Tattoos, Talent and Teleprompters

Dave Navarro is probably best taken raw, unfettered and unscripted, but he still did an excellent job of reading a script. No one would have guessed it was the first time he read from a teleprompter. Navarro's arched eyebrows and challenging stare were imprinted in my memory, but I had never thought about his career until I operated his teleprompter for the Season 2 Finale of Spike TV’s Ink Masters Live.  Before I turned up for the rehearsal, I was told that certain people were touchy and I might be ditched from the job.  This did not make me feel good.

In preparation, I started reading Navarro’s book, “Don’t Try This at Home.” I thought perhaps if I got in tune with him, I might be able to help the show run more smoothly.  Soon, though, I realized that I’d best not try this at home or anywhere. 

“Since the option of death was always available, I had nothing to lose,” Navarro says early in his book. “If somebody came over and spilled a glass of wine on the couch, I could always kill myself.” 

Thank God, I thought.  This man understands the futility of striving and this job might actually be fun.  But I was no match for Dave Navarro and anything short of perfection was unacceptable to him, at least in terms of teleprompting.  Shortly before the live show began, I wished that the option of death were—in fact—a little more available.

When the first rehearsal began, Navarro’s microphone was not turned on so I heard nothing for around two minutes.  This was long enough for him to decide I was not up to scratch.

Trust No One, Dave Navarro

Navarro always wanted to have the next script item waiting in the screen so he knew what was coming next, and could go there in case he had to jump out early.  During the dress rehearsal, a producer insisted that I blank the screen and wait to jump past several items, which she wanted to hide. 

“Dude, the screen can never be blank,” said Navarro. 

Then, he turned to his floor producer.  “I think we need to get a new prompter,” he said.

She murmured something to him and we carried on.

When the show went live, Navarro carried it along with energy and charisma.  Nobody noticed I was there, which is the best I could hope for.

Dave Navarro and Tatu Baby at the after party, which I definitely was not invited to

Back at home, I continued to read Navarro’s book and learned about the photo booth he installed in his home, his stalker, his hypothesis that, “The only people who stay in your life are the ones you pay,” his obsession with billboard celebrity Angelyne, the untimely death of his mother, his break with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, his addictions and his bands, Jane’s Addiction and Camp Freddy.  

If it hadn’t been for Ink Master Live, I never would have thought about these things.  Even if he wanted to replace me, I’m glad I got a glimpse into the world of Dave Navarro.

A Bunny's Tale and Other Stories

Sarah Miles, Fifi Dennison and me in Coping With Cupid 

At the end of the 1980s, I performed as part of a trio of girls in blonde wigs called Golden Syrup.  We intended to upend traditional views of women as objects by wearing granny underwear instead of bikinis and writhing on the floor like slugs instead of doing girly pushups or giving our audience the V sign instead of smiling.  

Extract from Coping With Cupid, directed by Viv Albertine of The Slits

Men got off on it anyway, and getting that kind of attention was a slippery slope.  One of our final projects was a BFI short film called Coping With Cupid.  I joined and moved into the Unification Church before it was released, so only learned later that we were banned from our own screening because the BFI feared an “emotional bloodbath.”

Teens on Nickelodeon with Linda Ellerbee and Gloria Steinem

Yesterday, I worked on a Nickelodeon Lucky Duck production about feminism, featuring Gloria Steinem, Linda Ellerbee and some very articulate teenagers. In 1963, Gloria Steinem wrote an essay called, “A Bunny’s Tale,” describing the ridiculousness of being a Playboy Bunny.  Girls today still deal with similar issues of body image and public representations of women.

In “How to Be a Woman,” Caitlin Moran writes about how women are trivialized by the focus on their appearance.  She writes, “paps will take pictures of women going to the shops in jeans and a sweater, with no makeup on, and make it look like her world is on the verge of crumbling because she didn’t have a blow-dry before she left the house.”

Several of the teens on the Nickelodeon show are part of a group called the Spark Summit, which aims to "reject the commodified, sexualized images of girls in media and support the development of girls' healthy sexuality and self-esteem."  They collected over 84,000 signatures in a petition delivered to Seventeen magazine, which then made a commitment to not alter the body size or face shape of the girls and models in the magazine.

From the Nickelodeon show, I learned that the Equal Rights Amendment, which was drafted in 1923 still awaits approval.  It says simply:

“Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

Gloria Steinem and Linda Ellerbee questioned how anyone could disagree with this statement. Some of the more conservative teens argued that the 13th Amendment negates the necessity for the ERA, and that one can’t ignore the inherent differences between men and women. 

Steinem suggested it would be better to forget about generalizations.  Only when we see people as individuals rather than stereotypes can we truly relate as human beings.

I grew up having mixed feelings about what it meant to be a woman.  I agree with Steinem that the qualities we see as masculine or feminine exist on a continuum of human characteristics.  It can only liberate us to view one another more as individuals and less as preconceived types.  Yesterday, I was happy to see that young people are getting smarter about this all the time.