So internet access has been super sparse….but I promise an extensive recap of this entire trip when I get back on Monday. I’m going to see metric tonight, neon indian and the crystal antlers…a band that I only remember because they posted an craigslist a couple years ago that their van had been stolen with all their gear in it, and i think they had a Farfisa. Austin seems to get rowdy at night as i have seen a few fights…but it’s mostly out of town bros and such. The locals are friendly and laid back. I’m using one of those public computers so I feel like with each tap of a key a zillion microbes are attaching themselves to my fingers. Must wash hands. These last few entries have been planet gay, but I promise some proper narcissistic ramblings shall be forthcoming.
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one little two little three little indians
March 20, 2010highlights
March 18, 2010Paul Mitchell has a booth here and they are giving hand massages for $2. You know that I bought one…I would have paid 20 for it
3 hours sleep
March 17, 2010I’m updating this from the SXSW convention center, because the hotel I was put it up was sort of ghetto and didn’t even have internet. Also the shower has like no water pressure, which means i’ll be coming back with a few extra layers of dead skin cells. Downtown Austin is pretty fun. I stayed out last night until 3 am…mostly at the Beauty Bar. The Austin Beauty Bar is way better than the L.A. one. It’s way bigger and people actually go to it.
not quite the opposite of north by northwest
March 16, 2010I don’t know how I managed to wake up at 6 a.m. and catch my plane this morning, as I went to Casey Moore’s last night, got drunk off red wine and stayed until close. Hung out with Jonathan Sakas, Bree, Kelly(not the lifeguard kelly different one) and company…where we discussed the most popular tacky phoenix radio jingles (“lerner and roe is the way to go,” I love my metropolitan mattress,” and the Shane Company diamond one. They were all too young to remember classic late night infomercials like Don Lapre’s “I did it all from my ONE BEDROOM apartment placing TINY CLASSIFIED ADS” or any of that Howie World crap” We shoot down the competition!” I swear you just can’t get that stuff out of your skull once it’s been engrained somewhere in that slab of meat which feeds the beast of civilization. Exchanged texts with a girl which may lead to a possible epic reconciliation and potential boardgames…or possibly just some consolation bored games
I’m currently in Austin for the next 8 days for South By Southwest. For some reason the kiosk I’m using at the hotel blocks you from accessing Facebook…which makes very little sense and kind of sucks ass.
I ate some serious BBQ my first day here at some amazing out of the way place. I have an all-access badge and plan to see a crapload of bands while I’m here. I know Austin is supposed to be different from the rest of Texas…but from what I’ve seen so far it’s not that different.
I become more and more appreciative of Phoenix as a city the more I travel. Texas has to be one of the least pedestrian friendly places. You just can’t walk or bus anywhere here unless you are downtown.
I have a feeling I will have a lot of fun when the show kicks into high gear. Hopefull I will get to see my friend Dawn Batson from Los Angeles who lives here now, but I can’t get onto facebook to send her a message to tell her that I’m here….!
Of Miracles and Mirages
March 14, 2010So this girl that I briefly dated’s cellphone always calls me randomly from like her purse or something. And the situation ended kind of badly, so it’s like I see her name pop up on my phone and I get excited about the possibility of reconciliation…only to answer the call to the sound not of her voice but of make up bags jostling around in her handbag. It’s like a mirage! Here I am, alone in the desert…I’m dying of thirst and crawling in the sand. A tumbleweed just blew by and hit me in the face. The immediate area is awash with rattlesnakes and quicksand. Up ahead in the distance I think I see water so I start to get a hot flash of optimism, but wait it’s not water! Its….
a 5 minute voicemail which consists of an overheard bar conversation of her giving her number to some random dude. How painful is that to have to listen to? The guy sounded like a complete doofus, too. They have an unremarkable conversation which ends in equally unromantic fashion.
girl: Is it okay if I give you my number?
doofus: FUCK YEAH!
Then when the guy goes to give her his number she starts to grab her phone and that’s when she must have noticed it had called someone(me), she says “oh my god” and that’s when the voicemail abruptly ends.
I can assure you that if the movie “Better Off Dead” would have been filmed in the 21st century rather than a time when cellphones were the size of bricks of cheese and only used by doctors and lawyers as opposed to teenagers….it would have featured some variation of this absurdly tragic scene.
