I’m not generally a fan of anything which uses the expression “white trash” because I’ve lived in the American South. Pig ignorant people there will generally excuse racist nonsense by explaining that they also have issues with “white trash” like being bigoted on the basis of class, as well as race, is somehow more reasonable than being merely racist alone.

Due to the humorous intent of the occasion, I made an exception, however, for Miss Kitty’s White Trash Ball at Dragonfly this past weekend and, damn, but I had a good time. My homeboy Lange and I hit the Cat and Fiddle beforehand. Having been a fisherman in Alaska after art school (yes, like the TV show), Lange is not such a big fan of crab and raw fish, so I felt it was high time I chose a restaurant with cooked non-seafood items on the menu. The Cat and Fiddle is a music industry hang which bills itself as an English pub in Hollywood, although I am personally partial to the New Orleans fare like their uber-buttery crab fingers. In fact, I ate brussel sprouts and crab fingers and I was thinking that this would be a kinda healthy meal without the butter and Stella Artois. Kind of representative of Los Angeles really, something which looks healthy on the surface, but something just underneath which could probably kill you. Fun fact to know and share: Parts of Casablanca were filmed at the Cat and Fiddle location. When I first saw Casablanca as a teenager, Humphrey Bogart’s Rick was not pretty enough for my taste, but, these days, I have enough pretty in my world that I’m more impressed by force of personality and strength of character.

Major Strasser: What is your nationality?
Rick: I’m a drunkard.
Captain Renault: That makes Rick a citizen of the world.

Despite my best efforts to alternate with water, the Stella theme continued at the Dragonfly where my friends kept plying me with high quality beer and low quality water. Given a choice between sparkling Voss and Stella, I will generally choose the water over the beer. Given a choice between Stella Artois and flat Arrowhead, the beer is going to win most of the time. I would like to particularly point the finger at Lange and Blue Blood hottie Joel Awesome for enabling my wayward ways. When Scar called Lange an enabler, totally independent of having heard me call him one, he claimed not to know the meaning of the word. I am skeptical on this point, but was happy to give him the benefit of my otherwise useless over-education.

The really cool thing about the evening was that people dressed really tongue-in-cheek. Instead of being all doing their little turn on the catwalk (on the catwalk, yeah, on the catwalk), everyone was dressed silly and laughing and having a good time. The only difficulty was recognising everyone I know under tooth black or without makeup. Perish, who I once shared a house with for a month, generally dresses like the demon prince of elfland (or at least a fetish-y goth boi) so I didn’t recognize him at all in his faux beard and flannel and jeans. Embarrassingly enough, not even when he hugged me and said hello. I was all faking like how’s it going and he totally knew and told me who was under that hair. I was very entertained. The winners of the costume contest were a gentleman dressed as a farmer with a date dressed like a sheep. Ya gotta love any event which involves sheep-fucking. My costume was blue eyeshadow and a limited edition Alabama stagehand T-shirt I got for working for the band about a million years ago, in a land far far from here. Although I know the band has had a couple dozen #1 hit songs, Alabama fans who are impressed by my collectible T-shirt will be less impressed when they find out that my best guess at what a song by Alabama might be was “Sweet Home Alabama” which, according to the interwebs, is actually a Lynard Skynard ditty. (I also kind of think Alabama has done a song for Sesame Street.) That’ll learn me not to guess.

My knowledge of things a person could put in her cunt is far more extensive than my knowledge of Southern fried rock and country music. Thus, I was pleased to impress my friends when a gentleman named Craig wandered in wearing little besides a towel and a gigantic fake cock. “Ask him if that is the Dick Rambone,” I told Scar. “What?” she said. “Ask him if that is the Dick Rambone.” “Is that, uhm, the Dick Rambone?” Indeed it was the dildo modeled on legendary 80’s pornstar Dick Rambone. Dick Rambone has one of the largest cocks ever to appear in porn, so the Dick Rambone plastic cock has little real world application. I used to manage an adult boutique where I often fantasized about beating shoplifters (and a prudish wife who came in to complain about her husband’s female-orgasm-inducing-oriented purchases) with our larger plastic appliances. Apparently the knowledge from that particular weird job has stuck with me better than the knowledge from my gig as a stagehand for Alabama.

Other Blue Blood hotties in attendance included Kitty Von Klau, Damon Knight, Tassy Pink, and Nikki 666, who told me that her outfit, like mine, was just kinda what she would normally wear to kick around work, as opposed to go out on the town. I’m only posting a small gallery of pictures from the festivities because, for some reason, most of my photos appear to just be of people’s asses. Also of people’s asses being spanked. One of the great truths of life is that sometimes what looks hot as fuck in photos is sorta off in person and sometimes a really hot live sex show watched while tipsy doesn’t totally translate to snapshots. Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, people with appealing and frequently visible asses tend to walk into whichever one I’m at.

