The funk infused alternative rock show with a hint of punk aesthetics just ended. The guys head back to their dressing room. Sweaty and tired, they plop on the couch and munch on some Chex Mix.  Flea pours tequila inside the Chex Mix bowl, whips out a large wooden spoon and starts munching. Anthony Kiedis sees this and says, “Aw dude, dinner cereal again? Don’t you think you’re getting a little too old for that?”

“You’re only as old as you feel! Want some?” Flea aims the wooden spoon towards Anthony Kiedis’s face, but he bats it away. Flea then offers it to the other two guys in the band, but they also reject it.

The band’s manager comes in. “Red Hot Chili Peppers. You’re great. You’re amazing. In fact, you’re RED HOT!”

Anthony Kiedis glares at their manager. His name is Dave or Rick or something. “You say this after every show we do. Getting very old.”

One of the dudes in the band that isn’t Flea or Anthony Kiedis says, “Yeah, the Red Hot Chili Peppers have existed since 1983. That’s when you started managing the band. That was almost thirty years ago.” He then closes the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Wikipedia tab that happened to already be open on his iPad. 

Anthony Kiedis only heard the words ‘thirty years’. They echo in his brain. Wow, he thinks to himself, that’s such a long time. He then looks around the room and says, “Wow, I think to myself, that’s such a long time.”

“I was just thinking to myself the same thing” states Flea, still munching on the dinner cereal.

The manager interrupts, “But you boys act young. Everything about you screams youth. You’ve still got it boys. Anyways, hey other two guys in the band the Red Hot Chili Peppers, how about we go out to the bar and take some shots of Jack Daniels, a moderately priced whiskey?”

The two dudes comply, leaving only Flea and Anthony Kiedis in the dressing room. They are alone in the dressing room. Anthony Kiedis and Flea are all alone and Flea is a little drunk.

Anthony Kiedis stares at Flea. He notes the wrinkles in his face, and the funny little way his eyes dangle like a nutsack.

Flea feels Anthony Kiedis’s stare but tries to dismiss it. “We rocked so hard. I love how we rock. We have such a good thing going with this band. I mean, the way we infuse funk with rock, but also have some punk rock edge. Don’t you love it?”

Anthony Kiedis snaps out of his stare. “What? Oh, uhh yeah. Totally. Hey you know what, give me a swig of that tequila you got there. I suddenly feel like getting drunk from alcohol.”

Flea picks up the bottle of tequila right near him. He shakes it tauntingly. “You mean this tequila? Well you’ll have to come and get it from me”

“Flea, you’re such a jokester. Okay fine, I will come to you and try to get that tequila from your grasp.”

“Sorry can’t hear you, too busy holding this tequila bottle.” He then takes a swig.

Anthony Kiedis lunges towards Flea. They both jump around and giggle as Flea playfully taunts. Anthony Kiedis trips on one of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ bobble head figurines that was on the floor. He falls to the ground and takes Flea with him. They land face-to- face. Flea, for the first time in nearly thirty years is looking into Anthony Kiedis’s eyes. He gazes intensely. Gets lost in his pupils. Kiedis is just as entranced. The two of them freeze in each other’s gaze. They are seeing each other’s soul.

A rush of song lyrics swelled to both their brains.

Flea says, “Wonton the trombone three bone my baby”

Anthony Kiedis responds, “Live on a bench press stool sample lady”

Then both at the exact same time shout, “Why can’t we all just surgical cats”

Flea gets off of Anthony Kiedis. His face is flushed. He is startled. “Dude, Anothony. How did that just happen? It usually takes us weeks to come up with lyrics that good.”

Anthony Kiedis is flustered as well. He chugs some tequila and says, “I don’t know man. It was magical.”

Flea and Anthony Kiedis keep passing each other the tequila until finally the bottle is finished. They are both drunk, and reminiscing the near thirty years they have been in the band the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

“Remember when the Red Hot Chili Peppers released Californication?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Me too.”

After that they get silent again. Flea looks down at his crotch and sees his boner. “Woah, Anthony Kiedis check out my epic boner.”

