Band of Skulls

I should be brushing my teeth and swishing Listerine, readying myself for another day of paid hyperbole and, what we in the trade like to colloquially refer to as "total and utter BS," but I'm not. Yet. First I'm going to gush about my latest musical obsession, Band of Skulls. 

As is often the case now that I'm no longer a child in the '70s/'80s devouring Kerrang!, Rolling Stone, NME and Creem with hungry dripping jaws to read up on the next Hanoi Rocks or Pulp, I'm late to this party. 

Never the mind. It's better to bust in after a few kegs are drained. By then, most of the savages have fallen into a stupor (or slumber), and you're left with the people who want to sit on a tree stump and talk about Rush. 

So...Band of Skulls. I listen to Planet Rock on the weekends (streaming, of course) and sometimes I dance around the dial to other UK stations to hear what's being played over there. I kept hearing this band and kept finding their sound an interesting mix of heavy, catchy, infectious and dreamy. All words I look for in my escapism.

And then, that wondrous thing happened that only comes around every so often: I found that I'd been unconsciously drawn to this band because a few of their songs (the songs I kept playing over and over, elatedly) were—lyrically—mirrors of things I'm going through in my own life at this exact moment. Which just gave my love more weight. 

"Nightmares" is my new driving song. When I have the courage to drive. Which I'm finding I have more and more when I listen to the song. And "Bruises" is a close second.

I've already pre-ordered their new album, Himalayan. I look forward to more wild animal anger and padded catharsis. Meanwhile, I'm going to brush and gargle. But while the others are tapping pens on steno pads today, flinging the BS, I'll be a million miles away, watching the bruises heal. 

It Was The Ultimate Sin

Rumor has it blogging twice in the same day is a cardinal sin among hipsters. I hate hipsters, so here's my second post of the day.

I'm thinking of starting a separate blog for fiction. Micro fiction to be exact. Since reading The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories by Etgar Keret, I've been obsessed with the freedom and irresistible challenge of extremely short stories. For a journalism major (just the facts) who wanted to write movies (...and the music swells), micro fiction is my long-awaited peanut butter cup. 

If I get some together I'll throw them into a separate blog and give you guys the URL.

Meanwhile, has anyone besides me heard Jake E. Lee's new band, Red Dragon Cartel? 

If so, thoughts? To be journalistically just, I'll hold mine until I've listened to the entire album a few more times, but I've always loved Jake's style.

Grimly Fiendish

I'm no parapsychologist, but I'm pretty sure if your idea of the perfect weekend is staying up until 5am Saturday morning after a breathless four-hour conversation about pain, beauty and art; sleeping 'til 11:00; waking to a cold, wet-charcoal day and thinking "Yes!"; and proceeding to celebrate the lack of light with a medley of early Metallica while wishing you had a view of the moors...you just might be a vampire. 

I blame whoever gave me my first copy of Hound of the Baskervilles and let me play Help! on my Mickey Mouse turntable, thus infecting me with full-blown Anglophilia by the age of nine (you know who you are). 

I do not like scraping ice or shoveling 18 inches of snow. Nor do I like the kind of precipitation that can rip your roof off. But I love to be cold and I love rainy days. It brings out my inner Shirley Manson (who's always in there, millimeters behind the worker bee with my Achilles' Heel poised to pummel your teeth in).

Rain gives me the social go-ahead to slow down, which I damn well do anyway, but feel pressured to lie about come Monday morning at the water cooler: 

THEM
How was your weekend? Did you have a good weekend? What did you do this weekend? Did you do anything fun this weekend?

 ME
Oh, pretty good. I started reading Infinite Jest, plus the first few chapters of Candide, watched a documentary about J.D. Salinger, and outlined an idea for a series of short stories that use geographical metaphors to explore the current emotional state of the average middle class Gen X American within an increasingly insular society.

THEM
I built a tree house for charity. 

Telling sunny types you don't like sweating through your bra by nine a.m. for nine months a year is like telling them you're bringing fetus fajitas to the spring picnic. They'll figure you're either a vampire or a Muslim.

So I relish days like today when the joggers, the cross fitters, the triathletes and the yoga booty ballerinas are stuck inside watching Pretty Woman for the hundredth time. Not that I begrudge them their sun. I just need a few dark days to keep breathing. 

Cue the Nick Cave!


