la la land

bootlickers anonymous
“. . .she’d told him if she wanted to be mistreated, she’d at least find someone who fucked her while doing it.”
- Laura Smith, “Disclaimer”

Jack believed there was a difference between fame and celebrity. Fame was the universal acknowledgement of one’s talent and/or skill. Celebrity was the Cult Of Personality, a fascination more with the person possessing the talent than with the talent itself.

He mused on this kind of distinction often while driving, as it was necessary to disengage a portion of one's brain when driving in Los Angeles, which wasn't really driving most of the time, thanks to traffic. It was hell on poor LILIA, his beloved Porsche Turbo. Jack's theory was that it was the car which had ended his marriage: not the drinking, not the mutual adultery of their alleged “open relationship,” not the demands of the band and attendant celebrity. It was the car that he never allowed Sandy to drive. There's always that one last bit of indignity that causes a person to vomit up all of their pride. And in that moment, they realize that everything they swallowed was poisoning them, but now came the reprieve.

Someone, probably Eva, had told him he was a typical Taurus: appreciating creature comforts, always looking to be financially secure. And this was true, yet, with the exception of LILIA and some of his instruments, there wasn't a whole lot he was attached to – he couldn't afford to be. It had all been claimed by Sandy and she kept the house pretty much as it was when she walked out on him.

“It's like a goddamn museum,” Pete had said after delivering the decree for her to sign. “Everything of yours is still there on display. I half expected her to be leading tours through. And here is the room where Jack had the vision that led him to write 'Apocalypse in 7/4.' She kept trying to milk me for info, but I couldn't stay, it was just too creepy.”

Shifting now into third, finally getting past the traffic in Van Nuys. LILIA roared appreciatively and sprinted down the fast lane, other drivers getting out of Jack’s way when they realized he wasn’t about to let up. He came neck-in-neck with a blonde betty, the wind tousling her already styled-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life coif, eying him through a pair of Ferragamo shades.

They probably go with the shoes, he thought.

They drove along for a few miles like that, staring at each other, but she was not bedazzled by his grin. She gave him and his chariot a frosty appraisal and put pedal to metal.

“They go faster than they come, don’t they girl?” Jack remarked, then turned up the music. Pete has given him a copy of Nebulae’s EP Gravity Well and he was particularly struck by the song “no, be low:”

There is no below, there is only above
there is no abyss, there is only a shove
off the edge of your perceptions
until you find yourself falling up
there is no below, there is only above.

He found it inspirational in a way that only someone who has truly fallen would. It was only a matter of perspective, though if his opinion mattered he would say that he much preferred the perspective that a certain financial stability afforded as opposed to the one without. Plus, it had a gong in the bridge. He always lobbied for the gong.

“It needs a gong,” he would say authoritatively, listening to the playback. His three bandmates would turn to him and exclaim in unison “No gong!” He’d look hurt at first, then stick his tongue out at them.

“You’re just jealous, all of you. But that’s okay.”

That response usually garnered a hail of small objects aimed at him, until their long-suffering producer begged for mercy, and attention to the process at hand.

Winding through the neighborhoods containing the faux estates of the moneyed in Calabasas who played at being country squires with livestock and gardens, Jack had to chuckle at their naiveté. Anyone who had grown up in farm country, as he had, knew that there was no inherent romance in the life of the soil, that it was strictly an Americana brand of bullshit. He was glad that Pete only wanted five acres to ensure peace and quiet, not wax poetic about his pastoral homestead at the office. And he was pleased to see they had left the gate open for him. He had been too angry to return to the neighborhood to see what Sandy had picked as a replacement, though he knew could have left the original attached. But now, that was one thing which definitely belonged to him, as it sat rusting out in Murph’s backyard.

