Famous People Read online

  And for the record, just ’cause I know there’s some people who still don’t believe us: Yeah, we lost our V-cards to each other. I took Mandy’s, and she took mine, and I’ll always remember her for that. I came in ten seconds flat. Seriously. My poor little guy didn’t stand a chance. I was talking all this big game beforehand like: Yo, I bet I’ll last at least a couple minutes, maybe half an hour. But then the second my dick hit pussy, it was just like: NOPE! HERE WE GO!

  Mandy’s pussy is like … how can I describe Mandy’s pussy …

  YO! I’m just kidding! I’m not gonna divulge that kind of shit to you guys! Are you serious? Mandy’s gonna be someone’s mom someday! If you want to read about that kind of shit, go to the message boards. Go read the tabloids. Go plug yourself into whatever misinformation machine you’ve got waiting for you in your browser. That shit’s gotten out of hand. I was hooking up with this one girl after a show, and before I took my pants off she was like: So is it true? And I was like: Is what true? And she was like: Do you really have all the lyrics to your songs tattooed on your dick? And I was just like: How is that even possible? Even if I included the balls, how small would they have to write? I’m not saying I’m lacking in hardware, but like: Seriously? I’m gonna spend that much time with some tattoo artist, letting him hold my thing in his hand while he inserts a needle into it again and again? Are you kidding me?

  Actually, that reminds me: I’ve asked the publisher to let me include an appendix at the back of the book where I’ll have a little diagram of all the tattoos on my body and explain the significance of each one. I’m kind of sick of all these articles online that I’ve seen that try to catalog them, because like, first of all, they always miss a few, and second, like, they come up with all these totally insane, absolutely ridiculous explanations for what they represent, and so I’d rather just give you the official tally. Obviously, it’ll only be valid up to the date of publication, since I can pretty much guarantee that I’ll be getting fresh ink up until the day I die, but maybe if they print a second edition of the book, I’ll update it. Who knows?

  But yo! My first tattoo was with Mandy. We went and got them together. We were like, walking around on the beach one day in Santa Monica, and we had some popcorn or whatever—you know, we bought it from one of the vendors on the pier—and this bird just swooped down and jacked the popcorn right out of my hand. Mandy and I were laughing about it, and we were like: Yo, that was crazy! What kind of bird was that? And we asked this old, like, surfer dude on the beach, like: Hey, do you know what these birds are around here? And we like, pointed at one, and he was like: Seriously? And we were like: Yeah, what are these called? And he was like: That’s a seagull, man. What the fuck? And Mandy and I immediately started cracking up because we had obviously seen them in movies and like, seen drawings of them when we were in kindergarten and seen them around L.A., but neither of us had actually ever put the pieces together and been like: oh, that’s what a seagull looks like.

  And this was right after we had lost our virginities to each other, so we just felt like it was the two of us forever. You know how that feels? When it’s first love? You’re just like: Whoa, okay, this is obviously the only person I’m ever gonna be with. Like, obviously, I can’t ever feel this way about someone else. And so later that night, we passed by a tattoo parlor, and we were just like: Absolutely. Let’s do it.

  You’re supposed to have, like, a written permission slip from your mom or whatever when you’re that young, but the guys at the tattoo parlor had seen us both on TV, and so they thought it would be tight to give us both our first ink. And so we each got a little seagull right above our hearts. Just a simple little guy. It’s a really sweet first tattoo when I think about it. I’m glad it wasn’t something stupid like her name or a rose or whatever. It’s just this little seagull. I love that thing. Every time I look at it in the mirror after I get out of the shower, I think of Mandy. It’s crazy how in love we were then.

  But life is this ever-changing thing, you know? You have to accept that. Everything is just a phase that’s passing through us. And we’re all just phases that are passing through the world. Things aren’t supposed to last forever. Not even tattoos.

  * * *

  Things started going sour with my dad around the time I was releasing my second album. The first album was like, obviously this major hit, and now everybody was just waiting to see what the second album was gonna be, and my dad had already sort of mapped it out—he already had a plan for it even before we dropped the first one—and he hadn’t really let me in on the plan, because he was just like: Focus on the shows. Focus on the interviews. Focus on the battle at hand. But then when it came time to start recording, he showed me what he was thinking and I was just like … Nah. That’s not it.