A few weeks back, my good friend TC, lead singer of Satiate and Blue Blood writer, celebrated her birthday. TC is into her Americana, so the theme of the evening was bowling and Pabst Blue Ribbon (and later tittays, tittays, tittays.) We started off the evening at Lucky Strike Lanes. The bowling alley at the flailing Hollywood and Highland mall advertises itself as upscale and I generally end up there fairly regularly when various porn companies rent out the VIP for parties. The teams were roughly divided along band lines of Satiate versus Dead Girls Corporation. I played on the birthday girl’s team and we were utterly pasted by DGC. In my defense, although I do not do an approach, I am not a terrible bowler, but Lucky Strike Lanes has an awful ball selection on a weekend night and their lanes are non-standard length and a bunch of their machinery seems oddly timed. Not in my defense, the other team also had to contend with the same sucky ball selection and non-standard lane length and oddly timed machinery. I swear all the balls seemed like they were made for giant steroid users with baby hands, like sixteen pound balls only a little kid could get a finger spread in. At one point, I accidentally threw one of the balls our lane was using when the system was actually changing pins and my ball went down the middle of the lane, got stopped by the pin-sweeper, and just kind of hung out there. I finally went up the lane to retrieve it. To my friends’ amusement and the bowling alley personnel’s annoyance. I can’t help it if I’m a DIY problem-solver.

Continuing my beer-related sports activities for the night, we all went across the street to Powerhouse afterwards. Powerhouse has electronic dart boards. There is something tremendously and poignantly Hollywood about producing something as basic as a darts game for hole-in-the-wall bars as a big budget extravaganza with special effects. I am not a terrible bowler, but I have always been a wretchedly bad darts player and I haven’t played in years. I am undaunted by fear of failure, so I decide to have a go at darts. Throwing darts into cork board is difficult. Throwing darts into a dart board structured like a Lite Brite is even more difficult. The only plus being that, if you suck so bad that you don’t hit the dart board at all, it does not count as a turn and you get to keep playing until you sink a dart into one of the holes and it registers electronically. So I am determinedly attempting to connect darts with the electronic dartboard. Pretty soon, it seems like most of the bar is watching me play darts. Badly. Probably because, if they were going to lose an eye, they wanted to see their blindness coming. Finally, a cute boy named Deacon comes up to me and starts to say, “I’m only saying this because I work here . . .” At this point, I kind of expect him to tell me to, for the love of all that is holy, put the fucking darts down. Instead he gives me pointers on how to throw in such a way that I am less likely to turn those in line for the men’s room into pin cushions. The Powerhouse is awesome! Forrest Black beats me at darts. TC double-fists beers until she got to the “Is there anybody here who has not seen my tittays?” portion of the evening. Happy birthday, girl!

Afterwards, we hit Miss Kitty’s pervy club night at The Dragonfly. Billy, aka Deviant Designs from the Blue Blood boards, entertains us by making out with his friend JT. Scar watches intently for a while. She has been peer-pressuring Billy to do this for pretty much the entire evening, from before they even got to the club. Finally, she says that she has the oddest feeling like someone just walked in on her masturbating. I point out that now she knows how she makes all the guys she knows feel. She doesn’t seem to get what exactly the similarity would be, but I’m not sure there is all that much blood in her brain at the time.

I should probably never play strip darts.

Strip bowling would probably be okay though.

There are a lot of people in Los Angeles who get decked out in full regalia every day, just in case. By this, I mean that they blow dry their hair or put product in it or put makeup on and make sure they are wearing something versatile but hot. Every day. Because you never know, in this city, when fabulosity may strike. A lot of actors and models and so forth end up getting discovered because they happened to already be ready to go, in the split second the iron was hot here.

The thing is that it tends to be a split second of hot opportunity. Because, due to a combination of flakitude and being on the forefront of cell phone technology, most party plans here are made at the last minute. If someone phones to tell you to look off your balcony because their car is outside, you can be relatively sure they will not flake before you get across your lawn. I pretty much only use the phone to (a) say I’m running late, (b) ask where to park or (c) compare notes on the party I am at with the party someone else is at. The last minute thing is also because everybody, who already has the hookup, works long and unpredictable hours. The various entertainment industries may yield fun jobs, but work is still work and tends to come first for anyone committed to what they do. Which is an awfully high proportion people in this city. I know I can’t be ready to go all the time because I work way way way too much and I have a lot of days where I end up having to put out unexpected fires. (Flame is the official metaphor for this feature article.)

So there is this really excellent raw foods place which has opened up near me. Real Raw Live has great smoothies, super cool and friendly people, and the best cashew burgers in the universe. So I’ve been telling my pal J that he has to check it out and he keeps almost making plans to do so and then flaking. Which is totally normal for Hollywood. So we are supposed to go over there and get delicious raw food smoothies and J, who is also a photographer, calls me on my cell, with his cell, to tell me that actually the Corbis photo agency is having a party that night and he doesn’t think he got an email on it, but Corbis called his cell to remind him and the shindig is at The Cabana Club, which is pretty close to me. He asks if we could shift the plans around a little. I tell him I have a headache and I’m tired and I’m going to flake.

Then I remember that I made a birthday resolution to get out more. The resolution was simply that I realized it was too difficult to pick the specific most perfect events to attend in such a vibrant city, so I resolved to just say “yes” to more of the invitations I get from all of the interesting people I know. And I do know an interesting and diverse cross-section of the population. This might seem like I resolved to take the path of least resistance, but, believe me, the path of least resistance for me is just to work through all waking hours. I’d already showered and my hair looked fine, so I surprise J by hitting him back on his cell and saying that I was going to keep my resolution and I was going to go to the party with him after all (after I got my raw smoothie.) He says he was thinking about flaking, but so long as we don’t get there ten minutes before it is over, it should be cool. He tells me he should come get me in about a half an hour. I tell him I’ll need a half hour more than that to get dressed. We agree on an hour. We finally hook up after an hour and a half. Traffic is insane because apparently some band is playing at the Hollywood Bowl.

