Eight or nine months later and it's time for a new post, just to keep shit, I don't know, "real." As you know, I do most of my blogging in other corners of the Internet. The best way to peek in on my geek antics, lately, is to check out my Tumblr joint: The Mooncalf. I'm posting old stories, new essays, and longer musings, still, at The Gist, and I'm still (again) haunting the Atlanta Metblog. And of course, my newest book is still new: Things We Think About Games
The thing I don't get? Friends lists. Here, Facebook, wherever -- I don't know what to do when strangers want to befriend me. (Actually, that applies to real life pretty good, too.) I'm trying something new, though, and I'm adding folks here if we have something in common, even if I don't yet know the person. See how that goes.
Content! Let's make your visit worthwhile. Since the sad sinking of Everywhere magazine, I've had this piece sitting around without a home. Since it involves porn (or pr0n!, if you like), I offer it up here for y'all. I hope you enjoy it:
"Porn-Star Karaoke and Cadillac Hats"
I admit it: When I was living at home, I snuck peeks at my brother's porn stash. It was, I'll say, formidable. I don't know where he got it, but he got it.
So I shouldn't be surprised, exactly, when I'm out visiting him in LA and he says, "Tonight we'll go to this Mexican place nearby and then head over to porn-star karaoke." Oh, of course, I think to myself. Porn-star karaoke. Sure.
"Is that something people do?" I ask.
"Sure," he says.
He and I grew up in the Midwest, but he was always meant for LA. Snow was his nemesis. Writing for the screen was his calling. LA was his home. He just lived in Illinois for a while.
Porn-star karaoke turns out to be held in a dive bar in a strip mall in Burbank. To one side is something like a discount housewares store. To the other is, I don't know, a salon. Ordinary things. In between them, behind the opaque black slabs where windows used to be, something is happening with porn-stars and karaoke. I'm picturing them up on a small stage, rocking out to a cheering, drunken audience of other porn-stars.
What's the percentage of porn-stars to regular people, I wonder. Desperate to look like I'm not wondering that, or anything else, I keep my mouth shut and shuffle ahead with the rest of the small crowd edging through the door.
Dudes in black T-shirts check your ID at the door, and I thought maybe your cred, but they let me by, so I guess it's just the IDs. Inside on the first floor, the place manages to also be a basement rec-room. Fake wood paneling. A mirror crowded with stickers, wedged between overfull shelves of beer, liquor bottles, and chotchkes. The trick, though, is in doing all of this without any references to modern Hollywood. After about thirty or forty years, when something becomes cult or kitsch, then you can put up a poster or a doll. Otherwise, I suppose it's just advertising.
The place is a single big room, crammed with people, shoulder to shoulder. It's so tight, there's no polite way to enter or reach the bar. At first, I think there's a sunken area in the middle of the room, and presume that the men with the big hair and the busty women sitting down there are porn-celebs. It turns out they're on the same (linoleum?) floor we all are. They're just sitting on low couches and plush chairs. Everyone else must stand, except for a horseshoe of single men at the bar.
There are two buxom brunettes up near the microphone, trying to coax people on stage to sing Metallica or something by offering up T-shirts with adult-film company logos. These are the kinds of girls who play the best friend of the female lead in romantic comedies. They announce that the prizes for some kind of drawing or scoring or something include DVDs. I think. They're waving them up over their heads and then tossing them back into a cardboard box like they're free. They all have colorfully busy, nasty covers.
For a long time, no one goes up there. The girls' energy level does not waver.
My brother knows some of these girls. He points them out to me. "That's Sunny Lane," he tells me, gesturing. Google her at your own risk. (NSFW.) She was voted the best adult-video newcomer that year.
The guy in front of me turns around and we're so close that the brim of his cap hits me in the glasses. He leans back, like I'm the jerk, and I see his blue hat has a Cadillac logo on it. I don't know what that means. "Excuse me," I say.
"Hmphoughagh," I guess he says. He shoulders me aside and heads for the bar.
On the far side of the room, puncturing through the atmosphere, is the cold, dead shine of fluorescent lights and what I presume to be the bathrooms. I resolve never to go over there. Not only would it be a two-hour roundtrip through here, but I am quite sure that they'd just have one of those troughs for a urinal. That kind of place. Also, I don't do coke, so I felt like I'd have to stay out of all public restrooms in LA.
"You want a beer," asks my brother.
"Yeah, but I'll get it," I say, already forgetting my oath not to piss here. I head into the crowd, having to rub against walls and people to get by.