  I mean, I could see what he was going for. The first album had been like, all about me being a kid, you know? It was this very pure, sort of really catchy and hot, but like, very innocent thing. The big single, “Be My Baby,” was all about me having a crush on this girl and like, writing her notes in class, but she never got the notes because somehow they’d always get intercepted by other kids along the way, and it was totally cute. Like, it wasn’t SO childish that adults couldn’t sing it or play it in the background while they were working out, but it wasn’t so adult that it felt like I was faking something. But now I was a teenager. Now I was living in a totally different reality. Now I was in L.A., and like … I wasn’t a virgin anymore, you know what I’m saying?

  Think back to when you were fifteen, and try to remember how badly you just wanted to fuck somebody. Like, when you were fifteen, were you ever thinking about anything OTHER than fucking somebody? And it was probably really hard to make that happen, right? Because, like, what are you gonna do? I mean, sure, tons of kids these days are bumping by fifteen—twelve even—but I’m just saying, like, when you’re that age, all you want to do is just be an adult already, but you can’t, because you’re living with your parents, and you don’t have any of your own money, and you can’t go to bars or go to clubs or anything, and you’re just like, this horny, helpless, powerless little person.

  But I was actually doing all those things that fifteen-year-olds dream about, and I was doing them when I was fifteen. I mean, I have a theory about this, and I think the problem with so many people—well, I guess I should just say men, because I don’t know what it’s like to be a woman—but the problem with so many men is that they have to wait until they’re like, thirty to live the life they dreamed of when they were fifteen. And that’s if they’re LUCKY, you know? But here I was, like, ACTUALLY fifteen years old, and I was living the fucking dream! I was partying, and going out to bars, and making my own millions, and fucking girls—Mandy and I were on a break at that point because she thought maybe she was a lesbian—and so I felt like an adult. For all intents and purposes, I WAS an adult. I mean, I was filing taxes—not by myself, but like, the taxes had my name on them—and so I was seeing the world and seeing myself way differently than I did when I was singing in the choir.

  And I mean, I should also say, like, my voice was changing at this point, you know? I just literally couldn’t sing the kinds of songs that I sang on the first album. Even if I had wanted to, I just physically couldn’t hit those notes anymore.

  But my dad had written me all these songs for the second album, and like, they were about teenage shit, you know? Like, they were about NORMAL teenage shit. Honestly, looking back on it, I’m pretty sure that a lot of the songs were about stuff that like, my dad was feeling and going through when he was a teenager. And sure, some of those things were the same things I was going through, but for the most part, our lives were just completely different, and I couldn’t really find much to connect with.

  And, you know, when you’re famous—when you’re like, at the top of the charts and you’re in L.A. and you’ve got the kind of fan base that I have—you meet people. You meet tons of people. And you’d be surprised by the kinds of people wh
o want to work with you. I mean, even people who thought my first record was lame or whatever—you know, like, even people who thought I made music for kids—even they couldn’t deny my numbers. No one can turn their nose up at the kind of units I was pushing. And so I found myself in this position where I could call up, like, dope musicians, like, really dope people who I really respected, and I could be like: Yo, you wanna get in the studio today? And more often than not, they’d be like: Yeah, let’s go.

  And so, without telling my dad—I mean, I wasn’t trying to go behind his back or whatever. I was just doing my thing, being creative with whoever I wanted—I would go chill with all these guys making sick music around L.A. We’d smoke weed or go get a hamburger and then we’d usually get around to making some tracks, and you know, it was guys like Z Bunny and Trick Hatz and Deez Soundzz—just like, really dope, really forward-thinking, really crazy guys who had been in the game for a while. And it’s not like I was even trying to put an album together—I just, like, after hanging with these guys every once in a while for a couple months, realized that I had a whole bunch of songs and that all of them were a lot more exciting to me than the stuff my dad and I had been working on.