J and I and actress Sydney Lauren all head over to The Cabana Club. Sydney Lauren had to get dressed in the dark because, ironically enough, her roommate spaced on her electric bill and is now unreachable on her cell because she is at the bad traffic-inducing concert at the Hollywood Bowl. We park in a parking garage up the street and there is this bizarre collection of things in there with a whiteboard sign behind them, bearing the legend: The CAGE RETURN ALL ITEMS TO WHERE YOU FOUND THEM. This seems like a suitably surreal start to the evening and it does not occur to me until later that the garage is near a film school and perhaps doubles as storage for filmmaking props. It does not occur to Sydney until later (after the open bar) that maybe she should do a dance with the wooden Jesus on a chain she finds amongst the props. I convince her not to take it with her. Since when am I the voice of reason? J is unconcerned about the unconventional shape of the parking spot as he is driving a rental care because his BMW SUV has been in the shop for the past month because of, I kid you not, a safety feature. But that is a story for another time.

So we end up walking the red carpet and being photographed by Frank Trapper who has photographed a veritable who’s who of Hollywood over the past decades. Frank Trapper’s packager Welcome Books is one of the goodie bag sponsors for the party and, during the party, they did a couple of giveaways of his book Red Carpet: 20 Years of Fame and Fashion, edited by Katrina Fried. Welcome Books is, like Blue Blood, both a publisher and a packager. What this means, in their case, is that they put books together and sometimes they publish them in-house and sometimes other people publish them. When someone else is the publisher, we call that packaging. I believe Welcome packaged the Red Carpet book, but Random House is the publisher. The goodie bags also contained the coffee table book Cinema By The Bay, by Sheerly Avni, published by George Lucas Books, but also packaged by Welcome Enterprises. The book is about the specific sensibilities of big San Francisco-based filmmakers. I got a nifty new shirt from Royal Guard. The absolute best and most inspired swag of the evening was the Corbis Rubix cube with photos by Corbis photogs on it. J and I wheeled and dealed for which of us would get which color shirt and which tote bag. I ended up with the lavender Royal Guard shirt and the green Welcome Books tote, which smells like a new car, only weird. The Corbis tote bag was black, but I felt I could part with it because most goodie bag events I go to have black totes and there are only so many black canvas book bags any person needs.

So comedian Chris Wylde texts us a series of barely intelligible and totally unrepeatable (but funny) messages from the Viper Room. As Chris Wylde is always a blast (and the open bar is over), we head over to the Viper Room. I’m pleased to run into Casper again there and he is rocking a sort of riverboat gambler look. He generally is wearing the season after next’s fashions today, so I’m hoping this is an augury of things to come because that is a nice look on a man. Apparently, Viper Room security, although pleasant and polite, would prefer it if no one took snapshots at the bottle service tables, even if they are sitting there. Who knew? Chris Wylde points out that he says “great things” so we should probably go somewhere less loud.

After a comedy of errors, where six of us managed to switch who was in what car more times than should have been mathematically possible, most of us eventually ended up at Snake Pit. We meet up with Brian Walsh aka Forty from the Chris Wylde Show (although I don’t place him until some time about five minutes before typing this.) We end up debating all manner of things that I probably can’t repeat here, not only with our table, but with neighboring beer patrons as well. It is that kind of bar. Although I’ve been told by multiple people that Slash, of Guns ‘N Roses and Velvet Revolver fame, owns this pub, I’ve never seen him there nor seen any verification I would trust. Regardless, it is a very barlike bar, with a lot of good microbrews, and that is nice and harder to come by in Los Angeles than one might guess.

And all I wanted was a smoothie. The moral is that, in Los Angeles, like in the Boy Scouts (like I’d know), it is always good to be prepared because you never know what might come up.

Fun Fact to Know and Share: Although Chris Wylde is probably most familiar from his role as the hot funny guy on Julie “Earth Girls Are Easy” Brown’s Strip Mall TV show or his more recent turn as the horny beast in the Del Taco Feed the Beast commercials, he also had a bit part in the movie My First Mister. There is a scene in a sex shop in My First Mister where a number of blasphemous dildos are on display. Blue Blood traded beer to the person responsible for props on said major motion picture there. In return for said dildos. Yes, I traded beer for blasphemous sex toys. Which I then ran through the dishwasher, to be on the safe side, and then Forrest Black and I used them in photo shoots for some of the BarelyEvil sets on BlueBlood.com. Even Blue Blood sex toys are famous. And, no, I am not going to Hell because I stopped Sydney Lauren from stealing the wooden Lord and savior from the film students. Although, come to think of it, Lord knows what they will do with it.

I would like to say that I was aware of Tucker Max long before he was ever in print. On account of how I’m such a spectacularly plugged-in girl on the interwebs. The truth is that there are massively high traffic sites which somehow never have audiences intersect. In actuality, I was stuck in the Phoenix airport when visiting my family and, strangely enough, the Phoenix airport actually has a pretty good Borders. Which even more strangely contained a book with a sleek black cover featuring a gentleman with an antisocial smirk holding, I believe, a bottle and a bottle blonde with her visage replaced with a Your Face Here sign. The title was the clever I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. I bought it along with a stack of noir novels.

