Sunday , June 13, 2010
"For Emily, Wherever We May Find Her," by Laura Jane Faulds & Elizabeth Barker
Today our beloved Emily Richmond departs for her circumnavigation. We will miss her very much.
LJ: Two years ago next May, a total stranger traveled from Los Angeles to Montreal with seemingly no purpose but to meet me. Her name was Emily Richmond, and she was dead right on. That May, Emily and I made four videos together: one where my ex-boyfriend and I watch Spice World, one where I try clothes on, another trying clothes on one (which involves a dumpster), and one where I ask strangers their zodiac sign. Not surprisingly, all of them are brilliant. One of the hardest things in the world to get groovy at is Creative Collaboration, but Emily & I nail it without even trying. I'm the star, and she's the man with the plan. Emily Richmond is an Aries and a John. I knew from the first moment I saw her, standing in front of the hot dog restaurant by the park in my least favourite city in the Universe: this babe and I were meant to be bros.
LIZ: The first time I met Emily Richmond was in a bar in New York City. The second time was in a bookstore on the Sunset Strip. The third was in a bar in Los Angeles. The fourth was in another bar, down the street from the bar I was just talking about. And I don't remember where the fifth meeting happened, 'cause after that it was like "Dude, I know you. This is happening." Emily Richmond and I were fast friends and also "fast playmates" (although not in a Playboy kind of way, despite the bunny ears and scratchmarks Emily's wearing in the above photo). We are "partners in play or recreation," our three favorite forms of recreation being (1) surfing, (2) stalking semi-famous wannabe sex criminals who love iced coffee and sensitive '90s bands, and (3) eating extravagant salads at the Marina Del Rey Cheesecake Factory. It's a rough life but somebody's gotta live it.
And oh hey, I lied, I totally remember the fifth time I hung out with Emily Richmond: It was in my house and she and LJ showed up at my door with a bottle of Boone's Farm and a video camera, and maybe also an apple and some fizzy water. I broke them the sad news about Jett Travolta and instead of crying about it like dumb ineffectual babies they wrote a song called "RIP Jett Travolta," LJ on vocals and Emily Richmond on my cat-hair-covered guitar. I don't have the mp3, but I think you can probably find a bootleg recording on cassette tape in the dusty basement of a public library on Easter Island, or something like that.
LJ: I don't want Emily and I to come across like callous unfeeling assholes here. I was genuinely torn up about Jett Travolta's untimely passing; if it hadn't been for the sagelike Emily Richmond to remind me that I could heal myself through the creative arts, I probably would have gone and shot up or something. But, as Emily Richmond* once said, "Music is the great healer; the great Savior." Speaking of music, another thing Emily Richmond and I did that night was pose for the cover of our debut album, which can be seen above. Emily Richmond became preoccupied with how she looked "exactly" like one of the dudes from MGMT in this photograph, an assertion which to this day remains mind-blowingly false. Speaking of the legendary trip to Los Angeles I took near-exactly one year ago, to this day, some other cool things that happened on it were:
1) Emily totes hooked me up with a cute dude for New Year's! Total bro behavior. Thx, Pal.
2) We attended the same New Year's party as noted "kind of cool actress" Kirsten Dunst, who was visibly "too drunk," and spent most of the night crying at somebody on her cell phone.
3) We went to Chick-Fil-A, and were so goddamned charming that the Chick-Fil-A employee gave us free cow Beanie Babies. They have signs around their neck saying "EAT MOR CHIKIN." I am looking at mine right now. His name is "Emily Richmond."
4) We drank sangria and ate the nastiest Mexican food EVS at an ostentatiously-decorated Mexican restaurant called "El Conquistador," which is my new nickname for Emily Richmond. Here is a photograph of our flamboyant waiter, who was awesome:
5) We got drunk on the beach and it was perfect, as things tend to be, when Emily "El Conquistador" Richmond is involved.
*Look, I'm just writerly embellishing here. It was actually Paul McCartney who said that. But, in my defense: I often get the two mixed up.
LIZ: One time we almost died! It was in the ocean, and there were so many hellbeast waves all in a row, that washing-machine thing where you're just tumbling and tumbling and every time you get to the surface to get your breath, another wave comes along and shoves you straight down. We both drank half the beach, which doesn't make your tummy feel so good. Later on we decided somebody we'd make a movie with the tagline: "They Saw Death - And Threw Up In Its Face."
Other than that: oh what a summer it was! Maybe more than any other dude I've ever known, Emily Richmond knows how to do summer right. She knows that it's good to drive 31 miles up the coast to a roadside seafood shack just to eat unremarkable French fries in a plastic booth, and then go watch the surfers across the street, and then drive back home. She knows butterscotch coffee is best, especially pre-surf, and then post-surf, on a weekday morning when most losers are working hard or hardly working. She knows that whistles are the best necklaces, and she knows about parties where My Favorite Rock Star Since I Was 12 will show up and stand around in a terrible mustache and make my tummy sick like I've been bashed about by hellbeast waves for too long. She knows (not just intellectually but wholly and truly) that if there's something that makes you feel happy and amazing and fun and excited in a sustained and all-consuming kind of way, you should just do that thing as often as humanly possible instead of making up excuses for why you can't and then boring yourself rotten instead. THIS IS COOL. THIS IS RARE.