The front door was standing open, so he wandered in and closed it behind him, moving down the hallway that led straight to the kitchen. On the right, he could hear Pete hotly debating with someone over the phone from behind the closed door of his office. He found Eli chopping vegetables and listening to some audiobook – something to do with globalization – and she was unaware of his entrance until he was standing right on the other side of the counter, leaning forward and greeting her with the dazzling smile. She started and nearly sliced into her finger instead of the tomato on the cutting board.

“Jesus Christ, Perris, I almost chopped my fucking hand off!”

“The door was open.”

“Figures. If Pete expected me to answer the door you’d still be standing out there.”

“You’re just mean, Eli, you know that?”

“And you’re just used to every woman you know acting like a lovestruck teenager around you. Seems we both have attitude adjustments to make.” She turned to the refrigerator behind her and extracted a Molson Exel, which she handed to her guest. He twisted the top off with a practiced motion.

“So how have you been?” he asked, then took a long drink.

“How does that stuff taste?”

Jack paused to burp, grinning at Eli’s distasteful expression. “Like beer, mostly. That is, if you drink beer for the taste, which most people don’t.”

“I’m fine. How are you?” She added a handful of chopped tomatoes to a pot simmering on the stove.

“Okay. What are we having?”

“Spaghetti and stuffed peppers. Maybe some Eggplant Parmigiana if I get ambitious in the next hour.”

“No chili?!” Jack exclaimed, mock wailing.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got a king-sized plastic bowl of it you can take home to Murph. You don’t even have to return the bowl, just toss it when it’s empty.”

He sighed in relief, taking a seat at the kitchen table. “I’m so glad Pete married you.”

“I just wish he would have told me I was inheriting you as well.”

“Hey, since you guys moved out here I hardly see you anymore!”

“I think we’re better off that way,” she remarked, wryly, then grimaced at his wide-eyed hurt. “Oh don’t give me the puppy dog eyes, like I’m hurting your feelings!”

“But you are! You and Pete are my favorite couple!”

“Couple of what?” Pete asked, entering through the doorway on the other side of the oven.

“Suckers, most likely,” Eli said, opening the oven door to check on the stuffed peppers. The men smiled as a spicy smell filled the kitchen.

“Please say you’ll get ambitious,” Jack pleaded.

“What’s it worth to ya, Perris?” Eli asked, wiping her hands on a nearby dishtowel.

“What?”

“Oh no, baby, don’t bring this up again,” Pete said, tugging at her ponytail.

“What?!”

“Pete won’t let me invite Dex and Gordon for dinner, but he didn’t say anything about you calling them.”

“You want me to pimp for you? Shee-yit, like I would piss off my golf buddy!”

“And more importantly your legal counsel,” Pete commented, his tone mostly serious.

“What’s your higher priority? My cooking, or his membership at the country club?”

Jack sat back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. “Well shit, I gotta think about that one.”

Pete, rummaging in the fridge for a Pellegrino, snickered.

“Fuck you!” Eli declared. She leaned on the door of the refrigerator and scowled at Pete as he began laughing in earnest. “And fuck you too, not in the good way. Get the hell out of my kitchen, you long-haired cretins!” She made an outward waving motion with her hands, sending Pete and Jack out to the patio, chuckling.

“You’d better be careful. It’s my job to tease her, but you supposedly love her and everything.”

“There’s no ‘supposedly’ about it, my friend. I realize it’s a foreign concept to a bitter old man, but people still love each other, from time to time.” He set his bottle down on the table and pulled his ringing cell phone out of his pocket, examining the display.

“Jesus, it’s after seven already, doesn’t anyone knock off early these days?”

“It’s Miranda – she probably wants to remind me about something. I’ll listen to it later.”

Pete sat down in a nearby chair and lit a cigarette, blowing smoke outward over the railing. “So, did you work today?”

“Yeah, Brendan had me come in and listen to some of the demos. Then he wanted me to play to a click and I had to explain how I always screw up when I do that. That’s what got me fired from Larrabee in the first place, back in the day, not being able to play to a click.”

Pete chuckled. “I’m sure he didn’t care about that.”