Tucker Max’s I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell chronicles the author’s drunken and salacious exploits. He came of age as the offspring of a South Beach restauranteur. From his writing, I gather his taste thus unsurprisingly runs to big-titted blondes with fit but not skinny bodies. Mildly Southern demeanor potentially a plus. Too bad for him that his intelligence level is off-the-scale brilliant. Tucker Max has raised hitting on drunk human sluts to the art form, or perhaps sport, of a more advanced species.

He comes across to some reviewers as a misogynist. He does tend to refer to women as filthy whores and mention that they owe him a rib. The following excerpt from a tale of a horseracing tailgate party drinking contest is a pretty representative exchange from his book:

1:58: She raises the first shot and gives me a toast, “Give me chastity and give me continence – but not yet . . . St. Augustine!” All her little friends laugh and cheer. Amateurs.

Girl: That was really sexist.”
Tucker: No it wasn’t, it was a joke. If I had said that women are nothing but life support for pussy, now THAT would be sexist.”
Girl: “Excuse me?”
Tucker: “If I had called her a hot mouth, that would be sexist too. Or, if I said that the only thing going for her is that she’s 98.6 degrees and has two wet holes, that would be very sexist. But I didn’t say those things, did I?”
Girl: “WHAT?”
Tucker: “Uh oh! Did I piss you off? Are you going to write angsty poetry?!?”

Women in the stories Tucker recounts also tend to say things along the lines of, “I can’t believe how funny I think you are and I’m a girl.” It is my opinion that they are either (a) easily manipulated chicks or (b) missing the fucking point. I’m not delusional, so I’m well aware that some people look at my own work and aren’t aware of anything deeper than quality photos of punk genitalia and gothic boobies, although there is more to it. But I do understand that sometimes pervy sex is the common denominator for a reason. Sure, Tucker regularly points out how much pussy he has thrown at him 24/7 and how great he is at acquiring even difficult pussy. His writing career started when he first launched his site as a dating application. Some chicks will always be attracted to a guy they believe other chicks want. Some guys will be impressed by any dude who claims to have laid miles of pipe. Although I went through a phase in the late 80’s where I liked to tie up blonde boys from good families, that was a long time ago, so some people will undoubtedly be surprised that I am such a huge fan of Tucker Max’s writing that I told my panelmates at the recent SXSW confab that I’d be late getting to the green room for our panel because I was going to watch Tucker Max speak at his first. Then again, readers who really got BLT, the antisocial punk rock humor zine I did in DC, well, I think they will understand the Tucker Max appeal.

The point is not that Tucker Max is a hard-drinking vanilla guy who has frequent sex with varied partners. The point is that his writing is brilliant, articulate, painfully insightful, and totally fearless and he is able to find the humor in absolutely anything. John Hargrave of Zug.com, the moderator of Tucker’s one man SXSW panel From Blog to Book called the author “a promiscuous drunken Tolstoy.” To give you an idea of the Zug perspective, my horoscope on the site today suggests I “Call a hardware store and whisper “stucco” into the phone over and over. “Stucco stucco stucco stucco stucco.” If they hang up, simply call back.” I used to manage an adult boutique where callers sometimes attempted this sort of thing. They might as well have been saying “stucco” for all the impact it had on folks who sold lingerie and vibrators, although only the serious submissives called back to speak with the manager, once I got through with them. At the end of the From Blog to Book panel, John Hargrave was kind enough to pour healthy doses of something called Tucker Max Death Mix. The ingredients of which are apparently Everclear, Lemon-Lime Gatorade, and Red Bull. No wonder so many Tucker Max Drunk stories entail such copious amounts of vomit.

Tucker Max claims to have little formal idea how to write properly. This is debatable as he went to both U Chicago and Duke Law. Both good schools. But he assured his SXSW audience that he has no clue how to use commas, confuses forms of the word ‘too’, and doesn’t really consider himself a writer. He says he tries not to consider his audience when writing, to just concentrate on telling his story in his own authentic way. “I write in my authentic voice,” he says. Oh yeah, and then he works on trimming the fat from his work. But the authenticity is key.

According to Tucker Max’s business card, the name of his company is Rudius Media. According to the Rudius web site, “a rudius is a wooden sword, given by the Roman Emperor to a gladiator upon attainment of his freedom.” It may be happy coincidence that this is probably also a play on the word ‘rude’, but whatever. The best thing about Tucker Max’s writing is the sense of abandonment, the extreme freedom. He’ll tell you his ferocious opinion of some lesser person that himself and he’ll tell you his dick is average in size, although a bit large to put in a midget or a small girl’s colon. He may be coy about whether he has ever done cocaine in Vegas, but he’ll tell you how much hostile fun he is on absinthe. He’ll detail how he drove a mildly inconsiderate girl’s car through the storefront of a donut shop. He’ll pressure all the law firms in Silcon Valley into raising their salaries for summer interns by posting sock puppet conversations with himself on Infirmation.com. He’ll tell girls he is in a Christian rap band and coerce his friends into playing along. He’ll get accidentally pepper-sprayed during the sex act. He’ll bring friends in Special Ops to a politically left wing cocktail party. He’ll get thrown out of IHOP. He’ll get thrown out of Denny’s. He’ll get thrown out of Mickey D’s. And he’ll pretty shamelessly tell you – and everyone else – about it. Although his book has been out for more than a year now, he says it is still selling a remarkable 2,000 copies a week to people like me who are just discovering him. He says he designed the flawlessly appropriate book cover himself too. Tucker Max challenges the SXSW audience to check his numbers on Bookscan because everything he says is true and this is one outlandish tale which is verifiable.

