Photo by Pat Darrin/Sony Pictures I have the Ug boots and the acid-washed jeans. I have a cut-off T-shirt tied under my boob job, and I have bruises on my arms and outer thighs. I never did figure out why, but the other chicks had 'em, so I got some, too. I just wish I could grow me a droopy mustache. Yeah, dudes, I've went and turned Hessian! Allow me to demonstrate. Ahem! Hey, have you heard the new Ted Nugent? Hey, is that the new issue of Motocross? Hey, can I get a lift to Riverside? Ass, grass or crystal meth—nobody rides for free!
Nashville Pussy is so to blame. How can you not immediately turn heavy metal when you see a lead singer who's bald as a Firestone tire but sends out a giant middle finger to the fashion police by growing the sides out long and stringy? Blaine Cartwright doesn't just sing songs about poontang: despite looking the way he does (fat, short, bald, stringy), but he has actually managed to marry the world's most hottest Hessian chick, the one writhing on her back while shredding Satan's idylls on her guitar. Oh, did Cartwright's wife, Ruyter Suys, take her shirt off to allow easier access for Cartwright's beer bottle to caress her cleavage? Imagine that!
There's another girl in the band, hotty brunette bassist KatieLynn Campbell, who has chops of her own. But since she neither constantly headbangs a permed-blond mop nor fellates a Coor's nor climbs onto a nearby security guard's shoulders to crotch the back of his neck, well, she doesn't get a lot of the crowd's roaring love. I mean, she probably has her partisans, but she's like Ann Wilson to Suys' Nancy. Except, you know, hot in her own right and not fat, so it's not a totally great analogy except that Heart references are funny—sort of. Anyway, it must really suck not being Ruyter Suys. And it must actually suck being Ruyter Suys, too, knowing that you should be Lita Ford, except way, way better and just as hot, and you should be the most famous chick in the world. I mean, what does the current Most Famous Chick In the World, Britney Spears, do besides be 20 years old and have somebody teach her dance steps and somebody else cover up all the mistakes on her vocal tracks? Hey, can I get a lift to Riverside?
The Reverend Horton Heat, for whom Nashville Pussy opened Friday night at the Mouse House of Blues, were good, too, and the drummer gave me a beer and was very nice. Also, both bands had charming, good-looking roadies, which was far too bizarre, as two of the usual requirements for the job are a serious case of pit stench and a serial lack of manners. Well-done, roadies!
The Vans Skate Park party for the apparently really, absolutely, fuckin' terrific Dogtown and Z-Boys (there were no more screening tickets available, but we did get Wahoo's!) was the perfect place to show off one's tattoos on April 25. The best of the evening? A lovely young woman's gleaming bicep sported the following sad pledge or ominous warning: “No more broken promises—Mario.” A crew-cutted cop who must have stood close to seven feet watched laconically over the madness of 600 old-school skaters and their skate-rat children. Asked whether he knew from whence the sweet smell of marijuana was coming during Suicidal Tendencies' set, the cop just laughed and shook his head. Lot of help he was! People like The Hunns' Duane Peters (he looks much healthier atop a board than he does in real life; you can't see from 20 feet that he's missing most of his teeth) and local legend Omar Hassan took turns impressing the hell out of all the scenesters amassed poolside. They did their assorted flipdiddles and flapdaddies and all those other cool skate things. But who was the guy with the ponytailed dreads and the yellow hat gathering all the crowd's adoration to his nonchalant bosom? I asked the guy next to me, and he pointed to a giant poster 20 feet away from us. It was the only poster in the place, with a Dewey Wins!-size font screaming the cat's name. Hell, he was even wearing the same outfit as in the picture. Oh. That's Tony Alva, then. I really shouldn't be allowed anywhere.
I didn't stay for all of Suicidal; I figured it would be a while before they hit “Institutionalized,“ and my style, pathetically, is more “Gloria” from the Flashdance soundtrack, which the speakers were ambient-noising on my way out of The Block at Orange. You remember: “Gloria, Gloria! I think they got youh numbah! (Gloria!)” I was happily belting along with it when a couple in their early 20s came up behind me, looking very sorry for me. “You remember this song!” I said to them, heartily acting unembarrassed. No, they didn't. Two nights later, at the Reno Room, I met a 22-year-old woman who had never heard Elvis Costello's “Allison.“ I will never again smirk when old people start talking about Rawhideor other stupid old-person things of which I have never heard because I'm so young and fresh and vibrant and young.
I like jazz as much as the next young and fresh and vibrant young thing, which is to say, not really all that much. I'm much more of a Hessian, you know. But, you know, it's nice for brunch. That said, Linda Jemison's new hip-pocket protg, Chris Williams, has a very nice voice. Heck, the boy can even scat sing! But when the 23-year-old dear started emoting all over a medley of Joe Williams and Miles Davis, about his baby packing her bags and leaving, at Steamer's Jazz Caf April 23, well, I wanted to tell him just two things. Chris, baby, I want you to: A) take up drinking and possibly smack. And B) get your heart stomped two to eight times by a real she-devil (preferably the same one over and over). Then you can come on back and show us what you got.
Finally, my deep apologies go to the happy winner from the Yorba Linda Star. When you stepped up to the podium to accept your trophy at the Orange County Press Club awards Saturday night, I was not laughing at you. Sure, it sounded like I was. But it was jealousy and dismay at the fact that this year, I was skunked, there being no category for articles about crotches. That's all. I am so very, very sorry for my graceless and ill-mannered giggling and the one outright guffaw. You deserved better.
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. Thank you!
