He did it in the house I grew up in. LOL. I guess I forgot to mention that. Probably most of you already knew that, but it turned out that’s where my dad had been staying this whole time: the last place I ever would’ve thought to look. He was just renting out our old house in St. James, making all those crazy videos for Content Bucket in front of a green screen in the basement, and like, sleeping in the room he used to share with my mom. And the day he decided to kill himself, he went up to the room that used to be my room, you know, the room where we recorded that video of me singing the national anthem, and he sat at the little desk that used to be my desk, and he leaned the gun up against the desk, and he leaned his head onto the gun, and he pulled the trigger. And like, the only reason he did it that day instead of some other day that week was that he knew the housekeeper was gonna come by that day, and so he knew someone would find him and report it and we’d all hear about it on time. I mean, it’s like I said, you know, there’s nothing particularly remarkable about killing yourself that way. There’s nothing particularly original or creative or interesting about it, but it’s just, like, the FACT that he did it is so powerful, you know? There’s some real sense in which, like, you just can’t top that. You can’t top, like, my dad sitting at my desk in the house I grew up in, literally blowing his brains out all over the room. That’s the best he’s ever gonna do. That’s the best anyone could ever possibly do. Which is why I think, like, for so many artists who can’t create anymore, it just makes so much sense to choose suicide as the next move, because it’s like, the most complete work of art we’re capable of. I mean, what could be more meaningful? What could be more powerful than just removing yourself from the equation? It’s the only power we ALL fucking have, but by doing it you’re just going, like: Yeah, I pushed the fucking button. In a way, it’s like you’re ending the whole fucking world, because, as far as you’re concerned, once you’re gone, there’s nothing left. And what better artistic statement could there be? What more intense thing could you do than just end the whole fucking world for yourself?

LOL.

Here’s something I learned recently:

The only reason tattoos stay in our skin for so long is that our body thinks it’s under attack.

Did you know that?

I’d been getting tats for years before finally I asked my main guy—this dude Optimus Prime who’s got a shop on Melrose—like: Yo, how does this shit even work? And what he told me was that tattoos are basically little infections.

When the needle pierces our skin and injects ink into the lower level—like, not just the surface level but the layer that’s way beneath that—our body freaks out, and it’s like: What the fuck is happening to me? And so it sends all of these immune cells to the places where the needle is attacking it, and when the cells try to fight off the ink, they eat up all the dye and soak it up into the skin. And most of the particles in the ink get eaten up by the cells no problem, but the pigment cells—the cells that have all the color—are too big to get broken down, and so they just stay there, trapped in the skin forever. And you’re always shedding layers of skin, so like, eventually they DO fade, but for most tats to disappear completely, you’d basically have to live, like, three hundred years or something, and so for all intents and purposes, they’re permanent.