And why, you may ask, was I at the airport, while visiting my family, buying noir novels and I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell? All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Actually, I have a pretty happy family, as these things go, but that just seemed like such an elegant literate way to close that I almost couldn’t help myself. Of course, now I fucked it all up with the disclaimer.

‘Shy,’ ‘proper,’ ‘politically correct,’ ‘distinguished’ are just not the words used to describe this man. In fact, most people quite often would go with, ‘vulgar,’ ‘uncouth,’ ‘improper’ and a ‘highly charged ball of beer fueled sexual energy.’ I mean, we’re talking about a guy, whose nickname is “Sketchy.” Speaking of which, he also happens to be the only person I know who’s named ‘Racci.’ Never could a person be more appropriately named.

I met him approximately fourteen years ago when I went to go cover an old band of his from Atlanta doing a show in Cocoa Beach, Florida when I was running a fanzine out of Tampa. It was a weird venue, and honestly, the most I can remember of that night was they wouldn’t turn off the smoke machine and it made for horrible photos. We were introduced at that show, but didn’t really pass more than a few words.

A few weeks later, one of my friends, who was super into him at the time, asked me to go with her to see his band up in Atlanta, GA. I figured I’d get some better live photos than the previous shots to go with my review. I ended up being pretty much a third wheel and went out to the stairwell to drink some beer alone when my friend left the hotel leaving Racci and me on the stairway enjoying conversation. That was our very first discussion and the beginning of a very hilariously awesome friendship. All over some girl, some beer and some conversations at a Hampton Inn. You ever have snapshots of your memories? This stairwell with two people and a case of beer, is one of mine.

Skip ahead a few years, and I’m living in Los Angeles and he’s in Tampa. His former band, Genitorturers, and my former band, Triggerpimp, are doing a few shows together. We’re betting beers like poker chips, taking hilarious photos that scare even us later, wrecking motorcycles in parking lots, flashing each other from behind curtains during shows, shaving heads and more or less, catching up while having a blast doing so. The snapshot of this moment would be him and I sitting on the walkway of the Maritime Hall in San Francisco outside the bus, both drinking a Pabst, covered in stage make-up and sweat, laughing our asses off, cuddled up under a huge jacket in the cold complaining about the gas station across the street and their lack of alcoholic beverages, i.e. Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.

Years later, he’s in Dope… Touring… More touring… Late night phone calls… I see with pride how this talented boy became an amazingly phenomenal man. I now hear his name mentioned in awe from circles of musicians and fans alike. I see his face in magazines. It’s a bit unbelievable. This boy that I would share beer with fourteen years ago would become a man known for his extraordinary talent and live show, as well as his crazy backstage antics.

Now, he’s currently touring with Wednesday 13, of Murderdolls and Frankenstein Drag Queen of Planet 13 fame, in lieu of the album Fang Bang released on September 12th here in the states. I don’t often interview friends, because they tend to make for lengthy and awkward interviews, but in this case, well, with our history, it makes for one hell of a read. Especially when we both have been drinking and there’s a ton of truth to uncover. Then again, we’ve never had to be drinking, to sling some dirt or let our hair down. Neither one of us has any shame.

So enough with the pretty poetry, time to get to the real meat of this interview. Open yourself up a Pabst, grill a steak, put on some AC/DC and rev your engines… Here is Mr. Racci “Sketchy” Shay…

TC: Is this going to be too invasive? (referring to the placement of the recording device)
Racci: I’m getting a boner.
TC: No, you’re not… Damn, do you smell that?
Racci: Smell this. (farting)
TC: That smells like lima beans. No, seriously, come on, do you smell that?
Racci: Now I’m really getting a boner.
TC: Is it the sexy musk?
Racci: Yes, I definitely have a boner. (pauses) This is really not “professional.”
TC: Um, this is Blue Blood Magazine, they like boners.
Racci: Then they’re going to love this interview.

TC: Hear the tour’s going great, how much longer you out there?

Racci: I don’t know a couple more weeks and then we’re off to Europe early September.
TC: Anything planned for after Europe?
Racci: I’m hoping to do a lot more slut fucking. (laughing) You know, I’m kind of on a roll right now, and I’m hoping that things continue to go in that direction…

TC: Now I get asked this a lot, and I’ll admit, I’ve given some hilarious stories to this, because they never seem to want to accept the truth. What the hell kind of name is ‘Racci?’

Racci: Well, the true story is not as fun as the actual definition of the word, ‘racy.’ The true story is that my father is a racecar driver and that’s my real name and no one ever seems to want to believe it. When I was in high school people used to make fun of me for having that name and I hated it. Once I started playing rock and roll I realized that it was a pretty rock and roll name. If you look it up in the dictionary, you know, take out a ‘C’ and the ‘I’ and add a ‘Y’ and, it means, well… how should I word this?
TC: (laughing) ‘Racy’ means something sexually risqué or suggestive…
Racci: Yeah, this is what you do, why don’t you transcribe the definition and put it in this interview, and then we can pretend that I just said the definition.
TC: Why don’t I just put in everything you just said because it’s a bit funnier…
Racci: Fine, that’s actually great. I’m just a little sick and am feeling a little lazy.

TC: Anyone who’s ever been backstage at a show with you, KNOWS you always have something hilarious going on… Okay, give me a highlight reel of some of the antics so far on this tour.