“No, but I think he was disillusioned.” Jack was silent for a moment, and took a drink. “Hell, it happens every day, I don’t know why I’m depressed about it.”

“What happens?”

“Disillusioning people. You know I stopped for gas on the way out here and all the cashier could say was, ‘I can’t believe it!’ Like what, I can’t get gas for my own fucking car?”

“You know how it is – people always think celebrities never do anything for themselves.”

“Yeah but – there’s something more to it.”

“You’re just paranoid. So what else happened?”

“I played what he told me to play. He recorded everything and will use what he likes best. Then I went home and watched part of the Lakers game. Then I came here, so Murph could have his nieces over.”

“How old are they now?”

“Seven and ten. Cute girls. The youngest always calls me ‘Jack Sprat.’”

“She didn’t notice that belly you’ve got going on, eh?”

“Fuck you, I bet Eli has to get on top every night now, lest she be crushed to death.”

“And I blame her cooking, naturally.”

“You can’t blame it all on my cooking,” Eli called out from the kitchen. “It’s all that greasy crap you eat every day too!”

“Ah, busted!” Jack exclaimed, teasingly.

“It’s a sign of the Apocalypse!” Pete proclaimed, stubbing out his cigarette and reaching for his mineral water. “My wife double-teaming me with Jack Perris!”

He was awarded a giggle for his trouble and grinned at his friend. “See, she loves me.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

Pete’s phone rang again, and he let out with a string of expletives, then pressed a button and spoke into it.

“Miranda, Eli is going to kill me if you call during dinner again, what is it?!”

He then listened, sighing and shaking his head. “Okay, did you call them back? They went where? Oh, okay. Yeah, don’t worry, but let me know if they call again. Okay, yeah, good night.”

“What happened?”

“Eh, just a minor crisis with Nebulae.”

“That disc you gave me, it’s pretty good.”

“Yeah, it’s gonna blow up, it’s their time.”

Eli called them into dinner, and in the middle of the Eggplant Parmigiana Pete’s phone rang once again. Noticing that the number displayed was in the 909 area code, he figured it was Gordon, calling from his parents’ house.

“I thought you told that overpaid bimbo not to call during dinner anymore,” Eli sniped.

“It’s Gordon, I need to take it.”

She nodded, smiling slightly. Pete rose from the table and went into his office.

“So you make an exception for Nebulae, eh?” Jack asked.

“They’re nice guys,” Eli said, spearing a bite of eggplant from her plate.

“Yeah, they sound pretty good. I approve of their progressive leanings.”

“I’m sure they’ll be relieved to hear it.”

“What makes you think they’d accept a dinner invitation from me, anyway?”

“Because you’re Gordon’s favorite drummer, you oblivious dumbass!”

“Really? Wow.”

“And to think they want to hire you,” she commented, reaching for her glass of pomegranate juice.

“They what?”

“Uh, what?” He noticed her face had gone bright red and his first thought was Pete you bastard.

“What did you just say?”

“Say when?” Eli got up from the table, taking her half-full plate with her.

“Eli, c’mon, don’t fuck around with me!”

“Shut up, okay?!” she called from the sink, scraping her plate with a clatter of silverware. “You know what I said, I’m not going to repeat it.”

“Repeat what?” Pete asked, returning to the table. Jack noticed he looked slightly worried, but more curious.

“You motherfucker. Here you’re riding my ass about getting a job and yet you know about something a lot better than being a fucking studio monkey!”

Pete paled beneath his brown complexion and looked over at his wife.

“Elizabeth Abigale, what did you tell Jack?”

Jack bit his bottom lip to keep from laughing at the invocation of her full name. He was surprised Pete didn’t trot out the maiden name just for good measure.

“Not a goddamn thing!” Eli cried, throwing her plate into the sink. Luckily, as it was Corelle, it merely bounced off the ceramic sides and settled noisily on the bottom. She ran out of the room and up the stairs. Seconds later they heard a door slam.

