May-December Continuum

One summer night I was driving home in my car, not paying much attention to the other cars driving by me. In the lane next to me was a car of about four teenage girls, listening to music and having fun. The car started driving side by side with me, not slowing down or speeding up from me.

When we stopped by the light one of the girls leaned out of her window.
"HEY!" she smiled. "What's up! D'you wanna hang out?"
I just smiled back. If she knew how old I was she wouldn't have started up, or would she?
"Hey! C'MON!" she laughed. She was probably drunk or something, but when they realized I wasn't interested, they pulled away and drove off.

This made me think of when I was younger and it wasn't unusual to see a 16-year old girl date a 22-year old guy. It was a generally accepted thing in my high school; it didn't seem like a big deal.

Around the time this carload of cooze happened I read Pamela Des Barres' memoir I'm With The Band, where she writes page after page of dating older rock stars even though she was hovering 16 to 18 years of age. Her friends in The GTOs shared similar relationships, and Frank Zappa even responded with songs like Motherly Love ("...you know it doesn't bother me at all that you're only 18 years old..").

While the male is always characterized as being a lech it's always been a fact that many younger girls are attracted to older guys, sometimes much older guys. At what point did this become viewed as some sort of dirty, sinister thing?

Altogether now...THE INTERNET. That's right, ever since social networking as dictated to one and all what's acceptable and what's not acceptable, we now have to listen to bluenoses proclaim any man dating a young lady as filthy and that immortal Internet word, CREEPY. The Internet loves that word, that and "disturbing".

Listen, if a teenage girl wants to date a rich, old crone I couldn't care less. She's getting what she wants and you know he's getting what he wants and who the fuck is anybody to judge either of them? By the way, if an older woman with stacks of cash wanted to cruise me I'd definitely let her dock in my harbor. Why not?

I fucking hate the Internet. I now have to read how Kim Fowley, a great artist, is a "rapist" (nobody said shit when he was alive...interesting), Woody Allen, another devil, etc. Every man, thanks to the Internet is now a pervert. It's boring and I don't care.

It doesn't matter that Charlie Chaplin, Steve Cochran, and countless other stars married or dating far below their age group and their women didn't give a damn, either. When do you think this whole shame circus started? You guessed it, social networking.

Look, I'm not going to hang around some high school tomorrow looking for ladies to hustle, but I'm not going to flip out over their lack of maturity. And see the average American nightclub keep an underage girl from getting in...please, everything's permitted and it's a consensual thing. Just stay off Twitter and Facebook or they'll stone you like an Islamic tribunal.

Kingdom of Blather

Just the other day I had to drop something off by the UCLA campus. So many young, beautiful people walking around. I couldn’t help but notice that all the students walking around were either talking into their cell phones or staring into them, scrolling for something, anything, oblivious to what was in front of them. It was weird, like horses with blinders on.

Did anyone even stop to look at the people and buildings around them? Were they so absorbed in their own little world did they forget to lookup and listen to the sounds of the street? The really sad part of it all is that some of these people are artists and musicians, and they’re deliberately shutting themselves off from all the sights and sounds around them. Like horses with blinders on, only horses are more observant.

You cannot produce great art if you’re blocking everything out of your sight, and likewise cannot produce great music if you’re blocking out the sounds of the street. Where are your reference points, your influences? You haven’t got any. It just won’t happen.

Summer means fun, which means more concert going than I have in a long time, tinnitus be damned. Judy Henske will be performing for the first time in years, so that’s pretty special, then there’s PJ Harvey and her ten-piece band (!), and then The Kills are playing in early September in support of their new album, Ash & Ice. They’ll be playing at The Wiltern, a theater I used to go to when they actually showed movies. I saw Willard there in 1971. I’ll also make my annual pilgrimage to Irwindale Raceway, which I go to once a year.

Summer also means a new Andy Seven book release, and this year will be no exception. I’ll provide more details in a few weeks. I’m pretty happy I’ve been able to release four books in four years without delay. I have a lot more stuff on the pipeline, so there’s no sign of my stopping anytime soon.

Next month marks my one year anniversary of being on Facebook. I’ve sold more books since getting on that site, but in all honesty I’m not much of a fan. Some of the people who have sent me friend requests are fans of my old bands from the past, so that’s pretty cool, but then there are all these strange people.

There’s that one guy from England who always posts shit about killing all Muslims and then sends me invitations to play some infantile computer game for him. What a nut. Then there’s the guy who always posts ugly psychedelic fractal images on my wall. Who cares.