Racci: (evil laughter) You realize that the tour manager across the room just smiles from ear to ear, from having to put up with it. Here’s an interesting story of what just happened in Cleveland. (The tour manager then starts laughing and leaves the room shaking his head.) I had, I don’t know, about a dozen girls or so on the bus, and I’m raising hell listening to David Allen Coe…
TC: (laughing) Wait, which song?
Racci: Oh, who knows? We celebrate his entire catalog. Anyways, I began singing one of the songs through the tip of my penis, so my penis is actually singing the song…
TC: (laughing loudly)
Racci: Then I started playing the banjo part with my penis, like my penis was the actual banjo.
TC: Well, your penis has a lot of… diversity…
Racci: Yeah, well, we’ll get to that in a bit…
TC: (laughing) Why are you calling it a ‘penis?’ it’s big enough to be called a ‘cock.’ You can say ‘cock.’
Racci: I would say that only you would know, but you know, a lot of other people know that as well. So if you say so and they say so, then fine, I have a ‘cock.’ So back to the story…
TC: Yes, so you were playing banjo with your cock, or better Racci’s playing banjo with his cock…
Racci: (laughing) Yes, so some people on the bus got disgusted and left…
TC: Disgusted by you?
Racci: (laughing harder) See that’s how I thin out the herd, to see who can deal with the ‘sketchy’…
TC: To see who’s the dirtiest hooker on the bus?
Racci: Exactly, or ‘hookers,’ plural, specifically plural.
TC: Did you have to slutpunch any of them?
Racci: I slutpunch them all in the baby maker all the time.
TC: (laughing)
Racci: So, I figured I would test the waters, picked up a bottle of Jack Daniels, and slammed the rest of it. Sit in the middle of the room and then pissed in the bottle. One or two more people left the room when they saw that. Then I said, “All right here we go”. I tipped the bottle back and drank the piss, and about five people left. I figured who was left was ‘ready.’
TC: (laughing harder)
Racci: See that’s how I test out the sluts, to make sure that they are ‘Sketchy Worthy,’ you know? If they are “down with the sketchiness.”
TC: (laughing)
Racci: There are just too many stories to tell. (laughing) I have this costume I like to put on. Like I’ve got my rebel flag thong and I have a rebel flag that I tie around my neck as a cape. Wednesday and I went to a toy store like a week ago and bought ourselves some kid’s police riot helmets. So that’s now my official super hero costume, after the sketchiness, and when I want to get everyone off of the bus. I’ll crank up “Battle Axe” by Quiet Riot really loud and try to aggravate the fuck out of people. Usually doesn’t work though, it usually backfires. They all just grab me and rip the costume off me.
TC: (laughing) Yeah, I can imagine how that could happen.

TC: For the people, who are just hearing about you for the first time, give them a little Racci 101…

Racci: Back in the early 90’s, I was in a gothic/glam/metal, whatever you want to call it, called Shok L’Amour. From there I went out and spent about five or six years with the Genitorturers which were glorious years of debauchment. After that, I spent five seasons with Dope. Then Wednesday and I were partying one night at a Genitorturers show in Orlando and we destroyed the dressing room. He started smashing coffee pots and I took a shit in the middle of the room. Gen got a little mad, but she knows that it was ‘Sketchy’, and “Racci’s going to do what he’s going to do.” You know, like, the old saying “Does a bear shit in the woods?” It’s more like “Does a Racci shit in the dressing room?”
TC: (laughing) Yes… Yes, he does.
Racci: (laughing) So we decided it was time that we play together and it’s been full throttle ever since. We’re just having fun. I’ve enjoyed all of the bands that I’ve been in, but there’s been a lot of ‘seriousness’ that went with that. Not to say, that we don’t care about what we’re doing, but right now, we just want to have fun. We just want to be Motley Crue on the Shout at the Devil tour and that’s just what we’ve been doing. We’ve just raised hell, total hell so far.

TC: As an often touring musician who really loves his job, what’s the hardest part about being on the road?

Racci: Fucking sound checks! Jesus Christ! I’d like to be specific with that. It’s the ‘Hurry up and wait!’ That is the most painful thing about being in the music business. PERIOD. Its always “We’ve got to go. Got to go! Got to go! Got to go! (pauses) Okay, now wait here for the next hour.” It doesn’t matter if you’re on tour, in the studio, at a photo or video shoot. It’s the same old scenario. (pauses) No, actually, the worst thing about touring is when all the booze is gone and it’s 5 AM and you can’t get anymore. Bus calls are pretty shitty, too. Say, if you are on the back of the bus with a “special young lady”…
TC: “Special friend”
Racci: (laughing and doing a Spinal Tap parody) “Yes, this is my ‘special friend’ Cindy…”
TC: (laughing) Truly?
Racci: (laughing) Yes, truly. You know when the bus starts to crank you realize you got to hurry up and do the deed, or else you’re going to be in the bunk by yourself with a laptop later. I do that anyways, but I’d rather just appreciate the moment in the moment. I love doing these types of magazine interviews. Blue Blood rocks.

TC: You’ve played a lot of shows with a lot of other bands through out the years. Who are some of the coolest people to share a stage with?

