by Shane Cook

Created on: January 11, 2009   Last Updated: August 28, 2009

I really don't want my friends to start calling me Mrs. Morisette behind my back. So if you feel a certain descriptive term I use in the forthcoming letter is being thrown around inaccurately please feel free to let me know. I believe peer editing to be a valuable and sadly ignored tool.

About five years ago I was involved in sponsoring a party for an Indie Film Festival. If you have never attended an event like this you should. You see a handful of two minute films then you go to a party. You see a forty-five minute B-horror then go to a party. This will go on for two days straight. You also try to bring in a few "Indie Icons". That year we had Rosanna Arquette, Gus Van Sant and John Doe of the Los Angeles punk band "X". John has also done a fair amount of film work. He's probably best known for playing the pissed off father-in-law in the movie about Jerry Lee Lewis.

Outside of Randy Newman and They Might Be Giants I don't have much of a "super-fan" mentality. I love music so much and to such an extent it would be impossible to devote that kind of time and energy to everything I appreciate. I really enjoyed Drug Store Cowboy so knowing I'd meet Gus Van Sant was kind of cool but at the time I wasn't familiar with Rosanna Arquette. I had actually spent ten minutes talking to her about how "I don't trust isolated soy protein" when someone came up and asked for her autograph. I actually felt kind of cool that I didn't realize who she was.

Come to find out my friend Andy (who was involved in the event with me) knew John Doe. I guess for about a month back in the eighties "X" considered having a keyboard player. That keyboardist was my friend Andy. Knowing Andy's distaste for simplicity and X's fan base it is a good thing that it didn't work out. Punk rock history may have been changed for the worse. Andy was looking forward to seeing his old "friend" though.

After a couple hours into the event Andy spots John outside one of the theatres and we walk up to him. Andy says hello and introduces me. "This is my good friend Shane. He's in a band called SIMONSOMETHING and there's a lot of people saying they're the next big thing." I still don't know why Andy chose to say this but he did and ultimately it's OK. It's cool when someone shows excitement about something you are doing. So, John pauses for a moment, shakes my hand and says, "Yeahnice suit buddy." He then looked at me as if to say, "I don't sign autograph's." I immediately felt uncomfortable. I then felt awkward

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