34. The Week in Me
In which I GOT TO SEE DANZIG!!
I saw Danzig last Friday. I drove down to Atlantic City - which despite only ever having New Jersey drivers licenses I had never been to before last weekend - to meet Scot for bacon-wrapped dates at Amada and then to see Danzig.
Some of you, my friends who are normal and don’t own King Neil Diamond shirts like moi1 do not know who Danzig is. Glenn Danzig is the lead singer of The Misfits. Danzig, who released a recent album of Elvis covers, who made a movie featuring a Parisian sex worker with eyeballs for nipples named Dajette, who wears multiple accessories with his band logo on them at the same time…is my king. I love him. I love his music. It got me through 2021. It got me into metal. He’s from one town down from where I grew up. Like Bruce Springsteen who I wrote about last week, you really just had to be there (there being the Saddle Brook Diner). He is a person who will talk about “woke culture” but is also so profoundly harmless because his fans are like “Hey little buddy” and his bluster can easily be shrugged off by putting your hand on his forehead and letting him windwill at you from his very low center of gravity. I love this man and his adamantine lack of understanding of irony.
He is the Nicolas Cage of music2, the Tommy Wiseau of songwriting, he is for whom the Planet Fitness Lunk Alarm™️ tolls.
Glenn performed his entire first solo album, which means that I got to hear “Not of This World,” a song that I of pale unmarked flesh want to make into my first tattoo.3 He sounded great, smiled, moved around, looked really happy to be there: this is not always the case. But given the Misfits show in July and this recent show, I think he’s doing well for himself, his mind, and his body. Good. Love you, Glenn!
I got into Glenn through the drummer. It took everything in me, even after all this damn time, to not tell him that I got to scream “Snakes of Christ” nearly in Danzig’s face. Especially when his karaoke first round draft pick - a song I have only ever heard twice on the radio, both in cosmic, elucidating moments - started playing on the radio as I drove past Sesame Place (he, knowing I was a Henson obsessive, had once proposed we go on a date there). But I didn’t. I miss my friend, but how good of a friend was he?
On Wednesday, I went to dinner at the divine Gelso and Grand (get the lamb pasta) with Michael and Carey, and then we strolled Little Italy and got cannolis:
I also dragged my two dear, dear friends into the year-round Christmas store and the amount of gay ornaments would give a Kentucky senator an embolism. Like, this has to just be a licensed collaboration with the Robert Mapplethorpe estate, right?
Before I move onto the week’s recs, I was asked a few questions by my Instagram followers and I’d like to answer them here!
What’s your comfort/going feral meal? I have two that are considered controversial. The first is chocolate chip cookies dipped (lightly, I’m not making overnight oats here) in apple juice. This came from the two being my childhood afterschool snack. The second, and I haven’t done it in years because I live with a person now and prefer not having to pay full rent on this place, was Stouffer’s mac and cheese dipped (lightly) in whatever ketchup is on the plate. Mac and cheese in general, cheese in general, makes a goblin out of me.
Do you smoke or drink anything? No. I have been sober for all 32 of my years. No cigarettes, alcohol, or pot.
What’s a must have during the day or week for Tara? Listening to music. Kissing the chickens. Getting rid of some emails. Having 12-14 Snapple Zero Sugars.
To read:
In exciting news, I was approved as a Bookshop.org affiliate! You can shop my very own virtual bookstore, featuring favorite works of mine, books I recommend in this newsletters, and books by my very accomplished, very smart friends. Click here to visit and message me about any of the titles you see!
My first book recommendation is Hannah Sloane’s The Freedom Clause. I was gifted this book by Corina Diez from the Dial Press (Random House) team, and invited to join a bookfluencer book club discussion with the imprint’s marketing team.
