Interview with a Guy Who Puked on a Bunch of Hollywood Stars
Celebrity Dogs of America
Last weekend, I attended America’s Family Pet Expo in Costa Mesa, California, which attracts thousands of people for a host of reasons: they love pets, they volunteer with rescue organizations, or they’re interested in buying their cats some quality business cards. One of the biggest draws, though, was the celebrity pet event—a showcase of trained dogs and cats who act in popular TV shows.
Like normal, non-dog-dominated events, the expo had its own black market: shortly after I stepped into the long admission line with the rest of the non-celebrity pets and humans, I got approached by a sketchy, nervous-looking guy who mumbled at me, “You guys want to buy some passes?” Yes, this man was a Pet Expo scalper. I bought a pass.
Although I was primarily there for the celebrity pets, there was no shortage of other entertainment. While walking through the expo, I watched several rounds of dachshund racing, pet an 18-pound rabbit, and spotted more than a few dogs who were better dressed than I was.
Cry-Baby of the Week
Is it the people who freaked out at this snow penis or the guy who freaked out during a threesome?
My Very Own Sad Mix
Working with the same little group of writers each day gets to be intimate feeling. You read their writing. You get a sense of what they’re good or bad at. Before long you’re casually thinking about what their pajamas smell like, and then you ask them to make you a mix tape. Really you could demand it, because, you know, you pay them. But you ask nicely because otherwise it would feel perverted and illegal.
William Cody Watson does our Sad-Ass music column, and was nice enough to make me my very own Sad-Ass mix. The only guidelines he was given were to make it the “saddest sad fucking sad thing you’ve ever done.” Here’s what he put on my mix, which I will now review for you all.
Tracklist:
There was this boy I had a crush on in grade school. His name was Eric and he had that floppy hair. You know, like that style of hair that was basically all bangs that boys who listened to Depeche Mode had in the 80s? Eric was into cool music, but he was also into being a dick. It got back to him that I had a crush on him and one day, out of the blue, he walked right up to me, flipped his hair bangs, and was like “can I talk to you?” He led me over to a dead patch of grass on the playground and was like “do you wanna go out?” My eyes welled up because I was so happy and I said “really??” And then he laughed and was like “no,” and walked back to his friends. This song could have been playing in the background as all that happened. Anyway. I bet I’ve fucked like 75 more girls than he has by now.
From note numero uno this song had me by the crotch seam. Oh, you’re Southern AND sad? Fuck yes. I’d listen to this and flop around on the grass for almost any reason. Like I could listen to this if I was sad about something, or If I accidentally ordered the wrong ice cream cone. Whatever. For any reason. Yes.
I love the drum in this. It’s a good way to keep time with the top of my head hitting the wall of the interior of my closet while I’m in there having a fit about something. The funny thing is I never really get sad about stuff. But this is all making me want to fall into a wet blanket of picky sadness. It’s working!
Sometimes I mix up love feelings and sadness feelings. Like I was just listening to this and thinking “can you imagine if someone sang this song to you? Like maybe while sitting at the lake or something?” And then I remembered that I was supposed to be surfing a depression wave, not a wave of pussy juice.
I’m starting to feel really sad. I just noticed myself making melty face. You know, where your face gets so down and loose that it’s like the skin is melting off your bones?
I wish I could lay down.
Sad-Ass Music
Alright let’s get all up in this shit.
So the world, in fact, DID NOT END on December 21. I know this because I was sitting pretty with my roommates, in the living room of our house, ripping the shit out of X-Mas gifts. We celebrated early just in case the real armageddony type shit did pop off. But guess what? By 12 AM—December 22—I was drunk as fuck watching those same roommates play in their little band with a bunch of other totally alive motherfuckers standing around me. So… Yeah, no end of the world. Hurray.
So while we’re all alive, LET’S FUCKING PARTY.
Here we go: Sad songs you could totally get away with slipping on at a party…
Now, you might think this is a cop out, but it’s not. Listen to this groove-banger and tell me it’s not gloomy as shit, while all around foxy as shit. The laid back percussion, the lush synth atmospheres, and bright and bold sax lines. All this from a main track from the motherfucking VIRGIN SUICIDES score. Sure, “Sexy Boy” is a much more frolicking, get-down-make-love type jam, but we’re attacking from our patented strong & sad angle, and “Playground Love” works much better from that position. Those Lisbon Girls…
For Similar Results: Björk’s “All Is Full Of Love” / Stereolab’s “Captain Easychord” – especially the second half / Cornelius’ “God Only Knows”
Grandaddy, “Jed’s Other Poem (Beautiful Ground)”
I probably could’ve went with some other, more well-known Grandaddy songs, but really, this one’s my favorite. The whole vibe of this one, honestly, sort of just makes me want to imagine myself as a weird, fucked up soul-vampire, kind of like Sean Bateman did in Rules Of Attraction. Dawson was a stone-cold freakazoid in that movie—I never read the book, well kind of, I did read the last page to see if it really did end all abrupt, mid-sentence AND IT TOTALLY DOES! Anyway, yeah, something about the slow, pulsing organ and the droning synths, just makes me wanna roll through crowds of dumb faces and scowl. Sometimes you just got to get really weird and raw in a thick crowd of heads. I also really like when he says, “I try to sing it funny like Beck, but it’s bringing me down.” Good line.
