"
"Yeah, you have a butter neck, but in your use of English."
"Oh."
"It's not surgery or training or anything."
"Oh," I would say. "Then I guess I don't have to worry about poetry anymore."
"No, just get a real job. Study whatever, but go work in a bank or an autoparts factory."
I've had a lot of terrible jobs in my life, but I really can't think of a worse job than being my girlfriend. I have no idea why anybody has ever wanted to do this.
First of all I suck. Second of all I'm stupid. In high school my girlfriend sat in front of me in English class. My teacher told me not to be intimidated by the other honors students because he liked what I had to say in my papers but I needed to talk more in class if I wanted the grade. I don't really want to get into this now but in high school I in remedial classes except for English, which is a language I don't speak particularly well. So anyway the first time I talked I expounded on all the great things about Ezra Pound and why she was a great poet. My girlfriend turned around and stage whispered, "HE."
Also, I have pretty much nothing to do with planet earth. People tell me that I have an apartment, but I spend almost no time thinking about it or cleaning it or painting it.
Let's say you were a nice young girl and we met. I guess when girls think they want a boyfriend he might look something like me. I have a good job and famous friends and I am a brilliant novelist. But what you really get is this: there's a guy who can't go out on the weekends, never sleeps, and spends all of his time "writing" which is clicking between gmail, facebook and gawker all day while you're at work.
Plus! because of my satanic writing habits I spend most of my time in my apartment and I get visibly irritated when interrupted. Andrea thinks it's great that we can work from home together, but that really just means that I leave her cold and alone in bed, make coffee for just myself and hide downstairs.
None of this has anything to do with the fact that I also have had my nose broken 4 times, so I'll never be a teen model. I cannot for a second remember how I was ever on the track team because the idea of working out makes me vomit. To work out you have to have this inner desire to be good at something--and I do not have that. Even when playing board games I find no earthly value at proving that I am better than someone. So this all means I have absolutely no ass whatsoever. Riding the subway for me is like sitting on a T-square.
Also, for no reason I am on a quest to find the most hilarious thing to say and that means that I spend all of my free time hoping that people will step in front of me in the grocery store or bother me in some new, uncharted way.
I could go on, but there are actually a hundred more terrible things about me that are secrets. I guess the only thing that I could possibly see a girl liking about me as opposed to all the other guys with jobs and careers is that I don't watch porn.
Tonight I left my house and went to another planet called Uptown. On my way up there I was trying to remember when the last time I had remotely been above 14th St. I live in Downtownistan, which is pretty much anywhere between Beauty Bar and Freddy's.
The thing is I do love going uptown. I love going to the boat basic and looking at Yachts. I love love love central park. I like museums and I think it's pretty magical the way the nicer department stores decorate for Christmas.
But I was running late so I quickly iPhoned "Met Museum" and did whatever my phone told me to do to get there. The only problem being that my iPhone knew I had DJ'd two parties last night, one of which got extended through my dinner break and I woke up in a three piece suit today and the only reason I know how I got home is that my metrocard ran out. So my iPhone wanted to fuck with me. It told me to get on the B and take it to Central Park West and 8th. If you hadn't DJ'd last night or, say, have seen any episode of Gossip Girl, you probably know that the Met is on 5th Avenue and 81st St. The complete other side of the park.
I also go tied up in my apartment because I was very busy all day not-writing, even though I told everyone I was going to finish this novel for a Chanukah (which starts tonight). So when I get off the subway I'm expecting the scene in my mind which is you can't miss the most gorgeous museum alive because it's huge and has the steps. I see an older guy walking his dog and I look at my iPhone, which is telling me to walk to the middle of Central Park which is, according to Steve Jobs, the correct address location for 800 Fifth Avenue.
I ask the dude walking his dog if he can direct me to the Met and he says, "Are you on foot?" And I roll my eyes like, Ugh, typical uptown rich schmuck who prolly takes a towncar everywhere. "From here you, well, you can just walk through the park, go straight in there."
I look at my phone and it still says that the most famous museum in the world is halfway through central park, like on a footpath or something. So I take the 86th St. entrance. I don't know where halfway through the park is, though, so I keep checking my GPS. Then I get really freaked out. According to my little blue dot I'm standing in the middle of the pond!
Just then I get the slew of twenty texts that I missed in the subway. Most of them are from Andrea updating me on her progress. I always hate these because I remember a time when you had to actually meet someone on time some place and it was wonderful to spot them. I like surprises. Then she calls because my friend from the Onion are there and they are leading a big tour, "I'm coming. I just didn't realize it was so far from the subway."
"That's why I took a cab."
"I think I'm about halfway through the park now."
"You're in the park?"
"Yeah, isn't it halfway through Central Park?"
"What? No. It's 1000 Fifth Avenue."
"Oh Jeez!" I turn around to go back the way I came. Which, if you've ever seen Seinfeld you're probably bright enough to realize is the opposite of where I need to be. "Are you sure? What's the cross streets?"
"5th and 81, hang on," she checks with someone at the Museum.
