But Enough About Me (13 page)

 

She called me the day I got back to make lunch plans. “Quick,” she said. “Turn to channel two. There's a squirrel licking a lollipop.” I fumbled for
the remote control.

The newscaster gave a hearty chuckle on the voice-over. “How many licks will it take for this little fellow to finish?”

“So where should we go?” she asked. “I warn you, I like to go to places that have been around forever.”

“I do, too,” I said. Not that I had actually been to any places that had been around forever, aside from rock clubs that only smelled like they had. I heard a flushing noise.

“I had to flush the toilet because I was cleaning my hairbrush and I just put in a big wad of hair,” Julie said. “I wasn't going to the bathroom or anything.”

“I understand,” I said.

We soon made a habit of visiting the least happening spots in the city. Julie, already living in Manhattan for years, had been everywhere in town but had an affinity for quirky places from a gentler time. Our first meeting was at Rumplemeyer's, an ancient ice-cream parlor on Central Park South that had pink walls and a long counter with a soda fountain. There were stuffed animals for sale, and candy, and the whole place breathed a faint but reassuringly musty scent. We sat at one of the little round tables in the back and had ice-cream sundaes.

The following week she took me to Kaplan's at the Delmonico, a deli that had been around for nearly a century. “My father used to bring me here in the seventies,” she said, pointing out the old-fashioned deli counter with yellow lights, the display case filled with Dr. Brown's soda. “All the waitresses call you ‘sweetie.'” It was fake-wood-paneling heaven, and when you couldn't finish all of your colossal pastrami on rye, the waitress would wrap the pile of meat up for you and tuck in some extra bread so you could have a whole new sandwich later on.

Then we would walk to one of the small, chronically underloved museums in the city: the Merchant House Museum on the Lower East Side, a perfectly intact nineteenth-century house from a Bygone Era that typically
had exhibits of Victorian mourning jewelry made out of human hair, or the Abigail Adams Smith house, where workers gave tours in period costumes. To the world, Julie and I coolly displayed all the trappings of hipsterhood, but around each other we let our geek flag fly.

We called each other four times a day. We developed a shtick: If one of us picked up the phone, the other began talking as if we had just been in mid-conversation.

“Hello?”

“I just took a cab to work, and when we stopped at a light, my cabdriver opened the window and poured out a cup of urine,” I said. “Is this common?”

“What? No. I would say that it isn't.”

“What are you doing?”

“Deciding if I'm going to go to Alan's party.” Alan was a fortyish typist at the insurance company where Julie worked who had a heavy Brooklyn accent and a wet-look hairpiece. There was a fussy dignity to Alan. He wore a smock because he didn't want to get the typewriter ink on his polyester suit. Once when I visited Julie at her office, Alan approached her desk, holding out an open box to us.

“Care for a Vienna Finger?” he asked.

Alan was known around the office for his holiday-themed parties at the Bay Ridge apartment that he shared with his elderly mother. His latest was in honor of Halloween, but sometimes he changed it up and threw an Autumn Party.

“You wouldn't want to come with me, would you?” Julie said.

“What, are you kidding me?” I said. “I'm in.”

That Saturday I took my first trip to Brooklyn when we rode the subway out to Bay Ridge. Alan met us at the door, throwing it open the moment that Julie knocked. “Thank you so much for coming,” he said in his decorous way. The entire apartment, from the shag carpeting to the walls, was pink, which nicely offset Alan's sizable collection of porcelain clowns.

“This is for you,” said Julie, handing him a box of Godiva chocolates.

“Thank you,” said Alan. “I appreciate it.”

We walked into the living room, which was decorated with an explosion of plastic Halloween gewgaws and orange and black crepe paper. A few of Alan's neighbors introduced themselves and we chatted with two receptionists from the office who had come. “Where's his mother?” I asked quietly.

