did a q and a for vanity fair’s great website with a real hero of this rock journo thing, mr. nick kent. one of the elvises i’ve been impersonating for the last dozen years.

i have taken enough drugs for eight lifetimes but sometimes i miss them. it’s unseemly to be a 40 year old on drugs but i still don’t know what to do with all the energy i would have (and did) normally devote to finding, doing and recovering from drugs. i’ve just been funneling it into work. writing. there are usually five or six files open on my desktop. projects. screenplay. new play. old plays i’m rewriting. mick jagger book (still doing interviews, getting very lucky with my wish list but do not want to jinx by elaborating). an essay i had an idea for while listening to jazz trio in washington square park. not to mention all the lists for ideas that pertain to all of these pieces. movies to rent, books to read. most of the friends i have left have marveled about this like i’m james franco or something but really it’s just absence of drugs. i haven’t done heroin or cocaine in a very long time and i haven’t danced (like shawn ryder, i’ve never danced like bez) in a very long time either. i guess i’m romanticizing them. i read that pills thrills and bellyaches was going to turn 20 this fall. i thought about pitching something to uncut about it but fuck ‘em. i will indulge in nostalgia (stock in trade) here and be on with it. i don’t wish i had all the money i used to spend on dope, like tom waits sang. i just wish i had some of the moves.

saw the warhol/last decade show on saturday in brooklyn. was great to see work and video from the period when i was obsessed with andy… took out every book on andy, the factory, edie, the velvets, from the peninsula public library in lawrence, ny. weird seeing the oversized interview magazines that i carried through the high school halls (woodmere, ny) mounted on the wall of a museum. those magazines were hard to find on long island (paper, and details, when it was a club/fashion magazine too) and when you got one, you wanted everybody to know it (even when don johnson was on the cover). i also loved this curiosity killed the cat song. i still own the 12 inch and have DJ’d it more than once.

still doing mick interviews. rae dawn chong was the first. she has the honor. there can only be one, you know. very cool to have her in the book, actually.

crazy sheep,
m

full on into the interview phase. healthy, functional, fitter, happier, more productive, smarter, white stuff on (as opposed to in) m y nose. sending out requests, meeting demands, writing out questions, trying to be social. which is not easy. i’ve spent so long in doors that when a cocktail waitress asks me if i want a lime, these day, i stare back at her like i don’t really understand the question. but a first draft of a good, well structured, and unique mick jagger book looks on track for early to mid fall. if we ever get there. is it really 89 degrees again today? i hate august. i hate dog days. i love dogs. and days. usually i don’t get ideas till much later in the year. when you start to smell wood fires in the neighborhood. i need leather jackets and whiskey for ideas, not t-shirts with holes in them and vodka. or tap water. for instance, i would very much like to do a public access talk show with my friend and frequent actor in my plays tom vaughts. he is a burly man with a beard and a voice like tom waits or wolfman jack. i am lobbying for him to play marlon brando in my new play, which i just might post here. i had an idea that he should also host a talk show that takes place in the russian bath house in the EV. it’ll be called Schvitzing with Tom, kind of like Fishing With John but much, much steamier. they’re be a desk and a band, and guests and everyone will be wearing white robes, slippers and towels. how can you think of an idea like that and not see it come to fruition one day. we are a nation of dreamers and visionaries after all. last night before i passed out very drunk and almost dry heaving i thought about devoting this or maybe a sort of tandem blog to The Greatest Song Openers of all time. these used to be the kind of stories that i could pitch to Spin and get assigned. i fell asleep in the air conditioning sort of half watching Top Chef’s final re-run of the evening (deconstructed gyros) and thinking: what are the songs that just kill in the first three or four seconds. here’s what i came up with:
bust a move by young mc (where he simply says “bust it” i mean you cannot improve on that.
then there are the count offs, “i saw her standing there” probably being the most famous. or maybe “taxman” with the coughing and then the weird count in if we’re going beatles. “add it up” by the violent femmes is a good one: “day after day…” maybe “computer blue” by prince? “pass the dutchie” any others that come to mind do post a comment here and your two cents. as this type of story will never appear in a magazine again. speaking of appearing in a magazine again. i have a bunch of stuff coming out in print and online. interviewed brandon flowers for VF on his solo debut. did a large oral history of jackass for maxim’s november issue and am trying to nail down same on mr. show for december spin. and a new york mag piece.

i wanted one of these fucking scooters so badly when i was fourteen. when these commercials came on tv i would go Pavlovian. i just figured one day i’d live in manhattan and ride everywhere like aidan quinn in desperately seeking susan. now, i live in manhattan and don’t go anywhere. i always threaten to buy a scooter (a vespa, not a honda, apologies) every time i sell a book. maybe that’s what’s really missing. it’s not children or religion or yoga or therapy. it’s two wheels and a helmet. oh, and youth.