“Thanks a lot, Perris. Now she probably won’t speak to me for the rest of the week.”

“Wait a minute, why am I getting blamed for this? You’re the one who’s been holding out on me!”

“And with good reason. You are nowhere near in good enough condition to join another band: emotionally, physically, or any other way you want to name.”

“I’m fine! I’d be even better if I could just get back to work!”

“I don’t think so. I know you believe you’re indestructible. All your friends - you remember when you used to have friends, right Jack? All those people would refer to you as ‘The God Jack Perris,’ but let me tell you something: you’re not even a minor deity now. You’re the only one I refrain from telling too much truth to because I don’t think you can handle it. But here’s the truth: you’re a wreck, man.”

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!” Jack had gotten up from the table, walking over to the patio door. He ran his hands through his hair and his forehead creased in frustration. Pete vaguely wondered if something was about to get broken.

“Oh but I do. That’s what I get paid for. You know I think you’re the best musician I’ve ever known, and you’re a pretty good guy too. I spare your feelings because I care about you. Believe me, I would love nothing more than for you to join Nebulae, but because I’d rather you both survive apart than implode together, it’s my opinion that you shouldn’t do this.”

There was no response for a very long time. In the interim, Pete finished the food on his plate – no sense in letting Eli’s cooking go to waste, after all – and cleaned the kitchen, hoping that might earn him a few brownie points. He was incapable of getting angry with his wife, and he figured he was going to have to talk to Jack at some point. Gordon was nearing desperation and it was better to attempt to mediate some sense into both sides rather than allow them to be carried away on the contraption of their own giddy mutual appreciation society. But now he could see that Jack, notoriously stubborn (because he was a Taurus, Miranda was always reminding him), was going to take matters into his own talented hands, most likely. As Pete was wrapping up the leftovers, Jack sat down and resumed eating.

“Does this mean you’re going to listen to reason?” he asked the other.

“You know how I feel about wasting food. And am I going to listen to reason? Maybe. Am I going to listen to you? No.”

“Well that figures.”


The only other comment Jack made to Pete before he left was to ask for Gordon’s phone number. Pete gave it to him, knowing that further arguments were useless. He then fished out the large plastic container labeled with his initials from the Maritas’ refrigerator and drove back to Los Angeles. The 101 was wide open and he wondered if he could break his Anaheim-to-West Hollywood land speed record he set last year: 17 minutes. But after seeing a Pigsicle on the side of the road, lecturing two young girls in an Eclipse, he figured tempting fate wouldn’t be a good idea on the eve of possible career salvation. Returning to Burbank, he rolled by the house and saw Cathy’s car parked out front. Cathy was Murph’s sister and she despised him, most likely due to the fact that Jack had once propositioned her, while drunk, to make it a threesome with Sandy in their hot tub. Women were weird about that sort of thing, and he figured that Cathy, having been raised around musicians, believed herself to be above the typical assignations afforded to the average Hollywood girl. In fact she had fled, marrying a Lebanese real estate magnate and settling in Etiwanda. Not wanting to cause any additional angst since moving in with Murph, he stayed out of Cathy’s way when she brought her daughters over to visit their only uncle.

Jack drove around, and dialed Terry’s number, letting the phone ring twice. When there was no callback after ten minutes, he figured the guy was out with his girlfriend, probably at a movie. The girl loved movies – they both figured that was the real reason why she was dating Terry – and sat through them all, rapt. Even the crappy ones.

Somehow he found himself on Hollywood Boulevard and figured what the hell, he might as well visit an old haunt. Finding a place to park near Birds turned out to be harder than he thought. Jack had never driven there before, which was why it was one of his favorite bars. He could just walk home, though sometimes he laid down in the landscaping by the front of the gate rather than negotiate the rocky pavement of the mansion’s driveway, provided he was even slightly sober (or as Jack liked to refer to it, “high-functioning drunk”) enough to remember the security code. The police had found him passed out in the bushes so often that they stopped trying to wake him up and called Sandy instead, warning her that he had to be moved in an hour or they’d haul him in for vagrancy. He remembered, once, coming to as Murph was dragging him up the driveway.