And then there’s an endless line of clowns who refuse to accept that the punk era is over and there are new bands that are better than their old punk heroes. Nothing says “I’m old” more than obsessing over The Ramones or The Stooges. “We refuse to listen to dubstep; that’s not REAL music”. Yes, it is. Grow up.

Sometimes I think Facebook is like The Tower of Babel where everybody’s talking and no one’s listening, and it all crumbles into fighting because nobody can agree on anything. Suck on that, you trendy atheists.

Stalking For Sale

Email #1 – January 11, 2015

Thank you for purchasing the iPod Touch during out fabulous money saving New Year’s Sale. We hope you enjoy the iPod Touch with its many convenient features at our insanely low prices. If you could take a few minutes out of your time and complete the attached survey so we can find out how we did, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, and when purchasing your next music player, video or audio component remember you can get it less from ZapTronics!

Yours truly,

The Gang at ZapTronics

Email #2 – February 8, 2015

Whoops! Looks like somebody forgot to take care of a few minor chores, like walking the dog, washing the dishes, and leaving a survey about their favorite music & movies vendor, ZapTronics! But hey, we’re patient guys and we’ll let it slide this time. Just make sure to fill out our short, handy-dandy survey attached to this email and shoot it back to us as soon as possible. Don’t overdo the compliments, though, our stock girl Marcie blushes easily! Well, gotta get back to unboxing some new iPod product for our big President’s Day sale, the lowest sale on the net and only from ZapTronics!

Yours truly,

The Gang at ZapTronics

Email #3 – March 17, 2015

We miss you! Did we do something wrong? Earlier this year you bought one of our best iPods at our money-saving lowest prices on the internet. Weren’t you pleased with the great iPod Touch you purchased from us? If our product didn’t meet with your expectations please let us know with the consumer survey attached. Help us grow and improve our service to you! Just take a few minutes out of your time and fill it out, and remember, don’t miss our fabulous Easter sale, only at ZapTronics!!!!

Sincerely,

The Gang at ZapTronics

Email #4 – April 3, 2015

After several requests for consumer feedback you have failed to respond. Might we remind you that when you purchase a product you enter an unwritten contract with the vendor to leave them feedback. Failure to do so is a breach of said contract and legal action might be taken, IF we were bad guys, but we’re not. So please reply to our FINAL request for feedback. Your timely response is greatly appreciated. Don’t forget – we got you that nice iPod Touch at super-low prices you can only get at ZapTronics.

Best Regards,

The Management of ZapTronics

P.S. Even Dave Grohl leaves feedback.

Email #5 – April 11, 2015

Take our word for it: Our business depends on your feedback. Without positive feedback we have no reputation, and with no reputation we get less and less customers coming to our fabulous on-line store. Are you trying to put us out of business? Do you want us to file for bankruptcy? Is that what you want? All that was required of you was to leave feedback for that cheap, fucking iPod which you bought WITHOUT PURCHASING A FUCKING WARRANTY, you penny-grinding son of a bitch!!!!! In closing, let us remind you that we have your phone number on file. Fill out the attached feedback and remit as soon as possible or you’ll be hearing from us….A LOT SOONER THAN YOU THINK!

Regards,

The Management of ZapTronics

Email #6 – April 19, 2015

So, you want to play hardball, asshole? Let me remind you that we have our sources of consumer data and saw your name under the topic called “ZAPTRONICS SUCKS!” on Google. Rest assured the message board that published these libelous lies will be taken down within the next twenty-four hours, and we have carefully captured every name that posted on that message board (including YOURS) and will immediately take legal action against all of you for slander, as well as undue hardship, especially in the matter of a female stock clerk who suffered irreparable stress and anxiety, forcing her to leave work early, following the message board posts which were carefully printed and distributed around the warehouse and corporate office, too, you people, all of you are vandals, buying our precious stock and then throwing bricks and lobbing Molotov cocktails at the hard-working retail enterprise called ZapTronics. You and your thug internet cronies will have the devil to pay for your slanderous doings. Mark my words.

Regards,

The Management of ZapTronics

Los Angeles Times – June 1, 2015

Adam Walfish, CEO of failing internet electronics retailer ZapTronics was indicted on several counts of income tax evasion, embezzlement of company funds, sexual harassment of a female stock clerk, as well as attempted identity theft of over 200 credit card numbers held by past customers. He faces a maximum sentence of thirty years in federal state prison if found guilty. Mr. Walfish refused to comment on these charges for this article.