Push The Sky Away
(lyrics)

I was ridin', I was ridin', oh
The sun, the sun, the sun was rising from the field
I got a feeling I just can't shake
I got a feeling that just won't go away
You've got it, just keep on pushing and, keep on pushing and
Push the sky away
And if your friends think that you should do it different
And if they think that you should do it the same
You've got it, just keep on pushing and, keep on pushing and
Push the sky away
And if you feel you got everything you came for
If you got everything and you don't want no more
You've got it, just keep on pushing and, keep on pushing and
Push the sky away
And some people say it's just rock 'n' roll
Aw, but it gets you right down to your soul
You've got it, just keep on pushing and, keep on pushing and
Push the sky away
You've got it, just keep on pushing and, keep on pushing and
Push the sky away
You've got it, just keep on pushing and, keep on pushing and
Push the sky away

 

Buried Treasure

Sometimes the universe goads you to keep going. This was the case this morning when I woke up singing "All The Way From Memphis," one of those songs that—after you hear it the first time—makes you wonder how you ever lived without it. 

My brain being a database of rock and roll relativity, the song made me think of Joe Elliott (a huge Mott The Hoople fan), which made me think about the Planet Rock radio show he hosts, which made me want to listen online to his most recent playlist. 

This, and a pound of Peet's coffee, is what got me out of bed. 

Alas, the UK-based Planet Rock radio player wouldn't load on my US-based Mac. I updated my Flash player to no avail. I tried and tried and tried until it became a quest. 

But, in the end, I had to give up and load Sirius instead. Which led me to Tom Petty's Buried Treasure, a channel I'd never clicked on before. I like Tom Petty. I like him a lot, but had always assumed his catalog would be flooded with Byrds and Flying Burrito Brothers. And it was, but I heard a Neil Young song I'd never heard before ("The Loner") that, musically if not lyrically (or perhaps both) embodied the essence of my '70s childhood. And a Zombies song I'd never heard before ("This Will Be Our Year"). And a Hendrix song (whose title I've stupidly forgotten) that prompted Petty to say, "Wow. If you listened to that song with headphones every day, I'm not sure you'd be able to walk very well." 

Did I say I liked Tom Petty? I love him. 

Throw in the three seasons of Veronica Mars I've just begun watching on Amazon Prime (never saw the show before), the David Foster Wallace book I downloaded to my Kindle (never read him before), my new Adobe Creative Cloud subscription (I can't wait to learn Muse), and the fact that I'm getting my eyebrows reshaped and I'd say I'm turning a sucktacular week into one kickass glass of frontier spirit lemonade. 

To keep my chi cranked up, I'm creating a collage of framed black and white photos for my hallway of people I aspire to be like, because they inspire me to be myself. Here are a few of them. Who would yours be?

Blame It On Bob Diamond

To quote one of my all time favorite film characters, Bob Diamond, from Defending Your Life, I'd tell you where I've been but you wouldn't understand. 

And then you'd say, "Try me." 

And I'd say (to again quote Bob Diamond), "I was trapped in the inner circle of fault." 

And then I'd make fun of your little brain. 

So let's skip that awkward moment and just jump back in. Not much has changed. I moved to a new apartment about a week ago, and now I can walk to work. So I don't have panic attacks on the way to work. But now I have them everywhere else. When stuck in traffic in other people's cars. When lost in Olive Garden on my way back from the bathroom. And my favorite, when trying to explain to my therapist, the panic attack specialist, why I can't tell my boss I need to leave early once a week to see my panic attack therapist who refuses to see me outside of her 9–5 office hours. 

The best part of that story is that when—during a text conversation with her—I told her I was really sorry my work schedule was inflexible and thanked her for all she'd done to that point, and that I hoped we could work out a schedule in the future, her professional psychiatric method of consoling me (the panic attack sufferer) was to completely blow me off. That's right. She never replied to my text and I never heard from her again. 

I did see her from afar while celebrating the holidays with my mom at a local hotel. I don't know if she saw me. I didn't stick around to find out. I think my exact words to my mom were "Shit! My therapist!" and I dropped to the ground and crab-walked into the nearest gift shop. 

That pretty much brings us up to date! 

I'm only halfway unpacked in my new place, which may very well be my optimal way of life. I have what I need but I'm ready to take off. I signed an eight-month lease here and, without going into it because I don't want to ever talk about work in my blog (or its comments section) because God knows who might find it and read it, it looks like 2014 won't be the year I tour Europe signing hardcover copies of my imminent best-seller: "What Would Rob Halford Do?" 

However, I am spending tonight with Rob Halford. After a crushing day that left my psyche shanked and splintered, I consoled myself by eating a really big sandwich, drinking a glass of chocolate almond milk, and watching my favorite two episodes of Metal:Evolution (NWOBHM and Thrash). 

So, as I contemplate responsibility, mortality, and Alfonso Cuaron's herpes joke, I am—as Penny Lane instructed—visiting my friends from the record store (okay, so she said to visit them IN the record store, but there aren't any of those anymore, thank you bullshit millennial culture). It's nice to know that after 30 years, no one can cheer me up like those particular friends. 