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7:21 pm  •  9 November 2012  •  4 notes

 by Patrick Trotti

There are some words that just piss me off…to no end.

Literally

Like

Amazing

Honestly

Personally

Regardless

Typical

And then there are words that make me smile…even if it’s raining outside.

Bloviate

Acerbic

Dichotomy

Rhetoric

Ostracize

Cantankerous

Voracious

Much of the problem with the first list is laziness and the fact that I’m guilty of using them in my own writing way too frequently, like literally way too often. Honestly, regardless of how I’m personally feeling these words appear often on a typical day.

The best part of the second list is the way the words sound and the beauty of word association. In my mind when I hear an appealing word it brings to mind a list of another dozen picturesque words. There will be no sentence mocking these words because it wouldn’t do them justice.

1:17 pm  •  23 August 2012  •  3 notes

Jack decided that three éclairs would give him enough courage for a last kiss. Just as he had done millions of times before, he kicked his left foot into a pointed toe, flying out of the kitchen doorway and over the folded bend in the Oriental rug. Reaching toward heaven, this thorny corner of the rug was the only way to tell which of the guests at Jean’s holiday party was one of her hundreds of grocery store acquaintances.  Unfamiliar young steed and giggling gals would exit the kitchen, turning to give a flirting glance into the swarm of men breathing over their Bourbon, hoping to disguise their concern for whether or not they flushed the toilet, and BOOM! His or her newly polished vintage shoes would dig into the sun-faded and frozen bend, hurling their feeble bodies forward into the tens of relish trays that masked the formal dining table, causing a clamor everyone drunk and dancing would reply to in cheer. 



Jean wasn’t the best at holding on to friends, but she was blessed with the gift of gab and frequently stalked good-looking meat eaters she spied at organic markets around her neighborhood. Tonight, an abundance of new hes, shes, neighbors, old school teachers, desired lovers and old ladies waltzed loops around Jean’s decaying Village one-bedroom. “And you must be…” through the foyer, “Where did you find that…” scratching their backs up and down the crown molded hallway, “You wouldn’t happen to…” pivot turns away from the living room frost-painted windows, “Believe you me…” hands motioning stop to the buzzing bedroom furnace, “My parents never…” pouring blindly into a pine-tree painted tumbler.



Orchestrating an evening of endless possibilities and never-ending equations for love connections is exactly how she dreamed to spend the evening leading into the New Year. Although Jean had yet to pin her affections on any of the young men at the party, she found more than a handful of her produce-section prey tackled against the wall with fingers hooked into the damp belt loops of another. After couples gulped down enough poison to dance off their nerves, a tornado of homemade confetti and dust began whirling around these licking strangers. Jack and Jean spent days before the party checker-boarding her pre-war hardwood flooring by spray painting soiled newspapers with golds, reds and greens carried-off from the corner hardware store. What Jean lacked in money, she squirreled away in stained and faded newspapers dating back to the old lady who committed suicide in the 1st floor walk-up before her and the generations that prospered in the flat before them. Jean’s hoarding of histories unread were winked at by her unknowing guests with charm and lit with the notion of her madness being just as quirky as the way she invited her new smiling associates to this summer solstice, New Year’s soiree.



Sweating rings around the hand-painted begonias on her satin gown, Jean shrugged-off questions of why the heat was firing and if the good looking coed from the cheese, egg and milk aisle could change the Frank Sinatra holiday singles to the new band of his ex-boyfriend. From the pink frosted cupcakes to the dried mistletoe over the kitchen sink, her attention to detail had been diligent and she giggled at the ironic wish to remember the night before she died forever.

Claire wrestled a photography student into the half-bath, pulling down her ruffled collar, licking away the two beads of sweat that raced for her belly button.

Jack stared at Jean twirling around the living room in a heat he only remembered matched on their Mexican getaway during their first New York Indian summer, massaging a cramping love pain stinging him under the rib cage.