“She's stashed away somewhere,” said Julie. “It's like when you're in seventh grade and your parents stay upstairs and you have a party in the basement.” We made our way to a table that was covered with foil trays of Italian-American specialties. On the subway over, Julie had briefed me on the menu. “Part of the party ritual is to rave about Alan's cooking,” she had said. “It's basically old-man Italian food. The big thing is
fritto misto,
which is battered, deep-fried vegetables. It's like having some broccoli in a doughnut. The other thing is rice balls.”

Julie handed me a paper plate with a ghost on it. “Well,” she said. “Let's dig in.”

Alan came up behind us, bearing yet another tray heaped with chicken Parmesan, and slowly lowered it onto the table. “Alan,” Julie said, holding up a hand. “Alan. These rice balls. Really delicious.”

He puffed up. “I can't give out the recipe,” he said.

“
Alan.
”

He shook his head. “I'm sorry.” After the meal, Alan brought out the Godiva chocolates that Julie had given him and slowly walked around the room, displaying them to each guest, who would say, “Ooh, fancy” or “Don't they look delicious.” Nobody actually got to taste them because Alan left the cellophane on the box.

“I used to work in catering,” said Julie, watching Alan as he vanished into another room to stash the chocolates away. “There's an expression that they use called ‘parading food.' Before everybody eats their salad, all the waiters parade around displaying the salad to everyone at the tables. It's a very big part of the caterer's oeuvre. I don't know why anyone would want to see their food before they've eaten it, but apparently some people like this parading of the food. Alan
is one of those people. This is a chance for him to parade his food.”

Indeed, the festivities peaked when Alan emerged from the kitchen holding a Halloween cake shaped like a jack-o'-lantern. Slowly, solemnly, he circled the room, exhibiting the cake to each person as though it were the Queen's jewels.

“Beautiful,” I said when it lingered in front of me. Then he took out a camera and had us all surround the cake for a group photo. After that, Alan had a neighbor take a more serious solo shot of him alone, holding the cake.

Later, as we got our coats, I whispered to Julie, “I had the best time.”

She nodded. “Me, too. It's almost like going to the Lower East Side tenement museum and seeing an actual family living there. You know? It's a slice of life you would never see. This isn't a goof. And it's endearing. It's touching to see the effort he went through.”

She handed me my coat and smiled. “I couldn't bring just anyone, of course. I knew you would have the right spirit.”

If your subject is a reluctant interview, do everything in your power to get a drink into their hands. Alcohol liberates the tongue and blurs the time so that your allotted hour slips by unnoticed and stretches into six. Optimally, you should remain sober while your companion gets plastered, so as the evening progresses and your woozy new pal begins to spray your face with a light coating of spittle as he or she talks, surreptitiously switch to a mocktail. Around midnight, make a big show of “feeling dizzy” and wobble off to the bathroom, where you shut yourself in a stall and coolly take notes.

Only once did I deviate from my own advice, during a Lollapalooza tour stop in Atlanta. The bill was especially good that year: the Beastie Boys, the Breeders, L7, A Tribe Called Quest, Smashing Pumpkins, George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars. I flew down to interrogate the Breeders' Kim Deal for
Rolling Stone
's special “Women in Rock” issue. I was to ask her the typically weighty questions that were posed to all participants: How has the role of women in rock changed over the last four decades? How are you affected by misogynistic lyrics in rock and hip-hop?

I met her backstage at the venue, where she sat on a battered couch in an oversized T-shirt and stained jeans, joking around with various crew members and musicians. As a former Pixie and member of the Breeders, Deal was one of my heroes. I loved the sound of her sweet, husky voice, and the way she smiled onstage as she played bass as though she was having the best time in the world.

Deal was perfectly friendly, but she was not in the mood to hold forth about being a victim of the patriarchy.

“So,” I said nervously, fumbling with my notebook. “I know that these aren't the most freewheeling of questions, but maybe we can find a way to have a good time with them.”

Silence.

“Do you feel like there is a glass ceiling in the music industry?” I began.

