Lindsay's Blog (Sept. 2)

Lindsay's Blog
Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Political Blog

I've been watching the news all morning, like everyone else - and i keep hearing about the issues related to 'teen pregnancy'- It's all related to Sarah Palin and her 17 year old unmarried pregnant daughter. Well, I think the real problem comes from the fact that we are taking the focus off of getting to know Sarah Palin and her political views, and what she can do to make our country a less destructive place. Its distracting from the real issues, the real everyday problems that this country experiences.

I am concerned with the fact that Sarah Palin brought the attention to her daughter's pregnancy, rather than all world issues and what she believes she could possibly do to change them-if elected. I get Sarah Palin's views against abortion, but i would much prefer to hear more about what she can do for our country rather than how her daughter is going to have a child no matter what.

Maybe focus on delivering some words and policy with stronger impact like Joe Biden.
See below for Barack Obama's thoughts:

From Alexander Marquardt
MONROE, Michigan (CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama said firmly that families are off-limits in the campaign for president, reacting to news that GOP running mate Sarah Palin's 17-year-old daughter is pregnant.

"Let me be as clear as possible," Obama said. "I think people's families are off-limits, and people's children are especially off-limits. This shouldn't be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin's performance as governor or her potential performance as a vice president."

Obama said reporters should "back off these kinds of stories" and noted that he was born to an 18-year-old mother.

"How a family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn't be the topic of our politics, and I hope that anybody who is supporting me understands that's off-limits." »


On another note-the last note- i heard a woman say on TODAY on NBC that teens are feeling as if they have to grow up faster. Really? Because, i think that girls that are CHOOSING to be sexually active and are making a conscious decision to grow up faster..... I think that parents need to recognize how important it is to talk to their children about the things that can result from being sexually active if they aren't protecting themselves (birth control, condoms, etc.)

So-those are my thoughts for the day. Enjoy the music :) xoxo
Currently listening :
Forever Young
By Rod Stewart
Release date: By 2005-11-07

1:15 PM - 1056 Comments - 865 Kudos

Dumb High-School Boyfriends Made Good

In all my current blurriness, I have nothing better to do than look up old high-school people on the web.

I dated a Mormon guy my senior year of high school. He'd just moved from California, where he'd been converted by a girlfriend he kept talking about. Before his conversion, he used to be into drugs and rock-n-roll. After he arrived in Azle, Texas, he still played guitar, but the thrill was gone.

He was a nice person, but there was no spark. I tried mentally, though: At the time, I was into "exploring religion," so I attended his branch of the Mormon church in Azle (and took to reading the Book of Mormon). (One of the elders had no answer when I asked him where cave people came from, since Adam and Eve allegedly appeared so perfectly intact...) There was also a big dramatic moment when I was working on the school paper, and he left the newsroom, saying he was going home... When I looked downstairs, there he was, talking to some other girl! When he called me that night, there was a big blow-up over the girl...He ended up driving 20 miles to appease me. For no reason, really. After dating for about 2 months, we broke up soon after.

Anyway... When I just looked him up, I found out he is now an Assistant Principal in Utah----making $68,000 a year! The guy was stupid! Not said in a mean way, but the guy was really not very intelligent at all! And he's now making $68,000 a year! What the fuck!

Feeling Blurry

I hate not having regular employment. Yes, I'm working, but it's almost completely random very-late-night temp stuff, combined with maybe 10 hours per week at a local newspaper. Both where I hardly speak to anyone for hours at a time. It's a very sporadic, weird existence, one where I hardly ever have to venture out in daylight hours, but only get carted around via limos after dark. And end up going to sleep at 7am or so, then waking up at 3pm. I'm a night-owl by nature, but this is all rather unpleasant and strange. I'm feeling pasty and sluggish and sun-deprived. I keep thinking about the Woody Allen movie "Deconstructing Harry," where, for some reason, the Robin Williams character discovers that he's all of a sudden become quite literally...BLURRY.

I feel blurry. Not literally, as in the movie, but something close. For example, I just walked to a fast-food place today, and when I ordered, I sounded, even to myself, like a mumbling idiot, and I had to repeat myself to the counter-girl. (How hard can it be to order a Quarter Pounder and McNuggets?) I'm in New York, the capital of communications, and I'm a very verbal person by nature, but... this night work and waking up at 3pm is making a slug out of me. I'm not happy like this. I'm going to do it as long as it takes, but still...it's psychologically hard.

Julie: Are You Sincere?

Two weeks ago, you say "Let's try." I'm all for that.

So where the fuck are you?

As I mentioned before, this blog is not the forum for our personal communications. My e-mail addresses are not a secret to you. If you do indeed want to try, then e-mail me privately, and stop this public bullshit.

I really do have the patience of a saint in your case, but I'm also getting fed up with the constant bullshit. Don't say you want contact and then disappear for two weeks.

Act with some fucking integrity, like an adult and not a 19-year-old. (Yeah, I've read the literature about being mentally blocked at a certain age. Get...the...fuck...over...it. Seriously. Stop being a poster-child for gay/trans regression. That kind of stereotype is old and boring as shit.)

Kiki and Herb: Total Eclipse of the Heart

Justin Bond was one of the reasons why I moved to New York City. His "Kiki" character is extraordinary---an aging diva, back on the road, attempting to relive her past... (Why was this an inspiration to move to New York? The act was psychologically complicated and clever. I wanted to be in a place where people were coming up with this sort of thing.)

Lindsay and Samantha: July '08 in NYC

Trying to catch a cab. Bizarre to me because of its mundane surface milling about, while at the same time feeling like it could get out of control at any second.

Good Times Coming/Feel the Sun

"There was something about that summer
wasn't it hot
We laughed a lot that summer
la-di-da
Laughing at the good times coming
Laughing at the good times coming in..."

The older I get, the more I love Paul. And his ability to hook into utterly happy feelings. I love the above song, from 1986.

(BTW: For his 66th birthday this past June, Paul traveled with his gal-pal across the US...on Route 66. Amarillo and Oklahoma City were two of his stops; in one Texas shop, the store owner asked him if anyone had ever told him he looked like Paul McCartney... Turned out, the man had named his son "Jude," after Paul's song...)

The Pound is Sinking

One of my favorite Paul McCartney songs. From his not-yet-acknowledged-as-classic 1982 album, "Tug of War."

My Favorite Julie

Is there any song sexier than this?

The Good Fight?

Just in from the AP:

GORI, Georgia – Russia said Monday it had begun withdrawing from the conflict zone in Georgia, but it held fast to key positions and sent some of its troops in the opposite direction — closer to the Georgian capital....

-----------

It's an odd psychological phenomenon for me to again read stuff like that, having spent the formative years of my youth with Russian/US conflict as the news backdrop. (I was 15 when Reagan got elected in 1980, and our countries' mutual aggression was at the forefront of everyone's consciousness until the USSR's dissolution in, what was it, '91?)

Since, especially, 9/11, "terrorism" has been the foremost "evil" that the US government was battling. (Invading Iraq was completely squirrelly---absolutely no cause for us to ever be there. Saddam, dictator that he was, was secular and his country harbored no Muslim terrorists.) So, for the past 7 or 8 years, there's been this "shadow war" going on---few, if any, clearly defined battles, just clandestine bombings and our various retaliations (and our sleazy tortures at prisoner-of-war camps).