  And so one day, I was chilling with Deez Soundzz, and you know, he’s kind of crazy, like he’s kind of one of those guys who, when he gets that certain look in his eyes, you know he’s about to say some insane shit, and like, we were chilling with these girls, and they knew I was fifteen, but whatever, they were down, and we were in the jacuzzi at Deez’s place, and we were playing this track we had made for the girls on the speakers out there, and they were like, losing their minds over it. And, at some point, one of them was like: When is this coming out, Deez? And Deez just looked at me straight in the face, and he was like: Tonight, bitches. And I was like, immediately laughing and shit, like, I thought he was joking, but Deez was like: I’m serious, bro. Let’s roll the dice. And I was feeling kind of like … I don’t know, I was feeling like life was full of possibility, you know? I was feeling like life was so ridiculous. I was feeling like why be so precious about this second album? Who cared? I had so much to give the world, and like, not everything needs a strategy. Not everything needs a plan. Sometimes, you just gotta let inspiration take you—you just gotta make a bold, crazy move, and if people don’t like it, fuck ’em. Move on.

  And so Deez dropped it on his website that night—he just put it out there—and within an hour, it felt like the whole world had heard it. People were losing their shit. Deez and I didn’t even sit there at the computer or anything waiting for the responses to roll in. We just went out and got some sushi. We ordered sake and beer, and we just sat back and watched our phones blow up. The girls we were with were like, cracking up every time one of our phones rang, and eventually, we both just turned them off, and Deez was like: Let’s go perform this shit. And I was laughing, like: Where, Deez? And Deez was just like: Where you think, homie? Charizard.

  And so without even announcing it or anything, we just rolled into Charizard and got ready to play. We walked in the door, and immediately, the staff knew what was up. They laid out a sound board for Deez, and they got him a laptop, and they got me a microphone and within, like, fifteen minutes, there was this insane crowd outside. I don’t even know how all these people got there so fast, but it was this crazy mixture of Deez’s fans and my fans, and I talked to the bouncer, and I was like: Yo, man, a lot of my fans are underage. Think you can give ’em a pass? And he was like: Yeah, bro, I got you. This song is tight. And so within half an hour, the house was packed. Deez and I were set up, and we didn’t even sound check or anything, we were just riding on this, like, insane high. And we let it rip. I mean … we crushed it. I’m seriously not trying to brag or anything, but we just totally crushed it. It was legendary. A new era had begun.

  * * *

  Okay, so I want to tell you about someone.

  One of the cool things about writing this book is that, like, I get to just talk about whatever I want whenever I want—I have all this space, and so I can just talk about all of the people who have had an impact on my life, who have left an impression—and so one person I definitely want to talk about is Oddvar, my biggest fan.

  I know that sounds crazy—like, how can I know that he’s my biggest fan?—but I’d honestly be astounded if there was anyone on the planet who cared more about me or my life than Oddvar. Oddvar’s level of fandom is off the fucking charts. He’s an EXPERT. He’s a MASTER. And he’s actually super-fucking-chill.

  Being famous is crazy—that’s true for so many reasons—but absolutely one of the craziest things about being famous—and like, this is one of those things that only the people who have experienced it can even begin to understand—is having fans. It’s one thing to put shit out there and have people listen to it and like it or whatever or like, maybe play it at a party where they’re all hanging or hear it on the radio and go crazy, but then there’s this whole other thing, you know, where like, people are FANS of YOU. They’ve just decided that, like, YOU’RE the thing they’re into, like, YOU’RE the thing they love most about life. And that’s one hundred percent bizarre and insane every time you encounter it. You honestly never get used to it.

  I was thinking about this the other day, because in L.A., they’ll sometimes host conventions for sci-fi shit or fantasy shit, you know—like, they’ll do it at the Convention Center downtown, and it’ll be going on for a couple days—and I remember we were driving by the Convention Center one day on our way to this fashion show in Chinatown, and we saw this massive line of people with their tickets, all dressed up in their costumes waiting to get in. And you know, it was like, people were dressed as elves and wizards and battle dragons—it’s not like they picked this shit up at the store: they MADE this shit—and I was just looking at all these people thinking: You guys LOVE this. Like, this is your FAVORITE thing. And I was just thinking about how crazy it is to love something that much—to devote such a big part of your life to being part of the world of something—and then it dawned on me, like: There are people who feel this way about ME. There are people who show up to meetings and symposiums and conventions and have like, full-on roundtable discussions about ME and my work. And I’ve honestly pretended for most of my life like that part of the world doesn’t exist, but now that I’m writing this book and I’m thinking about who’s actually gonna read it, it’s like: Who ARE these people, you know? What are their lives like?

