Famous People

by Justin Kuritzkes

  NONE of these guys thought this was possible, you know? Like, these are the guys who are supposed to know more about this shit than anybody else, and even they were just like: Whoa. Shit. I’ve honestly never heard Oddvar so bummed. I mean, it was just an email and like, usually his emails are kind of formal and serious-sounding, but this one was really sort of hopeless, and like, actually sort of sad. I mean, I don’t want to make it sound like Oddvar’s depressed or something, because like, he’s one of the most optimistic people I know—I mean, when you think about it, his whole project is one big bet on the future—but reading his email today—like, seeing the way he was describing everything—he just seemed like the kind of sad that you can only really get if you’re also sort of shocked, you know what I mean? I could just feel him coming to accept the possibility that maybe we really are all doomed and that maybe there really isn’t anything we can do about it.

  It’s funny because, like, Bob’s whole take on global warming is that we should just let it happen. LOL. I mean, he totally believes in it—like, he’s one hundred percent on board with the idea that it’s our fault and that we’re the ones causing it—but he just sort of thinks that there’s obviously nothing we can do to stop it at this point, and so we might as well let ’er rip and see where it takes us. Like, we’re obviously not even really making a dent, and so we should be preparing for the worst instead of holding on to this bullshit hope. And Bob is sort of cautiously optimistic that like, when the shit really does start hitting the fan, it’s gonna be so crazy and like, so horrible that we’ll actually take a step back for a second and rethink the whole thing—like, we’ll actually start back from square one and go: Okay, where did we go wrong last time? How can we do it differently this time?—but he’s also the first to admit that like, there’s only a small chance that’ll happen. More likely, it’ll just be a total shitshow.

  When I talked to Oddvar about all this at the seed vault, his opinion wasn’t actually that different from Bob’s. I mean, he disagreed that there was nothing we could do about it, or that like, we shouldn’t at least try, but he was saying that what Bob definitely gets right is that like, most of the people who say that they’re concerned about global warming are just totally fucking full of shit or like, at the very least, just completely fucking stupid.

  While Oddvar was in the middle of giving us the tour last week, I noticed that there was this giant cupboard filled with bottled water near the kitchen, and I was like, kind of joking, like: Whoa, Oddvar, I thought you guys were supposed to be all eco-friendly and shit. And Oddvar just looked at me, and he smiled for a second, and then he made that jerk-off motion in the air. You know what I’m talking about? That, like, motion, where you do a few quick jerks and then you let the jizz fly all over the room?

  But it’s actually kind of nuts, because like, one of the rooms that got flooded—one of the rooms that was almost filled to the top with ice water when the permafrost melted—was the guest room where me and the boys had been staying. I’m calling it a “guest room,” but it was really just like, a closet with a few bunk beds. And, legitimately, if we had gone and visited him this week instead of last week, we would’ve been sleeping in there when the ceiling caved in and all of this ice water just started gushing in through the cracks. We might’ve actually drowned or something. I mean, it’s no fucking joke.

  In his email, Oddvar was SO apologetic about it. He was just like—I don’t know, I think it’s been really eating him up inside that he put me in that kind of a situation. Like, the seed vault getting destroyed is one thing, but losing me or being responsible for my injury or my death is just not really something I think Oddvar can handle. He was saying crazy shit like: I understand if you never want to speak with me again. And: I hate myself for what I’ve done to you. And: Forget about me. You owe me nothing but scorn. And I just wrote him back being like: Whoa, Oddvar, chill out, you know? It was an honest mistake. You can’t apologize for nature. Like, yeah, you’re supposed to know more about this shit than the rest of us, but like, we’re all just ants in the grand scheme of things. We can’t control the ice. I mean, honestly, what I told him was like: If that’s how I go—if I literally get KILLED by global warming—I think I can live with that. LOL. Of all the ways I’ve imagined dying, that one’s actually pretty next-level.

  But I don’t know. I guess I find myself being an optimist in the long run. It just seems so obvious to me that we’re gonna figure it out somehow. Like, you look at the history of humanity, and you look at what we’ve been able to accomplish, and it’s like, yeah, there was some really stupid, really selfish and destructive shit, but every couple years, we just get a legit genius, you know? We’ve legitimately produced so many geniuses when you think about it—even just in the past century. And I mean, it wasn’t that long ago when we didn’t even have electricity, you know? It wasn’t that long ago when everybody thought Earth was the center of the universe. And now, like, some aboriginal tribe in some tiny corner of the globe can watch my videos on their phones and send messages to each other by bouncing signals off of satellites in space, and so it just seems crazy to me that someone’s not gonna figure out how we can stop warming the planet. I’m pretty convinced that some genius is going to stumble onto the scene one of these days, and just be like: Oh, dope, I solved it. Like, they won’t even be trying to, you know what I mean? They’ll just be working around in the lab one day, like, trying to do something else entirely, and then they’ll get some crazy result on their machine and they’ll be like: Whoa. Shit.

