"There's snakes upon your ladder and there's dice upon your skirt..."

Speaking of my Summer of '77 in Germany... Aside from the singles that I took home from Smokie/Baccara/Boney M, my actual main interest then was the Bay City Rollers. Their "Sgt. Pepper"---"It's a Game"---had just been released, and the German media was covering them prolifically, from magazine covers to TV appearances. (In the US, they were only minor stars, but in Europe, they were, thankfully to tartan-wearing me, HUGE!) I bought the "It's a Game" LP in Germany---and discovered when I got home and compared it to my Texas friends' versions of the same album, that the German version included pages of photos to flip through, which the US albums didn't have!

I just now searched YouTube for "It's a Game," not thinking I'd find anything... And, lo and behold, here's this coooooool video, from May 1977! I didn't even know they made videos back then! This title single was a big hit in Europe, but never released in the US. In the US, the singles from the album were "The Way I Feel Tonight" and "You Made Me Believe In Magic"---both Top 20, but rather generic.

Aside from the song "It's a Game," my other favorite song from the album was "Inside a Broken Dream," written by Eric---in junior high, we were supposed to turn in a poem for English class, and I used those lyrics. At 12, I thought they were the saddest, most profound thing...

Turn the pages of a broken dream
Smiling faces have they ever seen
Empty hallways will they ever end
The fool again

Masquerading in a hyper dream
(Such a sad affair)
fading shadows talk of their machine

Through the haze another cigarette
So much to say and to forget

Chorus:
And inside a broken dream I cry
Is love the reason why
And inside a broken dream I stare
At love that is not there

Life begins with your head in the dark
(Looking out looking in)
The chord of life reveals the final spark
It takes you nowhere
And nowhere takes you back again

Chorus:
And inside a broken dream I cry
Is love the reason why
And inside a broken dream I stare
At love that is not there

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Anyway, here's the neat "It's a Game" video---May 1977!




And just for fun, their 1974 TV video for "Summerlove Sensation"---looooove that song! :)

Voluptuous Panic

Back in November I bought this book from the Neue Galerie in NYC while attending a Klimt exhibit. (I was trying to think of wholesome things to do by myself over the long Thanksgiving weekend. Klimt and Weimar Germany were the only ideas I could come up with. No wait...I did also go look at trees in Central Park that weekend!)

Anyhow, I put the book aside at the time and have just now really been looking at it. Aside from all the spanking photos that I love so, I am also struck (figuratively) by how much this picture of a Weimar coke-addict ("Dangerous Passion" by Manasse) looks, to me, EXACTLY like Joan Crawford! (Oh, if only more coke whores looked like that...)

When I was looking for references to the book online. I came across one woman's blog, where she talked about taking a lunch break to go "fondle" this book at a Barnes and Noble before "furtively" buying it... For some reason this reminded me of a former co-worker back in Austin. When I once mentioned in passing that I was gay, she then proudly recounted the time she'd been to a leather bar! She'd gone along with a friend of hers who was doing a "sociological study" for her Master's degree that involved visiting local gay bars in Austin, including a leather bar that was mere blocks from my house at the time (where I'd often gone with my then-girlfriend): "And they almost didn't let us in because we looked too straight, but we explained it was for a study, so they said it was OK! I had a great time!"

Wait, what was my point? Oh, maybe about people attempting to pose as "provocateurs." It seemed to me that the above-mentioned blog-woman and co-worker were trying to portray themselves as being really "hep" and decadent. By... (1) BUYING A BOOK AT BARNES AND NOBLE (!), and (2) going with a herd of nerdy friends to a leather bar, where the kindly door-guys were amused and let them in.

Their attempts at "learning" were/are relatively touching, but still... After their reports back from "the edge," one just can't help wanting to see them actually injected or spanked or...something! Sigh. I guess completely ignorant Republicans are much worse. But...arrrrgh. Yuppie liberals still pain me (only figuratively/furtively/fondlingly).

Oscar's Boy

I've been reading some bios and criticism of Oscar Wilde this week. (I initially went through my "Wilde phase" perhaps 20 years ago, while an undergrad, but just now got a library card in my new town, Weehawken, and while browsing the small library's shelves, started delving into literature again, which I haven't done in a while. I've been so caught up in the Internet for the past 7 years, I've almost forgotten how to actually read and think!)

