This week began at Losanjealous headquarters as any other. It was a bright, clear Monday morning. The Sandalwood conference room at the Marriott Residence Inn–Marina del Rey was ready for us to start work. And there, sprawled on the floor after a weekend binge apparently caused by despair occasioned by another second-place finish in a local flatulence contest, lay a passed-out DF.
Finding DF at the Losanj HQ in various states of mortification and/or disrobe at the end of a weekend is standard operating procedure. Except for one detail. In DF’s outstretched, near-comatose hand, we discovered a disk drive with a computer file on it. Could it be that DF had broken from character and actually done some damn work for a change?
Apparently: It seems that DF managed to convince Claire McKeown, charming doyenne of the local goth minimalist psychedelia dyad Dirt Bird to sit down with him for an interview. The result was occasionally incoherent (thanks to DF), occasionally inspired (thanks to Dirt Bird), and obviously incomplete. Here’s the first fragment:
–LaVerne CasaGrande, Losanjealous jefe
DF: Claire of “Dirt Bird,” I’d like to begin this interview by apologizing copiously for the fetor I exude.
Claire McKeown: …
DF: “Fetor” means “odor.”
CM: …
DF: It’s a congenital thing I’ve got, you see. When I was just a fetus, my mother ingested the needles of a deciduous Bosnian conifer, and as you can probably surmise… [seventeen-minute digression redacted–ed.] …anyway, “open sore” is really an understatement, as I think these eight-by-ten glossies I’ve brought amply illustrate–
CM: DF, are you going to ask any questions?
DF: I’m asking the questions here!!!!
CM: Yes.
DF: Yes.
[Painfully awkward silence ensues.]
CM: Perhaps you’d like to know where the name “Dirt Bird” came from.
DF: Is it a reference to flatulence, Claire of “Dirt Bird?”
CM: Ha! No. Dirt Bird comes from when I was about 19 and a dirty filthy little punk rocker. My Mom used to call me dirt bird. I wonder if she knew what it meant in slang and that she was basically calling me a prostitute?
DF: You’re a prostitute? How great! So if I–
CM: I’m not a prostitute.
DF: Can I still pay you for sex?
CM: No.
DF: Would you like to pay me for sex?