A Bold New Meditation On Death And The Starbucks Frappuccino

a fun meditation on death gold skull

I am writing my morning pages and find myself in a meditation on death.

Looking at the date, I realize it’s my Dad, John Ryan’s, birthday, or- it was his birthday when he was alive.  I don’t think you have a birthday after you die- the date stops being relevant to you.  It is, perhaps, the anniversary of your birth- but Mozart doesn’t have a 263rd birthday.

Where We Came From

My father was born Sept 9, 1948, to his mother, Ruth Ryan, who is now dead.  His father, Robert Sloan Ryan, was present at the birth, and is also dead.  The doctor and the nurses who attended the birth are all dead.  The maintenance workers at the hospital are dead, the policemen walking the streets of Houston, TX the day my Dad was born are dead, the mothers and fathers of the other babies born that day are all dead, some of the babies born that day are also dead. 

  Every singer who was on the radio that day is dead.  The number one hit song that day was the 12th Street Rag, by Pee Wee Hunt and his Orchestra.  Pee Wee Hunt is dead and all the members of the orchestra are dead. 

  The Oscar winner for Best Picture that year was Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet.  All the actors in the film are dead, the most recent being Jean Simmons, who died in 2010, three years before my Dad. 

  The stars of the most popular TV shows of the day, Ed Sullivan, Howdy Doody, and Candid Camera are all dead.  Most of the people who watched those shows are dead.  Everyone who worked writing or shooting those shows is dead.

Where We Are Going

  One day, Beyonce and Kim Kardashian and PewDiePie and Shane Gillis and David Duchovny and Taylor Swift and Lin-Manuel Miranda will all be dead, and everyone you’ve ever known or looked up to or hated or had a crush on or wronged or bought dinner for will be dead.

 It’ll happen so quickly you won’t believe it, sweeping unapologetically through the population and leaving you wondering what it was all for, all the striving and the cutting each other down and the aspirations and the heartbreak and denying ourselves frosty Frappuccinos in the Summer.  

Nobody will remember your failed Etsy business, the time you threw up at Homecoming, or the time Patton Oswalt retweeted you. If you’re lucky, 100 years after your death your descendants will remember your name. So, yes.  I am having another Frappuccino.

The Incredibly Stupid Story About My Tattoo

octopus tattoo design by Amy Nicoletto

virginia jones octopus tattoo by amy nicoletto

The Origin Story 

Having survived a questionable adolescence and young adulthood without a tattoo,  I thought, maybe my thing is to be weird WITHOUT a tattoo.   My dumb hot goth boyfriend had BAD RELIGOIN tattooed on him at a party.  Later, it was covered with a demon, and probably also dirt because I think that guy’s dead now.

 Being of a somewhat perverse personality, I find if there’s something everyone else loves, I hate it.  I’ve never seen Titanic or worn acid wash jeans.  

   When I left school, I found that every punk, every goth, every coffeeshop-clogging creative was heavily inked.  How cool could it be?  I worried that a tattoo had to mean something deep.  Something eternal.  What if I got something that would later be dumb?  My friend Bryan had a Stray Cats tattoo from the 80’s that I watched go out, and in, and back out of fashion.  

Joker’s Comedy Club

   One time I was doing comedy in Tri-Cities, Washington.  That’s right.  Three small towns: Kennewick, Richmond, and Yakima, gather their low-self-esteem populations together and call themselves the Tri-Cities in an attempt to matter. 

The Thursday night show had a promo table with a local tattoo shop, and they were giving away a tattoo to the prettiest girl in attendance who didn’t have a tattoo.  This really brought my two worst personality traits into the foreground: I am cheap and vain.  The nice tattoo lady said I was cute, I should put in to win the contest.  I laughed and said OK. 

   I had a really good set, I blew my headliner off the stage.  He was murky and resentful.  The next night, he melted down and was dismissed for he rest of the weekend. 

While drinking for free, I checked in with the tattoo lady.  She said I was still the winner by a mile.  I was feeling small-town famous.

Brianna

  I started thinking about what kind of tattoo I wanted.  I decided on an octopus.  Like on the Kraken rum bottle, although that is a Kraken, which is not real.   We got ready to line up for a vote.  I was confident.  I was ready.  But at the 11th hour,  she showed up: Brianna.  Brianna was 24 and had blonde hair piled up on top of her head, and was somehow wearing a pink baseball hat perched on top of that.  She had dimples.  I lost, and lost badly.

  Brianna got a dynamic ribbon reading “ALWAYS RESILIENT” tattooed on her ribcage, which I am told is a very painful spot, and that was a comfort to me.  It was executed right there, on a rickety massage table in a dark corner of a nightclub.  I started to think maybe I was glad I didn’t win.

  I woke up surly and resentful that I didn’t have an octopus tattoo.  Complaining to my friend Richie, he told me: believe, there is nothing more expensive than a free tattoo.  You’re glad you didn’t get inked in the tri-shitties. 

When I got home to Los Angeles, I got a birthday gift from my baby sister so I could get a tattoo at a fancy shop, from the lovely @amynicolettotattoo, and I don’t think I could love it any more.  It looks good with dresses, it looks good with t-shirts, it’s an accessory that I have on all the time, and it doesn’t mean shit.

Wisdom Of The Ages

 Looking back, I realize that if I had gotten a tattoo in my 20’s it would have been for The Cure, and if I’d gotten one in my 30’s, it would have been for Nick Cave, and they’d still be great today.  This is an often-overlooked plus to being someone who maxed out their taste and personal growth at 17, and will always be the same asshole, and who is also cheap, and also vain.