She groaned. Everyone around her laughed. I tried another question.

“What effect has being a woman had on your music?”

She rolled her eyes. “Do I have to answer this now?”

I considered. “I guess not,” I said.

“Good,” she said, producing a bottle of vodka and taking a swig. “Let's go see the Black Crowes. They're playing on the second stage.” She held out the bottle. I glugged it down, figuring that I could get her to hold forth later, once she'd loosened up. After a few more lingering swigs, she jumped up, exhorting me to follow. We had to plunge into the crowd on our way to the smaller stage. As we waded through, a Gothy gang of teenage girls surrounded us, clamoring for autographs.

“I'm nobody,” I told them. “My signature is worthless.” They looked at me suspiciously, then, suspecting that I was simply being modest, shoved pens and paper at me with greater urgency. Feeling foolish, I signed as Deal smirked nearby. Then she'd had enough. “Come on!” she shouted, and dragged me back into the crowd. The Black Crowes were just tuning up. A few hands appeared out of the solid wall of fans in the audience, offering joints to us. Pot made me paranoid, tired, and hungry (three things I usually was, anyway), but, of course, I puffed away.

A publicist hurried over with beers for us, which stayed magically full,
Alice in Wonderland–
style, throughout the show. Joints! Beers! Crowes! Vodka! Joints! Beers! Crowes! Whoops, feeling a little dizzy. No, I'm fine, it's cool. Just going to crouch here for a sec.

“Let's go see the Beastie Boys,” Deal shouted over the cheering crowd as the Crowes' set ended. She charged through the mob of fans with me in hot pursuit. She certainly seemed loose. I had to strike.

I paused on a stretch of lawn that ran between the stages, and shouted for her to stop. “Seriously,” I pleaded, pulling out my tape recorder, “can you just answer a few questions? Only a few. Who were your musical heroes?”

“Later!” she said.

“Now!” I slurred. The lawn was lurching dangerously.
Storm's a-brewin', I reckon! Better bring her into port!

“No!” she shouted, laughing crazily. Suddenly the ground shifted and
we were wrestling on the lawn of the Lakewood Amphitheater.
What made the scene even more surreal was that as we tumbled on the grass, a tall black man in diapers, a member of the P-Funk All-Stars, ambled past without giving us a second look.

“You will answer my questions!” I hollered, panting. I had no authority whatsoever. I begged, I threatened, I made jokes, but she wasn't having it. At some point, you just have to let it go.

Then, as the distant strains of the Beasties' “Sure Shot” started up, she wriggled free and broke for the stage where they were playing, urging me over her shoulder to follow. All doors were open to us as we headed backstage, then slipped off to the side of the stage, the Beasties mere feet from us. She pulled me next to the largest speakers I had ever seen and we danced through their entire electrifying set, to the amusement of a good portion of the audience, who had a full view of our rhythm-free flailing and leaping.
This is the best interview I've ever done,
I rejoiced.

Back in New York, my editor Karen studied my manuscript with a frown. “This is the worst interview you've ever done,” she said. “What happened? It looks to me like she answered a handful of questions. Where's the rest of
it?” I explained the saga of my struggle, conveniently leaving out the part about acting like a coal miner with a Friday-night paycheck.

“I'm sorry, but we'll have to kill this,” Karen said, shaking her head. “There's nothing there.” Even so, Kim Deal was a Woman Who Rocked. She just preferred to show me, rather than tell me.

“Just hear me out,” my friend Tina was telling me at lunch. “Go to the audition and if it's not for you, don't do it.” Tina was an executive at MTV whose low-key manner belied her high-octane job. Being around her always made me feel like we were in a secret club, filled with intrigue and excitement. (A typical staccato phone message:
Yello, Tina calling. Here's the thing. I have a meeting at three, but how about we go shoe shopping at four. Check the schedule. Circle back.
)

As we split a piece of chocolate cake, Tina said that MTV was starting an all-music channel called M2 (later to change to MTV2). They were searching for a female on-air personality who had a decent knowledge of music. The list of New York–based lady rock journalists is a concise one, so my name inevitably came up. “I know you don't like doing television, but this could be fun,” she said.