Wilde's philosophy of aesthetics/life is too complicated to go into just yet...I need to go back and re-read his actual works before critiquing...

Just a surface reaction, though, after this week's reading: What a mess he made of his life!

Months ago, in passing conversation, a (straight male) co-worker defended him, saying Wilde was persecuted for being gay. At the time of the conversation I mainly nodded (the common perception that Wilde was jailed for homosexuality not really an arguable point), but there was a niggling detail that I vaguely remembered, which I just confirmed from this week's reading: The judicial system of England wasn't bothering him until HE sued his 21-year-old lover's father for libel, after Lord Douglas had left a note at Wilde's hotel, calling him a "posing sodomite." The belligerent dad and son "Bosie" had been at odds for years, and Pa was outraged at his son's public relationship with Wilde, hence the note. Wilde was annoyed by Lord Douglas's harrassment, BUT... was completely goaded into pursuing a lawsuit by Bosie. I'm not completely puzzled by what Wilde hoped to gain by such a suit---drama-queen emotional gratitude from Bosie! But how stupid of Wilde to be sucked into that! Lord Douglas had not filed a suit against Wilde, had just been an angry father ranting about town. Logically, what was Wilde's legal leg to stand on? That he was NOT legally a "sodomite" (or a "posing" sodomite---even if not provably the former, he was surely provably the latter!)?

Needless to say, Lord Douglas's defense called many "rent boys" and other witnesses to prove his point; Douglas was easily acquitted of the libel charges brought against him. And then, unfortunately but in a way karmically, the legal tables turned against the accuser Wilde. At his own trial, Wilde did not attempt to argue against the injustice of the English laws (boldly the martyr, as many of his defenders today seem to think), he just falsely claimed that his love for boys had always been purely "platonic." (Again, the rent boys were called to testify. End of defense. Beginning of two-year jail sentence.)

While the English laws against homosexuality were, of course, ridiculous, truth is, Wilde unnecessarily brought his own public downfall upon himself by trying to defend his "boy" against his boy's daddy. Noble of Wilde as a lover. But by all accounts of Wilde's personal acquaintances (both gay and straight), Bosie was an obnoxious little hanger-on and creep, who wanted the public attention of being seen as "Wilde's boy," but who quickly disappeared whenever Wilde's money ran short and when Wilde was in trouble.

Bosie did not visit Wilde in jail, which inspired a later-published letter to him from Wilde. Here's the text of Wilde's De Profundis, a letter that he wrote to his "boy" while in prison, documenting the psychology of their relationship.

After Wilde's 2-year prison term, the two were reunited briefly, for 2 months. Bosie became bored and went home.

Dislike Bosie as I may, I did however find one redeeming feature. Here's a sonnet he wrote for Wilde in 1901, the year after Wilde's death:

The Dead Poet

I dreamed of him last night, I saw his face
All radiant and unshadowed of distress,
And as of old, in music measureless,
I heard his golden voice and marked him trace
Under the common thing the hidden grace,
And conjure wonder out of emptiness,
Till mean things put on beauty like a dress
And all the world was an enchanted place.

And then methought outside a fast locked gate
I mourned the loss of unrecorded words,
Forgotten tales and mysteries half said,
Wonders that might have been articulate,
And voiceless thoughts liked murdered singing birds.
And so I woke and knew that he was dead.

---------------------------

When I read this, I had to momentarily suspend my dislike. Bosie knew what was magical about him and loved him for it. Despite all of his shitty behavior, he did recognize and appreciate what was beautiful about Wilde. (Though years later the little shit went on to publicly denounce Wilde for corrupting him, in my mind he will always be redeemed by this sonnet.)

"I know you think that's too high for you..."

Back in '77, I was just out of junior high and went to visit Germany for 6 weeks in the summer.

I was really into music, and at the end of the trip my mother said I could pick three German hit records to take back home to the US with me.

Here are the three I chose: "Lay Back in the Arms of Someone" by Smokie, "Ma Baker" by Boney M, and "Yes Sir I Can Boogie" by Baccara.