Lily smiled at the people dancing, thinking about how they had shared links with her before via chat and posted with her back to the refrigerator, expecting her nerves to cool, her barrel curls to reset and her confidence to excite. She massaged her neck, remembering hours earlier when she decided underwear unnecessary in the New Year and wanted someone else to praise her for it.

As Jean swam past her kindergarten cohort, she spotted her fellow party planners stealing moments to themselves and licked her lips visualizing their final party icebreaker.



The dry heat filling the room caused the 50 or so guests’ noses to run into their punch and pickled them faster than they noticed. By now, most of the streamers hanging from the living room rafters had been shaken from their posts and were shawled by fumbling drunks step-clapping and closing their eyes to the nostalgic tunes. Claire motioned for Jack and Jean to smash together for a photo, hovering her phone over her eye, she tapped her heel waiting for a smile. Jean sucked-in, brushing her skirt down and felt the bloat of the half-bottled of pain killers she noshed before dinner growing. Short of breath she shouted:  “It won’t matter soon enough!” 



Before it could upload, Jean caught a glimpse of the winding down clock and she grabbed Jack, Lily and Claire’s hands before shimmying over to turn the music up as high as it could go. As those who were hip to the New Year danced harder, knowing time was closing in on midnight, the remaining dozy literati did their best to protect their ears while still looking with-it. The devilish foursome filled their teacups with gasoline and ran around the room, throwing it all over everyone and everything. Jumping on the crumb-covered table, an unbuttoned Lily began can-can-kicking lit votives into the air like fireworks. Hitting hairdos covered in hairspray and sprinkled with gas, elegant men and women quickly were set ablaze.

—Nicole de Ayora

@nicoledeayora

2:51 pm  •  3 July 2012  •  6 notes

When I was a young lad in Geneva, the Mirbeau sisters used to tease me for my cleft lip. My parents, often preoccupied with hiking or sodomizing each other, would dismiss my tears. They would remark that, “insults grow the soul into full fruit.” Their words were just as cutting as the ones I received as school.

The Mirbeau sisters’ wardrobe always matched perfectly. They were not twins. In the interest of full disclosure, I must mention that they were a full 7 years apart and the product of different mothers. Olivia Mirbeau’s mother, Katrina, was a Russian opium addict that frequented the same bars as Patric Mirbeau, the patriarch of the group. Christine, Olivia’s sister, was the cursed result of a proper marriage, but that union dissolved like so many sweets in an eager child’s mouth. 

I often imagined that Christine’s absent mother was actually a mad syphilitic or the Devil herself. It was my method of making sense of her thoughtless cruelty. Only a person with a deranged background could disregard me so completely.

On the eve of my eighteenth birthday, I received a pony. The pony’s name was Martin Luther, and I used to take him out to the harbor of Lake Geneva to admire the Pierres du Niton. He was my only friend, save for the slave boy who was forced to sell day old loaves in the city center. Martin Luther and I would discuss the great intellects of the time, debate the merits of a bohemian lifestyle and I would ride him from shore to shore. I could only have such a stable friendship with a stallion. A person lacked the subtler sensitivities that a horse possessed.

When my father saw how close I was to Martin Luther, he took him out to the lake and drowned him. “There is no time for frivolity,” he shouted. I took this not as a minor reproach, but to be a lesson I should cherished for the rest of my existence.

-It was there that I started to become a man, at last.

My next birthday contained the sort of melancholy usually reserved for a German family reunion or a discussion of Soviet atrocities. There would be no ponies. No talk of skiing or river rafting nude, as my parents had indulged in the previous year. 

-I saw the box for the first time.

It was pitch black, like the Negroid butcher who prepared our flank steaks. He called himself Mr. Mike and spoke in a lilting, lyrical gibberish that I took to be a sign of a public school education or possible mental handicap. The sight of him made me fill up with pride at being born into a family of Swiss diplomats, yet it also made me pity this poor man. The unknown random genetic draw we all participate in had given me all the pleasures of upbringing. Simultaneously, as a physically deformed child, I understood and engulfed the tragedy.

