On Blowing My Interview With SPIN Magazine.

"…that’s what Einstein said, if it has a flaw and its irreparable turn it into a feature. If you’re always burning the pancakes, put it on the marquee. Burnt Pancakes, 99 Cents." --Tom Waits

“…That’d be like staking my entire career on rolling a six right now.”

I imagined my expression, like a 6-year-old kid amazed at some mundane but no less miraculous wonder of life. I had rolled a six. I had been calculating my odds aloud, slouched over my friend’s ash-covered coffee table and nervously toggling the stray objects with my fingertips.

When the six hit the table I met his expression, which was slightly less exuberant than mine. I believed in superstition and, above all things, I believed in signs. He, always the realist, just saw a six.

I’ve always believed that if there is a hell, each person perceives it specifically to his or her own worst possible scenario. And I discovered on the night of my phone interview with SPIN magazine that my own personal “hell scenario” will be the following: Groundhog’s Day-style, I will be perpetually stuck on the snowy evening of Friday, January 14th ; on which I will leave my terrible and cruelly-located office job, sliding through the hazardous sludge and the even more hazardous winter drivers, sick with the weight of my entire future in the pit of my stomach. My dream job. A music editorial writer with SPIN magazine.

The cool Rolling Stone.

The phone call to determine whether or not I would get the job I had been dreaming of since I had seen Almost Famous when I was fifteen.

I fishtailed up my icy driveway and scurried up the slumping wooden stairs to my bedroom, checking the time on my phone. He was late-- the ‘associate editor’ with whom I would interview-- and I spent the last remaining minutes ratting off cool albums that I’d need to say that I liked; reasons why I liked them; my ‘impressive’ interview and editorial history.

The truth was I had only been writing for a couple of years. I started my blog as an anonymous and somewhat sharp-tongued shock-critic who hid behind not only my anonymity, but the harsh honesty for which I would come to be known. This made me fewer friends than enemies in my small local scene, and I had paid for it on more than one occasion. But in that time, I had not only started cultivating a narrative voice on which I hope(d) to build a career, but soothed the scathing rhetoric that I had hoped would come off as wit, and the result was a body of work of which I was fairly proud.

So, for some reason, I had felt that I was ready. I had sent my SPIN Internship Application pack (clips; cover letter; resume; etc etc) several months before and, truth be told, I had completely forgotten about it when I got the e-mail that I was a finalist for the internship. The editor said that we, the finalists (seventeen, including myself), were to be issued a “test” within the next three days, which we would have “a couple days” to complete. It was a simple test: three story pitches; one of which we had to actually write.

After much deliberation, I chose the following three pitches: one, a retrospective photo gallery of the life and times of Dr. Dre in celebration of his February album debut; two, coverage of Social Distortion’s new release “Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes;” and three, a tour photo gallery of the then-touring indie quasi-supergroup Bad Books. Naturally, the piece I wrote was the Dr. Dre one.

Miraculously, SPIN loved it and, a couple of e-mails later, set up an interview with me.

I had been streetviewing NYC apartments on Google for about a week, calculating feasible bus-and-subway commuter routes to downtown Manhattan from nearly all corners of the city, when William called me for the first time. I kept it surprisingly cool for the first half or so of the interview. I had been thinking endlessly about angles to take (I work in marketing, after all) for days and, weighing the options (should I be the “I’m cool enough to be in New York” Midwesterner, or the “I’ve been dreaming of this my whole life” Midwesterner?) decided to play it cool-- “just be yourself” was the only winning argument in every self-debate, in that frustratingly rational and yet impossible way.

After a few predictable questions, my decidedly “natural” and, yet, awkwardly formal responses (“Well, I like to think that many of my story ideas are not just focused on the subject itself, but more ruminating on the larger ideas of…”) I felt my words palpably slipping off of my tongue and had a sort of out-of-body experience. What was I doing? I was on the phone with fucking SPIN magazine. This was it. I was rolling the dice.

And that’s when I lost it. I think I blacked out a little bit, because I don’t remember most of the conversation. I remember him asking me the question that was my undoing. “What were your favorite albums of 2010?”

Truth was, it was a simple enough question. And the truth was that I not only had legitimate answers-- I really did listen to music! I really did like it, too!-- but I had backup answers too, just in case. Still, all that came out was, “Uhhh… um…..” and after several seconds I managed to begin to talk about Gorillaz’ “Plastic Beach,” and, just in the nick of time, uttered “Broken Bells… you know, that project with (gulp) Danger Mouse and…”--what the fuck was that guy’s name?!-- “James Mercer…”

The rest of the interview was excruciating, and the truth was I came off like a pathetic fucking townie. After my pathetically trite namedrops and mumbling something about local bands, I knew it was over; I could see New York in the distance, Lady Liberty waving goodbye from deep within a cloud of smog.

So even if I had rolled a six, it was still just a six-- just a number like the other five... not the right one. And yet I was somewhat hopeful. Those I had told about the possibility of my employment with SPIN (very few, “just in case”) were supportive and lent a million much-appreciated “their loss” hugs, sentiment, empathic proverbial claps on the back. All the same, I sunk into a deep creative depression which affected every aspect of my artistic life-- my music writing, my poetry, prose, and music itself took the brunt of the pain of my rejection, and, though I brushed it off with that same prescribed disaffected attitude that I had hoped would land me the job, I couldn’t help but feel like I was nothing more or less than the pathetic fucking townie that SPIN Magazine didn’t want to hire.

But it’s been a couple of months, and I’m fine. I took a step to renew the lapsing domain on TVJ and that simple act has given me a new lease on life: I’m finally ready to accept that, townie or not, I had a shot at my dream. I missed-- fuck, I blew it; no way around it-- but I’ve finally taken the steps to move on, to brush myself off and really-- actually-- be myself. No… just be. The rest will come as it may.

Burnt pancakes. 99 cents.