My Fantastic Fantasy Star Hits Interview

58570883_10219050282026349_113274552636669952_o

Growing up in Texas but *with* MTV, I identified myself as a New Waver and found the lifeline for all aspirational cool kids at the time, Star Hits magazine.

 Heavily influenced by its UK parent, Smash Hits, it was chock full of awesome photographs of the most important people in my life, including Duran Duran and the Cure.  They called Morrissey Mozz and Madonna Madge and they had advertisements for punk clothes and rare records and everything I dreamed of.

I dream of being interviewed by Star Hits, but because they don’t exist, I had to do it myself.  So, here it is.

I meet Virginia Jones in a coffeeshop near her Silverlake abode.  The coffeeshop sells perfumes named for alternative rock hits but cost one gazillion dollars.  

She sits on the patio, head to toe in black, drinking a Dirty Ginger, a soy milk latte with spicy ginger syrup in it.  She smiles slyly and says it’s her fourth. I greet her, take off my suit jacket, brush the shaggy blond hair out of my eyes, and set up to record our chat. She says she only has half an hour before she has to go do comedy in the basement of a wine shop.

Firsts

Who was your first crush?

Ohhh, this is weird but it was definitely Boy George.

Oh wow!

Yeah, I just thought he was spectacular.  I still do. At twelve year old, I had a poster of Culture Club on my wall that I kissed every night before bed.  When I took it down, George’s lips were clear with greasy little-kid Chapstick kisses.

What was the first record you ever bought?

The first single was Celebration by Kool and the Gang.  This was about ten years after it came out, but I heard it in one of my mom’s Jazzercise classes and I had to have it.

And the first LP?

Chipmunk Punk, obviously.

Obvi.

Which had no punk songs, but some new wave songs and some Billy Joel.  The weirdest track was My Sharona, which was written about a 15 year old girl and has some semi-explicit reference to thighs, but the chipmunks DGAF.

Bests

What is your most treasured possession?

When I was living in Potland, I did a show on Christmas Day. It went, as I remember, horribly, but my friend Bri Pruett, who was KJing there at the time, gave me a card that permitted me to go next to sing karaoke.  That potential, the idea that I could be next, even in a bar that has closed in a town in which I do not live, makes it one of my most prized possessions. Also, that Bri gave it to me.  I’ll never cash it in. I’m perpetually next!

Other Stuff

Do you get presents from your fans?

Yes, isn’t it weird that people give you images of yourself?  But I have some awesome fan art, including a Barbie doll of me, an embroidery of my album cover, and a pen and ink rendition of me and my many interests. They are displayed proudly in my home.

In Portland, I was given a lot of weed, which I saved in a tin and forgot in my apartment when I moved.

How often do you wash your hair?

I like to wait at LEAST three days between washes.  If I can stretch to four, even better. My hair is long, when wash it, it’s a hot mess.  If you ever see me wearing a hat, you know it’s day four! Sorry.

If you were an animal, what would you be?  

I mean, I love the idea of a three toed sloth, but that’s not really my lifestyle.  I’m more like a squirrel, out there hustlin’, always starting projects and forgetting about them, and of course, looking adorable.

Oh, certainly.

Thank YOU.  

Ok, the last question, and this is a deep one:  Where do all the lost pens in the world go?

You know, I’m glad you asked me that, because it’s something I have thought a lot about.  The size and shape of pens mean that they take up space on the horizontal, but also they can slip through any hole or crevice, and we live on this earth full of holes which is always rotating, so if you think of the world as a big Pachinko game, and pens as the ball bearings, pens wind up:

(Flabbergasted) In the center of the earth?

Yes, precisely.  Magma is made of melted pens. That’s what makes it so dangerous.

I effused my thanks to her as she killed her last inch of coffee and took off, yelling thanks and that she looked forward to the interview.  I had to take a second to catch my breath, and, folding up her paper coffee cup into my pocket to take with me, (don’t judge me!) went home to write.

Jordan, Jesse, Go!

I’m always glad to pop in on my two favorite dorks and talk about draculas, Bad Venom, Godzilla, and Halloween! Listen here!

GHOST ROAST of DAVID BOWIE!

Yes, comedy fans, Bowie fans, all humanity- start making your plans for Saturday nights roast of David Bowie, where the ghost of David Bowie will be played by me, Virginia Jones!

(This is what Ghost Bowie looked like, in case anyone is curious)

Buffalo Bill’s Traumatized Personal Assistant

buffalo-bill has a personal assistant comedy

MONDAY: It picks up the silk kimonos from the cleaners.  It checks the ticket very, verrry carefully before it gets back into its Geo Metro, to make sure it has the right number of kimonos.  We do not want to punish It like last time.   It’s harder on Us than on It.

TUESDAY: It sorts tax receipts.  It puts mileage receipts in the blue envelope, it puts business purchases in the pink envelope, and it puts tattoo-and-piercing related expenses in a manila envelope.  IT DOES NOT SPEND ALL DAY FUCKING AROUND ON FACEBOOK!  Nobody wants to see a photo of what It ate for lunch, the food makes It look and smell disgusting.

WEDNESDAY:  It brings a fruit plate for Jenny’s baby shower.  It chooses a fruit plate with a lot of strawberry and pineapple and not as much melon or kiwi.

THURSDAY:  We apologize for saying that it smells disgusting.  It sometimes does not smell very bad.  We still need It to dust the house, and also to collect all loose teeth into a Mason jar.

FRIDAY: It gets paaaaid.  Yayyyy.  It can buy all the tacky blue mascara and Lee Press-on Nails it wants.  It cashes Its check right away, so that it does not appear outstanding on our bank balance.  It is on call all weekend, so It does not turn Its phone off!  Its phone is never off!