PixelVixen707

(Photo by Suzy S Photography)

So, you’ll pardon me if I’m a little high on myself right now.  Let’s start with the big news: after months of slogging away at my personal blog for my personal fanbase and my personal self-indulgence, I landed a column!  At Suicide Girls!  I’m in with the geekorati - Mur Lafferty, Wil Wheaton, and mobs of naked chickitas.  So check that out!

Zach and Lucas threw me a mini-party tonight in celebration.  They even bought a cake.  And yes, it had boobs on it.  Classy to the end, my boys.

I got something else today: a big box full of my adolescence.  Well, a chunk of it anyway.  My dad dragged a box out of the garage, and in there I found: photos of me the first time I tried to dye my hair green, and messed it up, making me look like a pimply rat that washed its hair in acid; some kind of herbal substitute for marijuana that still smells gross today; some 7″’s, half of them cracked; and a stack of back issues of Maximum Rock’n'Roll. My memories of being a wanna-be punk stuck in backwater Michigan came rushing back to me. I didn’t know whether to chuckle or cry.

Instead, I got busy. With the help of, once again, super-detective Nara Malone, Dad and I traced the Mr. Do! machine to a junkyard in L.A. - and to a band called Dangling Eye that bought it, for $800, and hauled it off on tour with them.

“So this is a band you listened to?” dad asked.

“I barely heard of them. I might’ve bought a split 7” of theirs, but I doubt it. They were from San Pedro, and I think they toured with Cleveland Bound Death Sentence, but they never got anywhere. I can’t believe they were still on the road in ’94.

“But I got their numbers. I tracked them down through their label,” I threw in, secretly pleased I had gotten ahold of somebody so quickly and waited so long for them to drag through the records and get me a number. In fact, I got all three numbers, and the tidbit that they aren’t talking to each other anymore – something about a break-up in September, 1994. Ding!

“Would you like any tips for the interviews?” my dad offered.

Hackles raised I answered, “No! Why would I - I mean, do you have a lot of experience talking to washed-up punk bands?”

“Sure. I talk to everybody.”

“Well - I’m okay. I’ve done a few interviews myself.” College paper. Local bands. Almost got the White Stripes once, for a phoner, but I got bumped and the publicist said he’d reschedule. And, he didn’t.

Around 12 or 13 I stopped talking to my dad. I was an unholy pain in the ass as a teenager. Zach never believes it – I’m the eversteady peacemaker in our little circle. But the reason is my adolesence. I was intolerable. Not that I set fire to stuff or wrecked the car or drank or screwed around, or not too much anyway. But I was moody, and quiet, and didn’t talk to anybody. And my parents never said boo. They chalked it up to a phase, and my dad more or less backed away from it.

My grades were crap, and I shambled into Eastern Michigan and didn’t do much to distinguish myself. And now I’m just a barnacle on the bottom of the news biz.

But that’s all so yesterday. Now I’m a star columnist and a brilliant music journo waiting to happen. Dad and I split up the three members of the band - Al Haig (guitar/vox); Jesus H. (bass/some vox); Fuck (drums) - and we talk to them Thursday. I took the day off work, and I’ll be pulling it all together tomorrow for your input. We’ll have this cracked in no time!

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