Sometimes, if I wrote a story for
Rolling Stone
that made some sort of splash, I would be called upon to do an interview for one of the celebrity news shows. I usually wriggled out of it, because I found the whole process excruciating. First, a crew would show up at the office and film you faking some activity so that filler footage could run while an announcer said, “Jancee Dunn is a reporter at
Rolling Stone.
” Usually the producer
would instruct you to type at your computer, or chat on the phone to a nonexistent “source,” or, the worst, stride purposefully down a hallway with a “stop the presses” expression on your face. This usually involves multiple takes because the producer will tell you that you're smirking, or look slightly demented, or that you're staring at the camera when you should act as if you're lost in thought, mentally writing your next story's lead paragraph as you walk along.

Then, for forty-five minutes, you dutifully answer a producer's detailed questions. That night, the extensive footage is narrowed down to one dopey, truncated micro-quote (“Sarah Michelle Gellar is a great girl, and—”) before your answer is awkwardly cut off. Then they cue up the garish music and they're off to the Cannes Film Festival, where the stars light up the red carpet!

“I'm horrible on TV,” I told Tina. “Trust me.”

“Just give it a try,” she said. “It's only part-time, so you can keep your job at
Rolling Stone.
I'm going to have a producer call you to set it up.”

Two days later, the producer phoned to give me instructions for the audition, which was to take place, terrifyingly, on the street outside the MTV studio in Times Square. “Don't wear white, because depending on the lighting, it might glow,” he said. “No patterns or stripes, because they can look animated, almost, on camera. You know how it can look like it's moving? And you'll probably have to read off of cue cards, but there won't be a lot written on them, so don't worry.”

I worried. “How do I act? How do you want me to behave?”

“Just be yourself,” he said. “Tell jokes, and if you have any information about the musicians you're talking about, throw it in there, because you want to seem informed. We'll send you a rough script, but feel free to say whatever you want.”

The script introduced different videos with a couple of pertinent facts, such as new projects, tour dates, or background information about the video shoot. The channel only played music videos, and the variety was staggering. The playlist resembled some insane late-night cable access show:
a Buzzcocks video would run after Tiffany's “I Think We're Alone Now,” followed by footage from an early-seventies James Brown performance. LeAnn Rimes, N.W.A., KISS, the Cocteau Twins, Nirvana, the Sugar Hill Gang—all were tossed in together.

For days, I hastily memorized trivia on the artists I was to mention and then practiced a way of casually throwing it out there as if I had just thought about it.
Oh, here's something, Gene Simmons was once an elementary school teacher.
On the day of the shoot, I met the producer on the street behind the studio.

“I'm going to hold up a cue card,” he said, “but try not to look at it. Just talk to the camera as though you're telling something to a friend.”

My lips were trembling. My smile was a ghastly, grinning skull. As I rattled out my fun facts, the cameraman swooped the camera around me to create a spinning effect. I assumed they wanted my delivery to be short and sharp, but I found myself rambling as I corrected myself, or mused aloud, or wandered off on tangents. This was supposed to be a hip new channel, and I sounded distressingly like Bob Newhart. Flop sweat beaded my forehead. They urged me to be animated, but my arms hung heavily at my sides. At one point, for variety, I clasped my hands together before they returned to their droopy job.

One script introduced a video from the Cranberries, so I put in a fact about the lead singer, Dolores O'Riordan. “She recently won a libel suit against a newspaper claiming she was cavorting onstage wearing no panties,” I said. “Dolores claimed she was, in fact, wearing panties, and she won.”

“That was great,” said the producer brightly, afterward. “We'll let you know.”

“Right,” I said, quickly gathering my things.

A week later, a second producer called. “My name is Lou,” he said. “I'm the supervising producer.” He paused. “I saw your audition tape.”