"Lay Back" was always my absolute favorite--This song was so big, people in Germany were belting it out on the streets outside of pubs!

LAY BACK IN THE ARMS OF SOMEONE



MA BAKER:



YES SIR I CAN BOOGIE:



backed with CARA MIA:

Joan Crawford IS Chucky!

This according to one website, in an announcement posted May 11 (oddly, the day AFTER Joan Crawford's death):

EXCLUSIVE: Today is the 31st anniversary of Joan Crawford's death. What better way to commemorate Joan's death by bringing her back to life! Yes, Joan is coming back to life in the form of a highly professional custom made doll.... Feast your eyes on Joan's chiseled face and head! I can't think of a better way to commemorate Joan's death by showing her coming back to life!

-------------------------------

(As someone who speaks and writes English, I personally can't think of a better way to commemorate Joan's death than by inserting the word "than" after each "death" in the above announcement. But that's just me...)

To celebrate the new doll, this video has just been released:

Destrulibido, aka "Why I Like Julie So Much"

Because she's just fuckin' funny.

Julie's video contribution RE Hillary (stop it, I hate you, I can't stop laughing):



---------------------------------

And then here's:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Love was tried but not true...":



-Julius


With this Cleo's response:

Destrudo vs. Libido

PART 1: DESTRUDO

After re-reading my last profanity-laced blog entry, I started shaking my head at myself: "I can't stand this negativity any more. WHAT do I do about it?"

Then I was channel-surfing and came across someone talking about "the opposite of libido---gestrado." (Right now I can't remember what I was watching; it could even be something as mundane as "Entourage"---which I just discovered for the first time and really enjoy, by the way!) So I started doing a search for the word online. Turns out I'd heard it wrong---the word is "destrudo," not "gestrado"!

From a 2006 article on Freud by Harold Bloom:

For years, I have meditated upon Freud's self-revelation in a thought he added to an interleaved copy of "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life":

"Rage, anger, and consequently a murderous impulse is the source of superstition in obsessional neurotics: a sadistic component, which is attached to love and is therefore directed against the loved person and repressed precisely because of this link and because of its intensity. -- My own superstition has its roots in suppressed ambition (immortality) and in my case takes the place of that anxiety about death which springs from the normal uncertainty of life."

...Freud's triumph was that millions of people who never read him nevertheless internalized his categories, a phenomenon still prevalent among us. We unthinkingly think we are governed by the psychic agencies he invented: id, ego, superego, which necessarily are merely useful fictions, and not components of the self. Again, we tend to believe we possess libido, a particular energy that fuels sexual desire, but libido is another fiction or Freudian metaphor. My favorite speculation on Freud's influence is to wonder what would have happened had he decided we had "destrudo" as well as libido. He briefly entertained the idea of destrudo as fuel for the Death Drive, just as libido energized Eros, but then rejected the notion. Had he settled upon destrudo, would we not now go about, on our more self-destructive days, muttering that our destrudo was raging within us?

------------------------------------------------------------------

Regardless of how silly Bloom thought Freud's divisions, "destrudo" actually explained something to me: I'm deeply, deeply disappointed at how things turned out between Julie and me. Seems a huge, senseless waste of what was initially very powerful, positive energy (libido), now apparently mutated into this...destrudo. On both of our parts.

The/Our/My Pattern lately: I'll have a very positive few hours online, for instance, working on my Joan Crawford site or chatting with people on the accompanying message board. Then it'll be late, and I won't quite feel like going to bed yet... "Hmmm. Wonder what Julie's up to?" Then I'll go to where I know she "hangs out" online and get pissed about something she said. Or, I'll check the responses to this blog... Because she's been similarly trolling around to see what I'm doing online, she'll have responded "anonymously" here, either directly to what I wrote about or in scatological "Kilroy" fashion. So I'll respond to that; then she'll respond to THAT; ad infinitum.