On the way, I bump into Cadillac Hat again. No, wait. This is a different guy in a Cadillac Hat. "Pardon me," I say to his huge gold necklace and oversized jersey, and he raises his Pabst Blue Ribbons up over my head.
The bar is a big, almost blonde U-shaped thing on the far side of the room from the stage. I can't figure out how the bartender gets back there, and he doesn't look too happy. Dusty bottles, crammed into little shelves on either side of a big, varnish-flecked mirror, show off their stock.
Someone's stepped up to the mic. He's almost shaking he's so nervous. He is not a porn star. He is hoping to be hip or brave. He is not pulling it off. I think he's singing something by Van Halen.
Only losers end up on the mic. I was a fool to think that we were sneaking in on some weekly event where porn-stars just happen to get together for karaoke. The porn stars are just here as the spectacle, and the karaoke is a pretense. Everyone's standing around, drinking 'cause it's cheap, and waiting for something to happen.
I point at Newcastles, wave three fingers at the bartender, and get three Pabst Blue Ribbons, the coolly ironic thing to drink. I have to point, because the bartender can't hear me over the very-much-not-porn-star rocking the mic and the bar is jammed like the LA freeway with guys who came to tease themselves with professional sex artists and then started drinking alone. One of these guys is wearing his Cadillac cap backwards.
That's three guys in Cadillac caps. What is it with the guys in Cadillac caps? Is this just something that's happening in LA? Or did Cadillac get a ball club together and it's doing really well?
I head back with the beers. I spend most of the time talking to my brother's friend, a crew member on a popular sitcom with a look like a famous military writer. We're doing that thing where you lean in near the one's ear, shout something vaguely witty, and then the other one nods, only sort of sure he heard you. I can't tell if he's out of his element here, too, or if he's just being sympathetic. Can this room be anyone's element? Shouldn't part of the fun be the absurdity, that you're brushing shoulders with porn stars (or that you get to be a porn star being gawked at and admired by your fans) in a casual anywhere-in-America environment?
Except, of course, this isn't anywhere in America. This is Los Angeles, and the aura is palpable. It's in the hiply crappy clothes and the swagger on people. Everyone's a peacock. Everyone's tail is all fanned out.
This is one of those things about Los Angeles. I get a feeling that everyone else is in on something _ that they're all avoiding the crass conversations about business and what's fashionable, but trying to project that they know what's up. They're standing around with the pride of folks who work on things you've heard of. Like their shirts are giving off light and their pants are broadcasting. "I'm in the know," comes the signal, mingled with a dozen other overlapping signals. "I am one of us. If you talk to me, I'll be cool about it. Unless I'm better connected than you, in which case screw off."
It reminds me of Washington, D.C.: another company town where people wear rank and clearance badges declaring their importance and how much money they make. The system on the subway line is this: You bitch to equal-ranks about your superiors (never by name) and you mock the ones below you (always in a stage whisper). In LA I feel like the system is similar, but telepathic. They're all doing it. I just can't hear it.
Actually, not everyone. The porn stars are dressed much more casually. I can recognize one of them coming toward us by the way she walks behind a couple of guys who part the crowd, no problem. She's in sweats and a T-shirt. Not the hipster sweats, not a tacky gangster sweatjacket, but genuine sweatpants and a sincere T-shirt. She looks like somebody's sister.
Now I realize that this is Sunny Lane, newcomer of the year. As she's walking past us my brother sticks out his hand. I miss exactly what he's saying _ all I hear is the crowd and my own buzzing astonishment _ but it's easygoing. It's a compliment, without any fanboy gooberishness. He knows how to talk to fame. How to talk like a regular person when he's faced with a (adult) film star.
A quick nod, a quick thank-you from her, and without breaking the momentum of the guys parting the crowd, she's off again. She smiles and nods at me, 'cause I'm The Guy Next to the Guy, and she's gone. Vanished back into the netherworld of famous people that lurks just beneath the surface of Los Angeles.
Then, as if we'd done what we came here to do, we start wrapping it up. Maybe it's because I've never moved more than twenty feet from the door (the distance from bouncer to bar), maybe it's because my brother and his buddy have to work tomorrow. But a few moments later we're passing bouncers, who I thank without knowing why, and then we're back on the strip-mall sidewalk. Against all natural laws of LA, we walk back home.
Outside, now, Burbank feels much more mundane. The sodium lights that glow on the overpass are the same as sodium lights everywhere. The bank buildings are the same as bank buildings everywhere. The intersections are intersections. No big deal.