I was reminded of this pity as I fingered the coarse edges of the box. My father had wrapped it in a bow the same shade of black as the box. He was always a man to appreciate uniformity. It was the one thing I respected about him.

“Open it,” he admonished.

I peeled away the ribbon and gently raised the top off the gift. The first thing I noticed was the card inside. Written in crimson was a brief inscription:

There is nothing you have to offer this world that hasn’t been stolen from you already. – Your Mother.

2:54 pm  •  27 June 2012  •  1 note

“How many sexual partners have you had?”

“In total or in the last year?”

“In total.”

“7.”

Corey shifted in his seat a little and took a long sip off his Gingerbread Latte. He was never good at hiding an uncomfortable moment. Brad smiled coarsely and bite his bottom lip.

“Imagine if you could, without any sort of shame, keep track of those 7 women. Their goings and comings, no pun intended. Come on, Corey. Imagine with me. We all love to know. We all need to know. MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, whatever. A place for friends. This is a place for ex’s. You want to see the jacked up Stanford track star that little Sheila is fucking this month? He’ll be there. All his vitals. Height, weight, political party, favorite soft drink, desires, fears. If the guy is a flaming racist, you’ll know exactly what kinds of people he hates.”

“How can you guarantee people will be honest and offer up all that information?”

“Because everyone wants to A) flaunt their sex lives and B) stalk the people they’ve fucked in the past. What’s the name of your hardest break-up, the one that got away?”

“Marge.” Brad laughed at the blunt, anachronistic name.

“You dated a Marge? Like, the Simpsons character?”

“Yeah. Her name was really Marge. Her favorite novel was Great Gatsby, she spoke 3 languages, lived in a studio on Valencia, and knew one of the guys from the band Beulah.”

“Oh, I’m sure she’s great. She sounds like a real catch and a half. Got a photo?”

“Why would I carry a picture of my ex-girlfriend around?”

“Just answer the question, Corey. Do. You. Have. A. Photo?” Corey slumped back into his seat and pulled out an iPhone. The wallpaper was a rather stunning picture of a tall, brunette with dark horn-rimmed glasses and a faded cardigan sweater. Harsh sunlight and the crashing waves of the Pacific Ocean framed her lithe figure.

“Marge,” Corey said in a monotone voice so flat you could skate on it.

“She’s pretty. Not my type, but pretty. Where did you meet?”

“The zoo.”

“You’re an animal guy?”

“No, I worked there. Fed the binobos. She was with her boyfriend at the time.”

“I can understand how she fell for you, seeing that you were delivering snacks to monkeys.”

“Sometimes, you lock eyes with a woman and she locks eyes with you. You share a moment. A brief one, and then you keep walking. Not this time. I dropped my tray of bananas and followed her.”

“Shit, man. That’s borderline creepy. What did you say to her?”

“I asked her how long she had known her boyfriend.”

Brad raised an index finger to stop Corey.

“Where did you find the balls for that?”

“I figured it couldn’t hurt to try.”

“OK, go on.”

“She says, ‘2 months.’ I say, ‘are you happy with him?’ She says ‘I guess. He’s interesting.’ I laughed a little bit.”

Brad had the bad habit of cracking his knuckles at inappropriate moments and couldn’t help but crack all 10 of his digits, plus the neck.

“Bored?” Corey blurted out.

“No, no. Ummm…how did you respond to that?”

“I said pretty plainly, and I’m not usually this calm or forward, ‘People only say something is interesting if they don’t like it, but are afraid to admit it.’ That got her attention and she kinda smiled a little.”

“What happened to the guy? The boyfriend. Did he just stand there and take it or what?”

“He seemed kinda pissed, but he wasn’t much bigger than me. 5’8” or something like that. Kinda dorky, Mission hipster bike rider guy. He just walked off. Probably had more important things to worry about, like a bootleg Mothra DVD or the ozone layer or whatever people worry about in this town.”

“Earthquakes. The End of the World. Republicans. Tourism.”