Aside from the "destrudo" bit of info, I also just this weekend came across the old Tom Hanks movie "Cast Away" on HBO... I'd seen it once before when it came out years ago, but it hadn't affected me in the same way. This time, I could not stop crying at his losses. I cried at his scratched pictures in the cave, I cried when he lost "Wilson"...and, much more so, I cried at his ultimate loss once he was back in civilization. Which, at the end, turned into a very long crying jag about my own sense of isolation, my own loss of someone I loved. I finally just stopped THINKING about how mad I was at Julie, and just cried at the waste of it all.


----------------

PART 2: LIBIDO

Now for the more pleasant "libido" part of this post! (nothing to do with Julie Lindberg, just Julie Delpy!) :)

Again, just channel-surfing, and tonight I came upon Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise," his 1995 film co-starring Ethan Hawke and Delpy as two young people who meet by chance on a train to Vienna and end up spending all night together walking around the city and talking. It's such a positive, thoughtful, beautiful movie. About life's ambiguities and potential.

I was just reading some critiques online, and one critic scoffed at its "unlikeliness," of both situation and conversation...

RE "situation"---That particular critic must have led a very sheltered, planned, controlled existence, because I've discovered that many of the very best things in life are discovered in just such a random fashion. RE "conversation"---That critic has never stayed up all night talking, getting goosebumps and chattering teeth because you (whether you're with just one other, or several) suddenly get the rare sensation that you're hitting upon some profound, beautiful, usually elusive truths? (The moment in the movie where the fortune-teller says, as she's walking away, "You're stars. You're all stardust..." In truth, we ARE all made up of the remnants of the Big Bang all those years ago... And the magic that comes from listening to a song with someone else, when you're both on exactly the same wavelength and "feeling it"... It's so rare for fleeting, quixotic moments like that to be captured on film.)

I first saw the movie at the theater when in came out in 1995, and for some reason didn't notice one credit at the end: the poem that the two lovers buy from the artist on the riverbank (who asks them to give him one word, and he'll write a poem---the word was "milkshake") was actually written by David Jewell, of Austin. When I was 19 and took my very first poetry-writing class at the University of Texas, Jewell was in that class. He was 30-ish then, and for a naive 19-year-old like me, he was too impossibly "hip" in aura. I could never get up the nerve to talk to him outside of class, except once: Me and a couple of other self-conscious "poets" were walking out of class with him and were gushing sillily, "We're going to the Cactus [a university cafe] to talk about poetry and be cool." He replied drolly: "I think I'm going to go home and be boring."

(Later, one of my proudest memories of my life as a poet was being asked to be on a 5-poet bill with him at a cafe reading at the end of that spring semester. I remember the roster to this day: Jewell, Dona Brown, Sandra Skipwith, Michael [a shy, blonde pianist whose last name I now can't remember], and me. Everyone else was 25 or older---they all seemed so much more incredibly mature and experienced in life than I was. Dona was rich and sickly and beautiful (poet boys in the class wrote odes to her! though she got on my nerves with her fey-ness); Sandra was a rich, beautiful painter and former alcoholic whose mother was a suicide---she had her mother's furs, and would write "LIVE" on her bathroom mirror with lipstick, as a reminder... I would go over to her apartment to talk on occasion, but I was extremely inadequate and awe-struck and a real kid in the face of that (to me) heavy, "womanly" glamour... Though one time my "real" self managed to break through: I remember getting jealously angry at her one evening because she was going on admiringly about Dona and how Ms. Brown had to "struggle" until she came into her inheritance at 25! Poor rich baby! Ooops---that jealous part was probably for the "destrudo" section of this blog entry!) :)

Oh, anyway, where was I?? Back to David Jewell! Jewell wrote some very avant-garde stuff, but it was intelligent and thought-provoking and full of humanity, not just "playing around" with theory or words. (I got the same sensation from reading his work as I get from reading e.e. cummings' poetry. At first, the surface might throw you off---if you're either new or a traditionalist, your first reaction might be either, "Huh? I don't get it," or, "This is bullshit nonsense"---but upon reading and paying attention...so full of insight and love.)

Here's the poem from "Before Sunrise." It's more "Beat-poem-ish" and atypical of Jewell's usual style, yet also typical of his lovely quirkiness and sincerity.