  Honestly, I think part of the reason I’ve connected so much with Oddvar—like, part of the reason we’ve kept up a correspondence and become friends—is that he’s totally not what I was expecting.

  First of all, he’s thirty-six years old—LOL—and second, he’s this dude who lives in Norway—or well, not technically in Norway: He lives on this island called Spitsbergen in this region called Svalbard where like, there’s this giant seed vault where they’re keeping spare copies of seeds for basically every type of plant on Earth. Oddvar’s job is to like, oversee the vault and to make sure all the seeds are being kept at the right temperature and to accept new seed deposits when they come in. I’m not kidding. That’s what he does.

  I forget exactly what he told me about the whole thing, but the way he described it, it’s like: Basically, because this island is super-remote and it’s super-cold there, they’ve stored all these seeds in the middle of this icy mountain in case some sort of catastrophic event happens—you know, like in case of a nuclear war or something—and all of a sudden all of the vegetation on the planet and everything gets wiped out and they have to rebuild the ecosystem from square one. And Oddvar, the guy who basically runs this shit on the day-to-day, is OBSESSED with me! I don’t mean any disrespect when I say that—like, he’s actually a really, really cool dude—but it’s just like, aside from looking after the seeds and doing research and shit, Oddvar spends most of his time, like, being a fan of me. That’s what he DOES. And I don’t just mean that he knows all of my records by heart, or like, he has all t
he signed memorabilia or something like that. I mean, he DOES have all that shit, but it’s deeper than that. He’s a scholar of my life. He’s like, a student of my world. He could almost write this book better than I could.

  I remember when I met him, my reaction was just like: WHAT? LOL. Like, it wasn’t even like I was scared or something or like I was freaked out. I was just sort of like, taken aback, you know? I mean, the way he was talking to me about my life and like, all my shit, it was just like, there was almost this very clinical vibe he had. He wasn’t shaking with excitement or like, trying to touch me or screaming his head off or anything. It was almost like, I mean, it was almost like actually seeing me in the flesh wasn’t all that different from reading about me or watching videos or listening to the albums. He actually sort of talked to me like a person, which I totally wasn’t expecting. I think because he was just so familiar with me and like, so deep in my world, actually meeting me wasn’t that surprising for him.

  The whole reason I even met him in the first place was that he won this contest on the radio station in Oslo where they were doing a trivia thing ahead of my concert there. He must’ve called into the contest from the seed vault on Spitsbergen, and he obviously knew more about me than anyone else, and so the prize for the contest was that the winner got to come backstage after the concert and hang out with me, and I don’t know, I think there must have been some sort of charity component or something or else I probably wouldn’t have agreed to it. But anyway, Oddvar came backstage, and like, we started talking, and I was sort of expecting it to be the normal kind of shit, you know—I mean, honestly, I was expecting a fourteen-year-old girl—but here comes this like, well-dressed, kinda intellectual-looking dude, who’s like, thirty-six and doesn’t look like a crazy person at all, and he was so calm, you know? He was so gracious and nice. And like, I asked him a few questions, just trying to be nice, and he kinda blew me away with how much he knew. He started rattling off facts about my middle school, and like, all of the different producers I had worked with, and like, my vocal range, and then sort of the craziest thing about the encounter was that he just started asking me questions, but like, they weren’t the kinds of questions that most fans would ask. It was more like—I mean, honestly, it felt like the whole point of meeting me for him was to fill in the gaps in his knowledge, you know? Like, he was almost treating me like I was research material, or like I was a very rare book about the Civil War or something and he was finally going to get the answers that he had been searching for after all these years of studying me. He didn’t care about the fact of meeting me so much as he saw meeting me as the ultimate opportunity to answer the questions he couldn’t answer without me. And, I mean, honestly, it was wild, because we were just supposed to hang for, like, half an hour or something—I think that’s all that the radio station had promised him—but I ended up hanging out with him all night. He came out to dinner with us and like, we all had drinks together—he didn’t really drink much, but we got him to take a shot or two—and after a few hours, like, he left early. He was the one who ended up saying to me: I have to be up early tomorrow for my boat ride back to Spitsbergen, but it has been a pleasure meeting you. And then he just disappeared. LOL. All he asked for was my email address, which I gave to him, of course, and he was like: Would it be all right if I contacted you in the future with questions about your work? And I was like: Yeah man, of course, this was dope. And that was it.