The End Of A Non-Existent Era

It’s with sadness and no regrets that I’m here to announce the closing of my website andyseven.com, a website that I used for posting music and art event updates. I even tried to redesign the site but it never really shaped up into something I could get excited about!
I’m closing my site because I haven’t performed in years and have no plans to do so, and I also don’t produce a great deal of art in spite of the fact that the e-Gallery was the most popular page on my site. The least popular page was the Trash Can School gallery; no surprise in that my Trash Can School videos are the least viewed ones in my You Tube account. More time and energy has been spent on keeping up a weekly blog, book reviews for GoodReads and posting my artwork and photos on Flick*r.
Before I go, I just want to add that I'm keeping the domain address "andy seven.com", so the rock singer from Germany named Andy Seven can go eat shit and the British artist named Andy Seven can go eat shit, too. Do a Google search before you boost somebody's name, assholes.
Well, anyway, say a little prayer for the fabulous website that once was, and if you’re a true hardcore fan of my ravings there are several links to the right that’ll send you to more trash in a flash. Here, for the last time, are some images from the great website that once was.

Run, Little Mouse

If you’ve got a halfway decent attention span and can wait two weeks-plus to obtain your stuff, then the internet is your ideal shopping center. Everything’s cheaper and in better quality than the goods you’ll find in stores, because they haven’t been manhandled to death by annoying browsers. So without further ado, here’s a list of some of my favorite places to shop:

Leatherup.com : A great place to buy biker boots (see pictured), leather trousers, chaps, vests, gloves, and even hats. The prices are dirt cheap as leather goods go, and the folks at Leatherup send a 15% off coupon for your next order.

Tripadvisor.com : Tourists review hotels and cut through the hype so you get the real skinny on where the best hotels are. I like it when they post photographs of their favorite rooms and hotel features, like the swimming pools.

Goodreads.com : A mySpace-styled website where bookworms review their favorite books, and no book is too lowbrow for review. Pam Anderson bios are reviewed with the same fervor as a Shakespeare collection, cookbooks are cool, graphic novels, little kids books, teen vampire operas, etc. Started by Otis Chandler of the LA Times Chandlers, this website’s a winner all the way.

Rivithead.com : The best of the Hot Topic-styled websites where cool shoes and rocker clothes can be bought. The prices are not only the lowest I’ve seen, but goods are delivered in three working days at no extra charge (if you live in SoCal). I’ve bought many of my rocker shoes there.

Cooks.com : If you’re looking for a recipe to cook anything, you’ll find it here. This site’s pretty great, I’ve learned how to cook a lot of great dishes thanks to cooks.com. Members of the site contribute their own recipes, and the forums are pretty cool. The only recipe that didn’t work out was some bizarre compote I probably messed up, anyway. Corn starch???

bcdb.com : Big Cartoon Database, sort of the iMDB of cartoons. Every cartoon show ever made is listed, although some of the information is kinda sketchy, it still remains a good resource for finding out that cartoon show you have trouble remembering after all these years.

VitaMaker.com : Not to be confused with VitaPal.com, Supplements-To-Go.com or VitaDigest.com, these companies all sell hard-to-find vitamins and assorted supplements at extremely low prices. I buy several bottles of my favorite supplements at a shot and save a fortune. The price differences between a lot of these companies is pretty slim, so you can’t go wrong with any of them.

Abe.com : Before you get price gouged to death for a book by eBay, come here. They have rare books at excellent prices and are listed by the various bookstores that sell them. I’ve found quite a few rare pulp crime novels here that are out of print. This is a great site for those impossible to find books.

Creepy Classics.com : Every horror, science fiction, lucha libre, film noir, and Baby Boomer cartoon show ever released on DVD can be found here. When you run out of DVDs to buy for your trash culture friends go here and feast on the inexhaustible selection available.

Well, the list of stores you can run to on your little mouse is infinite: Newegg for computer stuff, Lush for sweet soaps, Diviniti for men’s and women’s jewelry and rings, Travelocity for travel, etc. Informational sites are even more out there, like my beloved Yelp, GaragePunk Hideout, Urban Dictionary, Edmunds (for car reviews), Find A Grave (directory of celebrity burial grounds), Home Theater Forum, eHow for instructions on EVERYTHING, Flickr, You Tube, DVD Help for advice on burning DVDs, and my favorite, the Downtown Skylines site. It’s funny reading everyone on the forum complaining about Los Angeles’ puny, underdeveloped skyline. So get on your little mouse and run, baby, run.