So, the "odd psychological phenomenon" now for me is that I have a bizarre feeling of relief (almost) at the big Russian bear coming out of hibernation. A clear-cut case of their aggression in Georgia, a clear-cut enemy in full military uniform, with tanks---rather than secretive turban-clad operatives running around hiding in caves and sending retarded women to bomb marketplaces. (Now, obviously, I'm not "relieved" at what Russia is currently doing. It's scary. However, it's also a known quantity that the US can fight against, up-front and head-to-head. With a sense of moral "rightness," unlike what my country has been doing in Iraq for the past 8 years. The US has been the dominant world military power since 1991---the lack of any official "check" to us since then led to a GREAT abuse of power with our invasion of Iraq.)

I completely decry what Russia is now doing in Georgia. Yet it's also a wake-up call to the US to concentrate on the battles that matter rather than wasting resources occupying a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

Picking Me Up

Recently, I've been doing temp work at some odd hours for various law firms around town (midnight to 4 or 6 or 8, stuff like that). After-hours, the companies pay for cars to come get you and take you home if you end before 6. Which made me feel important when I first started doing work like this last year, until I realized that there's a whole-sub-industry of night office workers out there, most of whom get the same "ritzy" treatment! (As a side-note, let me just say that there's nothing worse than dragging your bedraggled up-all-night ass home on the subway/bus at 8am amidst all of the fresh morning people just heading in!)

The types of drivers vary. Some are stoic and don't play the radio or speak at all other than to get your destination address. Others chat on their head-sets with their friends the whole time. Some will chit-chat with you. This past week, I had one Middle Eastern driver who was nice and friendly; we chatted for the first 20 minutes of the drive or so: Yes, I was fairly new here. Hadn't done temp work since I first arrived last year. (Interesting to learn from him that this is the worst he's seen the economy in 12 years of driving---his passenger list was really down this summer. It helps mentally that I can blame the poor economy for not finding a full-time job!) Just came to NYC to try something new. The driver lived on Staten Island, had been in the area for 14 years, had just gone to Atlantic City for the weekend with a friend...

And there's where things took "The Turn." Atlantic City, I should see it. (Yes, definitely, I'd heard so much about it.) I needed someone to show me around. By the way, how big was my apartment? 2-1/2 bedrooms? Oh, then I must have a husband and/or kids. No? I live in that big place all by myself? I really needed to see Atlantic City. Did I have a boyfriend? (No, I'm single. And I'm gay.) CLUNK. No more conversation for the rest of the ride!

Now, I don't know that it was "gay prejudice" that stopped the conversation. I tend to think it was just "unavailable female---don't want to bother talking any more." That's happened to me a few times over the years. Most recently, just after I'd first moved into my current apartment last spring and was at a Union City store bargaining for furniture. The first time I went, I chatted pleasantly and at length with the owner. He spent a lot of time with me, showing me most of his store, and I ended up getting a good deal on a bed; I came back the next week to haggle over a small dining-room set to order from a catalogue. The owner, also Middle Eastern, was again very friendly as we went page-by-page. But this second visit also brought "The Turn," which started out easy: How big of a table did I need? (I started to describe the size of the space available, and that I wanted a small table with 4 chairs...) For just me? For me and my husband? For some kids? For me and my boyfriend? (I continued trying to focus on the fact that I needed a small table with 4 chairs...) Oh, so it's just me? No husband? No boyfriend? I didn't say I was gay this time, but I did try a little mental experiment: "It's for me and three other people." CLUNK. End of solicitousness. The catalogue almost snapped shut. He didn't really have anything I might like after all!

Another time that stands out, I was on a bus in San Francisco, and a young college guy sat down next to me. All charm, all chat for 10 minutes or so. He's an interesting person, I thought. Until I mentioned I was gay. CLUNK. His face actually "fell" and he said, "Oh." And then shut up completely and physically moved to another seat a few stops later! (Again, this was San Fran, and he was a young "boho" type---I don't think it was gay prejudice.)

If I'm in the mood, I actually like passing time by chatting with strangers and learning about their lives. Last summer, for instance, I spent hours in a Chelsea park talking with an old woman who randomly sat on my bench while I was eating my hot-dogs and people-watching---I ended up learning about the neighborhood, as well as her grocery-shopping habits and about her daughters and grandkids, and met two of her friends from the 'hood that showed up to chat. (One daughter has a house on Long Island, and actor Danny Aiello is a friend of her family. The woman showed me photos of Aiello at their house!)

So I'm usually a bit shocked when someone blatantly shuts up or physically MOVES once he finds out that I'm not a potential "date"! Such an odd, single-minded purpose for chatting to begin with...and then the utter rudeness!

A Country Boy Can Survive

I have complete admiration for these men. (Years ago, when I was on a bus in San Francisco, some thugs got on and didn't want to pay their dollar fare. We riders sat there helplessly for too long waiting for the dumb-fucks to argue with the driver. At the time, I wished that some good ol' boy was there to stand up and kick those thugs' asses. This kind of thing wouldn't ever have happened in Texas---where men are men and don't let punks get away with their shit.) I'm a gay woman, but I love to see men act like real men.

Delta Dawn

I forget what year this country song came out, '71 or '72? But it was a teenaged Tanya Tucker, and some of us little country kids were subsequently singing it at the request of our parents! (The first song I ever sang publicly! I was, oh, 5!)

Judge For Yourself

Just released a couple of days ago... the US presidential candidates' favorite songs.

Barack Obama's top 10:

1. Fugees - Ready Or Not
2. Marvin Gaye - What's Going On
3. Bruce Springsteen - I'm On Fire
4. The Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter
5. Nina Simone - Sinnerman
6. Kanye West - Touch The Sky
7. Frank Sinatra - You'd Be So Easy To Love
8. Aretha Franklin - Think
9. U2 - City of Blinding Lights
10. will.i.am - Yes We Can

John McCain's top 10:

1. ABBA - Dancing Queen
2. Roy Orbison - Blue Bayou
3. ABBA - Take A Chance On Me
4. Merle Haggard - If We Make It Through December
5. Dooley Wilson - As Time Goes By
6. The Beach Boys - Good Vibrations
7. Louis Armstrong - What A Wonderful World
8. Frank Sinatra - I've Got You Under My Skin
9. Neil Diamond - Sweet Caroline
10. The Platters - Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

Given that the guys are going to put out phony stuff (Obama's "Yes I Can," for example), I'd still like to believe that they're at least a little sincere... Good lord, why else would John McCain put "Dancing Queen" at the top of his list??!

Based on the song list only, I vote for McCain. Thank you for naming "As Time Goes By" and "If We Make It Through December." (THOSE at least seemed like personal rather than politically motivated choices.)

Knowing Me, Knowing You

ABBA, shallow??

With the success of the recent "Mamma Mia" film (based on the long-running Broadway play based on ABBA songs), I've read a thing or two in the New York press lately about ABBA songs being merely "popular" and/or "shallow"... Are you kidding me? (What dumb 23-year-olds or willfully ignorant PC 40-year-olds are writing this stuff?)

For example: "Knowing Me, Knowing You" (video below) and "The Winner Takes It All"... Shallow? I find these songs to be pretty hard-core emotional stuff.

Happy Birthday!

My favorite birthday song!

Best of...wha?

A few days ago, a member of the "Best of Everything" Joan Crawford message board was in Bedford, Texas, getting her motorcycle license.

She was chatting with one of her classmates; he asked her name, and when she told him, he said, out of the blue: "Are you part of that Joan Crawford site? 'Best of...whatever'?" Turned out he was a reader of the website and the message board and recognized her name!