“I know, I know,” I said. “Painful.”

“I don't know how you did it,” he said. “Apparently
somebody
likes you.”

I got the gig. Taping took a half day, two days a week. My
Rolling Stone
editors tolerated my absence from the office, provided I got my work done. On
my first day as a veejay I reported for duty at an East Village thrift shop. MTV2 didn't want a studio setting, so we shot at various locales downtown. We were allowed to wear our own clothes if we wanted, so I showed up with a carefully chosen green shirt with a subtle pattern on it. A slim, dark-haired guy ran over holding a cigarette in one hand and a clipboard in the other. “Hi, I'm Lou,” he said, grabbing my hand absently. “It's nine hundred degrees in here.” While the camera crew set up, we quickly got to know each other. In five minutes I extracted that he grew up in Hoboken, was an aficionado of bad made-for-TV movies that usually ended up on the Lifetime network, was a sugar fiend, and didn't have much of a problem speaking his mind.

He stared at my top. “What's with the shirt?” He pointed to what I thought was an artful splotch on my left breast. “One of your tits looks darker than the other. It looks like you're leaking milk.” Before I could say anything, he pulled me over to a corner where a production assistant was setting up a craft services table with snacks, grabbed a bag of sour gummy peaches, and started to eat. “Get these away from me,” he said. He continued to pop them in his mouth. Was I supposed to actually take them?

“Listen,” he said, “we film dozens of segments that will run over the course of a few days, so you'll have to change clothes and hair.” He introduced me to the wardrobe girl and a hair and makeup artist. “It's your new entourage,” he said drily.

I changed in my “dressing room,” a tiny bathroom in the back of the thrift shop. The wardrobe girl buttoned my blouse for me and tied a scarf around my waist as a belt. Then she stood back, squinting critically, then darted forward again, fussing, adjusting. After she nodded, I was passed to makeup. I was fighting to stay cool but my inner hillbilly kept bobbing up:
Garsh, there's free food on a table that you can jist go 'n' eat! And a lady who puts on your makeup! And I got me a lil' ol' intern gal who runs to git me a Diet Coke!

Lou bustled up and told me to be ready in five minutes. “Oh, and the channel is on a satellite dish, so you need to say the transponder number.”

“I'm too nervous,” I said. “I won't remember. Plus, I don't know what a transponder is.”

He handed me a piece of paper. “Well, read it off of this when you're on camera. We're very informal here.”

The makeup artist slapped on some more powder and then we were ready. As I got into position and a sound guy attached a microphone to my shirt, another new veejay who had just finished her shift lingered in the doorway of the thrift shop.

“Lou,” I whispered. “Why is she watching me?”

He raised an eyebrow. “She's not doing anything. I've got news for you, you're going to have to get used to people watching you.”

I leaned in. “Yes, but this is my
first day.
”

He rolled his eyes and sighed loudly. “I'll try to get her into wardrobe or something.” After he lured her away, he returned. “Try to relax,” he said. “You look like you're about to have an embolism. It's just me and the crew, and believe me, we don't have any viewers. We're really working on our own
Private Idaho
here.” I could feel some hives form on my neck. He peered at me. “What are those?”

“Hives,” I whispered. “It happens when I get frightened.”

He shook his head. “Can we get some makeup?” he yelled. The makeup artist stubbed out her cigarette and hurried over.

“Can you spackle her hives, please?” he said. She dabbed gingerly at the welts with a makeup sponge, keeping her face mercifully impassive. Then Lou turned to me. “Listen, if you mess up, try to correct yourself and just keep going. Okay?”

“Sure.”

Then he counted down. “In five! Four!” Then he held up three fingers, two, one, and silently pointed my way. My lungs constricted as I stared back at the ring of faces—some bored, some interested—that surrounded me.

“Hello, viewers,” I ventured. “You're watching the very first hour of MTV2. It's a new network with videos, videos, videos, twenty-four hours a day. I don't quite know what I'm going to be doing, but I do know they have me on board.”