World Wide Web: The New Idiot Box

I'm on vacation from the internet for a week. I need one, I'm tired of the whole business, don't you get tired of it all? I'm going to drink quite a bit and remember that books will always be your greatest entertainment, art too. Modern films are your enemy, they're made by people that hate you. Seriously. The film industry should be destroyed ASAP. D. W. Griffith and Cecil B. De Mille told me so in a dream last night. So, anyway, I'm on vacation.

P.S. While you're reading this listen to "The Show Must Go On" by Three Dog Night.

Hungry For A Real Fine Guy Like Me: Marklindsay.com

Eight years ago I bought all the Paul Revere & The Raiders CDs reissued on Sundazed Records, and they were brilliant. They rocked hard and looked like drunken Revolutionary War dudes that dumped all that tea into the Boston Harbor. Like many bands of their time they made the effortless transition from garage rock demons to psych golden gods. Great stuff, whether it was “Spirit of 67” or “Hard ‘N Heavy”. Of course, listening to the music wasn’t enough. I registered onto the Mark Lindsay website and the fun, just like Elvis, quickly left the building.

To call Mark Lindsay one of the most narcissistic, control freak rock singers of all time would do him a grave injustice. His controlling and rampant ego would turn Beyonce or David Lee Roth into paragons of modesty. After leaving his cheesy website it took me a year to listen to his records all over again, it was that bad. We’ll talk about Dave Clark from the Dave Clark Five later, that’s another horror story.

One of the first things you do at a website is log on to the Message Board so you can exchange your views on the Raiders with your fellow fans. Ohmygod, I was the only guy on the board and easily the only person under 40. Shit, what a nightmare. Picture if you will a bunch of angry Jesus Freak housewives from the corn belt who think that 16 Magazine is still in circulation with Sajid Khan and Donna Loren on the cover.
Half the threads were them daydreaming aloud about being alone with Mark Lindsay serenading them in various forms of dress and undress. The administrator to the website was Mrs. Mark Lindsay, and unlike most website admins was not terribly diplomatic. You could almost imagine her seething behind her computer monitor reading all these horny posts about her man nude singing “Hungry” or “Mr. Sun, Mr. Moon” to them.

Since I was an interloper (male) every post I typed was met with condescension, kind of like DVD Talk. After letting their guard down 3 months later they calmed down and warned me of certain rules: what you can’t discuss on the Mark Lindsay Chat Room, i.e. specific band members Mr. Lindsay hates (Harpo, Fang, Smitty, Joe Jr.). Apparently he hates Paul Revere too, but since he’s the fucking leader of the group there’s no turning around that corner.

One of the power moms posted, “Wow, it would be great if I could get a video of the Raiders on Happening ‘67”. I posted back, “Oh, I have a copy of an episode on video, send me your address and I’ll be happy to shoot a copy off to you”. Uh-oh!
I got an e-mail that night from Mrs. Lindsay: “You will never, EVER, discuss unauthorized material of the Raiders, for sale or for trade, on the board again or you will be removed from the site”. If Mark couldn’t make a dime off the video it was forbidden.

The man himself barely made an appearance at his own website, and when he did it was to post his incredibly exciting life:

“My brand new Jaguar purrs like a kitten. I looooove my fast cars!”

“Love my house in Kawauii. The koi pond rocks and after I’m done with my yoga I settle down for some fine dining!”

“Buy my new record on my vanity label. I sing all the old standards, just like Rod Stewart. I dedicate it to “Casablanca” and I’m dressed just like Bogie on the cover!” (Lindsay still wearing zany outfits 40 years later.)

There was hardly any recognition of his fans, just Mr. Wonderful occasionally popping in to tell the Wal-Mart witches that he was living a Hawaiian idyll they’ll never experience. What a dick.

The few pictures showing Lindsay at his present state showed his elfin features obscured behind a magician’s goatee and sunglasses dark enough to make Howard Stern jealous.

What finally made me quit the board? Combined with Mark Lindsay’s arrogance and the Dragon Lady playing rock police, some desperately dumb housewife posted, “The reason so many Jews died in the concentration camps is because they didn’t accept Jesus as their Lord and savior”. As someone who’s lost countless relatives that died there I thought I was going to lose my mind. Nobody contested her idiotic statement. These people are fucking idiots, I thought, and I left the website, never to return.

And I’m sure Harpo, Fang, Smitty, and Joe Jr. were dying to ask me “What took you so long?”

POSTSCRIPT: Since I got off the site Lindsay has moved from his glamour pad in Hawaii to Portland, Oregon and got a job DJing on a radio show. Sounds like all the money ran out, ha! And the Menopause Message Board is gone, daddy, gone. Happy endings are the best.