Mama's Got a Mixed Bag

Taylor and his effing blog! First, and this is not hard feelings – just hard truth – he’s a writer like I’m Cyndi Lauper. I mean I’ve written a couple of songs and I was front woman for a band but…you get my point. Actually, I’m a lot closer to being Cyndi than he is to being any kind of writer.

So Taylor, like the rest of the world (including me, right?) has a blog. And, nasty little worm that he is, he decides he’s going to “get back at me” for what happened to Simon – which was all Simon’s fault as even you know and has totally nothing to do with me. Someone who was at the Midsommer Night concert posted some pictures and he found them. There was one where…okay, it had been kind of chilly and dampish, which I hear is typical for Reykjavik that time of year, so during the day I’d stopped at the knitting shop and picked up some things. A pair of knitted wristlets…except you can call them “wristlets” if they go up to your elbow like these did…whatever, these elbow fingerless glove things and a stripey cap that had two points ending in tassels, and this a long skinny scarf with these tufts of something sticking up. I had them on with a t-shirt and cargo pants and my old turquoise Uggs and, there’s no way around it, I looked like Bjork’s mother. I did. And in this photo, I’m on stage with Stu and you can tell I’m doing the goofy shout-out parts at the end of “Hard to Be a Girl”. And Taylor sticks up this photo with the headline “Raisin Bran” and a totally vicious rant about “rocking chair rocker Tash Loving.” Incoherent, but so ugly.

It wouldn’t matter except that he somehow managed to get it re-posted by some “Remembering CBGB” blogger who, unlike Taylor, actual has readers. Someone in Pozzo’s office saw it there and passed it to him, and he showed it to Vlad who I guess after all never forgave me for turning him down that time after Robbie died so Vlad – with lots of phony LOLs all over it – forwarded it to me. Now instead of remembering what a great night that was, all I can do is wonder how many people there were laughing at me. I want to hit someone. Or cry.

I’d be feeling totally miserable except that Horst came by and we went for a walk. He’s a really sweet guy. The first time he came by after the whole Simon thing, to see if I was okay (which you have to agree was pretty damned sweet), it was one of my afternoons to work the tasting room for Peter & Leonie and I brought him along to Green Mountain. He latched onto Peter for the rest of the day, and hung around after closing and came up to the house for dinner. Turns out his dream is to open a winery of his own. I apologize for all the clichés I ever thought about wrestlers. I mean, apart from the gentle giant thing, he’s got a degree from Cornell Ag, an MBA from Columbia and spent the last two years studying with Coppola at his vineyard in California. Obviously he and Peter got on like best buds for life, so he decided to stay in the area for a couple more weeks to come by and tap his brain some more. It’s been a lot of fun, for all of us.

So just after I got Vlad’s “funny” FYI, there was a knock at the door and it was Horst. I told him all about it. Good thing about professional wrestler’s – they know what it feels like to be the butt of a joke. He let me kick & fuss for while. Then, since it had decided not to rain after all (at least not yet; any minute now and then, if you can believe the weather reports, for days) we hopped on his bike to go to the beach for a walk. On the way, we stopped by the pizza place for ices, since it was closest. He hadn’t seen the strip before; not exactly where I think of taking visiting celebrities. His whole face lit up when he saw it, boarded up shops and all. He said it reminded him of where he grew up in Michigan. It was so long since he’d been in a “regular place;” he actually thanked me for bringing him. We talked a lot about growing up in the suburbs today. You can get nostalgic over the strangest things.

I’ve only known Horst a couple of weeks, but I’m going to miss him when he leaves on Thursday. On the bright side, Jeff’s back home and he’s coming out this weekend. Doesn’t matter if it pours – poor guy just needs to unwind and catch his breath. Four whole months he’s had to be out there in Manila, slaving round. Whatever they pay him, they don’t pay him enough, that’s what I think.

It never rains but it pours. Okay, right now it just never rains. It's been a steambath for two weeks already, the last couple of days worst of all. I'm living on iceberg lettuce and cucumber with thousand island dressing. I know, I know. But since I was a kid, that's what I crave when it hits 100. That and creamsicles, which for some reason feel colder than either vanilla ice cream or orange sherbet. Huh?

I'm getting distracted from the real thing I wanted to talk about, which was the huge uproar last weekend out in Bridgehampton. So I mentioned in my last post how Corey Lake was renting the house all summer. Well, he had a retreat going last week that was ending with a big open houseparty on the 4th. I was actually invited, but it depresses me to see the house so I said no and went to the barbecue Ed & Leonie were having at the winery, which was such a nice time and also turned out to be a damned good thing.

According to Corey who told Maggs who of course called me immediately, which was the only reason I knew what was going on when that reporter from NBC was sticking a mike under my nose, that one who lives out here and is always right on the spot when anything happens. According to Corey, then, what happened was that they'd just finished sun salutations and were meditating before breakfast when they heard a scream from the kitchen. The cook, who's some vegan Johnson Wales dropout who looks like she'd fall over in a stiff breeze, at least according to Maggs who got it from a friend who was there a couple of weeks ago, she comes running into the dining room shrieking her head off about a crazy-looking man who burst into kitchen and was going through the refrigerator. Well it happened that one of the retreaters (retreatees?) was Horst Morgenstern, who used to be "The Morningstar" for the WTF, so he and Corey, who picked up the bread knife from the table, go out to the kitchen and there's Simon. Gary's son Simon. Standing in front of the refrigerator with the door wide open, screaming "why isn't there any bacon!" and throwing food all over the floor. Morningstar wrestled him to the floor (I don't know what Corey thought he was going to do with a bread knife) and when he wouldn't quiet down but kept on screaming about "my house" and "that bitch whore," they tied him up with the sash from Corey's Happi coat and called the cops.

Apparently the girlfriend finally dumped him for some guy who had a better father. Simon never put a dime away all those years of course, and now he hasn't got a place to live, so in his twisted spoiled little mind, he decided to come "home" to the Hamptons. One of the women at the retreat said she'd noticed him sneaking around the garden the day before and the cops found some Subway wrappers and a gym bag in the wind break, so they think he must have been sleeping there. When he calmed down at the station, he told the social worker that I stole his father's money and was keeping it from him. I got this directly from the social worker, a very nice young man who showed up at my door like Joan of Arc and who had to have a tour of this luxurious Armpit mansion and a personal call with my own lawyer before he would believe my side of the story. But then he apologized very sweetly and suggested I'd maybe want to file a restraining order.

They tracked down Taylor in some town in Istria, which apparently is where he is now, as Simon’s next of kin, and Taylor called Sandy, their mother, who lives in a condo in Arizona with her 80 year old husband. Corey says as long as somebody comes to pick him up and get him far out of town, he won't press charges. I think it was kind of exciting for Corey, plus there was all that free publicity he got on the news. It didn't do Morgenstern any harm either. Maggs says Ken saw him interviewed and is thinking of testing him for a part in a 40-part Viking miniseries that he’s developing for HBO. I guess everyone’s happy except for Simon. I could almost feel sorry for him, except that he’s a total spoiled shit.

So that was what we had for fireworks for 4^th of July.

I have to go take another cold shower. The AC units in this house are pretty old and not all that great. I’m wondering how hard it would be to put in a few ceiling fans.