Year / 2007

by Patrick Stephenson

Ames et Manson

Jonathan Ames, favorite author of P.S. and writer of such novels as THE EXTRA MAN, I PASS LIKE NIGHT and WAKE UP, SIR!, plus three collections of comedic essays, has interviewed Marilyn Manson for the newest issue of Spin! There’s a preview available on Spin’s website, with the full article available only in print. A preview of the preview:

The door swings open and Manson lopes in, carrying his own goblet of absinthe. He’s wearing a black T-shirt, black leather pants, and gigantic Frankenstein boots. He’s six-foot-three and looks to be all narrow torso and legs. I’m middle-aged and completely bald and immediately assess that Manson’s black hair is beginning to thin, probably from multiple dyeings. [Patrick: This line is so Jonathan Ames.] His face is sweet, and his eyes, without his usual colored contacts, are kindly. [Patrick: As is this one.]

We start to talk, and Manson is sniffling a little. Right away, he starts to tell me about the breakup of his marriage to burlesque queen Dita Von Teese. They were together for six years and then, in their seventh year, they got married. “It’s the old cliché,” he says. “Marriage changes everything.”

The behavior he had manifested for the first six years — such as living like a vampire — became unacceptable to Von Teese, he says. But he wasn’t willing to give up his vampire’s hours. “I’m my most creative between 3 and 5 A.M.,” he says. “That’s the way I’ve always been.”

Going to sleep at dawn and rising at dusk was not the only issue of contention, though. Before they were wed, Manson and Von Teese were never separated for more than five days; after they got married, he wasn’t seeing her three out of every four weeks, due to her own hectic schedule. Manson is very needy, and with Von Teese on the road all the time, he started losing his mind. And he started believing her when she said that the way he lived was wrong.

It’s funny. Marilyn Manson is, if this article depicts him accurately, a very Amesian character. [Via Tiger Beat]

by Erin O'Brien

Close Encounters of the Erin Kind or Steven Spielberg walk with me

Most people watch “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and see a pretty good movie about a guy who really wants to get on a space ship.

They are wrong. This movie is about me.

Every day, I see Devil’s Tower in my mind. I see it and I must create it. So I go to my keyboard and start to form it up. The first attempt is a rough sketch, a shape. It is something, but it is not right. I print it out and study it, decide what is working and what is not. The next attempt is closer–not right, just closer.

I must get it right.

“Mom?” says my kid from the doorway of my office.

But I am consumed with the mashed potato model in front of me, the mud model in front of me. I know that I have been summoned to do this, to realize this, that it is a pilgrimage of sorts and that nothing can stop me.

The trained guys in the space suits that are supposed to get onto the spaceship? Those are not trained guys in space suits.

Them’s your book-learned guys.

The book-learned guys really know space ships! They have all the technical capabilities. They can turn out one perfect sentence after another and deconstruct James Joyce and discuss every book the NYT reviewed this week.

But all the book-learning in the world will not give them the calling.

Funny thing about the calling is that when you have it, the book learning is delivered unto you. Because in your quest to realize that which is inside of you, you’re going to need some tools. So with the bottomless obsession and energy that drives you to create, you

“Hey Honey? What about dinner?”

seek out those tools. And at once the word “you” transforms from three simple letters into a tricky device called second person.

Suddenly, the nuance of punctuation is no longer a preposterous assertion.

Really?

Really.

Really!

Suddenly The Overuse Of Capitalization Becomes Really Funny To You. You learn how to SHOUT without uttering one noise.

Yeah, yeah.

And just like in the movie, plenty of people try and stop you and tell you that you are crazy and that the whole thing is stupid. On the journey, you find one or two others as obsessed as you and you immediately understand one another. You fall down. And when the canary dies, you second guess yourself until the compulsion wells up again and thrusts you forward.

The movie is about the quest. The prize is far away, a reverie in Technicolor flying overhead. But the power of wishing upon a star is in the wish, not the star.

It is a good day when you realize this.

Now you will excuse me, dear reader. Despite being hopelessly insufficient, this essay has gone on entirely too long and I have a date with a dozen or so little space men.

Love,

Erin

by Patrick Stephenson

I’m Not Counterculture

(In that I’m not a slacker or a beatnik.) [1]

Allen
Allen Ginsberg [source: Cody’s Books]

I remember that, in my mid-teens, I assumed my cousin E. and my uncle J. as role models. They weren’t quite my dad’s age—they were one to two decades younger—and so they were role models for the age bracket I was approaching. I took these guys on because my dad was so impressed by them. And if you admire your dad, the people he admires become admirable to you.

Both were smart and capable and charismatic. One had tried out for the Olympics, was and still is a major biker, and could repair anything. The other was co-creating his own comic book and could, similarly, repair everything, e.g. he worked on crazy projects like a sun dial carved from stone for my dad. Most of all, they had what I at the time would’ve called drive or hunger. I was ashamed of myself because I didn’t feel I had this. Comparing myself to them, I felt like nothing. Their antithesis was someone who lazed around and leeched off his/her parents, and I was afraid I would become that, afraid I already was that.

I don’t know whether I got as much from college as I could have, but I feel the thrust or result of these past five years has been, figuring out who I am and what I want. I’ve finally got what I thought E. and J. had. I know what I want now. If I don’t know, I become depressed and hopeless. If I do, I can chart a course toward it. I can lay down steps and knock them out. So. I have, I think, finally become what I wanted to be: a guy in his twenties who desires success and acts on that. I’m not content with laziness anymore and that’s why, though jobless till July 1, I’m finding whatever I can to fill my time.

As a result, I’m feeling remarkably solid lately. In my pants.

[1] Actually, Kurt Cobain & Allen Ginsberg embodied what I describe. Both were artists who as it were made statements with art despite representing alternative cultures that may be misperceived as, uh, supporting laziness. Not true. They rebelled against a culture/society—the mainstream—they considered stultifying. I feel the same. Still, some part of me dislikes what I wrote above, as though it’s an admission or confession and I should feel ashamed of wanting to succeed.

[Cross posted on P.S.]