“What the fuck, man?!” he slurred.

“You’ve reached your limit with Sandy, man,” Murph informed him. “She refuses to help me carry your drunk ass back to the house anymore. The fact that you’re 6’5 and nearly 200 pounds doesn’t help matters.”

“Shit, stop already! You’re gonna make me hurl.”

Jack rolled over until he was on his hands and knees and attempted to stand, but the world was spinning too much. He lay down on his side and closed his eyes, only peripherally annoyed by a sharp piece of paving stone digging into his ribs. Murph walked back up to the house and as Jack lay there he wondered if Sandy found him unconscious would she even bother attempting CPR. Surely this had to be the bottom of something: collapsed in the driveway of one’s home, too sick to do anything but lie there and be bitten by ants, poked by rocks, burnt by the sun. But was it the bottom, was the question. Like many people, he figured that reaching the limit of a destructive addiction involved some cataclysmic event related to death, dismemberment, or disgrace, but he was becoming dimly aware that sometimes it was merely a moment of clarity which revealed a larger pattern at work.

However, in Jack’s case the other shoe would drop, eventually. It involved driving his fist through his guitar player’s living room wall (his right hand was miraculously unbroken, which lead Jack to wonder about the resilience of drywall in general), a four-car collision while driving someone else’s car, and an accompanying melee in which three other people (including a police officer) ended up with black eyes and/or broken noses.

Jack, of course, was unscathed.

Not that he was privy to the pronouncement of his lead singer (as Jack was sitting in a cell in Men’s Central downtown at the time) but he could have predicted what was said when the rest of the band received the news regarding the events of the previous evening.

”I don’t care if that fucker really is invincible, I’ll find a way to kill him if we have to cancel our appearance at Cochella.”

Naturally, the State decreed that the drinking had to stop, and so it did. When he was released from rehabilitation, though the band had promised they would wait for him, he was given a rather chilly reception upon his return. Sandy was already gone by that time, but the divorce filing didn’t surprise him when the papers were served on him that same week. It was as if four of the six people closest to him (not counting Murph and Pete) had colluded to continue the suffering. Jack supposed it was just, all things considered. Or at least he attempted to tell himself that, but in the end he didn’t really believe he had been that awful to anyone. Not truly awful, anyway. Well, except for that cop who tried to lift him off the ground by his hair. He hoped that fucker choked on his own blood while on the way to the hospital.


The interior of Birds was so dark the supermodels it was meant to entice stopped wearing high-heeled shoes so as not to twist an ankle or worse attempting to negotiate the main space or the dance floor. The bar, located at the back of the room, was especially murky and the bartenders relied on color-coding the liquor bottles with swatches of fluorescent tape to assist with filling drink orders.

Jack had never been recognized at Birds, though there had been times when he introduced himself by his full name, just to see what kind of reaction it would garner. So for those occasions when he preferred to get quietly shitfaced and talk basketball with his favorite bartender, it was the perfect place; moreso than the pub down the road (catering to the greater community of British expatriots in Hollywood) or the billiards place around the corner.

The head bouncer at the entrance regarded him with an eyebrow crooked curiously and waved him in. He took a seat on the right side of the bar, against the wall. Jake, his favorite, was on duty. It used to be, by the end of the night, they were calling each other by their own names. When you’re drunk, silly things like that can seem the epitome of hilarity.

“JP!” Jake exclaimed. He served his customer a glass of grapefruit juice without having to be asked.

“What’s up?” Jack asked, smiling.

“Lakers tanked in the fourth, that is what’s up. Sad man, just sad.”

“Really? They were ahead in the first half, they must have fallen apart.”