I found myself thinking “Really? Did this just happen? Seriously?”
And now I have the Tommy James and the Shondells song “Mirage” stuck in my head…which has been a recurring theme for me since about 1997:
I see you standing in the alleys and the hallways
Wait a second, you’re gone now
I run to touch you but you vanish through the doorway
And oh how
Hard it is to live without you
I love everything about you
Now I know you’re really gone
But my imagination is so strong
That I see you coming into view
And your face is telling me that you
Oh yeah oh, want to be by my side
Oh yeah oh, now it’s finally time
Wait a second
Mirage, that’s all you are to me
Mirage, something I only see
So I keep walking through the alleys and the hallways
Where are you
I keep remembering the kissing in the doorways
The car too
How it all comes back to me
The movies every Saturday
The place we used to go to eat
I want so much to have it like it used to be
That I see you coming into view
And your face is telling me that you
Oh yeah oh, want to be by my side
Oh yeah oh, now it’s finally time
Here it comes again
Mirage, that’s all you are to me
Mirage, something I only see
Just a mirage, that’s all you are to me
Just a mirage, something that I only see
Just a mirage, that’s all you are to me
Just a mirage, something that I only see
the ass isn’t greener
March 14, 2010I would strongly urge anyone who is considering breaking up with their significant other to first sign up for an OKCupid dating account and have a look at the sort of riff raff that’s available out there. I almost guarantee you that after exchanging a few messages with these train wrecks you will want to run straight home to mama, say you’re sorry, tie the knot, make babies and be thankful for what you have.
I’m lost in admiration could I need you this much?
March 13, 2010For some reason, I have had the Tears For Fears song “Head Over Heels” in my head for a couple days, which reminds me of the hallway scene from Donnie Darko, a movie which I remember when it was being filmed. I knew it would become sort of a cult classic, and I went ad far as to research the casting agent and try to get on it as an extra but wasn’t ever able to get ahold of anyone.
I did however manage to be in several scenes of the Kirsten Dunst movie “Crazy Beautiful”(which at the time had a working title of “At Seventeen”) which did not become a cult classic and is a mostly forgotten piece of shit. In fact, I was so poor at the time that the money I spent on the bus back from Palisades High School where it was shot, was literally my last dollar.
One of the scenes that my friend Mark Schoenecker and I worked on in this film, was in the bleachers of a high school football game. And they made us stand there and hold up these cardboard people to make it look like there were more people in the stands than there actually were. After about 5 minutes, Schoenecker was like “Fuck this, man, let’s get out of here. I’m not going to be holding up one of those cardboard MF’s.” So put down our cardboard counterparts, and we just up and left without getting paid or anything.
I still have never seen the film, as there were a couple close up scenes.. and I was so malnourished in that era that I’m mortified of what I must look like in it if they used any shots that I was in.
“I am so dead they’re going to have to bury me twice “- Corey Haim
March 12, 2010Corey Haim died, which was pretty sad. He was always my favorite of the two Coreys. In the fall of 1988, my mom took me and Robbie Haas to see “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” but for some reason it wasn’t playing so we ended up seeing “License to Drive” which would later serve as an unbeknownst premonition to my own future drivers test woes. I really wanted to be like Corey Haim when I was a kid, and he inspired many of my early ambitions. It’s weird to think that getting caught up in all the seriousness of art, music and show business, that what initially got me into all this stuff was just wanting to be like childhood icons I once idolized like Corey Haim, Christopher Pettiet and Jonathan Brandis…a trifecta of cool dudes I spent endless hours trying to look like in the mirror in the early to mid nineties.
All three of them are dead. Someone preserve Edward Furlong!
I even liked Corey Haim’s later teen movies when he was starting on the way down. I remember a humid summer evening in 1992 watching “Prayer of the Rollerboys” by myself on the third floor and thinking it was a cinematic masterpiece. I have not seen it since but would like to. I always wished for these guys to make a comeback, and when I lived in Los Angeles I used to daydream about writing indie scripts that would be vessels for people like Jonathan Brandis and Corey Haim to make stage big comebacks and win Academy Awards or like the Sundance Film Festival or something. Alas, it never happened.