Racci: I think the coolest person I’ve got to share a stage with is probably one of my best friends, and that’s David Vincent. (Editor’s note: David Vincent is the bassist of Genitorturers.)You know, it’s so difficult to just do one story about him. Actually, I have a good story for you. You might have to condense this a bit. Once upon a time, I had to drive a car down to Tampa for a friend from Atlanta. So I went down and spent a week with David and Gen. (This was when I was in Dope.) We went out drinking and got really hammered, and the drummer that was in the band at the time, Angel, was in the back seat. So we’re driving this car around that doesn’t belong to me. I have no registration, no insurance on it, no nothing. We’re driving in an area that is known for a lot of prostitution, and David goes “Let’s go back to my house real quick…” So we go back to his house, and then he gets back into the car and says, “All right, let’s go back…” We drive back to where these prostitutes were and these are transvestite prostitutes. I’m talking about the most ugly men with tits you’ve ever seen in your life. David then pulls out this cherry bomb that he got in Tijuana when he was on tour with Morbid Angel, and it was like literally a quarter stick of dynamite. So we pull up beside these prostitutes, calling them over to the car, and as they start walking over to the car Dave lights one throwing it out the window. This thing sounds like a shotgun going off. KABOOM! They hit the ground. We take off. It was all good and fine, at this point, but we decided to do it again. You know, there’s police everywhere because it’s a known prostitution area, but we have to do it again. Next thing you know, there’s a cop coming. So I “Dukes of Hazzard” it down this street, then pull down another street, about the time I got to my third turn there’s like thirty cops blocking us off. They then get us out of the car and spread us over the hood. The cop, now, he’s a good ol’ boy, and we’re good ol’ boys, and he says, “I don’t know what the hell you do up there in Georgia, but we don’t throw firearms and rockets and stuff out of a car down here.” (laughing) We said “Look, it was just a prostitute and we were just razzing them.” And the cop says “I know we have a big problem with prostitutes here, but you can’t be throwing dynamite at a prostitute.”
TC and Racci: (laughing)
Racci: So amazingly enough, Dave explains that he only lives a few blocks away and the cops let us go. So we got off. That’s one of my many favorite David moments. Sorry David.

TC: Do you find a lot of Genitorturers and Dope fans getting into Wednesday 13?

Racci: Of course there is a lot of Dope fans into Wednesday 13, from years back, when there was a little, debacle between Edsel and Tripp being in the Murderdolls. What a lot of people don’t realize that I was in the original incarnation of the Murderdolls called The Rejects. So it’s kind of like a close-knit family that has some bad blood because Tripp and Edsel hated each other at the time. At the end of the day, though, the fans translate over. As far the Genitorturers fans go, I think, I’ve seen a lot of Genitorturers fans out on this tour, but most of them are people who knew me from I was in the band, and that’s the main reason they’ve come out, because it’s more of a family type of thing, a society, that people are involved in. But there are some similarities that I think that Genitorturers fans could appreciate in Wednesday 13.

TC: Okay, you’ve done this officially in a few mediums and forums, but there seems to still be a lot of confusion amongst the fans… Dish it; what’s the dirt on Dope?

Racci: (whistles) I’m going to say for the record, right off the bat, a lot of people have been asking me on this tour why I quit Dope. What I’ve been saying and what really keeps me from opening my mouth up too much, is a great analogy. Have you ever fucked someone for a really long time and you just got really sick of fucking them and had to just go and fuck somebody else? That’s kind of where I was. You know, it’s like, during that time while you are fucking somebody, all you do is argue because you get bitter about this or that, and it’s like, you just kind of need to move onto something fresh. I mean, I could go on all day with things that I disagreed with one or other members of the band, and I’m sure that they can do the same. It’s definitely a shit-slinging scenario that neither them nor I are interested in getting into, but I think that’s really the bulk of it. Sometimes you just need to go fuck somebody new. Nothing like some good strange.

TC: So what does the future hold for Racci?

Racci: I am hoping in the couple hours to be having sex with you.
TC: (laughing Don’t you mean licking my ass like a bowl full of ice cream?
Racci: (laughing) Yes, maybe put some chocolate syrup on it.
TC: (laughing hard) So you want my ass to be sticky?
Racci: (laughing) It’s going to be when I’m done with you.
TC: I really shouldn’t expect too serious of an answer to this one.
Racci: No, no you really shouldn’t.

TC: To be interesting, I’ve come up with some name association questions for you. Basic gist, I say a word and you tell me the first word that comes to your mind. Normally, I would only ask for just one word, the first one that comes to mind, but I feel with you, well, I have to bend this rule. So just how about the first sentence that comes to mind.

Racci: Yeah, that’s probably best.

Steak: Pabst Blue Ribbon
Pabst Blue Ribbon: Steak
David Allen Coe: “Don’t bite the dick that fucks you honey”
Star Star: “I’ve got a lover with a nylon grip, and I’m still loving that same old pig”
Sketchy: I am
Chick-Fil-A: The best food, next to pussy, I’ve ever put in my mouth
Matches: Usually in the end of my cock
TITAYS!!!: HEY BALLS!!! (laughing)
Cock: cum on her face
Slutpunch: Straight to the baby maker!!!
Spinal Tap: “These go to eleven…”
Caddyshack: “Gunga galunga gunga galunga”
Tommy Lee: Sometimes you just have to answer these seriously. He’s the biggest influence on my career.