"Are you sure you're at the met? Not the Museum of Natural History?"
Why wouldn't my beloved iPhone have me get off at 81st? I go back to my phone and triple check everything. Then, just to be sure, I check again. I just type it back in and it points me again to 1000 Fifth Avenue, but it has decided that 1000 Fifth Avenue is now somewhere else on the other side of the city. Great. Fucking great. So I have to get through Central Park in the dark.
I should be in a really bad mood now, but it is not possible to have a bad day when you are in Central Park. I start to remember the last time I'd been down this way. Once on the afternoon of a snowstorm to get to that Jazz Club where I used to work, on my way home from shooting a thing for Japanese foodnetwork.
And then I remembered a magical night. I was costume shopping with LG and we got tea at one of those cafeterias for the oppressed of midtown. While we're sitting there, plotting how to make this crazy thing work she gets a phone call. It's Madonna's manager Burt. He heard the record and he wants to take over.
She had to hurry and get ready for our show that night. So I took her back to her parents house uptown as the sun set over the city. We cut through the park and she was on the back of my Vespa and she said, "I think this is already the best day of my life, Brendan."
"I think so too."
"This is what I've been waiting for my whole life."
"Won't this be fun? We can play all over the place."
"Ohmygod, can you imagine if we had a tour?"
"I hope we do."
"I hope we do to. You can write your novels in the tour bus. I'll be a star and my DJ will be the poet laureate of his generation."
There are moments like that. They're mine. All mine and I get to keep them forever.
Months ago I agreed to DJ a thing for my agent friend's young jewish organization in exchange for her doing some legal work for me. I figured why not. But I didn't find out until a few weeks ago that it would be at Greenhouse, which is my absolute favorite club in the world.
I've had an unnecessary amount of fun at Greenhouse and somehow it manages not to get lame. It helps that I have friends there, but it still never ends up looking like the upstairs of Webster Hall on Fridays.
I played some music while people were hanging around early. The whole thing was open bar. Then they tell me that they're going to have a speech with Cory Booker, who is the mayor of Newark. He has to give the speech from a platform back in the DJ booth. He gives a long sermon about uniting with the jews and tells a hundred great stories. Then he makes a joke about how this club is so cool that it's too cool for him and that he should probably "rap" the rest of the story and call himself Beatmaster-C.
I have been waiting this whole time to let a full club at Greenhouse hear me spin, so when he glances over to me in the DJ booth I give him a little scratch, a little "wikki--wahh." Everyone laughs. Later when his speech has gone on for a while he stops himself and makes almost the same joke again, this time asking me to let the beat drop. So I scratch again. Wicked fun.
I was glad to get a laugh because I had to make a bunch of announcements throughout the night and I already had my prepared joke. "On behalf of the gentiles I just want to say thank you for having me. And we all agree: you guys can keep Chelsea Clinton."
My set went fine and I had tons of fun DJ'ing back there and making the lights work to the beat. Sandflower came and met up with me. I was hungry and tired by the end of it, but then I got a text from my Fairy God Mother, who wanted to know if he could meet up. The real reason he wanted to meet up was because I was supposed to get picked up by my old singer and he wanted to gawk.
Turns out Sandflower's friends were hosting that night, so my asshole friends helped themselves to her friend's bottle all night. It was pretty cute.
I wandered, taking long breaks and just enjoying myself. Sometimes I like to get lost.
No one likes to make fun of my writing more than me.
I based my second novel, structurally, on "The Second Coming" by Yeats. I don't know why I did this, but it helped me get through the book. If you knew the poem and for some reason read my stupid novel you would probably just start to hate both of them.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
So the former bully, Alan, who becomes the evil wing of the real estate company shows up at the main characters house. In the early 90s Alan was a total metal head. Now he's a grown up stooge who's also a metal head. He comes by to warn the main character, but he drives one of the company trucks over, with a prefab house on the back.
...My voice gets caught in my throat as I look out the window and see a house parked in my father’s front yard. A big, shingled, pastel suburban home. Ready to go. Only it needs another half. The side facing me shows into it like a dollhouse, only with pre-decorated rooms and no furniture. It covers the window in just such a way that I start to feel as though we are the dollhouse after all. I get almost nervous until I see that this house sits on the back of a flatbed truck, still idling. Trout Brook Realty Written on the Front. The driver’s side door hangs open at the end of the footpath leading up to our front door. “What the—”
Hardly are those words out when something stands in front of the finger-print stained window with the body of a mountain lion and the head of a man. Alan O'Staff crouches there like mere anarchy in a loose black shirt with a giant red A on the front for giant anarchy. Red rings his neck where the tie and collar had gone. He just stands there with a gaze, blank and pitiless as the sun.
Mrs. Conor Boycott runs into the other room as soon as she hears Alan’s voice crackle through the door. “The Ceremony of Innocence is drowned,” Alan says.