“Right, right. After that, we spent the rest of my shift together. She helped me feed the primates for awhile and then we fed ourselves. I was broke, so we ate some of the left over bananas. It was cute. I asked and she gave her number.”

“How did it end?”

“Not really important to the story.”

“Sure. Well, my point is served either way. You still hold out hope for Marge to come back, otherwise you wouldn’t have her picture on your phone. Plus, you have an atypical courtship story to tell. Think about getting to tell that story on the internet, for everyone to see. And then you can read other people’s stories about how they met or broke up with their significant others. It’s one big group therapy session.”

“What do you call the website?”

“Match.com”

“That’s definitely taken.”

“Mis-Match.com?”

“Pretty stupid, actually.”

“Sadbastard.com?”

“I kinda like that. Edgy, potent, you get the point pretty quickly.”

“Have I sold you on this?”

“If you’re asking if I want to invest, the answer is ‘no.’ I haven’t seen a prospectus or a real business plan. Until I see those documents, I can’t put my money into your venture.”

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12:39 am  •  25 June 2012  •  1 note

You can’t just come here. This is not where you belong. I don’t really belong here either. Not with you occupying your space. This was my bus before you knew about it. You’re sitting across from me. Don’t make eye contact. There’s nothing to see. You’ve seen it all. You saw it for all those months we slept and cried and ate and worried together.

I don’t remember where we’re going. Santa Monica. Maybe Sunset. Maybe tomorrow. Remember when we tried to be friends? It was hot that day. You sweat on my shoulder. I talked about Tim Burton. His great movies. His funny hair. You have funny hair today. Did you plan this? You must have known this would happen. You can’t smoke on this bus. I wish you could.

I stayed home from work and made your bed once. You said ‘thank you.’ You seemed genuine. I told my mom about that. I gave you something, but took everything else.

Did I ever apologize?

I can’t apologize now. Not in front of everyone. We’re going somewhere. There’s no time. When we get there, what should we say? Should we laugh about it all? Are we even going to the same place? Wherever we’re going, it’s going to be hot.

Please don’t sweat on me again.

I could hug you. Should we hug? Act like this is normal? Do you want back all the things I took from you? I checked. It’s all gone. Someone else has it. Do you want their number? I deleted it. I’m sorry. I took from her too. I’m always taking. I’m running out of things to take and people to take from.

I hope when we get where we’re going, someone will let me know we’re both OK. I’ll even open the door for you.

11:34 am  •  19 June 2012  •  4 notes

And I used to make so many concessions for Marie. Marie was in a corner. Marie was always in a corner. Marie confined herself to small spaces often. When we had sex on October 27^th, 2009, she slept on one side of the bed and did not move. In that moment, she reminded me of those birds you see trapped in an oil spill, forever glued into their final moment of animation, their lives sealed in a macabre tableau.

“If you stop talking for long enough, you realize there is very little to talk about. We walk around acting as if every utterance we expel carries significance. That is patently false, Marie. What we say is just air. You cannot see air, just like you cannot see words coming out of my mouth right now.”

“Then why am I listening to you?” Marie swallowed an Oreo, then asked a question. “Do you ever feel alone?”

“No. I am consistently surrounded by wonderful people who enrich and fulfill my every desire.” I felt the need to lie. I wanted Marie to be safe within society. She needed to learn to live without me. I usually brought Marie food once a week, on Friday. Friday was her day for food. If I did not deliver Marie’s meals, she would call me every half-hour to make sure I was still planning to stop by. Marie did not leave the house.

She made a note of the grocery date in her calendar, which she kept on top of her dresser, with various dolls and pill bottles. Marie liked writing; actual, physical writing, which so few people did anymore. She scribbled thoughts on stray napkins, bills, coupons or whatever she could find. Often, they would just be trite observations like “I am fat today,” “I want to date a rich man,” or “die in a fire.” Other times, she would draw emoticons.

“People are mean about me on the internet,” Marie said to me one day via Facebook message. Marie included an obscure emoticon as a sort of punctuation to her sentence. ;_;

I couldn’t quite decipher what it meant, but it looked like someone crying out of both eyes, rather than the more standard ;( which was only one eye with a lone tear, plus the frown. The line in Marie’s emoticon must have meant she was sad, yet ambivalent about her situation.