TC: Okay, now for some “Either/Or’s”…

Ramones or Misfits: Misfits
Kiss or Motley Crue: Motley Crue
Creepers or Converse: Recently, Creepers
Jack Daniels or Jagermeister: JACK FUCKING DANIELS
Pabst or… (pauses) Okay, fine, I’ll just give you that one.: That’s fine by me!
Drinking or Dope: Definitely drinking
Chick-Fil-A or Steak: Chick-Fil-A
Ron Burgundy or Ricky Bobby: Ron Burgundy because he’s the balls.
Racci or Sketchy: Right now, I’ll officially say ‘Sketchy’ is back.

TC: Okay, here’s a hypothetical question… You drink yourself sober, and as you are calling it a night, down comes a your fairy rock father. He sits down next to you and says, “I’ll grant you three wishes and allow you to make one law.” You turn to him and say…

Racci: Three wishes AND a law? A law?
TC: (laughing) Yes, you know those things you love to break.
Racci: (laughing) Well, for the wishes… One, I’d want another bottle of Jack Daniels just so that I can see if I can get any more drunk. Two, I want a slut. Three, I want another slut. And the law is, “When the cock comes out its time to start fucking.”

TC: So are there any pieces of advice or wisdom you’d like to share before I call it a night and we get back to drinking some Pabst?

Racci: Yes, because we need to close this out properly. I have some quotes that I live by, and I would love to share them with others.

In the immortal words of Mick Shrimpton, from Spinal Tap, “As long as I have sex and drugs, I think I can do without the rock and roll.”

Also from Spinal Tap, from Viv Savage, “Have a good time, all the time, and if you can’t fuck them, then fuck them.”

Then my own personal words of wisdom:

“When in doubt, just throw a turd.”

“When people piss you off, go shit on their porch.”

and, the most important…

“Suck it.”

That’s it this interview is over.

Wednesday 13 European Tour Dates:

Oct 4 2006 11:00P Magasin 4 Brussels
Oct 5 2006 11:00P Mean Fiddler London

Wednesday 13 US Tour Dates opening for Alice Cooper:

Oct 20, 2006 Jim Thorpe, PA Penn’s Peak
Oct 21, 2006 New York, NY Roseland Ballroom
Oct 23, 2006 Washington, DC Warner Theatre
Oct 24, 2006 Lakewood, NJ Strand Theatre
Oct 25, 2006 Rochester, NY Auditorium Theatre
Oct 27, 2006 Reading, PA Sovereign Perf. Arts Ctr.
Oct 28, 2006 Atlantic City, NJ House of Blues
Oct 29, 2006 Boston, MA Orpheum Theatre

Please get more information on Racci’s band, Wednesday 13 at:
http://www.wednesday13.com
http://www.myspace.com/officialwednesday13

Racci uses Pearl Drums, Vic Firth Sticks, Instanbul Alchemy Cymbals, Coffin Case, and Dirtbag Clothing.

Universal’s Accepted Keg Party Photo Gallery

Estimated opening weekend gross for Accepted is around $10 million, which is hunky-dorey for a movie with a production budget of only around $23 million. I don’t know what percentage of those movie-goers also attended Comic Con or talked to someone who did, but Accepted did the most brilliant promotion at the convention.

Comic Con is the largest convention of its type in the U.S. This year, significantly more than a hundred thousand people showed up. Which is significantly more than the forty thousand or so the city of San Diego could probably handle. It was impossible to park anywhere near the convention center and it was approximately one billion degrees and the food in the convention center concessions started tasting kinda rancid by the second day. And, even for pretty literally nauseating food, the lines were likely to take an hour or so. Which cuts down on one’s collectible-browsing time. So, by the end of the day, everyone was sort of running on empty, streaming out of the San Diego Convention Center en masse, hungry and a long way, under a hot sun, from their transportation.

So the promoters of the Accepted movie threw a collegiate-style beer blast and barbeque across the street. The basic concept of the flick is that an enterprising young man is rejected from every college he applies to, so he creates his own institution of higher learning called South Harmon Institute of Technology. Yes, that acronym is what you think it is. The star-studded event featured a skateboard ramp and a giant banner reading “Welcome SHITheads” with the San Diego Gaslamp district as a backdrop. While waiting in a refreshingly fast-moving line for food, I was standing a couple of feet from James Duvall. While I wouldn’t talk to someone at my local supermarket, I’m generally in outgoing and friendly mode at a show like that. So I’d normally have told him that I like his work, but all of a sudden I got this horrible mental flash of the appalling scene where he’s castrated in Gregg Araki’s Doom Generation and I didn’t want to encourage my brain to keep going in that direction when I was about to eat.

The burgers and hot dogs were shockingly good and generously handed out. There was water and soda, in addition to beer, despite the kegger theme, but I think vegetarians might have been stuck with cheese and toppings. There might have been veggie burgers too, as I admit I was pretty transfixed by the yumminess of my own carnivorous fare.

The party had a fun and light-hearted vibe. A nicely straight-up rock band, called The Ringers, with a pleasingly sleazy sound kept the energy level up. I got bashed in the head when some of the actors from the movie got up on the stage and started throwing free T-shirts into the crowd. The gentleman who hit my noggin gave me the T-shirt he’d just caught, though, so it was all good. It says, “Ask me about my wiener.” Because I didn’t have enough lewd shirts already.

The trailer for the movie looks humorously promising and Lewis Black who I love from Comedy Central’s Daily Show is in it. If Universal knows how to throw a fun keg party, odds are good that they know how to make a fun movie. Best theatrical release promo ever.