  Because like, I’ve experienced some version of that in the studio, you know? Like, what I did with Chris and Trick—I’m not saying our music solved global warming—but if music COULD solve global warming, like, if music had that kind of power, we would’ve done it that day together. I know that sounds fucking crazy, but whatever: I’m over it. I’m already over whatever reaction you’re gonna have to the way that sounds.

  All I’m saying is: There’s got to be some scientist who’s on the verge of some major breakthrough. There has to be some person who’s just like, right on the brink of making a life-changing discovery that’s gonna save us all. And, who knows? Maybe they haven’t even been born yet. Maybe it’s some kid who hasn’t even been conceived. Or maybe it’ll be Oddvar. Maybe he’ll just be running tests one day in the seed vault and like, going out and digging holes in the ice or whatever he does and taking measurements, and then he’ll just be like: Of course! You know? It’s always something so obvious. In the movies, whenever they’re showing a scientist coming to some next-level realization, it’s always something that’s been right under their nose this whole time. And then they figure it out by accident and they’re just like: How could I have been so stupid? How could I have ignored this?

  * * *

  #32—Left shoulder. A lot of people think this one’s an angel, but it’s actually a character from Bob’s book The Question of Society. It was the first novel that he ever wrote—like, way back when he was in his twenties—and it was one of the first things of his I ever read. There’s this character, Barbie-One-6-3, who goes flying around the city—she’s a robot with mechanical wings—and she eats people’s brains whenever they’ve outlived their purpose, like, according to the society. It was a pretty dark book, but I just thought that character was super-scary, you know, and like, if I had her on my shoulder, no one could fuck with me. Plus, like, hardly anyone’s ever read that book, and so most people just see the tat and think it’s this really cute angel or something, which I think is hilarious.

  #54—Right arm. This is Jason Gideon, the like, main detective from that TV show Criminal Minds. I forget the name of the actor who plays him—he was only on the show for like, two or three seasons—but I just always felt a deep connection to this guy. When we were touring with the first album, I was just watching a TON of that show on the bus, and I would always see that character and think like: This is how a person’s supposed to be. LOL. This is a man. And there’s this am
azing thing that they do at the end of every episode where like, they have the crew coming back from catching a serial killer or solving a murder or whatever, and they’re just riding the private jet back to the FBI headquarters, and for the first time all episode, you see them super-relaxed, like, actually getting to talk to each other and hang out and be themselves, because they know, like, as long as they’re up in the air, as long as they’re above civilization, all that danger, all that stress in the world can’t touch them. And that just really reminded me of what it’s like in the jet with me and Curt and Patrick and Mo, you know? Up in the air and out in the middle of the ocean—those are the two places where we can really chill and be ourselves. Between the two, though, the air is better, because I’ve seen paparazzi people just pop out of the fucking surface of the water, like, in a submarine or some shit, trying to take pictures of me on the yacht. Seriously! I’ve seen them do it! But unless they’re fucking military trained, I doubt they’ll be able to fly alongside us and board our plane.

  #49—Left wrist. I’ve gotten into a lot of trouble for this one. I guess because it’s in Arabic? Like, I guess there are a lot of people in the world who are like: Why would you have that language on your body? Why would you support that language? And it’s like: You realize it’s a language, right? You realize it’s just WORDS? I remember right after I got it and posted a picture of it, everyone was freaking out being like: WHAT DOES IT MEAN? WHAT DOES IT SAY? WHAT KIND OF HIDDEN MESSAGE IS THIS? And people were coming up with all these crazy theories. And then finally this dude from Syria just wrote in the comments, like: All it says is “Love & Justice,” people. Chill.

  * * *

  I got it as a tribute to Mandy. Not in a lovey-dovey way, but like, just as a tribute to what she was going through and what she was doing. I wanted to find a way that I could support her, you know? Show her that I had her back.

  After we got back from France, like, while I was doing all the Roses and Mud shit and gearing up to tour with Chris and Trick, Mandy was definitely in a better place about what had happened in Berlin than she was like, in the days immediately following the attacks, but she still wasn’t “over it,” and she still wasn’t resolved in her mind about what had happened or why it had happened, and so I think she started to go really deep into all of the various explanations she could find.

