Lou Reed is the Answer

(A Play in One Act)

Curtain opens, revealing KATY and DOCTOR BELLOQ naked on a queen-sized bed. They are both drunk or stoned or tired or horny, or (more likely) some combination of all four. Books and compact discs are strewn across the queen-sized bed, on the nightstand next to the queen-sized bed, and on the floor all around the queen-sized bed.

A clock on the nightstand reads '10:08 P.M.'

A phone rings. The ring tone is the Velvet Underground song, ‘Sister Ray.’

The ringing of the phone makes KATY jump. She searches for the phone. She finds the phone and rubs her eyes to read the caller I.D.

KATY:             Oh shit. It’s Dana. It’s my ex. I have the girls this weekend. I have to answer this.

KATY slaps at her cheeks to sober herself up. She answers the phone on speaker mode.

KATY:             […]

DANA:            Hello?

KATY:             (suddenly and with an excess of bluster) Hello-o-o-o!

DOCTOR BELLOQ scrunches up her face and points downward, indicating that KATY should take it down a notch.

DANA:            Um, are you okay? Can you talk?

KATY:             (groggily, head bobbing, apparently falling asleep again already) Uh huh.

DANA:            O-o-o-okay… Well, I was calling about Angela’s science project.

KATY:             Angela’s science project.

KATY looks over at DOCTOR BELLOQ. DOCTOR BELLOQ shrugs.

DANA:            Yes.

KATY:             Of course! Angela’s science project. It’s done.

DANA:            That’s great, ‘cause it’s due in the morning.

KATY:             Yeah. Yeah. She was finishing it up and testing it out when I got home from work tonight.

DANA:            That’s great!

KATY:             Yep.

DOCTOR BELLOQ gives KATY a thumbs-up of approval before passing back out.

KATY also appears to pass out.

DANA:            Okay. So-o-o… What did she end up doing for her project? What was it?

KATY and DOCTOR BELLOQ remain passed out on the queen-sized bed.

DANA:            Hello?

Long pause.

DANA:            (much louder now) Hello? Katy? What was it?

KATY:             (snapping out of her stupor suddenly) Oh, you know… Um, Lou Reed!

DANA:            (pause)Angela’s science project was Lou Reed?

DOCTOR BELLOQ waves her hands at KATY desperately, mouthing the word “No.”

KATY:             (shrugging at DOCTOR BELLOQ, shaking her head) Yeah.

DANA:            (exhaling loudly into phone) How is… How is Lou Reed a science project, Katy?

KATY:             Oh, you know…

DANA:            No, I don’t know, Katy.

KATY:             You know… She got, like, a leather jacket… and a pair of wings, and…

DANA:            What was the experiment part?

KATY:             The wings…

DOCTOR BELLOQ finds a compact disc on the bed and shows it to KATY.

KATY:          …and ‘Metal Machine Music.’ ‘Metal Machine Music’  was pretty experimental.

The sound of DANA sucking at her teeth can be heard through the phone.

DANA:        And what was the idea or the question behind this project? What was the problem that Angela’s science project was seeking to answer or solve?

KATY:             You know… If it is possible to do that?

DANA:            (pause) You mean is it possible for her to wear a leather jacket and wings.

KATY:             Yes. That.

DANA:            And what was her conclusion?

KATY:             It’s possible!

DANA:            (sucking at her teeth again) Well, that’s… That’s a bold step forward for science, Katy. I’m glad that you-

KATY:             (interrupting and raising a fist in victory) Go science!

KATY hangs the phone up on DANA.

KATY:             Okay! I think that went well.

DOCTOR BELLOQ opens her eyes again, looks around groggily.

DOCTOR BELLOQ:             Kates, I just had this weird-ass dream that your ex called you about some science project.

KATY passes out, falls over onto her pillow.

DOCTOR BELLOQ shrugs, rolls over, and falls asleep.

Curtain.

My Favorite Faces

And she walked up – Rachel, I mean, and she’s my daughter – and she put her hands right up on my face, like one on either cheek, and she looked me dead in the eyes.

She said, “You sort of look like Bette Davis.”

And I thought, “Okay.”  I thought, “This is something I can live with. There are a lot worse things a nine year old can tell you than you look like than Bette Davis.”

She said, “Or Steve Buscemi. Yeah.”  She said, “You look like a cross between Bette Davis and Steve Buscemi.”