What the hell! :)

I've been approached in public maybe three times: "Are you Stephanie?" But that was at specific Joan Crawford events, where I'd guess that maybe a website reader or two would be there and recognize me from the photos I'd posted on the site...

What are the chances of a random guy recognizing your message-board name out in Bedford, Texas, in a setting that has nothing to do with Joan Crawford, though??

How cool is that?!

In Today's News

When I opened up my Yahoo mail today, I saw some pretty stupid stuff in what's supposed to be the "News" section. These weren't in an "Entertainment News" section, but rather, just in the main "News News" part.

(1) Bernie Mac Dies at Age 50

(2) McConaughey to Plant Son's Placenta in Orchard

(3) Senator. Vice Presidential Nominee. Leading Presidential Candidate. Political Outcast.

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

(1) Who the fuck actually cares if Bernie Mac is dead? The guy was pure filler.

(2) ...... [Someone decided this should even be mentioned ANYWHERE? Fire the little intern fuck---immediately.]

(3) While John Edwards' affair was being endlessly "analyzed" on MSNBC/CNN/FOX Friday afternoon, the Russians were attacking Georgia, a US ally. All of the stations would briefly mention the "Georgia thing," then go back to their full-coverage "analysis" of John Edwards: His wife has cancer! (And she was in remission when he had the affair!) What if he'd been the Democratic nominee! OH MY GOD!

Gene Simmons Solo Album: See You Tonight

Good lord, but the drama that ensued in my junior high KISS-world when the 1978 solo albums came out! There were judgments flung about hither and yon RE which of the four you chose (or could afford) to buy and what that said about you as a person; which of the albums "rocked" or didn't.

While "rocking" wasn't an issue for me personally (I just wanted to see the individual band members' SOULS), I remember having an argument in the junior-high cafeteria lunch-line with a self-proclaimed FORMER KISS fan who said he wouldn't listen to KISS any more because NONE of the solo albums rocked! (Me: "You KNOW that Ace Frehley's album rocks!")

The solo KISS albums that I bought (or, rather, had given to me at my request) were Gene's and Ace's. Did I regret my choices? Nah. I later heard Paul's and Peter's albums at my friend Debbie's house--- Paul's just sounded like generic KISS. Peter's, like the blues/soul that I'd read he was inspired by and that I absolutely was not interested in when I was 13. (And am still not today.)

Ace's, on the other hand, had the completely catchy, driven "New York Groove" on it, plus the advantage of his being a previous dark horse in the band---what he had to say musically was different and interesting, a lot harder and less melodic and more thrashingly guitar-propelled than what the band had previously put out.

And Gene, I had just always liked the best. (Any time we'd dress up, I was Gene; I had a Gene-face cake for one birthday; I had a Gene solo album T-shirt made at the local mall.) Maybe because of songs like "Goin' Blind" on the "Hotter Than Hell" album---"I'm 93, you're 16 / and I think I'm goin' blind..." Or "God of Thunder," which opened with eerie, demonic kids' giggling. He always wrote darker than Paul, and had odder themes. They often weren't as good songs tunefully, but were more interesting to listen to lyrically and atmospherically. (There was nothing more fun or atmospheric when I was 13 than listening to the demonic KISS in a candle-lit bedroom at a sleep-over.)

Above is my favorite song, "See You Tonight," from the Gene album, performed later at some unplugged venue. Completely non-dark and uncharacteristically, for Gene, Beatle-esque. I loved it at the time, and I've still been hearing it in my head now for the past 30 years.

In a side note: The junior high girlfriend that I'd listen to KISS with---she went on to become a real-life groupie and actually slept with Gene Simmons. When I met up with her again last year here in the NY area for the first time in over 20 years, I expressed admiration for that feat. She said, logically, "There's nothing great about sleeping with rock stars." But I, nonetheless, still think that there is. Anybody can sleep with local guys and get married to them and live in the same town they grew up in. Not anybody can go out on the road with rock stars and sleep with Gene Simmons. (Lord knows, I couldn't even get into Julian Lennon's hotel room, though I made it to the outside of his door!) My friend did something extraordinary.

"Dear God" by XTC

1986's "Skylarking" by XTC. One of the best albums of all time.

1. Summer's Cauldron
2. Grass
3. Meeting Place, The
4. That's Really Super, Supergirl
5. Ballet For a Rainy Day
6. 1,000 Umbrellas
7. Season Cycle
8. Earn Enough For Us
9. Big Day
10. Another Satellite
11. Mermaid Smiled
12. Man Who Sailed Around His Soul, The
13. Dying
14. Sacrificial Bonfire
15. Dear God

KISS 1976: Hard Luck Woman

When I was a kid back in Azle, Texas, we didn't have a concept of "greasepaint" makeup or anything, didn't even know that stores sold such a thing. So when we discovered that we all liked KISS, we tried to invent ways to create their makeup on our own faces. The white part = toothpaste plus baby powder slapped on top. (It stung and was splotchy.) The black part = magic marker. (What a big ol' un-wash-off-able mess!)

Below is one of my all-time favorite KISS songs, from the 1976 "Rock and Roll Over" album. (Someone's little brother was always Peter Criss!)

Walking on a wave's chicane

When I was younger (so much younger than today), I used to be a real poet. I'd stop dead in the street or at parties or during any show to write down what was filtering through. I wrote hundreds of pieces from '82 to 87. Then more got triggered when I was in my MA writing program in SF in the mid-90s. Stuff has been relatively slow coming since then.

A phrase would get stuck in my head...and I'd walk around for hours (or sit around for hours) chanting it mentally, then later when I got the chance, getting it all down on paper---whipping into shape what had already appeared subconsciously. (Back when I was a kid and stuck in my country home, the TV on in the background at 3am would provide inspiration.)

The older I've gotten, the less such "muse gifts" have just appeared magically to me. I've been doing other stuff, concentrating on work, or hard relationships, or the Joan website...I haven't devoted very much time at all to poetry, emptying myself for it. My receiving gifts have suffered accordingly.

A couple of days ago, though, a title started showing up in my head: "Ghost of a Suicide." Followed by "Rust of a razor blade/Slip of a knot." I knew all of it came from somewhere else. Probably Plath. Most of my books are still back in my mom's garage in Texas, so I couldn't immediately look the references up. But in the meantime, I started working with what I had. Here's something very rough, maybe one-quarter of what it will eventually turn out to be:

Ghost of a Suicide

Rust of a razor blade, slip of a knot
(or of your tongue--
ham-sandwich gag for your throaty laugh)

They fished you out of the ocean once
Rusted trident in your side
Plastic drink-rings embedded in your bloated wrists

What things have slithered past you as you slept.



After writing this, I found the Plath poem "Electra on the Azalea Path," with the lines:

I am the ghost of an infamous suicide
My own blue razor rusting in my throat...

I'd been channeling, but not quite copying. I wanted to put "walking on a wave's chicane" in my poem, but that's already been done, in a beautiful song by ELO:

McCain's Idiotic Ad/Obama in Berlin

While I think Obama is relatively shallow, what I think about him personally has nothing to do with this utterly idiotic McCain ad.

Yes, I'm pissed that Obama's "rock star" image got him the Democratic nomination with the support of milque-toast hyper-liberal democrats, who for some reason were uber-critical of Hillary for no real reason. (I absolutely am disgusted by MSNBC and Keith Olbermann, Mika Brszinski (sp?), and Chris Matthews now. They're idiots.)