There are so many classic Corey Haim scenes, but one that comes to mind is when he is singing “Aint got a Home” in the bathtub in “The Lost Boys”
I ain’t got no home
No place to roam
I ain’t got a home
No place to roam
I’m a lonely boy
I ain’t got a home
I ain’t got no sister
I ain’t got a brother
I ain’t got a father
Not even a mother
I’m a lonely boy
I ain’t got a home
Woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo
Well, I got a voice
And I love to sing
I can sing like a bird
And I can sing like a frog
I’m a lonely boy
I ain’t got a home
I ain’t got a girl
I ain’t got a son
I ain’t got no kin
I ain’t got no one
I’m a lonely frog
I ain’t got a home
Last Christmas I gave you my heart..the very next day you gave it away
March 8, 2010So I have to tell this story about what happened today. I have the hugest crush on this girl that works at Juicy Couture. I first saw her yesterday when we were waiting in line together at the Starbucks at Fashion Square mall. She’s kinda short and Scottsdale blond, wears all black. She just has that typical 20 year old Scottsdale look. Nothing special in that something special kind of way. I wanted to talk to her really badly, but I didn’t want to be that annoying cocky guy who strikes up a transparently pointless conversation. It’s painful to watch when I see jocks, old guys, or obnoxious bros do it and so I don’t do it, period. Anyway, so today just for the hell of it, I decide to go in Juicy Couture because I want to look at some of the jewelry and stuff even though I would have no one to give it to. Anyway, I walk in and it turns out this girl works there. Out of nowhere, she’s like “Can I help you find something” which she says in the most flirtatious way possible. So I decided to pretend to be interested in purchasing something and just see what would happen. I was all nervous and discombobulated. She even did the whole “Can I take something out for you?” It started to remind me of that scene from Christmas Vacation where Chevy Chase ends up looking at women’s underwear in the department store. Here is his exchange with the shopgirl:
Mary: “Can I show you something?”
Clark: “Ah. I was just smelling – smiling. I was just blouse – browsing. “
Mary: “For your wife or your girlfriend?”
Clark: “What? What happened? Whoof! I guess it wouldn’t be any… Whoa! It wouldn’t be the christmas shopping season if the stores were any less hooter than – hotter than they are. Whoo! It is warm in here.”
Mary: “Well, you have your coat on.”
Clark: “Oh, do I? How did that happen?”
Mary: “Because, it’s cold out.”
Clark: “Yes, it’s a bit nipply out. I mean nippy out. (laughs) What did I say, nipple? Ah, there is a nip in the air though.”
Mary: “Can I take something out for you?”
Clark: “(laughs) I was just looking at something for my wife, god rest her soul.”
Mary: “Oh god, I’m so sorry.”
Clark: “Oh no no no, she’s not dead. We’re just divorced. She’s history. And, obviously she doesn’t wear underwear. And, there are plenty of shopping days left until aduteries – adulthood – which is to say christmas, as in yule, yule log. Not a log, I don’t have a log. I mean you know. If I had a log, not in the sense that you think I said I did. (laughs) Good golly. Tis the season to be merry.”
Mary: “That’s my name.”
Clark: “No Shit?!”
So anyhow, I didn’t want to stop talking to her, and for once I could tell that she liked me. I wanted to prolong the flirtation of the century for as long as possible….and like I ended up actually buying this sort of expensive necklace. And at first my plan was to be like “Hey, you know what I was going to buy this for someone but I don’t think she’d really appreciate it so How about if I just give it to you.” But I didn’t want to embarrass her or anything so I chickened out. Also, it was so quiet and there were a few other girls working there, you could have heard a pin drop. It would have been the most awkward thing. Not to mention things were going so well I didn’t want to blow it by doing something totally outlandish…and I have blown it many times before. But I didn’t want to disappoint her so I had to get something that would make her think “wow good choice,” and I think I was successful because while she thought I wasn’t looking, she looked in the box at the necklace I got and smiled at it.
So now I’m stuck with this necklace from Juicy Couture. It’s like that episode from Flight of the Conchords Season 2 where Bret likes the girl who works at the pet store, but rather than just ask her out, he just keeps going there and buying goldfish until the apartment is just filled with them. And I can’t even really give the necklace to another girl because a: there isn’t one and b: if I did try to give it to another girl then someday she would read this and get pissed off, because she would realize it wasn’t meant for her but instead was intended to be for the Juicy Couture shopgirl whose name I only know because they annoyingly call out people’s first names at Starbucks.
<3 !!!