I put my foot down just behind the door, hoping that if he charges in I might be able to hold him back through the power of rubber and floor filth. I wonder, briefly, if there’s ever been a serial-drowner. This is the only chance I’ve ever had to be thankful that I don’t know anyone who has a pool in the neighborhood.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Alan. Is that, like, one of your bands or something?”
Just because you think you want to be a writer doesn't mean you should become a life-long English major.
But whatever. I'm having a lot of fun writing this novel. Normally 38,000 words is more like what you have after 10 weeks, assuming you try for a thousand words a day and go easy on yourself on the weekends. The only difference is that, especially at my age, you can go through quite a lot in 10 weeks.
10 weeks is the average distance between a girl wanting to move in with me and her breaking up with me. Anthony Burgess has a great line about how writers plumb the depths of their psyches to come up with their work, but that they are not the same person when they come to the end of the novel. Writing as a process is an adventure in discovery. There's lots of "I didn't know I thought of that until it came out!"
There's also agony.
Occasionally when I was a bartender people would ask me what else I did. I mentioned that I DJ'd and they would assume that I was just bartending until I could focus on my true passion. DJ'ing. Which is not true. But now that I just DJ people pretty much never ask me what else I do. But here and there I mention writing and it comes up, "You're working on a novel? Wow."
"It's actually my fifth."
Sometimes that impresses people, but for me it's just a reminder of how much of my life I wasted on this. I got an email from an agent today asking me how things were going "I finished the backpacking novel a month ago. Working on the next one."
"When do I get to see it?"
"I didn't know you wanted to see it."
I realized there was some confusion so I laid it all out for him:
Complete failures of my life:
1. Breakfast Anytime (2001)- No one told me that you're not supposed to write novels about road trips. An editor put it like this, "Road trips are awesome, but describing how awesome they are is something different."
2. Missing in Action (2006)- I took the main characters from my first novel and had them all return home ten years later while the older brother goes missing in Iraq and the love interest tries to woo the main character into letting her be the realtor on his father's house. Who knew real estate and missing soldiers were uncomfortable topics by 2007?
3. Mercutio (2008)- hmm, this is an example of what happens when all of your friends are cokeheads. They'll keep telling you you're brilliant until you believe them, even if writing a novel in modern english with select elizabethan dialogue sounds like a good idea. This is still the only novel I want to write.
4. Backpack (2009)-
5. The Heiress (2009)-
I also kind of want to write "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Lady" about something mchmnenenah. And then I want to put together some of my essays about failing as a writer and hallucinating that Mark Twain and Herman Melville coming over to my house to cheer me up.
THEN I'm going to need you to start a facebook group for all of my ex girlfriends so you can SHOVE IT BACK IN THEIR FUCKING FACES. But most of them are so anorexic they'd probably go throw it up.
The response I got back was warm and it will be enough to keep me going tonight. Tomorrow I'm DJ'ing a charity event at my favorite club in the city and then going out with a very special former bandmate of mine.
Last night I went to Pianos and just walking upstairs to see a band playing again reminded me why I love this stupid, pointless thing called bands. I went downstairs to see the band I actually came to see and the difference between the two was inconsequential to my joy.
I love my new roommate. Today we were grousing about life in the kitchen. After my three-day workweek I was pretty exhausted for a Sunday. The Sunday Times proved daunting all alone and I couldn't concentrate. Tomorrow I have to get back to writing all day. I will conquer this novel by Chanukah.
"Are you going out tonight?"
"My old barback's band is playing their first show tonight at Pianos. I want to go, but there's only one thing keeping me going."
This was weird. I finally got around to starting a facebook fanpage for my DJ'ing stuff. My old singer tagged me in a picture on her fanpage, so about half a million teenage girls' heads exploded when they found me. I had old pictures of her, which the fans then tagged. Whatever. Facebook.
So all the sudden I'm touring on my own and meeting new people and teenagers in Long Island and Spain are adding me as their fifteenth friend.
That's not the weird part. Today I started a page for people who are fans and I invited everyone on my friend list (this long this story takes, the more I feel like I'm 14 years old). I got a message from a fan today and I told her to add her friends and she didn't know about the page. So I go to check and make sure I invited her and there were maybe a dozen of my actual friends--an hour into the damn page--that chose to "ignore."
These are people whose birthday parties and play openings I go to. I've known some of them since they were in college. I go to their improv shows and am really supportive. If they started a fanpage that was like "Become a friend of your college roommate's friend--just in general" I'd be all over it.
The problem is that it's obviously written for the purposes of this guy:
And I fucking love this song.
Also, while we're on the subject of douche bags. I really feel the need to define this word. A few weeks ago I wwas out with Theo and like any red blooded American dudes in a bar we got on the subject of who in the room was a douche bag and Theo mentioned that he considered the term to be a fluid concept. Then a few days later I noticed that Details has a thing called "the daily douche bag" which includes hyperliterate heroes of mine like Russell Brand, which is just ridiculous. You can't be a douche bag and campy.
Douche bag- A man child of poor taste who was at one point or aspired to be a bully.
.
That's all. A douche bag is someone who feels good by putting others down in the least entertaining way possible.
