Kay Hanley

USA Mike has been in the studio producing an album for the lovely Lauren for the past week and a half so I have cut back my work schedule to take on some serious mommy duty.  Honestly, I don’t know how stay-at-home moms do this job 7 days a week.  It’s really exhausting.  The nice part, aside from spending rare daytime hours with the kiddos, is that I’ve been doing a lot of cooking and entertaining at home.                 

Jack had a few weeks off from the Jonas Brothers tour so he and Ashlee, one of my favorite ladies from the Miley tour, came over last Friday for dinner.  It was great to catch up with them and get all of the latest news of their lives.  Ash is putting in some major time with her drum lessons and Jack is about to embark on a hugely ambitious year with the JoBros.  Henry and Z are always over the moon to hang out with cool people that they met on tour.

jack, ashlee & z 

ash & z with the lushis-mobile                 

 Over the weekend, we had our somewhat regular Sunday pool party bbq.  During the summer months (when we aren’t in boston) we try to get as many people as possible over to our house on the weekends to swim, eat and drink.  The last variable of that equation usually has me feeling like shit on Monday morning, but it’s always worth it.

luke, kate & henry 

luke & isabel 

 omg, it’s milo & jackson!!!

Last week, I went to the 40th birthday party of one of my best girlfriends, Kaylyn Thornal.   At some point during our 15 year friendship, I became a soccer mom and she became a hot lesbian director.  It’s as if that song “Ebony & Ivory” was written just for us, but instead of a song about blacks and whites, it’s breeders and dykes.  I’m not sure who’s Stevie Wonder and who’s Paul McCartney in this relationship but I love her a lot and she, me.

mish, kaylyn, fan & kristen 

me & my besties.

Michael & I just bought a painting  by the artist Tim Bavington.  As always, the brilliant Naomi was the person who introduced this beautiful piece of art into our lives but I have to be honest:  I am terrified now that I have this thing in my house.   If Henry throws one of his Indiana Jones daggers in the wrong direction, we will be screwed to the tune of a new car and then I will be forced to administer a near fatal beating to my own flesh and blood.  Trust me when I say that I can think of a dozen similar scenarios between my children and this painting that might reasonably result in me resorting to some kind of violence, and that’s kind of scary.  Hey, beauty is truth. Sometimes brutally so.  Check out our awesome new painting!

naomi & the bavington   

 For those of you who have asked for my opinion on the Miley Cyrus maelstrom, here is my answer.  

 i don’t care. nor should you.

Solidarity,

Kay 

Due to the nature of my work, I have acquaintances from all over the world and from all sorts of backgrounds.  Some of the people that I know start out as Cleo fans or posters on my message board and then somehow they just become part of my life.   A few weeks back, one of the KH message board peeps sent me an email saying that he and his wife were coming to LA from Chicago to hang out, so despite having never met in person, we made plans to have lunch.  It’s funny how in this day and age, when we do so much of our communicating over the web, that you can meet someone for the first time and connect as if you already know each other because you DO know each other from sharing similar virtual interests, sometimes for years.  It’s a strange kind of vetting process, isn’t it?

Adi and Shayna showed up at 11:45am.  I showed them around our house and then brought them out back to check out our recording studio and introduce them to USA Mike, who never leaves the damn place, and then we strolled over to Mexicali on Ventura for some people watching and grub. It was a gorgeous afternoon even by LA standards so we chose a table outside and caught up on what has been happening with all of us; their years in Israel before they were a couple, my cockamamie schemes, real estate in Los Angeles, blah, blah.  Because Adi and Shayna are newlyweds, the conversation about how they met and got married came up quickly.

• • adi:   “it was kind of a saga.”
  • me:   “the best stories always are.”
  • shayna:   “does she know?”
  • adi:  “no.”
  • me: “what are you talking about?”
  • shayna:   “i was shot in the chest during a terrorist attack in israel.”
  • me:   “……….” 

 Hands down, they are the all time winners of the “how we met” contest with their star-crossed, globe-trotting, death-defying tale of love ignored, found, lost and then found again.   The tale also reminds me that even one life lost to violence and war diminishes all of our lives.   The innocent woman blown up by a god driven terrorist in Kabul, Jerusalem, Karachi, New York, Mosul, Yemen, London or Mogadishu is surely someone’s daughter, sister or mother, but she may also be your future wife and mother to the children you hope to have someday.

 That was the the most fascinating lunch conversation I’ve ever had guys, and I thank you for sharing the story with me.

  shayna & adi     

After I parted ways with my fabulous lunch companions I had to get back to the house and take care of a bunch of stuff and then get ready for sound check at the Henry Fonda Theatre.  Michelle had been asked by our friend David Gray at Island Records to put together groups of backup singers for an Aussie superstar by the name of Delta Goodrem who was performing industry showcases in NY and LA.  Since I am totally a profesh backup singer now, Mish roped me into generously offered me a job on her LA team.   It was actually a lot of fun.  The other singers, Nadia and Brandon (stacy lynes, i’ll give you one guess where you know brandon from) are ridiculously good, as is Michelle, so I’m sure nobody noticed when I stopped singing at a critical moment at the end of the very spare piano/vocal song because I started choking.  Literally AND figuratively.   Sorry about that, Delta.  At least we know it will never happen again. 