Lou nodded. Good.

I tried not to glance at the cue card that the production assistant was holding. “Coming up we have something new from Liz Phair and a classic from Bob Barley.” I stopped, flustered, then I looked at Lou. “Can we do it again?” I asked, assuming he would stop the tape.

He shook his head.

“Please? I said ‘Bob Barley.' I'm begging you.”

“Keep going,” he said firmly.

“Seriously, that was terrible—”

“No!” he said. “
I
will decide when we do it again! Keep going!”

Chastised, I continued. After a couple of takes, Lou pulled me aside.

“What made you decide to begin with ‘Hello, viewers'?” he said, lighting up his twentieth cigarette of the day. “Who talks like that? Even Diane Sawyer doesn't say ‘Hello, viewers.'”

“So do you want me to say something else?”

He shook his head while he exhaled a plume of smoke. “No.”

Back we went for more segments. During one in which I talked about a clip from a tight-pantsed Billy Squier, who was clearly hanging to the right, I started to break down in a nerves-induced giggle fit. This tended to happen to me during somber events, like funerals. As I chokingly tried to Keep Going and deliver my lines, tears poured out of my eyes and I could barely croak out a word. Still, the camera continued, relentlessly, to film me.

At the next shoot, Lou informed me that the word from on high was that the network brass actually enjoyed my trainwreck delivery. (“Focus,” said one letter from a viewer that Lou made me read aloud on the air. “Say your words. Pause and breathe. Take your time.”) Because the channel had an organic feel—as if you had stumbled onto a cable access show programmed by a musical polymath—the slightly unhinged quality that I brought to the proceedings must have hewed to the Keeping It Real philosophy.

As I got more comfortable on camera, I began to love the job. The young crew worked hard but knew how to have fun. Every week we would set up somewhere different, and it was like a traveling party: a Broadway costume store, the basement of a sewing machine factory on the Lower East Side, a
mouse-infested artificial flower factory, a dusty tenement on Twelfth Avenue, and once, memorably, a brownie factory. Taping at a bar could occasionally be hazardous. When the Deftones showed up at a sticky-floored downtown dive, lead singer Chino Moreno promptly turned a shade of garbage-bag green. “I just puked outside,” he announced. “We were here drinking last night and the smell made me sick.”

“I have Certs,” I volunteered, reaching for my purse.

We filmed on the street, where homeless people would flap up to me and gibber away as I was trying to introduce a Black Flag video. The whole procedure had an appealingly lawless feel, particularly in the early days, when it seemed like our only viewers were in the Big House. We were constantly amazed at how many prisoners enjoyed full cable. Sometimes I would read their carefully composed letters on the air.

“Here is yet another letter from our friends in the Arizona State Prison in Yuma, Arizona,” I would say brightly, holding a piece of tattered stationery aloft. “‘We love MTV2 and watch it for hours,'” I read. “‘Could you please play ‘Man in the Box' by Alice in Chains, and also ‘Freebird.' And please keep doing the mess-ups, they make us laugh, and we can use some laughs in here.” I guess they thought my gaffes were scripted.

“No problem, fellas,” I would say cheerily. “A video from Alice in Chains is coming up. And thanks so much for the sketch of the crying clown, I see some real artistic talent. Keep watching!”

Not only did viewers request videos, but crew members could, too. “Do you want to program an hour of videos?” Lou asked me one day. “The more obscure, the better.”

“Really?” I asked. “You would let me do that?”

“We all can,” he said. “Don't flatter yourself. I programmed four hours for my birthday. I put in every Kate Bush video there was.”

So I programmed what I considered the most embarrassing videos ever made, among them “Hello” by Lionel Richie (plot: a gorgeous blind girl falls for art teacher Ritchie and fashions an elaborate clay bust of his head, each Jheri-curl on his clay mullet painstakingly detailed).