Month: June 2010

Skewed to the Skeptical

Okay, so I changed the look of the blog and I’m not sure how I feel about it. Comments are welcome.

While doing some rearranging on the page, I happened to notice that all the google ads at the bottom, which intuit from blog text, are for detox or rehabs. This is perhaps not the best of signs for me, although I do think it’s kind of funny. It has dawned that maybe I should stop writing about my party moments all the time, since I’m not actually out as often as it may appear, but then, whatevs, it is what it is and my mom is used to reading my silliness by now.

And so, rehab ads be damned, and because many of my tens of readers seem to like the going out blogs, I thought I’d give you a state of the union address on the social tip.


Last week found me at Don Hill’s for one of Drew’s gigs. His band played with Mick Jagger’s son’s band; I have been told he is a very nice kid, although he was recently lambasted in this somewhat entertaining article. I have listed numerous complaints in here about the “scene” in New York City that Drew often finds himself gigging in, which in my mind consists of spoiled dilettantes, vacant models, pointless coke-fiends, and gross guys who chase the models, none of whom give a shit about the music that is played around them. So I’m never really super excited about these kinds of events, although they’re good for the band and Drew is very good at keeping me feeling safe and at being “in it but not of it”.  I am also fully aware of the fact that I am of a different age and mindset than the target audience, and thus my opinion is automatically skewed to the skeptical, and not one that they would, or indeed should care about.

But, I do like Don Hill’s as Don has been a friend for 20 years and I know that I can always sit with him and gossip at the end of the bar while the shenanigans rage on around me. I call it the old people’s corner and I know I’m going to be relatively happy when he’s there.


Drew is an extremely talented drummer and I like to watch him play, and I also like his current band, so I did go up front to watch. And this is what went on in my brain:

“Wow, this is a new song, I like it. I have to remember to ask what it’s called…Hey, that girl standing in front of me looks like Dyan Cannon. She’s adorable, I love her big hair. God, could her legs get any longer? Just what New York needs, another model…I’m sure she has absolutely no idea who Dyan Cannon is….Ouch, gross guy! Stop shoving me to get to baby Dyan!…Oh look, there’s Lizzie Jagger, she’s cute too…Wow…hmm…there is a lot of self-congratulating going on in that bunch. It’s like the popular table in high school, only skinnier. No one is even looking at the band…Oh, and that’s charming, Lizzie is “headbanging” by flipping her super long hair into the faces of lesser mortals. Boy, that is really obnoxious…Aaand there, we go, gross guy just knocked my beer out of my hand in an attempt to grope baby Dyan. All right, running back to Don now…”

I lasted all of 5 minutes and then spent the rest of the night in the corner, where I belong, swilling free tequila and bitching about the kids today. Sometimes I worry that this will be the way it is to my dying day. I’ll be 90 years old with my eyebrows drawn on crooked and a plastic flower in my dyed black hair with inch long gray roots, shouting about the lack of subculture today and pointing at my empty glass while winking at the frightened bartender.

A few days later the lovely Cid and I got on one of those fabulously cheap Chinese buses and headed to Philly to visit Kim Montenegro and to see my former bandmates Vas and Loopy play in their current band Hanzel und Gretyl. When we got to Kim’s beautiful home, she promptly poured copious amounts of red wine and we retired along with her friend Alexandra to her backyard for a mini girlie barbeque. We drank, pigged out and danced to the Black Crowes while the fireflies blinked around us. This is so much more my speed and happiness these days.

We did pull it together to make it to the club, where HUG put on a hugely entertaining show. For those of you who are unfamiliar, they are an industrial metal band who sing their songs in their own brand of German. They have a great sense of humor, Loopy wears a helmet and goggles and races around the stage and the shows are scary, funny and loud. My current favorite tune is Bavarian Bierhaus Blood.


The crowd was a funny mishmosh of gothy types, hardcore HUG metal fans, and weirdly what I think were a couple of prostitutes, and everyone was pretty chipper and friendly. We met a lot of random people and when Kim saw a girl at the bar get her credit card refused, she paid for her drinks. The girl was very sweet and grateful, and told Kim she loved her jeans (Kim has a denim line called MOTOR) but that they’re too expensive. So of course, I, being the most obnoxious person on the planet when drunk (except for maybe Lizzie Jagger and her hair), launch into a conversation that goes like this:

ME: You are adorable, and you have a really cute figure.
UNSUSPECTING GIRL: Thank you!
ME: But those jeans you’re wearing right now are awful. Really, they’re just horrendous.
BLINDSIDED GIRL: Oh God, are they?
ME: Yes. They look cheap and they don’t do your great ass any favors. You need to stop wasting money on cheap jeans, and buy one good pair and just wear them constantly.
SUFFERING GIRL (wailing): But I can’t afford Kim’s jeans! I need a sugar daddy!
ME: No, goddamnit, you don’t need a man, you just need a good pair of jeans. Stop looking so sad. C’mon, I’ll buy you another drink.