 On that note, I’m deciding that being a professional backup singer kind of sucks.  I’ve only ever done the backup gig with Miley and I LOVE that job so I assumed that you get always treated a certain way.  Even though Delta was super pro and respectful, I had this weird “faceless employee” feeling all night that made me think that the backup singer career has the potential to be a little dehumanizing.   No matter, even at its crappiest, any career where you get to sing or play music all the time beats punching a clock.  

we will not work under these conditions!!  unless you pay us. 

 xok  

  

I used to be a waitress.  I dropped out of college and needed to earn a living so from ages 18-25 I served people food and drinks.  My hobby was being in a rock band so the demands on my evenings and wee hours required me to have a job that took my rock & roll moonlighting into consideration.  It was said to me on many occasions by various bosses and diners that I was in fact, the worst waitress they had ever seen.  The reason I was such a hopeless waitress was due to a variety of factors:  my horrible time management skills, failure to consolidate tasks, the afore mentioned attention deficits and inability to prioritize, among other things.  If I needed to get a diet coke for table 1 and ketchup for table 2, i would invariably make 2 trips even though the diet cokes and ketchup were in the same place.  Extrapolate this stupidity forward to include 8 tables, a lunch rush and and a dozen other customer service requirements and you can see how my disorganization might result in unhappiness for everyone involved.  On my end, the chaos that ensued every time I put on an apron and stuck a pen behind my ear has a chilling terminology that every person that has ever been in the restaurant business will know and fear:  I was always in the weeds.

I would frequently dream about showing up for my waitressing shift only to find out that all the other waitresses had called in sick just as a busload of elderly sightseers came pouring into the dining room, demanding to be seated all at once.  They would want separate checks, ice water with lemon (which I would have forgotten to slice during set-up) and endless substitutions, thus rendering the menu pointless.  A couple of 4 tops of businessmen would get seated and they would be in a hurry because they only had an hour for lunch.  The owner of the restaurant would decide to pop in with a bunch of sommeliers to show off his amazing wine list and reasonably expect me to open, describe and pour every one of them  I would wake up in a flop sweat;  just as terrified as if I had dreamt of a knife wielding rapist cornering me at a deserted truckstop.   I anticipated every shift with crippling knots in my stomach, knowing with bleak certainty what was coming.   

 

In the last few years of my restaurant career, I was taken in by a group of incredible restauranteurs who quickly identified my absurd lack of ability while taking into account that I possessed some mitigating qualities that made my employment salvageable.   Some examples?  Excellent penmanship (for addressing invitations), superior phone voice (taking reservations), reasonable knife skills (chopping stuff for the expo line), and good old fashioned Boston Irish Catholic charm (bartending, of course. but only on slow nights).  Even after Cleo was earning a living and I was touring the world, I would go back to work for them in between tours and recording, wherever they were.  It was in those years, tagging along with Christopher and Esti like an over-eager puppy, that I became passionate about food and wine, which has in turn become the basis for the happiest and most enriching substance of my life.  If you are ever in Boston you MUST check them out at Radius, Via Matta or Great Bay.

 

Back to my initial thought that triggered this ramble.  In the weeds.  Those words still make my blood run cold.  I am so grateful that the universe found a way to spare me and the dining public the misery of Kay Hanley, the worst waitress of all time.

-xok 

I’m about to pass out from exhaustion but I know myself well enough that if I don’t post tonight, all of today’s information will be lost. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of a spaceshot with major attention deficits. Oh, you hadn’t noticed? Ooof. I feel like things are sort of awkward between us now.I’m actually posting a post about how I’m too tired to post so I’ll post tomorrow, but I wanted to at least leave you with a memento of my day.

You see, the lovely Cruiserweight kids are staying at our house because they’re opening for American Hi-Fi tomorrow night at the Troubadour. While they are here, USA Mike is producing their version of “American Girl”, the essential classic by Tom Petty. That got me, Stella, Dave and USA to talking about one of our favorite iconic scenes in American cinema: In Silence Of The Lambs Catherine Martin, who happens to be a senator’s daughter is driving alone at night, singing along to American Girl on the radio. Then some major shit goes down.

This song and video by The Greenskeepers pay homage to the creepy awesomeness.

{vidavee id=”7547″ w=”320″ }

Especially cute rock boys from the south. If they are from Georgia, all the better as far as I’m concerned. The first time I met Butch Walker, he actually replied to something I said to him with an un-ironic “Yes, ma’am.” Southern rock boys look as stylishly dangerous as any band from Brooklyn or London but with none of the contrivance. They will say “please” and “excuse me” and listen patiently as you breathlessly embarrass yourself attempting to offer some interesting points that they’ve never heard before about how awesome their band is because you want them to think you’re clever and maybe ask you out for beers later but then you get all off message and weird and end up saying something stupid about their leather jacket or their haircut and now they’ll never want to make out with you because you’re just like everyone else but with the added bonus of being a dimwit. Still, they will blush a little and say “thank you so much, that really means a lot” and you will feel like they really mean it. When I say you I mean YOU, not me, because I am cool as a cucumber, baby.

Anyhoodles, Stacy is producing this band from Atlanta called The Modern Society and they invited me down to the studio to sing a couple of background bits on their new album. They are totally super-dee-duper. When I listen to their music over and over, alone in my secret room with lit candles, a bottle of scotch and The Modern Society posters as wallpaper I think of J. Mascis fronting Superdrag. If you know me, you will realize that this is high praise indeed.

hi. we’re the modern society. you may swoon now.

A few weeks back I did an interview with Vivian Manning-Schaffel for a parenting blog called Babble.com. I’ve never done an interview that focused on motherhood before, so it was kind of a nice shift of focus from the typical Q&A, which after 20 years has gotten pretty tedious. Thanks for going easy on me my first time out, Vivian. Check out the article here

Okay, then. Have a nice weekend. Bye.

xok