But when it comes down to it, Obama's positions on the issues used to be much, much closer to mine than John McCain's. McCain is one of the most right-wing Senators, despite his occasional realistic views on immigration, or campaign-finance reform.

What's creepy about both candidates: McCain (a torture victim himself) used to be against torture; now he's for it. Obama used to be against federal wiretapping; now he's for it. And, just today, Obama announced that he's suddenly for off-shore drilling---when he used to be against it.

Both McCain and Obama are phony scumbags as campaigners. Though I did get goosebumps when I saw Obama speak in Berlin.



He seems to promise so much goodness and hope...You want to believe, but then you look at the fakeness of what he's been promising and not promising on the campaign trail...There's just slightly enough "there" there to keep you hoping.

I'd like to be proud if he were our President. But not if he follows the same old blind pro-Corporate, pro-Israel policies. Someone, anyone, has got to break free of that old way of thinking. Big Business is completely profit-oriented. Israel is completely an apartheid state, with Israelis and then the Palestinians who do the work for them.

Job-hunting---not all bad!

Though I did practically nothing but lie on my couch for months after my last in-house project ended, and I didn't bother looking for work because the idea seemed too strenuous... Now that I'm putting myself out there again, I'm remembering one of the interesting things about looking for work---the concept of what might be your new life!

Back in Austin, I was a copy editor for an educational publishing company. There weren't any "real" publishing companies in Austin, just the educational ones, so that's what I did... When I came to NYC last year, I thought FOR SURE I'd immediately break into the fiction/poetry world...Nope. What I got initially was a lot of groggy late-night temp proofing shifts (midnight to 8am shift) for legal firms, and then, a long-term gig as a copy editor for...AN EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHING COMPANY. Not complaining, though. That job paid a crazy amount of money, almost triple what I made at a similar job in Austin! (Way more than making up for how expensive housing is here.)

Depressingly (due to the loss of massive income), that's done with, though, and now I'm on the job hunt again, in the meantime doing temp work that will decidedly not pay my bills. I'm nervous, but the kind-of fun thing is the type of jobs I've been applying for---here in NYC, unlike Austin, there are a VAST number of editing/copy editing/proofing jobs up for grabs in all sorts of interesting NON-EDUCATIONAL fields. One job description I read mentioned: "must know Jackson Pollock's most famous novel and the style in which Tom Wolfe painted"----I freaked out when I read that: "Damn, I had no idea that Pollock ever wrote a novel!" and "What the fuck? Tom Wolfe PAINTED?" (The fucker who wrote the job description was just messin'! I got him/her back, though---turns out there really IS a "Tom Wolfe" (not THE) who paints...Western scenes! I mentioned that in my cover letter!)

Since I'm not quite out of money yet, the above is still funny. I've also been applying for various (only in New York) jobs at gossip and soap magazines and papers. I would absolutely LOVE to proof for, say, the "Post"! Seriously. Compare dumbing down historical or literary text for a 6th-grader and his/her state text approvers with the wonderful anarchy of writing/editing gleefully idiotic stuff for "Page Six"!

That's the thing about TRYING...You may not get what you're wishing for, but in the meantime it's fun to fantasize about! (And at the end, you can say you tried.)

The Most Beautiful Women in Films (morph)

(The music is Bach's Prelude from Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 in G Major.)

Woman is the Nigger of the World

"We make her paint her face and dance
If she won't be a slave we say that she don't love us
If she's real we say she's trying to be a man
While putting her down we pretend that she's above us..."

The Dick Cavett Show. ABC-TV. November 1971.

Just try to imagine daytime network TV today airing this. (Come on, Ellen!) Or even late-night cable TV, for that matter. (What's the most "radical" that HBO can come up with---"Entourage"?)

While I hate John Lennon's posthumous "generic PC feel-good" reputation, perpetuated by the widow Ono, his post-Beatles albums are actually anything but blindly "feel-good." I recommend most 1970's "Plastic Ono Band" for its pure, raw punk. And 1974's "Walls and Bridges" for its pure, raw sadness (alleviated by one of my favorite happy pop songs, "Surprise Surprise").

"Woman is the Nigger of the World" appeared on his 1972 album "Some Time in New York City."

In remembrance of the patient Ginny, 1983, for listening to it with me over and over again one night, after I'd found a rare copy while we were out at the local mall! (My idea of a good time...but, um, probably not hers...) :)

And Neil Maciejewski's raising a kid...

The guy in this video, Neil Maciejewski, is often found commenting on his blog about what a great father and role model he is for his 4-year-old... All the while sending out photos of himself with a dildo stuck up his ass and hanging out on the circuit and dancing in drag.

If you want to be a fuck-up, then great. Just don't afterwards pretend that your 4-year-old is learning anything positive from your behavior. (Unless, of course, you WANT your kid to grow up dressing like a woman, posing with a dildo up his ass.)

Maciejewski's a poster boy for all of the bad things that Republicans have ever said about gay people. I feel sorry for his kid.

Waylon and Willie and the Boys...

I've got my cable music station turned to "Classic Country." and "Luckenbach Texas" by Waylon Jennings just came on. I LOVE that song and so ran to YouTube so I could post it here.

Back when I was in San Francisco in the mid-90s working on my Master's Degree in poetry, I had a tiny, loud apartment, and so would try to escape it whenever I could. I found a comfortable bar a few streets away. Never too crowded during the day, always a couple of tables where I could spread out all of my work without bothering anyone. I'd go there almost every week, and I'd always put a ton of money in the jukebox for inspiration... The cool thing was, the jukebox wasn't "San Francisco Pseudo-Hip" but rather filled with lots of interesting standards, including plenty of Waylon-n-Willie.

After a couple of weeks of me sitting there scribbling and shuffling around papers and plugging in $5 worth of country songs on the jukebox, the bar owner finally came over and sat down to check me out. His name was/is "Whitey" (and he'd actually known Neal Cassady and hung out with those Beat-boys back in the day!). After that, every time I'd come in, I'd get free beers, since he said my jukebox choices were so good! :)

The best feedback I got while I was in San Francisco!

The songs I was playing were why I like Texas, the kind of men I like about Texas. Ruffian poets. I've never been able, personally, to connect with such, but I admire them from afar. They don't exist in New York City or San Fran, that's for sure.

Back in the New York Groove

After months of lolling about on my Weehawken couch, watching every last reality show and HBO special I could scrape up (I never want to see "Jon and Kate + 8" or "Little People, Big World" or "John Adams" again!), I finally got off my lazy ass and went back to work. Well, actually, I'd been doing some freelance work this whole time, just sporadically, and at home.

The last job I had paid so well, when the project ended, I didn't HAVE to do anything for months... I thought that would be fun and liberating---instead, it was just mind-numbingly dull! There's only so much of Weehawken one can see---only so many library cards one can get, mom-n-pop sandwich shops one can visit daily, etc. When my "freedom" first began, I thought: "Oh, now I can do some sightseeing in NYC at my leisure..." Nope. Instead, what I ended up doing was playing around on the Internet until 6 or even 8 in the morning, sleeping 'til 4 in the afternoon, then just LYING THERE bemoaning how hot it was while channel surfing for some, any, reality-show episode I hadn't seen yet! Then, once sunset approached, maybe wandering around Weehawken/Union City for an hour or so before picking up my fast food and beer for the evening.

For some reason, I could not summon the energy, month after month, to even call my temp agency or to send out any resumes. 'Til finally, thank god, some internal mechanism kicked in and at least I put in the temp agency call (and desultorily have been sending out a few resumes---I'm still not in "full motivation mode").