I have no idea what her name is, yet I’ve probably scarred her for life. Yay, Mary! And while this fashion assault is going on, there’s a man next to me in a full Nazi uniform, complete with hat held under his arm in proper uniform style, trying to get me to take a picture of him with Vas and his girlfriend, who is also in a form of Nazi regalia, although hers was completely done in shiny vinyl and she had those ridiculous white goth contact lens in her eyes. The downside, apparently, to playing really heavy music with German lyrics is that you get the occasional fan in offensive ensemble.

And that is my report from the frontlines. The rest of the weekend was pretty mellow, we got up the next day and brunched with HUG, dragged Loopy shopping and into one of our favorite Philly clothing stores called DELICIOUS (where I spent money that I don’t have on a top that I don’t need), and then Cid and I caught a ride back to NYC with them, which was, along with the backyard girl time, a highlight for me. I have to admit openly that I am mellowing, and lately just want to be with a few good friends in a backyard or on a road trip, rather than in a crowded club with people spilling shit on me. I’m not out of the game completely, but it looks like I’m leaning towards some version of addled adulthood. How did this happen? I blame Lizzie Jagger.

PS. Lizzie, if you have a google alert set for your name, I apologize for outing your bad headbanging, and, as they say on your side of the ocean, am really just taking the piss. I still think you’re really cute.

Not Qualified!

Holy crap! Doing stuff is hard.

I have a very dear friend from childhood who wrote THIS BOOK, to much acclaim. When she was in the process of writing her second book, I asked her how it was going, and she said, “The top of my refrigerator has never been cleaner.”

I cut my work hours down to four days a week and have allotted one day per week to just write some shit down in the hope that one day there will be something decent to show the world. Initially I was elated, and I still am in some ways, mostly just because I hate working and the more goof off time the better. But now I’m following the animals around the house, talking to friends on the phone, plucking my eyebrows, rearranging the contents of the underwear drawer, ANYTHING to avoid sitting in front of the computer, where inevitably these phrases roll around in my head:

“You have no idea what you’re doing.”

“This is meandering and boring.”
“There is no way to make this cohesive.”
“People are going to hate this.”
“You can’t remember anything anyway. Let’s see who’s on Dr. Phil today.”

I have always been a master procrastinator and am fascinated by people who just get out there and  do it. I have friends that lead these enormous lives that they’ve created for themselves. No one handed anything to them, they have received no special favors from this world. Still, it seems so magical and mysterious to me that they just got their shit together and DID IT.


 So, today, after writing for an hour with those phrases rolling around in my head, I called a friend. This particular friend has recently had some major business partners come into her life to finance her own clothing line. She is clearly talented, has years of experience, and is completely worthy of it, and it’s fabulous that someone has finally noticed the potential and said, “Here’s some money, now get designing.”
She said her floor has never been cleaner. And this week, in the middle of working, she freaked out and called her partner and shrieked into the phone, “NOT QUALIFIED!!!”
I told her I understood completely, and we stayed on the phone for another half an hour, procrastinating by talking about procrastination and the absolute terror of not being qualified that precedes it.
I really don’t know where my life is going to lead, but I’ll continue to enforce this one day a week thing and meander on my computer until something gets done or I drop dead, surrounded by well-attended pets with Dr. Phil droning on in the background. In the meantime, This channel came from my mother’s friend Linda Dewey after the two of them had a conversation about addiction to bad news media, and I am taking great comfort in it as she also touches on the need to achieve. I think some of you might find it interesting as well.

This is the message I received yesterday morning about listening to the media being addictive:

You are finding that addictions are more than physical. In fact, addictions are always mental and sometimes even spiritual. Whatever it is you desire can become a craving. Even a craving for the spiritual can become addictive.

What we mean by addiction is that it becomes out of balance. The human lifestyle, the human life form becomes unbalanced, unhappy, uneven, always seeking, seldom finding, always wanting more. In a sense, this is natural, but in a very real sense, this is highly unnatural and at some point must stop. We don’t see this as giving up or as a form of depression. That would be the shadow side of this stopping. What we see is serenity.

So yes, take that deep breath, and settle into a new form of being. It is a form of being where, on the edge of your conscious mind, your connection to Source lies, ready to be called up at any given moment, so there is no need for reminding. You have not forgotten and will not forget. You see God in and about you. You know that the world outside is the world inside. We have but to yank the chain, as it were, and you run in a myriad of directions, and yet you have this fringe mentality to call upon at any time to achieve the results which you wish.

And what is it exactly that you wish? We would hope it would be to achieve peace within and without yourself, and that peace be in the form of serenity, fulfillment. This is different from achievement. Achievement is more about going out and doing. Fulfillment is about going inside, listening, and then fulfilling. What fulfills me this moment? Not, what goal can I achieve today? Not even, what goal can I achieve in this moment?

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