London – MISS ANTHROPE'S HOUSE OF HIGH DRAMA

My August of Discontent

Followed by a pretty good September…

Woman #1: That was the worst! And then you gave all of our drugs to that LADYMAN!

Woman #2: I know! I’m sorry! I don’t know what came over me. I would have bought him a car if he asked.

Woman #1: It’s okay; it’s not your fault. You were DICKMATIZED. It’s a terrible thing that happens to all of us.

Woman #3: She got caught in DICKSAND!

This conversation is leading nowhere. I just think it’s funny.

So I know many of you are waiting to hear my take on LAPTOPGATE 2018, in which I was wrongfully accused of stealing a laptop from a DJ booth in which a friend was DJing, in a club owned by friends.

Unfortunately I can’t get too far into it for a number of reasons. First being that the club owners asked me not to, as they don’t want their business publicly dragged into nonsense. Second, I don’t want to perpetuate or dignify peewee-league drama. So I’ll keep it as brief and as non-snarky as possible. Which will probably still be snarky because it’s me and I am furious.

So yes, the day after visiting another bar after getting off my happy hour shift at Bowery Electric, I was accused of sneaking a fledgling DJ’s computer out of this bar via my purse. This is because the world’s two most dubiously capable detectives (seemingly parentally over-indulged and hysterical millennial laptop owner and her intellectually challenged BFF, who both shall, for convenience and amusement’s sake, be referred to as Spiker and Sponge for the duration of this blog) gained access to the club’s security video footage of that night and became fixated on an image of me putting my large-because-I-came-from-bartending purse in the DJ booth, where my friend was spinning, and then taking it out of the booth an hour later. Then, like all clever thieves, I spent ten minutes carrying said bag around the room hugging members of the staff goodbye before exiting for the night with my plunder.

I received a call the next night from the bar owner, who told me things were dire and asked me to call Spiker to try to reason with her so that she would not go to the police to try to get me arrested. I was stunned; it was so surreal. Of course I didn’t take anyone’s stuff. But I did as requested and called and attempted to explain calmly all the myriad reasons that I don’t need or want her computer. She responded, like all rational adults, by shrieking as if she’d been burned, until I was finally compelled to abandon the damage to my ear and hang up the phone. I then texted Sam and learned that Spiker’s reason for living had been found in his bag.

Sigh… all roads of chaos inevitably lead back to Sam. The computer had landed in his constantly open backpack, also residing in the DJ booth for a time on the night of said surveillance video. Spiker probably dropped it on the pile of bags while she was preoccupied texting her Adderall dealer or calling daddy to up her allowance. And because Sam is Sam he didn’t notice the extra weight until the next morning.

One would assume that this would have been the end of it. But Spiker insisted upon remaining in nonsensical victim-mode and accused Sam of covering for my kleptomania. He told her to go fuck herself. Then ensued a ridiculous and seemingly endless campaign of whining Instagram and Facebook prose about what a terrible person I am, followed by huzzahs back and forth between the two of them for being so “classy” while suffering so mightily under such tyranny. There were also countless complainey texts and direct messages via various social platforms from them to people I’ve known and worked with for 25 plus years. Who all assured these two geniuses that they had not cracked the DaVinci code, but instead were harassing an innocent person.

The night of the phone call I was so furious I put up a nameless rant on Facebook. I stated that I wished it could be 1989 for a day so I could mete out my frustration old school style. My friends responded in kind, which then prompted Spiker, (who must have been monitoring my page for possible song recommendations to borrow for her “DJ career”) to get hysterical all over again, flapping her birdlike limbs and squawking that she would now need an order of protection to prevent my army of ancient supervillains from attending one of her crap parties in order to beat her up or throw tampons at her while shouting “Plug it up”. Or maybe simply ask her politely what it feels like to be a complete and utter asshole.

So I then had to assure aforementioned bar owners that no one in my over-30 age peer group has the ambition or energy for fisticuffs at this late stage in our lives. And I took the rant down, as requested. After that some random troll or trolls spent quality time screenshotting and sending out any jokes that were made in the direction of laptop theft in what I can only assume were attempts to injure me further and/or inflame the situation. Then a few days later Sam brought a large group of people to another local bar after a nearby gig, not knowing that Sponge was bartending. She had a tantrum and refused to serve anyone until they left, claiming later that she was afraid, which was ludicrous. And to which Sam “Stay Jewish, Ponyboy” Hariss responded, “What am I gonna do, complain about the weather to her to death?”

Hmm…Admittedly this rundown is in no way brief, went way far into it and is quite snarky indeed. I’m sure I’ll get a call about it. But honestly I don’t give a fuck at this point. I’m tired of always working so hard to be the guy on the high road. August 2018 was the month in which I got hammered incessantly by young women for no good or logical reason, and I deserve to vent some sarcasm on my own damn blog.

