The first review I’ve read of the event wrote the whole thing off as a Kaufmanesque, performance-arty in-joke on the Tiger Woods thing (he did use the opening paragraph of Woods’ statement as the opening of the event, admittedly), and perhaps I’m naive or being totally hoodwinked here, but that’s not all or even most of what I saw.

I saw a guy who, whether his problems are of his own making or not, seemed genuinely rattled by the prospect of the “Is he or isn’t he?” rumors undoing 10 years of his work, during which he got the world to believe that a man can party. Hard.

If it was or is all an act, then call me a poor judge of peoples’ acting ability.

Because I’ve written a fair deal about him, met him a couple times and interviewed him a number of years ago, I feel like a lot of people have come to me as the go-to guy as the “Steev Mike”-related rumors have been mounting. Simply put, I’m not enough of an insider to tell you much about them with any authority. By the time I was following Andrew’s career (late 2001 to early 2002, I can’t quite place when I got on board now), the things that people are speculating about now were already pretty far gone.

My strictly speculative impressions, based purely upon what I’ve observed first-hand and read, are as follows:

I think that Andrew made business decisions when he was younger, very early in his career, that still have ramifications on what he’s doing now, possibly legally, possibly otherwise, and that, either by virtue of his word or a non-disclosure agreement, he doesn’t feel that he’s at liberty to talk about them. It also seems like this drives him a little nuts (to the point where he was stammering and squirming last night in ways that were honestly uncomfortable for me to watch), because he’s all about inclusion, and to not be able to fill people in genuinely seems to bother him, especially when you have people crying “fraud” about his work because of this. For some reason, in technology, NDAs are an accepted part of doing business, but not so much in entertainment, even as the two have basically bled together.

The stuff about there being several Andrew W.K.s, at least as of early 2002, I can confirm as total bullshit. Every time I’ve seen Andrew (5 times, counting last night), met Andrew (3 times) or talked to Andrew at any length (twice, including that very long interview), it’s been the same guy. Without much hesitation at all, he recalled our interview last night: “Man, that was a long time ago, but I remember that! It was a great interview! I was standing outside near train tracks.” The location was fuzzy for him (he guessed Connecticut, it was Worcester, MA), but for a guy who does and has done a literal fuckton of interviews, even that much recall is pretty damned good.

As far as his music and who wrote or played it goes, his musical pedigree’s pretty easy to trace, and he’s played at least 3 instruments, possibly 4 (I’m blanking on whether I’ve seen him play guitar in public) on stage proficiently. He’s always referred to his records as “this music” rather than “my music”, which struck me as acknowledgement that it was something that he viewed, either from a practical, technical standpoint or a philosophical one, as something bigger than himself. By most of his own accounts and those of others, he played most if not all of the instruments on at least “I Get Wet” and “The Wolf”.

If there’s anything I’d guess that he’s had help with in the studio, particularly back then, it would be his vocal tracks (which of course gets people all riled up, because that’s somehow the benchmark of authenticity when musicians and producers have been using every trick in the book on vocals since the advent of modern recording; folks, it dates back quite a bit further than Autotune…), because his vocal style’s evolved quite a bit over the years (the man met his wife through his voice teacher, so obviously, he’s put the work in…), and live, he’s never sounded exactly like his recorded vocals. Not bad, but different. That’d suggest sweetening, and probably studio vocalists to fill out the sound, but I wouldn’t say an entirely different lead vocalist.

Writing? Producers butt in on that shit all the time when you’re a major label artist, for better or worse, and again, Andrew’s been about inclusion every step of the way from what I’ve observed, so unless I’m mistaken, it’d be his gut instinct to take advice.

I think the best parallel I can draw here is one to Andy Warhol, who had plenty of help as well, and had his share of similar rumblings from people he’d worked with (I’d say that they were more frequent and more valid in Warhol’s case, but the tone’s very similar). Both Andy Warhol and Andrew W.K.’s work could be called “pop art”. Both have carefully packaged and presented their work. The major difference between the two is that Warhol seemed to leave agenda out of it (at least to me; your art critic’s mileage may vary), whereas Andrew W.K.’s got a very clear agenda: he wants to enjoy the hell out of life, and wants to encourage others to do the same.