“Not until the fourth, I’m tellin’ ya. It’s like someone put lead in their asses. Even Kobe, he was struggling big time.”

“Ah well, there’s always the next game,” Jack commented, toasting Jake with his drink.

“You bet,” he answered, clinking his bottle of water against the glass. “So how are you?”

“Okay. Seen anyone interesting lately?”

“A former business associate, as it were. He must have had about five women with him at the time. Brought his own damn bottle of wine, too. Said all we served was, and I quote, ‘swill.’”

“Typical,” Jack said, laughing. “But you gotta figure, more than two women at a time, that’s just wasteful, man. I always told him that.”

They laughed. Jake left briefly to make drinks for other customers. When he returned he handed Jack a new glass of juice.

“Hey so, I guess you’re holding up okay, since the news?”

“What news?”

Even in the dark, Jack could tell Jake was blushing, attempting to decide if he should make things worse with an admission he figured his best customer already knew.

“C’mon dude, I’ve already heard one earth-shattering piece of news today, bring it on.”

“It’s just that. . .on the Aubergine website they posted that they’ve hired a new drummer.”

At that moment, it was as if the world had gone silent, or at least all sound had been replaced with a type of roaring white noise in Jack’s head. Intellectually he knew the day would come, but he had expected it to take years because the band would insist on hiring someone who could play just like Jack, and really, there wasn’t anyone who could, completely. But apparently. . .there was. His voice sounded waterlogged in his own ears as he asked the next logical question.

“So who did they hire?”

Jake raised an eyebrow at Jack’s even tone. But he replied neutrally, as he opened another bottle of water for himself.

“Some guy I’ve never heard of, but he was in a band called Nebulae.”

Jack paused, mid-drink. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No dude, it’s right there on the front page of the site.”

Jack set down the glass and began laughing, and it seemed he would never stop. Jake stared at him quizzically for a moment, but was too distracted by work to be concerned. When he returned again to the right side of the bar Jack had calmed down, mostly, but was still chucking and shaking his head from side to side.

“Okay, what’s so funny?”

“Dude, life is just truly bizarre sometimes, is all.”

“You got that right.” This pronouncement precipitated another toast.

“Hey, I’ll be back, okay? I gotta go make a phone call.”

“Don’t sweat it, it’s only fuckin’ grapefruit juice.”

Jack went out to LILIA and was distressed to notice another Porsche Turbo in front of her on the street, as if she had reproduced, amoeba-like. The other one was silver and bore a vanity plate which read #1 HITZ.

“By Spare’s left nut, it’s the Dickless Wonder,” Jack muttered. He briefly considered keying Sabbron’s car, but had more important things to do. He dialed the number Pete had given him.

“Hey Gordon? Yeah, it’s Jack Perris. No, no shit, man, truly! Look, Pete let it slip that you guys want me for the job, and I’m telling you right now, I’m totally behind it. We will make those guys sorry they were ever born, you get it? Good. Tell me where to meet you tomorrow and I’m there.”

He had Gordon wait to give him directions till he could fetch a pen and paper from LILIA’s glove compartment, but then he wrote them down dutifully.

“How’s noon sound? Two? Okay, sure. See you tomorrow.”

Jack disconnected the call and leaned against his darling, the wheels of his thought processes grinding gears. Then he looked up at the sky and made an obscure gesture with his left hand.

”Immortalis, immotus, impenetrabiilis.” he intoned. A couple walking past him on the sidewalk glanced over, but one look at his grim visage and they quickly turned their scrutiny to the ground.

Reclaiming his seat at the bar, he noticed the DJ was being cute by playing “Scouring Scowl,” an Aubergine song. Really cute, as it wasn’t anything one could even dance to. Jack extended his middle finger in the direction of the booth and finished his juice. Then he left his last $20 on the bar for Jake and departed, wondering in an abstract fashion if the neighbors would complain about a little late-night woodshedding. A legend shouldn’t show up cold to a gig, after all.