The first attack (the blog prior to this entry, if you’re not up on all things Raff and are interested) I did my best to sort out how to be a good person and decipher what role I played in inspiring the aggression. And I did get an apology a few days later, which was gladly accepted. I have no desire to fight with people. But this laptop insanity was a whole new level of stupid. For this one I had to let go of the idea that there was some cosmic lesson at play and chalk it up to two things: one, some people are dicks, plain and simple, and two, chaos and confusion are the fees one occasionally has to pay to have Sam in the orbit.

While in eye of this latest storm I happened to get tattooed. My phone kept going off while I was sitting in the chair so my tattoo artist was forced to overhear all the conversations. He (Jonah Ellis) is awesome, and gave me his thoughts on why bad things happen while you’re innocently standing there minding your own business. His theory is that life is constantly stabbing you in the back of the head, then once in a while it stops long enough for you let your guard down and start thinking life is not so bad. Then as soon as you do, it starts stabbing again to remind you that life does indeed, and always will, suck.

This is hilarious but a bit bleak. I do have hope that there is more cosmic rhyme and reason to be had. Yet it did feel that way. I felt genuinely beat up. I was afraid to look at social media or leave the house for a week. I felt betrayed by my club owning friends for allowing a couple of petulant nobodies to have power to injure me in a scene that I had been participating in and contributing to since well before they were born.

Thankfully, it’s done. At least until they read this and start bleeding their teenage periods all over Instagram again. Plug it up! Plug it up!!

See how I brought that all around again. WRITING!

Onto bigger and better things–

Wendy Scripps, Liza Colby, Robby Bote (The Tip manager and bass player) and I went to London to get some biz done. Wendy loves the UK and all of us believe that breaking a band in the UK and Europe is more productive than doing it here in the States. So we’re looking toward more touring across the pond for all of the Wendigo bands, and we checked out the scene and took business meetings like grown-ups and had high tea for fun and Liza and I spent a day walking around the London Zoo eating ice cream and grinning like idiots. It was pretty great.

Here are some highlights. Check the Wendigo Instagram for more. And follow it for Chrissake. We have awesome content and we need more followers.

Right after landing, on 24+ hours of no sleep, I did a reading, along with one of my favorite poets and friend Puma Perl, for our friend Jane Ormerod‘s Great Weather for Media. It went great. Sometimes readings can be deadly dull or horribly uncomfortable as people read odes to their vaginas. But this one was full of interesting and talented writers and people liked what I read, thank you, Baby Jesus. And coincidentally, Puma read a poem called “It’s Not Depression, It’s August”, which contains the line, “Nothing good happens in August.” FULL CIRCLE! WRITING!

I was delirious but it was a blast hanging with NY friends in London.

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Wendigo sponsored Jesse Malin’s sold out Gates of the West UK concert at Dingwalls. It was packed to the gills, the performances were great, and it raised money for two very worthy charities: Joe Strummer Foundation and Music for Memory.

Gates of the West

Liza and Robby got up and did a few covers at our friend Arno Von Detritus’ club Lounge 666/Nightclub Kolis. That’s the UK Sub’s Jamie Oliver on drums.

Liza and I met and saw the 5, 6, 7, 8’s in a tiny club and lost our minds. They were so goddamn cute and the music was great. Here’s the drummer:

Zoo!

Tea Party

So that’s the rundown. I hope all these details aren’t too boring but I want to keep you all in the loop and so much is happening it’s hard to know where to begin or end with updates. Wendigo has a lot of exciting stuff in store for end of 2018 into 2019 and I’m stoked to be at the helm. The Liza Colby Sound is going to Japan, The Sweet Things are working on a new album, The Tip is headed to Europe in the Spring, we’ve got a few other band projects in the works and we’ll be doing more projects in the UK.

My dream is to foster a business model in which the artist and the people behind the scenes work as a unit, making decisions together, so that the artist can flourish with the help they need and everyone makes money at the end of the day. We’re getting closer to that every day.

All credit to Wendy Scripps for keeping so much rock rolling and for offering to bail me out of jail next time I get caught with my hand in the computer jar.

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London!

I have been doing so many heavy blogs and I want to lighten it up a little, so this one is gonna be mostly a what-I-did-this-September report. I hope it won’t be too boring!