That’s basically what I’ve got at this point. Even putting aside the “don’t make friends with rock stars” mantra (and again, perhaps naively, I would call Andrew a friend), I do think he and his work are being misunderstood and unfairly judged, but I’ve thought that since I first really got to experience more than just his recorded output, so this is nothing new. “This guy can’t possibly be for real” was and is the first impression of just about anyone (yes, me included) who’s been around popular music for more than a week, but when you get to know the guy a bit and get to see what he does, your opinion changes pretty quickly. If that makes me a guy who wants to believe in Santa Claus, or a guy who fell for Andy Kaufman’s schtick a generation later, so be it.

This week: Me 2, Fear 0
Current Score: Me 13, Fear 4

I got through New York OK, though it took me a fuckton of effort to leave the house. I certainly wanted to see the people I saw, and I had a good time, but there was this huge internal struggle that took place to get me there, mostly centered around money worries. I look forward to a day when meeting friends for dinner does not involve this huge, anxiety-creating mental transaction with ripple effects far beyond what they should be, or a bunch of guilt when people choose to pay for me. Whether I have it or I don’t, “It’s only money”, right? Also: if the people I met for dinner on Monday are reading this, apologies if my writing about things this way makes you feel weird, bad or uncomfortable in any way, as that’s the last thing I’d want, but for posterity’s sake and in the interest of being honest with myself, these things merited mention here.

As for this week’s round of bureaucratic nonsense, while I’m still mentally exhausted from it (I got something around 15 hours’ sleep in the day after I finished dealing with this nonsense), and I probably could’ve handled some things more gracefully (to the point where I think my psychiatrist got passive-aggressive in one of the descriptions he wrote on a form I needed him to fill out out of his own frustrations in dealing with me, which is actually pretty hilarious, but warrants an apology on my part the next time I see him), I think I got through it alright, knock wood. In my defense, on the subject of grace, when people whose job it is to help those in need consistently perform less competently and responsibly than a person who’s come to them for help out of a genuine need for it, it gets to be a little difficult to be graceful (or even patient) when dealing with them.

“In this life
You’re on your own”
-Prince

Next week: more New York, more red tape, more money worries and more difficulty letting people get close to me! Same Bat-time! Same Bat-Channel!

A little late this week, but I haven’t forgotten.

This week: Me 2, Fear 0
Current Score: Me 11, Fear 4

The good:

I dealt with all kinds of snow. For most of the past 15 years, I’ve pretended to be a grown-up and not enjoyed it, dreaded it, even. I travelled (by train) in a blizzard and refused to cancel plans, I played in the snow (a rousing game of “throw snowballs at the crack house” that folks at the Prudential Center in Newark were playing while they were outside smoking or keeping the smokers company, as I was), I dealt with driving and parking in the snow just fine without having much trouble digging out, even though I have a far less snow-friendly car these days, and I even shovelled snow, because I wanted to, rather than because I had to. (In truth, I felt bad for the poor kids that my complex hired to clean the snow; people were being downright abusive to them.) My back paid for it a little, because I’m not used to those muscles being used, but I needed the exercise anyway. I also managed to just shut out the worries and all my usually-racing thoughts and just enjoy looking at how beautiful the snow was. Probably my best snow experience since the twin blizzards of ’95-early ’96.

I also managed to face a pretty bad medical diagnosis (osteoarthritis) with a pretty good attitude, even after hearing the words “I hope that God cures you” from the totally useless orthopedist I saw. It’s an initial diagnosis, and I’ll probably get some more opinions even though I’m pretty sure I’ve been dealing with this since the ’90s on some level, but I’m in good spirits because I have a good idea of what I’m dealing with now, what I’m not dealing with, and how to proceed. Not fun, but far from the end of the world.

The bad:

Just more procrastination. I’ve been inching toward getting some things done, but everything takes a lot longer than it should for me. No new points to deduct for this, as it’s the same shit I’ve been wading through for the previous 5 weeks.