Delusion Angel

Daydream delusion,
limousine eyelash,
oh, baby with your pretty face,
drop a tear in my wineglass,
look at those big eyes,
see what you mean to me,
sweet cakes and milkshakes,
I am a delusioned angel,
I am a fantasy parade,
I want you to know what I think,
dont want you to guess anymore,
you have no idea where I came from,
we have no idea where we're going,
launched in life,
like branches in the river,
flowing downstream,
caught in the current,
I'll carry you, you'll carry me,
that's how it could be,
don't you know me?
don't you know me by now?

Women Are Their Own Worst Enemies

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080510/ap_on_el_pr/democrats_feminists
Feminists sharply divided between Clinton, Obama


"...One factor in play is generational. There is a widespread perception in the women's movement that younger feminists tilt more toward Obama while most of their elders favor Clinton.

Indeed, 74-year-old Gloria Steinem, a Clinton supporter and icon of the women's movement, riled some younger, pro-Obama feminists with a New York Times op-ed suggesting that they were in denial about America's persisting 'sexual caste system.'

Ariel Garfinkel, a sophomore at Mount Holyoke College, wrote one of the many counter-arguments in an online column. She and many other young feminists supported Obama because they perceived the Clinton campaign as trying to capitalize on racial divisions and to impugn Obama's patriotism.

'This pattern of old-style politics and adherence to un-feminist values is part and parcel of the campaign Hillary Clinton has run,' Garfinkel wrote. 'In this race, Barack Obama is the true feminist.'

New York-based author Courtney Martin, also an Obama supporter, wrote on Glamour magazine's blog Glamocracy last month that she was not backing Clinton 'in part because she reminds me of being scolded by my mother.'..."

----------

The below by the "sophomore" Ariel Garfinkel made me literally nauseous:

'This pattern of old-style politics and adherence to un-feminist values is part and parcel of the campaign Hillary Clinton has run,' Garfinkel wrote. 'In this race, Barack Obama is the true feminist...'

Barack Obama is "the true feminist"?? What in the hell about Obama's prep school/Yale Law/helpful wife-life leads anyone to this claim?

Hillary Clinton LIVED the shit that women had to go through since the late '60s. A superstar in her all-women's elite college, Wellesley (featured in "Life" magazine after she spoke at Commencement), she went on to... fucking Arkansas. Because she loved someone. And then, to help her husband, gave up the maiden name she had been going by, Hillary Rodham, because Arkansans, polls showed, didn't like a woman using her real name. And then, once her husband got elected President, people didn't like her input into public policy, so, again, she was forced to disappear and do "children's literacy" shit.

Funnily, Hillary once wrote in her college thesis, "I don't have a wife to thank..." Because she did it all herself. No "wife" to do the grunt-work typing and research for her.

I challenge anyone to find a single struggle that rich-boy Barack Obama had to go through. From what I've read: As a teen, he went to prep-school (no, not a regular public school). And then Yale. And this guy's supposed to be a "feminist" and someone who has "struggled" with anything?

As for the contest that these two have been going through: Yeah, Hillary's tough. Yeah, when someone knocks her for being "old Washington," she hits back with "What have YOU done?" Obama's been pretending to be "pure" and "above it all," while at the same time giving Canadians and Union reps a completely different line from his public pronouncements ("Don't pay any attention to that NAFTA talk..." and "If you have a friend in the White House, you're going to get your way.")

As for: "New York-based author Courtney Martin, also an Obama supporter, wrote on Glamour magazine's blog Glamocracy last month that she was not backing Clinton 'in part because she reminds me of being scolded by my mother.'..."

This reminds me of my sister-in-law, who voted for Obama in the Texas primary, but said if he loses, then in the general election she "doesn't have a problem with John McCain"...just because she doesn't like Hillary Clinton's personality.

I can't get over how dimwitted (aka, FUCKING STUPID) women like this are. (1) Sorry if Hillary Clinton reminds you of your anal, stickler mother... Perhaps that was the same Mom who kept things together because your deadbeat Dad was out fucking around? (2) Did you ever stop to think that the positions of Clinton/Obama and McCain are almost diametrically opposed? Why on earth, if you now support Obama, would you then support McCain if Obama didn't get nominated? You are THAT shallow and ignorant about the issues?