And you know how sometimes somebody says something to you – just some off-the-cuff remark or random thought – and you just know that you’re going to remember it twenty years from now? Like you’re going to be sitting on your death bed and you’re going to be going over your life and this is going to be one of the two dozen or so things you can recall?

For the rest of my life, every time I look in a mirror, I am going to think Bette Davis.

…Or Steve Buscemi…

…Or I’m going to think Bette Davis and Steve Buscemi…

Thank God she doesn’t know who Peter Lorre is.

So that got me thinking about faces and thinking about beauty, and then I read this study the other day, and it turns out that scientists? They know. They’ve got it all mapped out, this facial beauty thing. They know the proportions. They know the shapes. They know the symmetry behind the whole thing.

They know what we like and they know why we like it.

Florence Colgate,
possessor of the perfect face.

They know Florence Colgate has the perfect female face. This is the face that males see and want to breed with. Which is really what the whole beauty thing is about, anyway. Breeding, I mean. Fitness for reproduction.

But I am generally attracted to women and – with all due respect to Ms. Florence Colgate – if I saw that face coming down the street, and then it went away, and then five minutes later walked back past me, I’m not sure I’d remember having seen it the first time.

I admit that might not be a deal breaker for human males seeking a mating partner. Hell, it might even be a plus.

Maybe I’m just weird. I am probably weird, what with the unnatural sexual proclivities and all that abominating.

But I can remember my thinking for a few years back now and ever since I can remember, I have been drawn to interesting faces. Not healthy faces. Not symmetrical faces. Not perfect faces of the sort that scientists would pick out with their fancy computer programs.

Interesting faces. Faces like puzzles. Faces that make you wonder what is going on inside, behind the eyes. How did they get that way? How the hell’d they grow that thing?

Young Lou... and old. 

Lou Reed looks like he might have some sort of congenital mental disorder and I find his face endlessly fascinating. I could stare at him all day if most his music weren’t so bad.

If an art student painted a picture of a person with a face like Patti Smith, his instructor would immediately fail him. She looks like something terrible happened to her during the night.

Sometimes Tom Waits looks like he has fetal alcohol syndrome.

So does Neil Young.

And Polly Jean Harvey looks like a Muppet and young Roger Waters looked like an alien doing a shitty job at trying to pass himself off as a human. Phillip Glass looks like a fish and Samuel Beckett always looked (to me, at any rate) as though he’d had brain surgery that got botched and left him… you know, left him a little bit “off”, as they say.

But these people have the greatest faces I have ever seen. I take one glance at them and I’ll never forget them. Any of them. I take one glance at them and I want to know more.

Young Patti Smith... and old.

Now, no one would look like any of these people on purpose, villagers with torches being what they are. Nobody walks into their barber let alone their plastic surgeon and says, “Yeah, I want to look like Lou Reed. Can you make my eyes go in two different directions at the same time?”

And who else, who else? Who am I missing?

How about Bette Davis and Steve Buscemi?

Life is too short to spend drooling over a generic department store mannequin.

Maybe I’m just rationalizing my own freakiness…

In Defense of ‘Lulu’

Some music is hated.

There is music that is bad – meritless, unoriginal, unlistenable claptrap bad – but there exists much bad music that is beloved.

But some music is genuinely hated.

Like this “Lulu” album thing I’ve been reading about. It is a brand spanking new collaboration between Lou Reed and Metallica. A concept album, no less. A double-length concept album about self-loathing, self-abuse, and assorted miseries.

For the past month or so, the internet has been abuzz about “Lulu.” “Lulu” is hated. It was hated before anyone’d heard a note of it. It is hated on principle. It is hated viscerally. When somebody gets indigestion or loses the big account at work, they blame “Lulu.” They blame “Lulu,” and then they come back home and they get on Amazon and they kick it in the teeth a few more times.

“Lulu” has transformed negative record reviewing into a full-contact competitive sport.

“Metallica finally found a way to keep people from illegally downloading their music,” someone over here says.

“Lulu is a complete failure on every tangible and intangible level of its existence,” says this review.

“Reed mutter[s] the title over and over as if he was rudely woken up and shoved in front of a live microphone,” says this one over here.

And Pitchfork – oh, dear hipster Pitchfork – says “Lulu” has one too many good moments to be the worst album of all time, thus failing even as a failure.

Yeah, I’ve listened to “Lulu.” I even bought “Lulu.” Paid money for it. Online, of course: There was no way I was going to be seen walking up to a cash register with that thing.

Now, I should tell you, I am a fan of Lou Reed. I have listened to Lou Reed all of my life.