And that, after 30 years, my beloved Sheffield boys can still make the mean reds fade away, back into the inner circle of fault.

Dear Diablo

Dear Diablo Cody, 

I just watched Paradise, and I need to apologize. I haven't been fair. I've been jealous and petty and hoping that your success was a fluke because I wished I had the courage and tenacity to get my stuff out there the way you have. 

I liked Juno (everyone liked Juno), but I crossed my arms across my chest after your star blew up because I thought it should be ME sitting next to Jay and Dave, talking about my dysfunctional upbringing and artistic salvation through humor and words. 

Bitches be crazy, what can I say? 

You, Jenji Kohan, and Callie Khourie are contemporary writers I admire and envy. Yeah, yeah, yeah—we should think of ourselves as writers, not female writers. Bullshit. Everything's different for women. 

We have to work twice as hard as men for a good 15-20 percent less and show no emotion. We have to shove all critical opinion of our male superiors so far down our throats we teeter into VIVID award territory. 

We're supposed to get up every day and do all of this (while looking pretty) and NOT go crazy? 

I'm going crazy. I fully admit it. It used to be "I can't drive over bridges." Then it became "...or highways." Now I have panic attacks every single morning on my way to work. Sometimes I have to pull over for twenty minutes to (a) stop crying from the depression and fear and anger that this is happening to me, and then (b) find the courage to climb back into the Death Star trash compactor of traffic that's one crass commuter away from blood-soaked anarchy and make it through an endless stream of red lights without passing out from the adrenaline surge of terror that consumes my entire mental and physical being. 

There are no safe medications at this time (that I can take while driving). My only two choices are join a convent or get on with it. 

It's not about cars or driving or traffic. It's about isolation. It's about loneliness. 

It's about fear of insignificance. 


I'm not talking about being famous. I've watched a great number of nice, brilliant people lose skin and teeth from fame. I'm talking about relevance. Leaving something behind. It could be a novel, it could be $5 in a charity cup at Starbucks. It's all proportional based on your dreams. 


But dreaming leads to fear, which leads to exhaustion, which leads to procrastination, which leads to more fear. 

Which, apparently, leads to paralysis. Which is where I've been the past two weeks, battling a John Philip Sousa crescendo of anxiety attacks, coupled with a feverish flu. When you haven't had the flu in a few years you forget how morose it is. 

Thursday night I cried while watching a Rhoda rerun where Rhoda and Joe were breaking up. I don't mean I teared-up—I sobbed. 

When I made it to quitting time yesterday, I drove home, stocked the fridge with comfort food (who knew Kraft now has both veggie and organic macaroni & cheese?), and planned to spend the entire weekend on the couch, kicking the infection. 

Malcolm woke me up at 6am today because he's a cat and cats aren't emotionally equipped to distribute compassion. I fed him, couldn't sleep, made breakfast and scanned Amazon Prime for new releases. 

And there, Diablo, was Paradise. Did I primarily choose to spend $9.99 on your film because Russell Brand was in it? Of course. But if the trailer had shown him dancing around Las Vegas with a Capuchin monkey on his head while he and Octavia Spencer dueted to a Ke$ha version of "With A Little Help From My Friends," I likely would have passed. 

I watched it because I knew—the same way you know how melted butter on a baked potato will taste—that it was going to be the movie I needed to see right now, this week and this day, to make me feel better. 

And it was. It reminded me to get back on the damn bike, drink some freaking spinach juice and B-complex and quit my bitching. Having the flu sucks. Panic attacks are scary. Orlando is hot hellhole full of churches and twits. Blah, blah...

Life's too short to stay curled up on the couch. So I got a little bit burned. And I'm afraid to let the world see me this way because I'm afraid they'll feel uncomfortable.

You know what? I no longer care. I'm tired of hiding away because I might be crazy. I'm a nice person and I try to be good to people who deserve it. I might not be able to drive a car, but I can still make people laugh when they feel sad. And listen when they need to talk. And feed the feral (crazy) cats who wait outside my door every morning because they know I offer safety and nourishment. 

And I can still type.

I"d rather be weird than boring. And I'd rather feel things intensely (even fear) than go through life as a Saltine, floating in a room temperature sea of lumpy instant soup.

Diablo Cody, thank you for reminding me of this. And for writing and directing a movie that's beautiful, hilarious, and original (be careful, that last part might get you thrown out of Hollywood).

And for doing it all while being a human woman in this world. 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to finish hanging aluminum foil around the exterior of my apartment to keep the CIA and aliens from reading my thoughts.

Unbelievably Satisfying!

