Its a Wonderful Week

Photo by James BunoanOh, the week I had! The dream encounters and rampant fabulousness! Go ahead: be jealous. Be very jealous.

I spent the week in bed.

Now, before you send me any of your smutty, filthy letters (send those to Steve Loweryat le*****@oc******.com!) know that I was in bed alone. My mother thinks my general sickliness is because I'm a Pisces. “You and Liz Taylor!” she keeps clucking. “Weird things happen to you!”

Some of you may remember my death-defying encounter with a harrowing ovarian cyst a year or two ago. The very careful reader will also remember I managed to break my middle finger dead-sober after dining with Little Richard. (It was the very insensible—okay, hookery—shoes.) This time, I've managed to beat both those things.

I sprained my back. And how? Sitting at my computer, working on my book.

I'm really out of shape.

Oh, the book? Thank you for asking! Well, you'll be shocked to learn it's about me, and when it is completed and the bidding war has left me wealthy and unable to deal psychologically with my skyrocketing fame and probably addicted to cocaine and Colombian pool boys—ah, the sweet memory of Newport Beach socialite Tina Schafnitz fills my being like warm maple syrup—I will leave you all behind in a hot second. Ciao, darlings! Bye-bye now!

By Friday, as-yet unwealthy and not quite addicted to the Vicodin and muscle relaxants the goodly ER doc had prescribed in copious numbers (but getting close!) and despite my general bedridden-ness and dishevelment, the siren call of work raised its voice. It was the police siren of work, actually, not the good kind with the half-naked hot chicks sunning themselves on rocks in the sea, half-naked and hot and singing and stuff. In fairness to my editor, lest you think that I am a child sweatshop worker and he is Kathie Lee, I didn't mention to him I was sick and needed the weekend off. You know me: I'm not one to complain!

Here are all the ways work sucked, and I mean really, tremendously filled me with loathing and hatred for all of humanity, the wormy scourge of this beautiful orb God so stupidly placed in its slimy little worm-scourge hands. Stupid God!

Jumbo Size.The excrementiousness of this band is unfathomable; it even defies my powers of description, and everyone knows that I am fabulously describey. Opening for The Dickiesat diPiazzaFriday night, the “punk” “band” mangled eardrums with its putrid attempts at sound until I was finally, despite the warnings on the bottles of Vicodin and muscle relaxants, driven to drink. Did the alcohol help? Did it perhaps make me high and woozy and unable to operate heavy machinery? No, it just made me feel bloated and gassy. Leave it to the horrid, Dick Cheney-size ugliness of Jumbo Size to ruin what should have been a very enjoyable illicit mixing of narcotics and booze. By the time the Dickies came on, I was so overwrought by the sonic beating (and not in a good way) I'd just received I could stay for only two songs. During those two songs, the goofy, warmhearted old (old!) band declined to josh around with the audience and show off their vaunted penis puppets while covering The Who's “See Me, Touch Me. Maybe that was coming later, but I wasn't sticking around to find out. I know. I'm fired. For some reason, the Dickies just played music, and for some reason, they sounded kind of like Blink-182. Despite the hideousness of all that, there were two lifelines: photographer James Bunoan's hot chick, Brandy, was warm and chatty, and I clung to her as to a bottle of Scotch, and Marilyn diPiazza, the punky proprietress, said many shocking things to me about a certain rock-star-girl's dirty, skanky pussy! And who would want to stick anything in that?! And she also opined on various loved ones who she lovingly said needed desperately to get fucked. Marilyn is a treasure. The Dickies, I hear, will be touring with The Misfits and The Damned. So far as I know, Sum 41 is not on the bill. Rain. You know, Costa Mesa's Tiki Bar was really a pit. I hated that freaking place. So when I found out from reading The Orange County Register's nightlife codger Barry Koltnow's indispensable column (which is usually about Azteca or Martini Blues, but in this case made an exception) that the management had changed and they'd depitted it, I decamped there Saturday night with all the haste my crippled self could manage. Flock of '80s was playing! “Ten dollars,” said the door bitch. I was very nice; I was here to cover the place for my nightlife column in the OC Weekly. “We advertise in the Weekly,” she informed me dourly. “I haven't been given any instructions to let you in.” After about seven minutes, wherein I fetched a paper and showed her the column and explained that, yes, I was covering the club, but, no, I wasn't writing a cover story, she grudgingly let me enter. I know. You think I think I'm real special and shouldn't have to pay anywhere. You know what? I shouldn't.

Inside, the club looked terrific: after closing for four days in March, they'd reopened with a giant waterfall behind the bar that was so 1987 LA sushi bar I could almost taste the Reaganomics! Also, they moved one of the pool tables and installed overstuffed leather couches. The Kitsch Bar it ain't, but they did a fine job nonetheless. Still, I was so overcome with loathing for the power-play doorgirl and so hung-over from scrambling my kidney the night before, after-hours, at The Space (I refrained from mentioning it before, but I have a kidney infection, too) that I was just going to sit there like a big grumpy lump of unhappiness and immorality. Kind of like Bill Bennett!

But then a good thing happened, and that good thing was Flock of '80s. When they started their set with the anthemic opening keyboard strains of Bon Jovi's “Livin' On a Prayer” (Tommyused to work on the docks, but the union's been on strike, and he's been down on his luck. Poor Tommy! I weep for him!), well, all that grump went right out the door.

I headed over to the bar for a refreshing Coca-Cola. Kyle, the kindly bartender who has been there far too long, said he thought the band was from San Clemente. That couldn't be right: bands from San Clemente are wretched, wretched things—the kind of musical folk for whom being Jumbo Size is a career ambition, if only they could get their shit together.

Kyle then waved away the money I tried to pay him for the Coke, doorgirl, and that is how it's done.

After Bon Jovi, Flock of '80s played The Fix, and then they tuned up Billy Idol's “Dancing With Myself, at which point all the lemmings and sheep in the place (and there weren't many, because 00 Soul was perpetrating at Detroit down the street) began to dance because during the first song of the set, I'd opened the dance floor. Baaaaa! And whatever noise lemmings make! By song four, I was outta there like Liz Taylor at the AIDS dinner folks ponied up a thousand clams to share with her (okay, so it was a year ago. Still!). It's a Pisces thing.

The Santa Ana Art Walk. I did this on Saturday, too, but I only had time to see one exhibit (with Claymation video by the almost-famous Eric Stefani, who quit No Doubt just a little too soon) because I had dinner with friends and it took daaaaays. But that's okay because the Art Walk looked boring anyway, and I hate it. While I'm at it, I hate art in general and artists in particular. I. Hate. You. A Mighty Wind. I know everybody thinks the film was so great. I thought it was fine, and sometimes it was funny. But with more than a hundred hours of tape, this was the best stuff they could splice together? It was no Best in Show. Wait for video. Daytime Television. Television is my friend. Daytime television is not. Okay, so that's not actually part of my work. But don't you think it should be? Sweetness and light and a kiss at the end of the rainbow. Co**********@ho*****.com">Co**********@ho*****.com.

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