I am a fan of how unlikable he is. How difficult. Inconsistent.

I am a fan of his ugly imagery.

I am even fan of his clunky lyrics. My favorite Lou Reed album ever begins with the line, “Life’s like a mayonnaise soda.” That’s pretty clunky!

But as best as I can discern, when it comes to “Lulu,” the criticism centers around only about four things:

     1.     The awkward mismatch between Lou Reed and Metallica;

     2.     The songs (both lyrics and melodies);

     3.     The musicianship; and

     4.     The vocals.

Other than that, there does not seem to be much trouble with “Lulu,” really. Just those four minor things.

Damn you to Hell, Hal Willner.

Me, I blame Hal Willner. He produced “Lulu.” Hal Willner is a terrible producer. Just awful.

For years now, Hal Willner has produced novelty projects that look great on paper but sound awful in execution.

Like this: The last time Hal Willner produced a Lou Reed album, it turned out to be a concept album about Edgar Allen Poe that included actor Steve Buscemi doing a sleazy lounge act. And it sounds even worse than what you’d imagine.

The typical Hal Willner production uses this sort of reasoning: “Hey! Wouldn’t it be weird if we released an album of Leonard Cohen singing Limp Bizkit songs?”

So Hal Willner projects are bad. They are bad, but they are not normally hated.

Hal Willner projects really ought to be hated. I mean, divine justice and all that jazz…

The thing is, on “Lulu,” Lou Reed himself does okay. I mean, he does as well as can be expected. Maybe even better than can be expected. The guy is one hundred and seventy-four years old. I have seen surprisingly compelling evidence that Lou Reed’s major organ systems dissolved back in 1971. It seems probable that he is a zombie.

But despite that, Lou Reed bolts past the starting gate on “Lulu” in full clunky Lou Reed mode, moaning, “I would cut my legs and tits off / When I think of Boris Karloff.”

That’s pretty clunky! That’s Lou Reed!

In other places, “Lulu” distinguishes itself as the queasy Beatnik feel-bad album of the season. Like on “Dragon,” where he keeps repeating something about a “Kotex jukebox.” Or on “Pumping Blood,” where he whines, “I will swallow your sharpest cutter / Like a colored man’s dick.”

Oh. Yeah. I forgot to mention before: “Lulu” is mostly sung in first person from the perspective of a woman. Awkward…

I would imagine all this makes “Lulu” look pretty awful to anyone who did not already think “Lulu” was pretty awful. And don’t get me wrong: “Lulu” is pretty awful. But what’s with all this hatred? Can’t we all just get along?

The real problem with “Lulu” – other than Hal Willner and the Kotex jukebox thing and Lou Reed’s zombie state and the first person feminine perspective and the aimless songs averaging about nine minutes a piece – is Metallica. And it’s not even Metallica so much as it is James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, specifically.

James and Lars are running around right now – even as I type these words – bragging to the music press that “Lulu” is chock full of first studio takes. I believe them. It sounds like first studio takes. Hetfield’s backing vocals on “Lulu” make Lou Reed’s voice sound like Pavarotti or Edith Piaf or Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan in comparison. And Lars Ulrich is in beginner-league drumfills-a-go-go mode every time the album lurches into ad-libbed abstractness, which is quite a lot.

Lou Reed at the age of 12. 

Mostly, though, it comes down to this: Lou Reed is not for everyone. In fact, Lou Reed might not be for anyone. His discography is best appreciated in theory and not actually experienced, like a secret Venus de Milo sculpted from bovine excrement.

But right now, we’re seeing Metallica fans – all 200 million of them – bitching about a Lou Reed collaboration.

And that is a bit like JK Rowling and William Burroughs writing a novel together and then unleashing Rowling fans to complain about how many ellipses there are… and erotic hangings… and Johnny waking up in Ali’s body… It’s like a hypothetical David Lynch-directed “Twilight” movie being attacked by 14-year old girls for having a non-linear plot.

So I stand alone. Over here.

Yes, me. Right here. When it comes to “Lulu,” I will stand alone. I will spit into the wind. I will defy your conventional wisdom.

I will read the reviews… Listen to the album again…

And I will remain defiant.

Against all odds and against all logic and against good taste and better judgment, I will defiantly award Lou Reed and Metallica’s “Lulu” album an insane TWO WHOLE STARS (out of a possible five).

And that’s a solid D grade.

Yeah, I said it.

Don’t be a hater.