So, except for the near-drowning thing and the time we seriously thought our Cheesecake Factory waiter was going to shoot us in the face, life was gorgeously and radically death-free last summer. And then the season itself died, and Emily Richmond sent me a text saying "RIP Summer 09," and I hated it. There is no Endless Summer, turns out after all.
LJ: I just read the thing Liz wrote, and it made me jealous. I am not afraid to admit, on the Internet, that I am fucking jealous as all fucking get out, that two of my favourite human beings in the entire Universe get to live in the same city and get up to all these fun-sounding Californian antics without me. But, as I always say, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, and then mix your lemonade with hard alcohol, and then drunk-dial Emily Richmond." The Emily Richmond Drunk-Dial is one of the best things to do on a weeknight. Once, I drunk-dialed Emily Richmond while drinking a Bloody Mary. Another time, I drunk-dialed Emily Richmond while drinking a Whisky Sour. Then there was the time I got drunk before going to a dinner party so I could drunk-dial Emily Richmond while I walked to the dinner party, but Emily Richmond didn't answer her phone, and I wanted to kill Emily Richmond. Most importantly, one time I drunk-dialed Emily Richmond while drinking pink wine, which was the last time I drunk-dialed Emily Richmond.
It was perhaps the Greatest Emily Richmond Drunk-Dial of All-Time. I don't remember much of it, because I was drunk, but I remember that the conversation ended with me slurring, "You know, Emily, it's all you and me, bro. It's all us. We're the ones who, like, make things happen. We're the ones who are, like, DOING IT." And Emily was like, "Yes, Laura Jane, that's correct," because she totally wasn't even drunk at all. But I guess what I'm trying to say right now is:
I love Emily Richmond for many, many reasons, and Emily Richmond and I are bros because it is in our blood to be bros. But the most important thing about Emily Richmond is that she is gets shit done. Emily Richmond wanted to circumnavigate the planet in a boat, so she made it happen for herself, and now she is! I relate to that, only without boats or circumnavigation. See u in Rishikesh, Emmers! Unless you die. But, Emily Richmond, if you do die, at least you can die knowing that Laura Jane Faulds will write a really powerful story-essay about your life and death. Sail away, El Conquistador!
LIZ: Right now my hands smell like propane, because earlier today I spent a few hours helping Emily get her boat ready for takeoff. As far as fun-sounding Californian antics go, messing around with propane tanks can't really compete with stuff like smearing fake blood all over our mouths and then going surfing with dolphins on Halloween morning, or even with a little pre-farmer's-market crush-stalking on a sunny Sunday in a magical land called Venice Beach. And it's not nearly so lovely as that day in November when Emily and our buddy Alisa and I all drove up three hours up the coast and luxuriated in mineral springs, and then ate hot butter cake with whipped cream and a side of brownie in the most woodsy-adorable cafe in all the world. But it's still pretty goddamn good, and very soon we're going to come out with a book of sailboat-maintenance-related "That's What She Said" jokes that's sure to be a best-seller.
Hanging around Emily Richmond's always a gas because - like me and LJ too - she knows in her bones that being a legend in your own mind isn't so bad at all. Nay, it's the opposite of bad; it's the cat's whiskers, the bee's knees, the eel's heels, the gnu's shoes, the most glorious thing a girl/dude could ever be. And that's a fact, Jack.
Another thing about hanging around Emily Richmond is she always plays this one record; it's called Self Portrait and it's by Bob Dylan and this is the beautifully Bob-Dylan's-voice-less first track. Listen 17 times in a row while reading a blog post about how much Laura Jane Faulds and Elizabeth Barker love Emily Richmond, and I DARE YOU not to cry into your butterscotch coffee.
Bon voyage, dear Switchfoot/El Conquistador/Emilydad/Emily Richmond: we miss the hell out of you already.
Tags: Elizabeth Barker, Emily Richmond, Laura Jane Faulds
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1 Comments!!
Say something so insightful and witty, it will blow us away. (No pressure.)
Got something to say? We'd love to hear it! Name, email and "type in the weirdo drunken text" thingie are all required to comment; don't worry, we won't email you or anything, we just want to make sure you're not an evil spambot. Keeping in mind the good-times mentality we like to keep going here, we've worked hard to keep NOGOODFORME.COM as fun as possible. We welcome all kinds of comments, but insults/abuse/general bitchery are not tolerated. In other words, we put the smackdown on evil troll posts. If you want to be a hater, please go elsewhere. Now, as Salt 'N Pepa say, "Only the sexy people..."
We love you, Emilydad! Get some internet already!
By Katie P. on January 10, 2010 5:32 PM