So I'm now at last off my duff and waking up to the alarm again! It's invigorating. When you're home all the time, you get mushy and lazy. There needs to be some CONTRAST between your worlds for you to appreciate any of them. (It's nice to have that "It's nice to be home" feeling again, for instance, as opposed to the "rolling-over-with-a-hangover-and-hating-your-same-four-walls" feeling!)

And, while Weehawken's been cute to look at, I definitely missed the mighty might that IS New York. For instance, once I cross over from Joisey and land at Manhattan's Port Authority (8th Ave and 42nd Street), in my 20-minute walk to my current temp job here's some of what I see:







Every time I walk through and by Times Square, Bryant Park, the library lions, Grand Central Station, and the Empire State Building (all in two daily trips!), I get a thrill... and then flash back to the times back in Austin when I would drive 20 minutes past various strip malls to my job and later stand outside in a parking lot having a cig during breaks looking at all of the cars and the strip-mall surroundings, thinking, "My god, this is depressing and horrible." And then, "My god, what's wrong with me? This job is nice and cushy; I like my co-workers; Austin's a nice town; why am I so depressed?" (Note to self: Strip malls and parking lots ARE depressing, honey.)

Austin is indeed a nice, pretty, liberal, university town. But I haven't missed living there for one second. There's no "there" there. It's like "West Coast lifestyle"-lite, and I hated the West Coast when I lived in San Francisco for 2 years back in the mid-1990s. Hated its phony, PC, "feel-good" boosterism. (When in fact there was nothing at all to boost. Both San Fran and Austin are the center of exactly NOTHING, but at least Austin is slightly more humble and laid-back about it, without most of the annoying 1970s Berkeley crap still reverberating, as in SF---and with less crime and attitude. I certainly never got mugged in Austin, and never had to sit at a bus-stop for what seemed like an eternity because some thug assholes didn't want to pay their fares.) Austin and SF are also both extremely lazy artistically, with no criticism of the arts to speak of. Everything's just "good, man," as long as it has a patina of "weird" about it. What I like about New York is that it seems to be run by adults and not hippies or PC granolas. Adults with some standards and critical acumen.

But what I really like about New York is that, to me, it just "feels" right. In a recent issue of "Time Out NY," Briton Ricky Gervais was asked, "Do you like playing in New York?" He answered: "Yes. It makes me feel funny; it smells good. When I get here, I just feel strangely at home." That's it exactly in a non-intellectual nutshell! The second I first came here for a vacation a couple of years ago, the city made me "feel funny" and it "smelled good" (like my German grandfather's basement and baked goods) and I "felt strangely at home." (When I lived in San Fran, on the other hand, the place to me constantly smelled like a nasty combination of piss and pigeon-poop.)

Maybe NYC will kick me out (if I can't ever find a permanent job that pays the rent!)--- but that's New York's decision, not mine. If kicked to the curb, I'll always be able to say that I tried, and that I once lived in the greatest, grittiest, most glamorous and ambitious city in the world.

What a lucky punk...

...Samantha Ronson is! ;p

What Happened on 23rd Street

Filmed on 23rd Street in New York City by the Edison Co., August 21, 1901.

I love how the couple cracks up afterwards!

BTW: Today, 23rd is home to the Chelsea Hotel; the Chelsea Cinema, where I see most of my Joan movies; and my beauty shop, "Chelsea Styles"!

Joanie Sommers/ Nothing Worse Than a Coward

I first became aware of Sommers when I saw a clip of her appearance with Joan Crawford on "Hollywood Palace" in the mid-'60s---both were embarrassingly schmaltzy to me. But it didn't click until just hearing the song tonight that Sommers also sang the great "Johnny Get Angry" that I knew from back when I was a teen in the '80s and only had AM radio playing the Oldies in my car!

In a weird side-note, Sommers shares a February 24 birthday with someone truly apropos of the "Johnny" in this song.

When I first came online in early 2001, one of the first things I accidentally got involved with was defending this wimpy Pisces-character on a Joan Crawford message board, since I thought that others were picking on her... In the 7 years since then, she's never once come to my defense. Not once. You'd think that at some point the wimpiness would abate and the intellectual honesty, or at least a bit of loyalty, would shine through for just a second. Nah.

There's nothing worse than a coward.

The Ballad of Steph and Julie

At first, I was looking for a serious version of Yoko Ono's "Give Me Something" on YouTube... I found instead this brother-sister team doing "an interpretive dance" to the song. Which, to me, at 7am after a night of drinking, seemed pretty indicative overall of our last 7 years.

Gen loves Joan

I...I do sometimes get the most interesting e-mails, with photos! (Thanks, Gen!) ;p

Obama Babies

By GLEN JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer 10 minutes ago

CHICAGO - Democrat Barack Obama said Tuesday that the New Yorker magazine's satirical cover depicting him and his wife as flag-burning, fist-bumping radicals doesn't bother him but that it was an insult to Muslim Americans.

"You know, there are wonderful Muslim Americans all across the country who are doing wonderful things," the presidential candidate told CNN's Larry King. "And for this to be used as sort of an insult, or to raise suspicions about me, I think is unfortunate. And it's not what America's all about."

Obama blamed himself for not being forceful enough in challenging some of the rumors about him, including that he is Muslim. Obama is Christian.

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

Let me get this straight... Both Obama and some of his overly earnest (read, "dumb"--either that or "age 18") supporters are actually upset about this cover?

For the very young or the very dumb supporters' edification: "The New Yorker" is a relatively sophisticated East Coast-published (LIBERAL) magazine that's been around since the 1920s. It's famous for its thoughtful, in-depth coverage of all aspects of society (ranging from sports to libraries to art to movie stars to paleontology to politics---you name it), as well as its fiction, poetry, cartoons, reviews, and... (gasp!) SATIRICAL COVERS.

I can maybe slightly understand if the young and/or dumb don't have any idea what "The New Yorker" or its editorial viewpoint is and so go off half-cocked. (I actually read one blogger who kicked some people off her blog for "not understanding" why she was so upset with this cover---"You fuckheads!" she cried.)

But Obama's statement above to CNN's Larry King is completely, ridiculously disingenuous. The man is intelligent and sophisticated enough to know better, to be completely aware of the magazine's political leanings. The only possible reason I can see for his statement to King is to once again (as he did during the primary campaign against Hillary Clinton) attempt to play the victim. ("Geraldine Ferraro is racist!" stands out particularly in my mind.)

I've been a regular reader and subscriber of "The New Yorker" for something like 15 years now. (And, as a Hillary supporter, was mightily irritated by what I saw as their constant snarky editorial snipes at her during this spring's Democratic primaries.) Trust me: They like Obama. A lot.

Their cover art depicting Barack in Muslim attire fist-bumping his guerrilla-garbed wife Michelle (with her wild Afro), a portrait of Osama bin Laden hanging over the mantle, and an American flag burning in the fireplace is a highly and overtly satirical jab at the few idiotic extreme right-wingers who claim that Obama and his wife are Muslim terrorists.

Now, if the same cover had appeared on "The National Review" or "Guns and Ammo" or whatever...that's a different story altogether. Given these magazines' extreme right-wing agendas, obviously such a cover would indicate an attempt to propagate the lie that the Obamas are radical Muslims. While I don't personally admire Obama very much (though I'll be voting for him), I would indeed be outraged about such a false portrayal appearing in those non-satirical contexts.