[ 2008 Will Hindmarch ]
The thing I don't get? Friends lists. Here, Facebook, wherever -- I don't know what to do when strangers want to befriend me. (Actually, that applies to real life pretty good, too.) I'm trying something new, though, and I'm adding folks here if we have something in common, even if I don't yet know the person. See how that goes.
Content! Let's make your visit worthwhile. Since the sad sinking of Everywhere magazine, I've had this piece sitting around without a home. Since it involves porn (or pr0n!, if you like), I offer it up here for y'all. I hope you enjoy it:
"Porn-Star Karaoke and Cadillac Hats"
I admit it: When I was living at home, I snuck peeks at my brother's porn stash. It was, I'll say, formidable. I don't know where he got it, but he got it.
So I shouldn't be surprised, exactly, when I'm out visiting him in LA and he says, "Tonight we'll go to this Mexican place nearby and then head over to porn-star karaoke." Oh, of course, I think to myself. Porn-star karaoke. Sure.
"Is that something people do?" I ask.
"Sure," he says.
He and I grew up in the Midwest, but he was always meant for LA. Snow was his nemesis. Writing for the screen was his calling. LA was his home. He just lived in Illinois for a while.
Porn-star karaoke turns out to be held in a dive bar in a strip mall in Burbank. To one side is something like a discount housewares store. To the other is, I don't know, a salon. Ordinary things. In between them, behind the opaque black slabs where windows used to be, something is happening with porn-stars and karaoke. I'm picturing them up on a small stage, rocking out to a cheering, drunken audience of other porn-stars.
What's the percentage of porn-stars to regular people, I wonder. Desperate to look like I'm not wondering that, or anything else, I keep my mouth shut and shuffle ahead with the rest of the small crowd edging through the door.
Dudes in black T-shirts check your ID at the door, and I thought maybe your cred, but they let me by, so I guess it's just the IDs. Inside on the first floor, the place manages to also be a basement rec-room. Fake wood paneling. A mirror crowded with stickers, wedged between overfull shelves of beer, liquor bottles, and chotchkes. The trick, though, is in doing all of this without any references to modern Hollywood. After about thirty or forty years, when something becomes cult or kitsch, then you can put up a poster or a doll. Otherwise, I suppose it's just advertising.
The place is a single big room, crammed with people, shoulder to shoulder. It's so tight, there's no polite way to enter or reach the bar. At first, I think there's a sunken area in the middle of the room, and presume that the men with the big hair and the busty women sitting down there are porn-celebs. It turns out they're on the same (linoleum?) floor we all are. They're just sitting on low couches and plush chairs. Everyone else must stand, except for a horseshoe of single men at the bar.
There are two buxom brunettes up near the microphone, trying to coax people on stage to sing Metallica or something by offering up T-shirts with adult-film company logos. These are the kinds of girls who play the best friend of the female lead in romantic comedies. They announce that the prizes for some kind of drawing or scoring or something include DVDs. I think. They're waving them up over their heads and then tossing them back into a cardboard box like they're free. They all have colorfully busy, nasty covers.
For a long time, no one goes up there. The girls' energy level does not waver.
My brother knows some of these girls. He points them out to me. "That's Sunny Lane," he tells me, gesturing. Google her at your own risk. (NSFW.) She was voted the best adult-video newcomer that year.
The guy in front of me turns around and we're so close that the brim of his cap hits me in the glasses. He leans back, like I'm the jerk, and I see his blue hat has a Cadillac logo on it. I don't know what that means. "Excuse me," I say.
"Hmphoughagh," I guess he says. He shoulders me aside and heads for the bar.
On the far side of the room, puncturing through the atmosphere, is the cold, dead shine of fluorescent lights and what I presume to be the bathrooms. I resolve never to go over there. Not only would it be a two-hour roundtrip through here, but I am quite sure that they'd just have one of those troughs for a urinal. That kind of place. Also, I don't do coke, so I felt like I'd have to stay out of all public restrooms in LA.
"You want a beer," asks my brother.
"Yeah, but I'll get it," I say, already forgetting my oath not to piss here. I head into the crowd, having to rub against walls and people to get by.
On the way, I bump into Cadillac Hat again. No, wait. This is a different guy in a Cadillac Hat. "Pardon me," I say to his huge gold necklace and oversized jersey, and he raises his Pabst Blue Ribbons up over my head.