  Mandy is actually this incredibly smart, incredibly deep person. Like, people might not assume that because of the early music that she was putting out, or like, they might watch those interviews from the L.A. Baby days or like, look at the Heartache/Heartbreak music videos and think they know who she is, but the truth is, she’s actually always been this really complex thinker, and she just sort of compartmentalized all that shit so that it wouldn’t get in the way of her career. Like, it was always so clear to me that like, Mandy got to L.A. when she was thirteen or whatever, and she saw what the game was and she saw how it worked, and she was just sort of like: Okay. Got it. And then that same level of perfection that she brought to her voice—like, that same thing that makes her voice so spotless—she brought to the whole thing, you know? The interviews, the outfits, the videos, the charity work: All of it was just sort of untouchable. There were never any blemishes. Which was kind of the thing that started to annoy me about it, or like, the thing that I started to really dislike about the shit she was making, because it just always felt sort of lifeless, or like I couldn’t see Mandy in it. But at the same time, Mandy and her team were actually really smart because she was just so reliable, you know? Mandy was maybe never the person who was getting the MOST attention or like, making the MOST headlines or raking in the MOST money, but she was ALWAYS killing it. She was consistently putting out shit that was doing well, and like, when someone else would fuck up big time or like, when someone else would take a wrong turn or say the wrong thing or make a fool of themselves and drop out of the game, Mandy was always there to fill in the gaps. And even when she did all the sexy stuff, you know, like, even when she took that leap into adulthood and adult music and started showing more skin and singing about wanting to get fucked or wanting to get “dirty,” like, even then, she was still doing it in a way where you could listen to it with your mom and your grandma in the car and none of you would be embarrassed when the song was over. It was definitely sexy and it was definitely hot—like, if you watch the video for “Take Me” or “Like I Want You” or really anything from Mobilize, there’s no denying that it’s all sexy as hell—but at the end of the day, she could still show up to the Kidz Spot Awards and none of the parents were gonna be upset that she was presenting.

  And so as a result of all that, you know, like, up until that thing happened in Berlin, I don’t really think Mandy was ever concerned with like, politics or history or any of that shit, because as far as she was concerned, it was only ever gonna get in the way. Like, in her mind, the costs of getting mixed up in that shit were always gonna outweigh the benefits. But then that thing happened in Berlin, and it was like, I mean, in a lot of ways it was sort of an awakening for her, because she had to reconcile all of this horrible anger and violence in the world with all of the shit that she thought her music and her shows were supposed to be about, which was love and peace and happiness and acceptance.

  It wasn’t enough of an explanation for her that what had happened was just like, some crazy evil. That’s kind of what everybody was trying to tell her—I mean, even I was trying to tell her that for a while, that, like, you can’t get caught up in this shit, because there’s just a lot of evil in the world and it’s really unfortunate that it knocked on your doorstep, but it’s got nothing to do with you—but Mandy was like: No. There’s gotta be a reason for this. There’s gotta be an explanation for why this happened beyond like, “some people are just crazy.” And so she started doing all this research.

  I mean, Mandy really would’ve made an amazing high school teacher—maybe even a college professor or something—because she’s such an academic when it comes down to it. Like, when she gets into something, she gets in deep. She’s such a good student. Back when we were together, she was reading constantly—she was obsessed with all that vampire shit, like the Dying Dawn series or Sisters of the Blood, but she wouldn’t just read the books, you know? She would look up all these historical accounts of vampire sightings and like, get into all this scholarship about what vampires symbolize in literature—but now, like, after all the stuff with her concert happened, she just wanted to find out where the guys who did it were from and like, what their motivations were, and how they possibly could’ve gotten to a place in their minds where it made sense for them to do this, and so she read everything she could get her hands on. She wasn’t gonna stop until it all made sense to her.

  And at first, you know, she was doing it all in secret—like, she wasn’t really making it public that she was trying to educate herself about all this shit—but then as she got deeper and deeper into it, and like, as she started to really put together a picture for herself of like, what exactly had gone wrong in the world so that something like this was even possible, she started to want to share it with people, because it felt like, I don’t know, I guess she sort of felt a responsibility, you know, as someone whose concert created the environment for something like this to happen.

  And I mean, I think people were expecting a particular sort of response after Mandy returned to the public eye. Like, everybody was sort of cool with Mandy disappearing for a bit and gathering her thoughts, but I think they all assumed that when she finally did resurface, she would say something like: I’m so sorry for all the lives that have been lost, and I hope we can react to this horrible tragedy with love instead of hate. But instead, you know, when Mandy finally did come out and say something, she was talking about Western imperial aggression, and fucking drone strikes, and, like, the history of regime change in the Middle East, and people were just like: WHOA. I mean, they were just like: What the fuck? It really took them by surprise.

  I even saw conspira
cy theories online saying that Mandy was in on the attacks, you know, and that like, she had helped the terrorists plan them, and it was like: People were NOT fucking happy. People were really losing their minds.

  And it’s not like Mandy was trying to shock anybody or anything. I mean, it’s not like Mandy was saying what she was saying to be controversial or to make people upset or to piss people off. I really hated that, actually, when people were saying shit like Mandy was doing this as a marketing strategy or, like, she was trying to “rebrand” herself as some radical or something, because the truth was actually so much simpler. It was just like, she did all the research, and she came to her conclusions, and she was like: This is obviously the truth, and so I should obviously be saying it. And it started to feel like NOT addressing all this shit, like, NOT fully examining all the causes of what happened—like, just giving the sort of measured and careful and meaningless statement that everybody was expecting her to give—would’ve actually been the political thing to do, because as far as Mandy was concerned, that would’ve been the thing that would’ve required her to have an angle. The way she saw it, she was just stating the facts.