ELMO KEEP

But “With or Without You” is not even subtle in its imagery. It’s up there in its mass misinterpretation with “Born In The USA.” This is not a love song, it’s a song about bondage.

That’s right, U2 write kinky tunes about S&M. TRUTH EXPOSE at the Awl. 

As it was, however, in my fanciful attempt at getting myself organized, I had, among other errors, set the call to speakerphone, something I was afraid to rectify in case I accidentally hung up altogether. So Gene Simmons’ voice was booming like God’s, bouncing off the white walls and hardwood floor, reverberating around the enormous conference room where I sat in a white vinyl chair at the enormous white round table (where a single person was always an aberration of its symmetry), and the sun was steadily rising at the windows, filling the room with horrible, horrible light and I felt as though I were inside a giant microwave, being roasted, being roasted by Gene Simmons; and the disembodied, booming voice carried up through the atrium drew curious people from upstairs in the office who came to gawk quizzically at me, caged animal, through the glass, making Who the fuck are you talking to? gestures while I gestured back with wide eyes, shaking my head: I have no idea what is happening!

»

A lenghty piece in which I attempt to explain how I came to love KISS is now up on the Awl. It also got a link in the New York Times.

UPDATE: There’s a longer version of this up on the Awl, should you like to see it!



Dom Knight did a brilliant job hosting Bret Easton Ellis as Oxford Art Factory last night. In among asking (via a question from the audience) if he was “a bottom or a top?” (to which he replied quick as a knife, “I’m versatile”), he raised the Delta Goodrem Question, which resulted in one of the funniest exchanges of the night: 

“Oh man, this is out of control (shakes head). Out of control. I’m in my hotel doing press all day, so I’m moving between the foyer of the hotel, and my room where I’m staying. I keep my TV on Music Max in my room – whoa, dangerous livin’! It’s crazy in that suite! So this video comes on, and there’s this very attractive woman on it, and she’s stomping around, and she’s talking about how this is her life, and her persistence has made a difference. And she’s stumbled and she’s fallen and she’s back on her feet again, and I’m thinking, ‘Really? What is going on with that?’ And she is throwing her hair back and waving her arms around and it’s very dramatic and kind of sexy and I’m thinking, Who is that? I have never heard of this person at all. I have no idea who it was and I tweeted about it that night. And I was just listing what songs I was listening to. And in the morning there was this deluge of replies to me. Things like ‘I have lost all respect for you as an author.’ There was one reply which was like ‘I’m very sorry that she has cancer, but I still think she’s a fucking sow.’ And I’m thinking, “What the hell is this?” And so I go back through it all and then I realise, ‘Oh. It was that Delta Goodrem thing that started this all.’

I did not know that you guys had such a complicated relationship with her, it’s very complicated! And then I played with it a little bit, and it’s gotten out of hand. I’m getting phone calls from Brian McFadden’s manager asking if I can get Delta a job in LA. And I’m like, ‘I don’t really know what she wants to do.’”