I decided to deliver her food on a Sunday. Sunday is not Friday. It is not Saturday, Monday, Thursday or any other day. The bags I had brought were full of cookies, cake, frozen pizzas and anything else I could find that did not require actual cooking to eat. I liked to stare at her while she ate. I found solace in watching her consume. Seeing it eat made the effort worthwhile.

“Friday. Every Friday. You come, you leave the bags. The bags have food in them. I eat the food. You come back the next Friday with more food.” Marie’s upper lip started to sweat. It did that when she was agitated.

“Go to the store. Other people can get you food.”

“I don’t know. I don’t get 9% of people.”

“What about the other 91%?”

“I don’t know them. They’re strangers.”

“Do they have to be?”

“That’s what they are. Being a stranger defines their existence. Why should they change who they are?”

Marie turned away from me and went back to writing. She had found success online, writing about her sex life. She wrote a story about us. My problems performing. The nights I would stay up crying into her stomach. The brunch where my credit card was declined.

“What are you working on?” I asked. “Is it about me? Tell me if it’s about me. I deserve to know.”

“It’s about a new guy. His name is Tom. Tom’s nice to me. Maybe he can bring me food?”

I grabbed the bag of Oreos and poured them on the floor. “You don’t need this,” I said as I stepped on the cookies, driving them into the neglected, already soiled carpet.

“I don’t, but you do. You could have left. You can always leave.”

I never will.

11:34 am  •  18 June 2012  •  10 notes

+++

An old Yale chum named Barrington e-mailed Martin. ‘Chum’ was Barrington’s word, a salvo of irony meant to convey both congeniality and recognition of shared elitist satisfaction. Martin had not seen Barrington for years. Their last encounter was a series of hurried utterances whilst Martin packed his lonely suitcase on his way to Los Angeles. Very little was kept between them, save for a sense that all they had paid for in the last four years was symbolic, rather than meaningful.

“Hey chum, heard things are rolling forward with you in LA. Marjorie said she caught wind of you acting a smidge. Is this true? If so, how would one place themselves in a position to gain access to show business? My steady woman has intimations of talent, and has been pestering me rather incessantly about leaning on my prodigious contacts from our school days. I don’t mean to be forward, but if there is anything you can do to help her advance her standing in preparation for our move westward, I’d be very appreciative. By the by, my father is quite well. He’s currently recovering from a bypass surgery and speaks of you often. He’d be eager to share a round or two with you in Maine when the weather is appropriate. Looking forward to hearing from you, chum. Yours, Barrington.”

Martin scanned the timestamp on the e-mail. It read ‘3:45 AM.’ “I’m glad I’m not ugly yet,” he thought. He took an aggressive pull from his cocktail and set about to compose his response.

“Barrington, glad to hear your father is well. I’m taking a break from work at the moment, but I’d be happy to introduce your girlfriend to my old acting teacher. Maybe we can get together when you make it to town. Martin.”

Martin sent the e-mail off and hoped it would be the end of his correspondence. He did not so much hate Barrington, as he did not relish the need to recall the years they spent together. He poured himself another drink and counted the number of gray hairs in his latent beard growth.

Some moments later, a response came.

“Great to hear that you can assist! Steph and I are in West Hollywood for an alumni event at the Soho House tomorrow night. If it’s anything like the New York location, it should be a fairly posh affair. Perhaps you can join us and we can discuss next steps.”

True to form, Barrington’s machinations were transparent, but effective. Martin’s previous willingness to offer help, combined with Barrington’s very real presence in Los Angeles meant that he must oblige. Arrangements would need to be made. The cigarette smoke would have to be dry cleaned out of Martin’s threadbare blazer. He was resigned to once again perfecting the affected smile, firm handshake and approving glance. He painted a winged dog flying over Dresden, dropping bombs onto helpless Germans. Some of the Germans were committed Nazis, but most were just average citizens. The monstrous canine made no distinctions as it expelled fire onto the pathetic beings below.