Daphne and Dominic are a young (too young) British married couple stuck in a very relatable sexual rut. When Dominic proposes they open their marriage for one night each year, no asking, no telling, no repeat offenders, no lingering relationships, the couple learns big, bold truths about themselves and their marriage. The concept seems rote - but at every turn I expected to groan through, something unpredictable happened. While the characters are a bit prudish (they both seem so scandalized at the arrangement they’ve made, as if the concept of “hall passes” hasn’t existed since keys in bowls at swinger parties) the author is clearly a step ahead of her alternating protagonists’ discoveries, subverting the narrative traps we’re used to in the world of contemporary womens’ fiction. Daphne’s discovery of how to orgasm with a partner…look, my cousins read this, but it was talismanic. I actually read this book, read about this character voicing her needs better, exploring what worked for her and what didn’t, and have had tangibly better intimacy ever since. Reading this book made me actually ask the world to give me better orgasms and it fucking worked?! Buy the book. I also love that Daphne begins a Substack in the novel, an anonymous blog about her sexploits coupled with thematic recipes, a venture that leads her to brimming confidence and opportunities. Given that no one on my Instagram feed seems to know what a fucking Substack is, I love that our author Miss Sloane and her editor believe the world is ready to learn.
Dial Press’s initiative to curate a small book club to discuss the marketing strategy for the book, asking us for similar titles, I’m a dirty little whore for focus groups so getting to talk about related books and what lures me in as a reader? I would have paid them.
I created a playlist for SURviving Scandoval, which you can order here for just eight dollars if you enjoy the idea of poems about Jax Taylor. Thank you again to
for including me!If you live in Philly or plan to visit soon, you must visit Molly’s Books & Records. Sean and I stopped in a few weeks ago, and he had to warn me not to turn the corner, because once I saw the back half of the store I’d never leave and make my job interview later that day. The bookstore is filled with used, loved, lived books and records, all at phenomenal prices. It looks like what you want a bookstore to look like: not Fox Books, nor some hypercurated union of clean white lines (don’t do it) and expensive genetically modified plants.
I’d move in if I could.
This essay by Allison Claire called “Posting Single” which…anyway! 👀
I am as many of you know devout in my readings on Scientology. I am not interested in joining the practice, fret not: I have an avid interests in cults and the currency of manipulation that makes up their free market. I rarely take delight in anyone, anyone, being incarcerated these days, but I am relieved to know that the rapist Danny Masterson will not be able to inflict his harm and smear campaigns any longer. I am relieved for his victims. I am so shocked that justice was handed down this generously that I jokingly maintain that the judge must be a fan of At the Drive-In (survivor Chrissie Carnell Bixler is married to the lead singer). I believe these victims and believe every allegation they throw Scientology’s way in attempting to impugn, coerce, and silence them. I am, in support of these valiant women and as one of their number in my sexual trauma, listing their impact statements below. Obvious trigger warnings for sexual assault.
There is an anecdote about candy bars that moved this man up to perhaps the number five spot of people I plan to fight when I arrive in Hell4:
Read Niesha Trout’s victim impact statement here. “You’ve lived your life behind a mask- as two people- but the real one sits here now for its reckoning.” I felt a yawp of relation in my heart when I read her words, one that transfigured into a yawp of release. Thank you, Niesha.
Chrissie Carnell Bixler’s statement:
And thank you to
for being noble in the face of corruption, always.
This post on accountability from my mother. I have thought so much about apologies and apologizing lately, and her words of wisdom came at a good time.
To listen:
What a haunting little cry for hope by Lauren Mayberry, recommended by
: This is literally just Simone:
This is literally just Matt and our beautiful son, Lugosi:
Actually the babies:
Various and Sundry:
As @dragontattoogrI said on Twitter, “He’s too pretty to be this unemployed”:
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Ed sent me this this week. We love Ed. My aunts expect to be sent photos of us when Ed visits from out of state. Ed is family and understands my rampant need to be little:
Love you bitches,
TG
Except that actually, Nic Cage of the people he is associated with, absolutely understands his own whole deal. Now, anyway.
For the man having the parodic quality to him that he does, there is perhaps no lyric I relate to more than “not of this world / and nothing bites like I do.” I quote it bimonthly in therapy.
The list includes David Zaslav, my ex Joe, whoever changed the recipe for the fucking Dunkaroos icing, and the person who wrote this headline. I’m famously leaving Kissinger to Tony Bourdain:
:
Great show. You bring back good memories. 💜
m.youtube.com/watch?v=iGXUhFCkus0
Awesome awesome awesome 🖤🖤🖤