But I like and understand my "New Yorker" a lot. It's rational, it's funny, it's intelligent. And it's scary to me to see supposedly left-wing rational and intelligent Obama supporters, and Obama himself, speak out against satire...and FOR the dumbing down of American discourse. Obama should know better.

"...getting out of one car and getting into another..."

It's funny that whenever you really feel sad, if you want to get anyone to listen to you, you have to act like you're not sad. You have to, instead, act "melancholy" or "blue" or "whimsical" or something. Something palatable. So someone can picture you as Audrey Hepburn, perhaps.

People are repulsed by overt and overabundant tears, by truly upset looks, and especially by snot. But they always do seem to feel terribly moved by a slight tear in the voice or a geisha-like sideways glance downward.

If you happen to be writing in your blog, people also like to see a piece of art illustrating your fleeting melancholy. Even better is an emotionally evocative YouTube musical clip to accompany your words.

Here's yer clip, motherfuckers.

Julie, Julie, Julie, Do Ya Love Me?

Come on, baby! :)

The Art of Failure: Connelly/Scaboda

http://www.chuckconnelly.com/gallery.php?year=1993http://www.chuckconnelly.com/gallery.php
http://www.chuckconnelly.com/scaboda.php

Oh, the tortured, misunderstood, undiscovered and unappreciated artist.

Except that Chuck Connelly is actually good. Yet while good, he's still mightily derivative, a la Munch, Dali, Van Gogh, Balthus. And he was once both discovered and appreciated commercially, while apparently blowing his chance because of his behavior. (I could care less about his behavior---it's just that all the work that I saw presented on this HBO doc looked like it came straight from Munch, Dali, Van Gogh, or Balthus. It's simultaneously beautiful and daring and bold and disturbing and subtle...but is it original?)

Connelly made a big splash when he first appeared in the early '80s, and then fell out of favor. In his latest incarnation in the "Art of Failure" documentary on HBO, he's hilariously hired someone to pretend to be an artist in 2007 named "Fred Scaboda"---supposedly someone new on the scene, but actually Chuck Connelly, and who's presenting Connelly's work to various galleries as "Scaboda." All with "Scaboda"'s "trademark" Big Black Dot appearing in all of the pictures.

In one scene of the doc, a gallery owner asks the actor playing the fictional Scaboda what the black dot on all of his paintings means: "When I was a kid, I showed my dad one of my paintings, and he put his cigarette out on it." My jaw dropped at how funnily Spinal-Tappish that was, and at how the gallery owner took it completely straight! (Really, how else COULD he take it? The performance was so straight-faced and perfect.)

"Some balls are held for charity..." b/w "Sandra Dee"

When I was 12, 13, 14 (in the mid/late '70s) and stuck out in the Texas countryside, music did manage to filter through to the hinterlands via movies and FM radio! My neighbor Marla was a year younger than I was, and we loved both "Sandra Dee" from "Grease" and "Big Balls" from AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" album and would go around singing them at the top of our lungs! To this day, I know every word of the "Sandra Dee" song! (Marla and I also once put on a "Grease" show on her front porch for the neighborhood kids, with her lip-synching the Olivia Newton-John parts, and me the John Travolta parts---we looooooved that whole album!)

Marla was cool--- We went to church camp together and got mutually kicked out for not wearing bras. (Please, we were in the 14-year-old range...how exciting could that have been for the other camp-goers?) I do feel guilty, though, for one incident at church camp----All of us kids were supposed to go out into the woods by ourselves and think about our sins... Marla and I ended up teaming up and running around terrorizing lone girls and boys who really were out there to think about their sins, yelling obnoxiously at them, "What are your sins? Tell us your sins!"

She also had a trampoline over at her house, and in the summer we would both lie out on it to get a tan, most of the time topless. My mom worked during the day, but her mom was at home and had friends over sometimes... One time said friends happened to look out the back window while Marla and I were sitting up chatting on the trampoline without our tops... Uh-oh! No more sun-bathing! :)

She and I also liked KISS together---she was always Ace Frehley, and I was always Gene Simmons. We'd make our little brothers be Paul and Peter. And we'd invent whiteface KISS makeup by smearing toothpaste on our faces and then slapping powder on top.

All of us neighborhood kids would often get together in the summer evenings to play softball, or to run relay races, sometimes with the parents taking part... Whenever there were two teams, everyone else started to try to separate us: "Stephanie and Marla can't be on the same team." That was just always something immediately thrown out as a rule by other older people.

Once we both were in high school, Marla started dating a lot of boys. She told me about one boy that she'd had sex with... One night we neighborhood kids were sitting outside in a circle playing "Truth or Dare," with 3 of Marla's cousins in the circle. Her cousin Ginny Mae asked Marla a "Truth" question about if she'd had sex... Nobody in the circle knew the truth but me. Marla slightly glanced up at me; I slightly shook my head back at her, "NO." The official answer came back to the circle: "NO."

There wasn't ever a "sex vibe" or anything between us (oh, wait---then why were they always kicking us out of church camp and off trampolines and out of softball games...!), but there was always a complete "friend vibe," an "I trust you, let's do something crazy" vibe. I miss someone to sing "Big Balls" and "Sandra Dee" with.

"She told me she worked in the morning and started to laugh..."

In Austin during the spring and summer of 2003 I was completely smitten by this woman. After weeks of hanging around her at various parties, we finally hooked up at a club and we hung out all night and she asked me over... We stayed up all night talking about the Black Dahlia, and I watched as she did her nails... She had to work the next day and when it was time to go to bed, I volunteered to sleep on the couch downstairs, but she said, "Don't be silly" and invited me upstairs to her bed... TO SLEEP! :)

Two weeks later, she attended her high school reunion and three months after that, she ran off with a guy she met there to get married. (Prior to the "running off" there was plenty of Sturm und Drang...I acted pretty badly.)

We're back in touch now, oddly.

The Tranny and the Pot-Bellied Twink

This bizarre message just in, verbatim, from Julie (aka "Tranny"). To try to explain some of her references, though that won't really help, sense-wise: "Sensen" is a Russian man on a photos site. "The script" is something I wrote and sent to Julie 8 years ago. Julie's "man" Neil is an aging, balding gay twink who's in a relationship and prefers gay men to trannies.

Here goes:

LOLOLOLOLOL - Sensen is an extremely sensual woman (hence her name, if you catch my drift, that is :) And she is a bisexual - which you boast to be, ass! I don't think so. (Btw, I had to answer the phone - but now you are properly banned, and I will ban your every LJ ID in the time to come). Oh, your so-called script was so goddamnly boring and uninteresting that I could not bring myself to be phoney about it in any way just to let you believe you had any hint of talent in that direction, hence my lasting silence about that subject - better stick to your pathetic online attempts at bitchery, Steffie Mine. Neil found your script laughable as well. LOLZ!! Honey, you ain't woman enough to take my Man(= Neil) away from me! LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL! :P

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

My goodness! Neil Maciejewski (aka the "Pot-Bellied Twink" pictured) is now Julie Lindberg's "man"! Who'd've thought! ;p Congrats to the paunchy, balding couple!

Union City Blue

Weehawken, where I live, lies right on the Hudson, overlooking NYC. It's a small town, both population-wise (about 13,000) and geographically. Walking just a few blocks inland takes you into Union City (immortalized by Blondie in "Union City Blue"). While Weehawken has mainly white Yuppies and retirees and is rather quiet and picturesque, Union City gets a bit more, shall we say, "diverse." (When you walk on Bergen Line, the crowded main shopping street there, there are signs everywhere proclaiming the city's "diversity." Although, about 99.8% of the people that I've seen on Bergen Line are Hispanic, which ain't too diverse!)