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12:49 am  •  18 June 2012  •  2 notes

Lana Del Rey Responds To Her Critics

This article is parody. Lana Del Ray did not write it.
Jan. 16, 2012
By Dave Schilling

Hey guys, it’s me. So, I felt really strongly about speaking out about my performance on Saturday Night Live. Because, I’m about something. And that something needs to be said right now. People have been ragging on me. Making jokes about me. Saying I’m ‘not talented.’ Or ‘fabricated.’ I’m about to set the record straight about that. Actually, I’m going to set the record straight right now. I’m going to address each and every one of your (‘your’ being those of you who I have never met that make fun of me) criticisms about me.

I Am Inauthentic.

OK, here we go. This one. I’m super authentic. I made my own music videos.

My own music videos. Sure, they use a bunch of stock footage awkwardly smashed together with no discernable meaning behind it, but they’re mine. I made them. That counts for a lot. I’m an auteur. A visionary. Also, so very sexy.

I admit I used to be called Lizzy Grant and I made pop music for bored college girls who shop at Anthropologie, and now I’m a ‘gangsta Nancy Sinatra.’ We all create ourselves. I can be whatever I want to be. If Lana Del Ray doesn’t work, I’ll rename myself L-Deezy and join Odd Future. Nice try, h8ers.

I Can’t Sing.

You don’t have to sing to be successful. Ask anyone.

On SNL, Whenever I Said “Video Games,” My Voice Did Some Weird Baritone Thing Where I Sound Like Andre the Giant in Drag.

This is just like you hypothetical critics to find things that aren’t wrong about me and say they’re wrong. You can say I ‘sound like a French coal miner on an absinthe binge,’ but you’d just be saying things that are good are bad. Up is down. Black is white. Mitt Romney is not a pampered elitist. This isn’t about you. It’s about me. My music is mine. You don’t decide what’s good. I do. Duh.

I Look Uncomfortable on Stage.

Staring off into space with a blank look on your face is very cutting edge and avant-garde. It’s about circumventing your expectation of what a performer is supposed to do on stage. You think I’m going to entertain you with tons of charisma and stage presence, but that would be giving you what you want. My art is transgressive. I am not interested in placating your need for gratification. I want to upset you.

More importantly, I give you what I want, which is to appear scared out of my mind in front of cameras. It’s a comment on fame, since I want to be famous, but seem totally unprepared for that which I covet. Putting on a good show is easy. Making people pay attention to you even though they dislike you is hard. I like to think of myself as a modern day Jean-Luc Godard of pop music. I’m a sexy Jean-Luc Godard.

I Had Plastic Surgery to Enhance the Size of My Lips.

Maybe I did? Is that wrong? Can’t you see that my lips are a comment on lips and…other important things? It’s a societal statement. If Lady Gaga wears a dress made of meat, does that mean she likes wearing meat dresses? Maybe, but I doubt it. She likes drawing attention to important topics of concern! That’s all I’m doing by having gigantic lips jutting out of my tiny little face. Drawing attention to an important topic of concern, namely me.

I Suck.

That is not even a valid criticism. I suck? You aren’t even being specific about why I suck. Actually, I think you suck, hypothetic h8er. I have empirical evidence that says you, in fact, suck hard. You have an ugly face, you can’t sing and your butt is massive. Like, you have a huge butt. How do you squeeze into those jeans, buddy? I have it on good authority that you don’t shower and you’re a virgin. Plus, you read all the Twilight novels twice. See how easy that was?

I hope this clears up all of the unnecessary misconceptions about me as an artist. I’ve worked very hard for this opportunity and I’m not going to allow anyone’s flippant judgments to bring me down. I’m stronger than that. I have goals and I will achieve them. All of them. And if I don’t succeed, I’ll just try something else. Something better. Plus, I have a foolproof way to be happy. I’ve decided to be blissfully unaware of what people think about me.

11:59 pm  •  17 June 2012  •  7 notes