The bar is a big, almost blonde U-shaped thing on the far side of the room from the stage. I can't figure out how the bartender gets back there, and he doesn't look too happy. Dusty bottles, crammed into little shelves on either side of a big, varnish-flecked mirror, show off their stock.
Someone's stepped up to the mic. He's almost shaking he's so nervous. He is not a porn star. He is hoping to be hip or brave. He is not pulling it off. I think he's singing something by Van Halen.
Only losers end up on the mic. I was a fool to think that we were sneaking in on some weekly event where porn-stars just happen to get together for karaoke. The porn stars are just here as the spectacle, and the karaoke is a pretense. Everyone's standing around, drinking 'cause it's cheap, and waiting for something to happen.
I point at Newcastles, wave three fingers at the bartender, and get three Pabst Blue Ribbons, the coolly ironic thing to drink. I have to point, because the bartender can't hear me over the very-much-not-porn-star rocking the mic and the bar is jammed like the LA freeway with guys who came to tease themselves with professional sex artists and then started drinking alone. One of these guys is wearing his Cadillac cap backwards.
That's three guys in Cadillac caps. What is it with the guys in Cadillac caps? Is this just something that's happening in LA? Or did Cadillac get a ball club together and it's doing really well?
I head back with the beers. I spend most of the time talking to my brother's friend, a crew member on a popular sitcom with a look like a famous military writer. We're doing that thing where you lean in near the one's ear, shout something vaguely witty, and then the other one nods, only sort of sure he heard you. I can't tell if he's out of his element here, too, or if he's just being sympathetic. Can this room be anyone's element? Shouldn't part of the fun be the absurdity, that you're brushing shoulders with porn stars (or that you get to be a porn star being gawked at and admired by your fans) in a casual anywhere-in-America environment?
Except, of course, this isn't anywhere in America. This is Los Angeles, and the aura is palpable. It's in the hiply crappy clothes and the swagger on people. Everyone's a peacock. Everyone's tail is all fanned out.
This is one of those things about Los Angeles. I get a feeling that everyone else is in on something _ that they're all avoiding the crass conversations about business and what's fashionable, but trying to project that they know what's up. They're standing around with the pride of folks who work on things you've heard of. Like their shirts are giving off light and their pants are broadcasting. "I'm in the know," comes the signal, mingled with a dozen other overlapping signals. "I am one of us. If you talk to me, I'll be cool about it. Unless I'm better connected than you, in which case screw off."
It reminds me of Washington, D.C.: another company town where people wear rank and clearance badges declaring their importance and how much money they make. The system on the subway line is this: You bitch to equal-ranks about your superiors (never by name) and you mock the ones below you (always in a stage whisper). In LA I feel like the system is similar, but telepathic. They're all doing it. I just can't hear it.
Actually, not everyone. The porn stars are dressed much more casually. I can recognize one of them coming toward us by the way she walks behind a couple of guys who part the crowd, no problem. She's in sweats and a T-shirt. Not the hipster sweats, not a tacky gangster sweatjacket, but genuine sweatpants and a sincere T-shirt. She looks like somebody's sister.
Now I realize that this is Sunny Lane, newcomer of the year. As she's walking past us my brother sticks out his hand. I miss exactly what he's saying _ all I hear is the crowd and my own buzzing astonishment _ but it's easygoing. It's a compliment, without any fanboy gooberishness. He knows how to talk to fame. How to talk like a regular person when he's faced with a (adult) film star.
A quick nod, a quick thank-you from her, and without breaking the momentum of the guys parting the crowd, she's off again. She smiles and nods at me, 'cause I'm The Guy Next to the Guy, and she's gone. Vanished back into the netherworld of famous people that lurks just beneath the surface of Los Angeles.
Then, as if we'd done what we came here to do, we start wrapping it up. Maybe it's because I've never moved more than twenty feet from the door (the distance from bouncer to bar), maybe it's because my brother and his buddy have to work tomorrow. But a few moments later we're passing bouncers, who I thank without knowing why, and then we're back on the strip-mall sidewalk. Against all natural laws of LA, we walk back home.
Outside, now, Burbank feels much more mundane. The sodium lights that glow on the overpass are the same as sodium lights everywhere. The bank buildings are the same as bank buildings everywhere. The intersections are intersections. No big deal.
[ 2008 Will Hindmarch ]
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
otoki:
Yeah, they were super nice. I want to give them a few prints.
malloreigh:
"Every one of your sets, it seems, manages to be somehow about your eyes. I think that's great." you left that as a comment on my set. thank you. i am going to keep that quote.