I took a trip with Wendigo/Art on A founder Wendy Scripps and artist Jozie Lovestar to London last month to organize a show of Jozie’s photographs in the Sanctum Soho Hotel. Honestly, I was a bit resistant because I have been traveling a lot this year; I have been lucky to have traveled a decent amount in my life and have visited London many times, either visiting friends, playing shows or staying with boyfriends during the Anglophile period of my dating life. Although the one I ended up with there for a time, Slam Thunderhide of Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction, was actually Canadian. Side-story–he’s an awesome guy but his ex-wife hated me so much she told everyone years later that I died of AIDS in full dementia. Which I think is pretty hilarious; I appreciate a creative diss.

Anyhoo, now it’s many years later and I found myself back there, this time under much more lavish circumstances and in a more adult (ish) state of mind. Honestly, I think the first class flight would have been enough for me. I was way more excited than was appropriate. My top favorite things in life are free stuff, laying around, eating, and drinking, and that’s exactly what you’re given. I sat happily in the airport VIP lounge waiting for someone to get wise and throw me out, then laid in my little compartment on the plane under a comfy blanket with a pillow behind my head watching free movies while women in cute red skirts came around every five seconds to fling free champagne and food in my direction. If someone could have thrown a cat into the mix they would have had to drag me off.

The Sanctum Soho is a gorgeous hotel and the staff is lovely in the way that only an international staff can be. Did you know that cool people in England don’t use washcloths? They call them flannels and our gorgeous, hip, gay, fabulous concierge actually giggled when I asked him for one. Who doesn’t love a giggling gay concierge?

I should have taken photos in the room but our stuff was everywhere so I didn’t bother. Here’s a dresser that I wanted to remember though:

Here are a couple of real photos of the place so you can a better idea. It’s a very rock and roll hotel…

The show, which was really a party, went well. We had some large pieces and this project entaile having a giant wooden crate custom built, like the kind you see in movies about museums, then packing the art with a mountain of bubble wrap, then hiring a freight company to fly it overseas. And then everything got stuck in customs and I had to fill out endless amounts of confusing paperwork and then the actual day of the opening we were told the artwork would be coming the NEXT day. I considered having a meltdown and then decided, eh fuck it, it’s art, we’re not doing hurricane rescue or heart operations. In the end did it matter? But I did talk the powers that be into speeding it up and the art arrived that afternoon and went up on the walls in the nick of time. Here’s an extremely unflattering photo of me unwrapping art before I sat down to order more scones with clotted cream.

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My dear and generous friend Jyrki 69 flew over from Finland to DJ for us, and my other dear friend Storm Large happened to be able to get into town too, so we all stayed in the same hotel and room hopped. Or at least I did, consuming their booze and digging through their toiletries for perfume samples. Other friends showed up for the party, people I haven’t seen in decades, and that was really special: Finnish guitarist extradinaire Timo Kaltio, bass playing legend Dave Tregunna, legendary tattoo artists Sean Vasquez and his beautiful wife Leticia Molera Vasquez plus assorted hot fetish model chicks and awesome people I never get to see because we live on other continents.

So whew! That was a lot, but fun, and the rest of the trip we could relax. We were right near Carnaby Street…

…so I picked up some overpriced but properly fitting mod shirts for Sam to stem the flow of his constant purchasing of overlarge old lady smocks on Poshmark…

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Jozie is a fitness trainer and she looks like this:

Jozie gym

So annoying, right? She also has a book out right now:

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I know a good thing when I see it, so I was as ready as my lazy ass could be to get in some training time with her. We found an uber gay gym nearby where the house music is always pumping, all the men are Italian and and appear to work out constantly. It was ridiculous and so much fun. She flirted with the boys in tight shorts while simultaneously beating the crap out of me. Jozie always makes working out entertaining.

I had dinner at the uber British Wosely with my friend Paul Wassif (yet another super talented and great-looking musician) who I hadn’t seen in person since the 80’s. My phone was nonworking overseas and I have a terrible sense of direction, so no matter how simple the trip I would photograph a map when wifi was available and then walk staring intently at the photo in a neurotic I’m-gonna-get-lost panic.

Map

It was one of the high points of the trip for me, humming and walking leisurely through the streets of London by myself, looking in windows and up at buildings. It’s such a beautiful city and so different from NYC. Naturally, I forgot to get an actual photo with Paul, just a shot of my martini while waiting for him to arrive…

Wosely

It was lovely to be able to catch up as adults as we were both pretty messy in our younger years and didn’t part on the easiest of terms. I love being able to revisit and feel you get a bit of a do-over with someone, which seems to be a major theme in my life, always hoping to do things better the next time around. So thank you, Paul.

Then it was time for Jyrki to head back to the land of Finns. He said we were having brunch but it turned out to be primarily a ruse to drag me by the elbow at breakneck speed through the streets and pubs of Soho before he got on his plane.