When I met Layne Staley, back in the '90s, he was knee-deep in heroin, had a broken leg and was surrounded by sniveling sycophants. I wasn't a huge fan, but had promised a friend who worshiped him that I'd try to get her an autograph seeing as I'd gotten a backstage pass by working as a cashier in a record store and knowing (yes, just knowing) their regional A&R rep. As I made my way over to him, shaking in my grunge boots, I remembered that he and I were both people. He was a human being with fears and insecurities and a need to be validated and appreciated just like me. 

But perhaps not on that particular night because he was horrible. 

Toss in two decades and a half dozen or so more encounters with fame (including two back-to-back Soul Asylum moments—the first being wonderful, the second being cringe-worthy), and I've come to the conclusion that it really isn't a good idea to meet your heroes. 

"Please don't put your life in the hands of a rock and roll band who'll throw it all away." —Noel Gallagher 

"You're a star f*cker, star f*cker, star f*cker"—The Rolling Stones 

When I heard Russell Brand was coming to Orlando, after checking the almanac to see if it was, in fact, the beginning of the apocalypse (Orlando? I thought there was a border patrol that kept intelligent, free-thinking entertainers out of the state), my dear and generous mother offered to buy me second row center seats because she knew I'd never be able to afford them. 

Second row center to the Russell Brand Messiah Complex show? Throw in one of those beds from the Westin and a basket of cheese fries and you've got my mental Instagram of heaven! 

A few days before the blessed event, one of the two close friends I was going with found out from her boss (a high powered CEO in the health insurance biz in NYC) that, long story short, he knew someone who knew Russell's publicist and that we should stay on high alert for a phone call before the show instructing us where and when to report for a "meet & greet/photo op." 

Five years ago I would've been hooked up to a liposuction hose on one end, and a collagen needle on the other. I would've been standing in front of my bathroom mirror, practicing my best Bond girl voice: "Mr. Brand, I presume..." I would've convinced myself that this was my one and only chance to say something so clever and so witty that he'd whisk me away to a life of A-list guest writing gigs. 

But last weekend? Not so much. Maybe it's because my anxiety attacks have caused me to give up all consumption of alcohol and I've grown accustomed to liking myself sober. Maybe it's because I no longer need to touch someone's sleeve to feel like I matter. 

Maybe it's because I actually read the f*cking title of his show? 

Whatever the combination, when we never heard from the publicist until thirty minutes after the show, basically to tell us that it wasn't going to happen, I've never reacted in a more Zen-like manner. My friend, who was a little buzzed by that point in the evening, was distraught, crushed, embarrassed (she didn't produce the gift-wrapped celebrity) and angry. 

All somewhat understandable. 

But I was actually relieved.

I've been a fan of Russell's for so long (ironically, this same friend who almost snagged the starf*ck moment once texted me during the VMAs to say "Who the hell is this British guy hosting? I've never heard of him in my life. Where did they get HIM?" To which I replied, "Trust me, you'll know who he is soon.") And seeing him perform live was, to me, so much more than being in a very large room with a very famous person. 

His show made me laugh until I cried. But it also reiterated ideas and philosophies and basic human kindnesses that I've often felt very alone believing in (reminder: Orlando). 

It was kind of like going to church, if church included the occasional blow job joke. When the show was over, he came down into the crowd and allowed the thronging masses to grab, kiss, hug, and paw at him for a good ten minutes. It was like watching somebody open a van of starving hyenas. Forty and fifty-year-old women in brittle peroxided hair, micro-dresses with stilettos, and a half gallon of fake tanner were literally climbing over one another's heads to get to the stage and touch him. I was almost swallowed whole by the tidal wave of pulsing estrogen. 

Being (a) claustrophobic and (b) horrified, I high-tailed it outta there and watched, bewildered, from a few feet away. At one moment, as Russell was being led away, back to his real world by security, he must've caught a flicker of my flaming red hair because we locked eyes—maybe two feet from one another—and he momentarily appraised me, self-removed from the herd (mostly women) who apparently hadn't listened to a single f*cking word he'd said all night about celebrity and false idols and the emptiness of fame. 

But damn if they didn't snap a selfie with him! 

His eyes flickered away, he waved one last wave to us all, and was gone. 

For the next two hours, my friend and her husband lamented the publicist who never hooked us up, wondering why—had they misunderstood? Was it their fault? Whose fault was it? 

I simply enjoyed the three onion rings I'd put on my white appetizer plate in the Hard Rock Cafe, relived my favorite punchlines, and sent Russell a mental hug for reminding me that sometimes, the best way to know your heroes is to listen to them. 

By the way, if you want to learn the significance of this blog title, you'll have to see the show!