was entertaining out loud the possibility of getting out of new york for good. even saying it was strange. of course what i suggested was getting a cabin in the woods in new hampshire, maybe a goat on a stick and a shotgun. and an ibm seletric. i have a desktop full of writing projects, most of them novels that i might have had a chance of selling five years ago and plays that i will never get produced. i might as well just finish them. live on pork and beans until the economy improves, then come down from my mountain or hill and see what’s left of new york city (do they have mountains and hills in new hampshire)? at what point do you admit nyc defeat. that’s a good idea for a story. i’m trying to pitch stuff today. i haven’t even stopped and like… thought of any fucking magazine ideas lately. not for months. i used to have at least two things going on the pot, one for uncut in england and one for someone here. now i got nothin’. finished a story for maxim. an oral history of jackass that’s coming out in the fall. but blank as a fart now. spent all summer finishing this book that i actually have sold (not a novel… or a collection of dirty plays with dated pop cultural references). the writing and reading is done, and now the interviews start. so while i’m doing this…
FAMOUS, OLD BRITISH PERSON WHO KNEW MICK JAGGER: Is it authorized?
ME: No, but it’s not a biography, it’s more like a cultural celebration. Don’t you find there are too many biographies.
FOBPWKMJ: But is Mick okay with it?
ME: I hope so. I don’t know. What I mean to say is that when it comes out, I am sure he will be okay with it. There’s nothing in it that – I’m not saying he’s a – bad person. It’s not pro-Mick. Nor is it anti-Keith. That’s my mom calling me for dinner.
FOBPWKMJ: I’ve been burned before by you lot.
ME: Yes, we are terrible and desperate people. So, are we good?
FOBPWKMJ: Can I read some of your previous books?
ME: Yes, while varying in quality, and unappealing to the masses, they are all still in print. If you have a penny, you can purchase the paperbacks on amazon.com.
FOBPWKMJ: Ah, brilliant. One last thing, please finish this sentence for me -
ME: – , okay.
…i might as well be writing smaller things and resuming my storied career as drunken, surly journo.

i wrote about this today. the stones second tv appearance in america at the hollywood palace, during their first trip (when they were really only causing riots on the coasts and playing like, state fairs in texas). i was asking a friend last week if mad men was going to address the beatles this coming season… the british invasion and its effect on advertising and marketing. seems like it’s next for the show. the fear of the old guard is pretty evident in this clip. dean martin was still making huge pop hits but look at him tipsy in his tux and his bryl cream vs. mick in his smart, casual but somehow regal, mod polo shirt and long hair. he’s full of contempt for them but clearly threatened as well. it’s a lot of revolution in about a minute and a half of blues.

i guess i always knew this song was about Performance. the first BAD album pretty much never left my turntable when i was 16. i’ve heard the song probably 1,500 times. i even interviewed Don Letts once for Spin. but now that i’ve written about the film for this Jagger book, it’s oddly brand new. “E = MC 2″! it’s possible to hear an oldie in a new way, which is a happy thought. am all about happy thoughts today. last night the power went out. fuses blown from the extreme heat. a sense of dread crept in and a few of us tenants were standing around like passengers on a plane just as the engines crap out and before the big drop. we all knew how hot it was. but in the end, it wasn’t so bad. it was actually oddly good therapy, esp. given the everything/allt he time shit i’m dealing with trying to finish this book. i opened the windows and laid there in the pitch black and the heat imagining i was dead. or unborn, maybe. either way, at total peace. and i tried to just – think. which is not the easiest thing for me. i usually like the tv on, a magazine or book in my hand and sometimes the radio on too. i read somewhere that randy newman worked the same way: just bombarded with stimulus to the point that it makes some kind of dream machine white noise in his head and he can think. it’s good to go the other way every once in a while. make the best of a bad situation and remind yourself that you are basically one blown old wire away from total darkness. the thoughts came eventually and they were good ones, calming thoughts and fresh ideas on the hustled to the page stuff i’d written that day. “i like a bit of a cavort,” but as we know it’s possible to overdo it and lose your “demon.”
memo from spitz

there really is no option to have a social life, a nice complexion a healthy sleep schedule when you are writing a book.  every single one that i’ve done i’ve written this way: a few months from the target deadline, the initial advance third long gone, and (with the exception of the first one) every mistake i’ve ever made as an author pulled up from the mental archive.  i also make the mistake of turning to people for advice.  i’ve been told everything from “eat eggs” (they are cheap protein, i guess, and you can get twelve of them for two dollars) to “take a vacation” to “plug into the TV.”  of the three, the TV is probably the only one that’s going to happen.  Mad Men, all three seasons in a chain leading up to 4 premiere.   i am DJing a spin thing on monday which will at least get me out of the house but i think this is the truly dangerous time of the whole process, the bell jar time, the time when the people on the street (especially in this weather) look unfamiliar and potentially violent.   when this part is over (and it only lasts a week or so because much of the research based reporting and structuring and THINKING is done) and  you have a little style and flow to the pages, it’s fucking excellent.  you can print it and hold it and say, “this is going to grow up to be my new book.”  but i’m not there yet.  till then, this is a war.   i declined an invitation to cocktails a day (two days?) ago by explaining that i felt like a fucking soldier or a cop and could not drink because i was on duty.  summer’s here and the time is right for writing in the streets.

oh and this weird al thing is great.  i would watch a tv show full of interviews like this (or listen to double albums full of howard stern’s mel gibson rant song edits).  lo fi technology collage.   dickie “mr. jaws” goodman = a pioneer who got scalped.