For Similar Results: Mercury Rev’s “Pick Up If You’re There” / Spiritualized’s “Death Take Your Fiddle” /Clinic’s “Distortions”
Nine Inch Nails, “Somewhat Damaged”
I think Trent’s written a lot of somber, distressing tunes that have been heavily disguised as something perhaps a bit more flustered, pushing towards angsty, unnerved, and chaotic; when they’re really just tales of desperation, isolation, and a sense of full-bore uneasiness. “Somewhat Damaged,” sounds pretty fucking vicious with lines like “lick around divine debris, taste the wealth of hate in me” and “tear a hole exquisite red, fuck the rest and stab it dead.” So yeah, OK, Trent is pretty pissed, I get it. What we’re really dealing with here, is a tale of loss, a change for the worse. “How could I ever think it’s funny how everything you swore would never change is diferent now?” Trent’s screaming about how fucked it is that everything he had come to know and have faith in has changed abruptly; guess it could be a lovey-dovey kinda thing, or who really knows. That’s the way it speaks to me and most every other human that’s had a relation-SHIT go sour, right? So how well would this go over at a party? Well as long as your partygoers don’t masturbate to the Garden State soundtrack on a regular basis, all heads are gonna burst into headbang city when this heavy pummeler charges out of the speakers. Get wild. TOO FUCKED UP TO CARE ANYMORE!
For Simliar Results: Sisters Of Mercy’s “Lucretia My Reflection” / Marilyn Manson’s “Man That You Fear”/ Team Sleep’s “Your Skull Is Red”
Girl News - Girls and Crying
The apocryphal idea (APOCRYPHAL? HAAAA) that crying is for girls is extra-dumb (like in addition to just being regular-dumb) when you consider how everybody is mad at guys for being Xboxy thumbsuckers, right? (PS: guys, girls are mad at uuuuuu.) Boys cry plenty, and I like it. I like it better when a boy’s penis cries right into my hands, but it’s nice when an adult man cries (about something other than an occasion of retarded, internalized sports-team dramatics) and you are allowed to be there for him for a half second. And when you’re in a fight and a guy cries “YOU’VE WON IT! Shake my hand!” Nah. But really men crying is just as complexy sexy and responsible for turning pussies into fresh-out-the-box Creamsicles as the attractive sadists on TV who we can’t stop talking about.
And yet. Girls and crying is just a canon of its own, a subdivision of girl-activity in the same way that I guess guys shop for stuff (apparently? You’re wearing stuff, items, somehow?), but they could not possibly understand the capital-X-shaped full-systems flush of Shopping, which is also the reason why “acquisitiveness” should be recast as a necessary sexual macaroon rather than symbolic of dumb sluts in the grip of capitalist overlords/patriarchy/Transformers, or whatever. (Here is the part where, if you’re like “I don’t understand this bitch,” you retire to your mud room to do a job because I don’t even want you here, OK?)
Been doing a lot of crying lately. It’s fine, it’s fine. I’ve found out new ways to cry and be crying and stop crying. One of them is, you might remember this from the toddler era, is the back of the fist tear wipeaway? I’m vaguely curious about why that’s been my move during a tough time (eight months!) and is always the move when I’m in front of my mom. NEVAH MIND I just figured it out. Oh hey, did you know that when you hear your mom’s voice it makes you want to… go? My friend told me that.
WHAT IS CRYING?
I don’t really know. The closest I can come to it without broaching gross science is when a firmness of purpose in any direction is interrupted. Also, PMS.
STARTING
If you listen to drone music and also think about your throat, it is like that. It is of you and not up to you. It’s better that a cry be as natural as possible, all road-trip colors and moving through heavy air, because the alternative is you hopping around on one foot and whine-sobbing because you’re too frustrated to do anything else. Knowing you might cry, considering it, and beginning is a hazy extra-reality where your doll-eyes slide shut, big lashes side-by-each like windshield wiper blades at rest until they bloom with water and red vines, is actually really beautiful.