(Side note, totally unrelated to this discussion: I dreamed about writing this at some point in the past couple years.)

On the horizon:

I’m supposed to travel to New York tonight to see friends, again with snow on the horizon. I love spending time with people, but I get so anxious about the process of doing it. Working out travel/parking, paying for things, dealing with the weather in this case, you name it.

I’ve also got some major, major bureaucratic fuckery on the plate for this week.

All of this happens by the end of the business day on Wednesday, so I’m going to have to resist the urge to accomplish nothing for the rest of the week once it’s done with. Stay tuned.

As I do every year, and have for a long time, I’d like to provide you with the information necessary to tell those cocksuckers what you really think of their fucking holiday.

Hallmark:

Email: info@hallmark.com

Or call them at 1-800-HALLMARK

(While you’re at it, tell them that my mom is pissed as hell that they keep fucking with the Hallmark Channel line-up, especially because they took “The Waltons” and “Walker, Texas Ranger” off. Might be a different division, but that’s really not our problem, is it?)

De Beers:

clientservices@debeers.com

Or call them (toll-free this year!) at 1 (888) 376 9230

If you have suggestions for customer service emails/phone numbers of companies that belong in my annual announcement (I actually like florists and flowers, so I usually give them a pass), let me know.

Have fun!

Baidu traffic went crazy in January (3000-ish plays for “Wolftab”? No way!), so I’m going to change our robots.txt, see if Baidu actually honors it (they’re notorious for ignoring excludes), and proceed from there. Hopefully, at some point, we have a realistic picture of what’s going on here. Stay tuned…

This week: Me 2, Fear 1
Current Score: Me 9, Fear 4

The good:

Finally made it to the coffee date from Week 1, even though it was Really Cold once again, and it yielded interesting results.

I’ve been continuing to try and make new friends when possible, and I’ve talked to some cool people that way.

The bad:

There’s been lot of procrastination beyond making said friends, because I’m really afraid to get too involved with people right now. I don’t want to get anyones’ hopes up, on a friendship level or a romantic one, until I feel more comfortable around people. Like I said, I’ve been coming into contact with a lot of people who could be fun, cool or just plain nice, but at the same time, there’s this apprehension on my part because I just don’t know who or what would be good for me, and because I’m not really sure where I’m welcome or safe. Now, “safe” can be bad in excess, but I think you need to feel at least a little safety to not end up curled up in the fetal position behind a dumpster, screaming racial slurs at onlookers and urinating on yourself. (Yeah, a little dramatic, but it made me laugh.). I’m once again in this place I arrive at sometimes where I just don’t know who wants to hear from me when I’m in the mood to talk to people, and with newer people, that’s obviously even harder to read. So, if you think I’m awesome and want to talk to me, make the first move sometimes and ENABLE ME.

Other than that, procrastination continues in general, on doctors’ appointment/bureaucracy stuff, music stuff and so forth, but the procrastination I described in the last paragraph’s been the worst, and most fear-based over the past week, plus I haven’t already lost a point to it (there was a point lost for one specific person, but not *everyone*), so it’s our boogeyman of the week.

“Here, my dear.”

I should be posting “Obsolete” soon, in its current state. I made peace with it, and want to get to the present day at some point in my life.

I don’t mean to come down on you Nickelback haters too hard (the pickle thing is kinda funny), and I’m sure I’m going to hear a whole ration of shit for this, but while they’re not a very good, very creative band, I can think of a whole mess of current, hugely popular musical acts who are far more irritating than Nickelback, without even catching up on the ones that I’m not familiar with, busting out legacy acts, or taking the hatchet to the “country” stuff. (The quotes are because popular country died when Soundscan began, if not a few years earlier, and its overproduced, phony corpse haunts us to this day.) Coldplay, kinda the same drill. Can you guys go after Creed, Jay-Z, Dave Matthews, Beyonce and the Jonas Brothers, just to name a quick five, and get back to Nickelback and Coldplay when you’re done? I’m sure I’ll have more names for you by then, too. Jeez.