And, by the way, who needs Manhattan when you've got Union City? While growing up, I'd always read about the legendary "Studio 54" and dreamed about hanging out there. Well, Union City has its very own legend: Studio 45!















And Manhattan might have its fashionable stores like "Calvin Klein"... but Union City has...















Here's Blondie's homage to the town:




The longer I live in the NYC area, the greater my understanding that Manhattanites really are a bit snobbish about the "bridge-and-tunnel crowd"---i.e., those who have to take a bridge or a tunnel to get to Manhattan---like folks in Jersey or Brooklyn/Queens/Bronx! (The idea of this crossover played a HUGE role in the minds of the Brooklyn characters in one of my favorite movies, "Saturday Night Fever." Stephanie really lorded it over Tony that she'd made it to Manhattan, and coming to Manhattan was Tony's ultimate goal.) I'd always liked this Blondie song but, being from another part of the country altogether, had no idea about the "implications" of desiring a guy from Union City! Not necessarily just Hispanic---I think Union City used to be, 30 years ago in 1979 when the song came out, just known as lower/working-class white. But the dynamic of "forbidden love" is the same: "Power, passion/Playing a double hand...Cross to the other side/It becomes daylight..." She's going the wrong way (Manhattan to Union City), but can't help herself...

Spending warm summer nights in cars...

Last weekend around 3:30 a.m. some (what I assume were) teenagers parked their car across from my house and started having sex. (I know they were having sex 'cause when they first parked, they accidentally triggered the car-horn, which made me get up and look out the window; and then they left their low parking lights on, so I could see them in action!)

While I was looking out the window at them, I kept saying to myself: "Don't be a bitch. Let them have their fun." Which was countered by, "Fuckin' hell. It's 3:30 in the morning. I have the right to watch my movie in peace without these fuckin' weirdos showing up FUCKING LOUDLY outside my window!" I put my shoes on in anticipation of my running outside with a huge flashlight (which I don't have) to shine on them. I contemplated calling 3-1-1 with a noise complaint.

I ended up doing nothing but sitting back down on my couch, watching the movie (can't remember what it was) sporadically while getting back up constantly to peer out at what the car-sex-people were doing, and if they were gone yet. (Really, I couldn't see much of what they were doing---just a lot of bobbing---but I was anxious for them to leave so I could get back to my peaceful movie-watching!)

When I was in grad school, I read a story in some college lit magazine about how neighbors who complained about loud sex next door were, of course, prudish and sex-starved and jealous and prejudiced and...you name it. I related completely to the angry neighbors annoyed at the loudness!

The car-sex also flashed me back, though, to a time in Austin when I was expecting my lover to show up and he was extremely late, and in the meantime my duplex neighbor and her boyfriend were going at it---LOUDLY (and saying stupid things). My lover called, and I told him, "I'm sick of listening to them! I'm about to bang on the wall if you don't get over here right NOW!" He cutely was worried about me being rude to them---"No, don't do that!" (And then hurried his late ass over to calm me down!) :)

Should I be pissed at obnoxious people parking in front of my house to have sex? I think in general that yes, I should. Being good-natured about others having a good time is kindly, indeed. But then there's the, "I'm doing my own thing in my own house, don't intrude on it" part of it. (Or, more specifically, "If you're going to be fucking and I'm not, then do it QUIETLY as long as you're right next door or right across the street," dammit!) ;p

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

In semi-related news: In the past week I've had two pretty graphic dreams---one about sitting on the parents' couch and not being able to stop smiling; one about somebody (not me) waking up the parents in the next room. ;p

Now THIS is romantic! :)

From the Washington Post:

Marry You? Just Ax Me

One of the lesser-known reasons behind the opposition to same-sex
marriage: The gays are going to totally upstage the straights when it
comes to outrageous, attention-getting public marriage proposals. We
got a little dose of this toward the end of D.C. Capital Pride Week
when Joe Matessa, 38, proposed to Billy Molasso, 37, at an outdoor
screening of the Joan Crawford kitsch-horror classic "Strait-Jacket"
at Hillwood Estate Friday, in front of 300 people waving
glitter-covered plastic hatchets (Crawford plays an ax murderer) and
wire hangers. (Matessa, full disclosure, works in ad sales at The
Post; his boyfriend is a professor at GWU. They'll have a commitment
ceremony in the fall.) JumboTron? How quaint.

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

Really, I find this incredibly romantic!! This is exactly how I'd love to be proposed to!

A shot in the dark, a punch in the stomach

A couple of days ago I caught for the first time Adrian Grenier's HBO doc, "Shot in the Dark," about trying to get in touch with his father. (Grenier is the young star of "Entourage"; he also appeared as the boyfriend in "The Devil Wears Prada.")

Grenier was conceived in 1975 of two hippie parents. Basically, the dad wanted to be with the mom; the mom was torn---at the time the baby was conceived, the dad was living in a rooming house with five other guys. He said he loved her, but when she asked him where they would live once the baby was born, he couldn't figure anything out. She dumped him. (In the doc, she mentions that the father was a Leo, and that she repeatedly asked him, "Are you a lion or a lamb?" His passivity was unattractive to her at the time, and he remains passive nearly 30 years later.)

Grenier's doc is, for the most part pleasant and unhurtful. There's a bit about the dad's new wife hanging up on Grenier when he calls---she's been unable to have kids, and Grenier reminds her of that pain, plus his presence invokes the fear that Grenier's mother still has a hold on the dad. She and Grenier later meet and work this out, thank goodness.

I was watching the whole thing, taking it all in... It was mild, so I wasn't paying complete attention. Then there was a jolt at the end. There was a subtitle: "Reunion: Part 1." Still cinema verite, Adrian's dad drives up in a suburban mall parking lot, where Adrian is waiting for him. Dad gets out: "I'm sorry you came all this way. Sorry. You shouldn't have come. I have my own life now. I don't know why you're here. Maybe you can sight-see or something. Sorry. This isn't going to work." He gets back in the car, and Adrian looks after him in shock, then goes over to the camera-man and starts sobbing---"Did he just say that?" I'd watched the whole doc, coming to the conclusion that the dad was a nice guy...and then I was completely horrified by this ending. Thinking, "No, he didn't just say that." It felt like someone had just punched me in my stomach, and I started crying.

It was a trick. As the film itself had shown, Adrian and his dad had indeed had a pleasant reunion in actuality. The "rejection" bit was a fake thing that had also been alluded to earlier: "Wouldn't it have been awful if you'd been a real jerk?" (After the fake bad ending, there was also a fake hyper-happy ending.)

Best of wishes to Adrian and his dad. But what the fake bad ending reminded me of was a time back in Austin, a few years after my girlfriend and I had been broken up. We met up again unexpectedly at a club and hung out all night until closing. After getting along all night, we started to walk arm-and-arm back to her car---and then all of a sudden she dropped my arm and said, "This isn't going to work," and walked away.

Talk about a punch in the stomach. I actually threw up afterwards, not from drinking but from the cruelty of it.

That awful "girlfriend thing" happened back in 1998, I think it was. I'd never experienced anything like it before, or since, until I watched Grenier's "Shot in the Dark" last week, and re-experienced the same feeling... (Only his turned out to be staged, thank goodness. I felt so grateful and relieved when the explanatory titles came on.)

Julie's last post here flashed me back to that nausea of thinking you know someone, thinking you have some sort of connection, even if it's a truce of a connection--maybe the two of you can't get along, but at least you come to a detente and decide not to hurt each other further... only to have the other person suddenly punch you in your gut for no reason. What happened in Grenier's documentary was fiction, but it keeps happening to me in real life. I remain stunned by how cruel, and false, people can actually be.

Spending warm summer days indoors...

Norway? It sucks. I'm going for Luxembourg.

There'll be no Mozart tonight!

Usually I think this kind of thing is a bit too precious, but I came across this "Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall" (1962) clip by accident, and was accidentally charmed!

Hot town, summer in the city...

Summer in the City (by the Lovin' Spoonful)



Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn't it a pity
Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city

All around, people looking half dead
Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head

But at night it's a different world
Go out and find a girl
Come-on come-on and dance all night
Despite the heat it'll be alright

And babe, don't you know it's a pity
That the days can't be like the nights
In the summer, in the city
In the summer, in the city

Cool town, evening in the city
Dressing so fine and looking so pretty
Cool cat, looking for a kitty
Gonna look in every corner of the city
Till I'm wheezing like a bus stop
Running up the stairs, gonna meet you on the rooftop

But at night it's a different world
Go out and find a girl
Come-on come-on and dance all night
Despite the heat it'll be alright

And babe, don't you know it's a pity
That the days can't be like the nights
In the summer, in the city
In the summer, in the city

Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn't it a pity
Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city

All around, people looking half dead
Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head

But at night it's a different world
Go out and find a girl
Come-on come-on and dance all night
Despite the heat it'll be alright

And babe, don't you know it's a pity
That the days can't be like the nights
In the summer, in the city
In the summer, in the city
------------------------------------------------------------


It's been horrible the last couple of days here, truly dirty and gritty! They've been closing schools at noon this week and no one's even venturing out at night (much less meeting girls on rooftops)! And so---I love this song! I first heard it back in the early '80s when I was a 16-year-old with my first car (a red Ford Pinto) listening to oldies on the AM radio (the only radio station I could get aside from sports and talk and country)... Back then, I thought this song seemed "sooo New York." And now that I live here, I STILL think it's very much sooooo "New York!" I love even the nasty heat of this town!

I deserve a paper plate!

A few days ago I saw this ad on TV, and I wrote down the line I thought I had just heard (but couldn't quite be sure 'cause it was so insane)...

"I deserve a paper plate that's as strong as I am!"

Sure enough, I wasn't dreaming:



To contact this company and let them know how ridiculous this ad campaign is:
http://www.makeitadixieday.com/contact.html


p.s. For any sexist guys out there wondering why I'm being so uptight, try this for a second---put yourself in the place of the dumb women in that ad, and see how YOU feel after watching it. I had a similar argument with a young male neighbor back in the '80s, when the "Spuds McKenzie" ads were popular. I thought they were incredibly sexist and stupid, but he thought they were funny... So I had to plant the anarchic notion: "What if, in the ads, Spuds were a FEMALE dog, and GUYS were hanging all over her?" Neighbor: "Well, that wouldn't be funny."

The Ghost of Zelda

(another Leo, on the Cancer cusp: July 24)


This week I've been reading two biographies by Nancy Milford that I picked up months ago at the Strand: "Zelda" and the 2001 bio of Edna St. Vincent Millay. (I'd read the Zelda Fitzgerald bio for the first time probably 20 years ago.) Here's a quote in the Zelda book from husband Scott in the 1940s, long after he and his wife had found it impossible to live together:

Perhaps fifty percent of our friends and relations will tell you in good faith that it was my drinking that drove Zelda mad, and the other half would assure you that it was her madness that drove me to drink. Neither of these judgements means much of anything. These two groups of friends and relations would be unanimous in saying that each of us would have been much better off without the other. The irony is that we have never been more in love with each other in all our lives. She loves the alcohol on my lips. I cherish her most extravagant hallucinations. In the end, nothing really had much importance. We destroyed ourselves. But in all honesty, I never thought we destroyed each other.

And here's another incident from the book that struck me. In '46, 6 years after Scott's death and 2 years before her own, Zelda visited friends in the East. When it was time to go back to her home in Montgomery, Zelda and the family were all sitting on the porch waiting to leave. The family was getting anxious as the train's departure time neared and Zelda seemed in no hurry to go:

Zelda said we didn't need to worry, the train would not be on time anyway. We laughed and said, perhaps, but it was a risk we didn't intend to take. 'Oh, no,' she said, 'it will be all right. Scott has told me. Can't you see him sitting here beside me?' The Biggses were speechless, neither knowing what to say or do. At last Judge Biggs insisted that they leave. When we got to the station we had a half hour wait. The train was going to be late.

Many people seem to remember/want to remember only the glamorous early years of the Fitzgeralds, the years just after they'd met and had a brief, glorious time being feted in New York City. For instance, I just did a search online for a photo of Zelda as she looked in the '40s, after years of mental problems had worn her out, and couldn't find a thing. I did, though, come across numerous photos of modern-day couples with fluorescent teeth and blank eyes, too often posing pseudo-provocatively entwined on leather couches in LA, their photos bearing captions like, "The Modern-Day Scott and Zelda," with the following descriptions usually saying something along the lines of, "Jessica met Topher at the X Games, where she was doing publicity for his edgy band Snap982. They work hard and play hard!"

I wonder if any of those utterly generic and depressing people (or those writing blurbs about them) actually have any idea what it's like to feel deeply connected to someone, even after years of separation and sadness and pain... if they're capable of recognizing another's spirit (rather than their "big tits" or "big guns").

The Fitzgeralds, with their deep knowledge of each other and old-fashioned fealty, break my heart.

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
---Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Leos Rising

Despite this uber-gay "Time" magazine cover, congrats to Barack Obama (Leo--August 4) for winning the Democratic nomination. Of course I'm going to vote for him, despite my preference for Hillary. I've always voted on issues, not on personality. (Please: Walter Mondale. Michael Dukakis. John Kerry. Despite them, I was always politely there.)

I was heartened by being able to compare the speeches given by Obama and John McCain tonight. McCain's face was a horrible rictus. I liked the guy back in 2000. In fact, in the Texas Republican primary in 2000, when Gore didn't have any competition in his Democratic primary and so was safe, I crossed over to vote for McCain over George Bush. McCain USED to be a "maverick." Since 2000, though, he's sold his soul to suck up to George Bush and the right-wing of the party. I have no respect left for him.

A few weeks ago, I was proclaiming dramatically, "Oh, Obama is going to be just like McGovern..." (Because of the '72 candidate's similar overt liberalism and overt appeal to young people, which came to naught---since historically young people never show up at the polls at the same rate as other age categories.) Obama's as liberal as McGovern, sure... but he's also "cooler" and tougher. Truly, he's got nothing at all to say, and McCain really does "deserve" the job more, based on qualifications, as did Hillary... but things are so completely fucked up in America right now that I think people might just throw up their hands and vote for Obama for the hell of it. I hope they do. What an exciting experiment!

In other "Leo rising"/"exciting experiment" news:

Samantha Ronson (Leo--August 7)--- Also a case of: What the hell!

Kathy Griffin has her "gays," I have my "Leos" that I wish all luck to!

"I love how your eyes close..."

Along with "Lay Back" and "Near You," here's one of my absolute favorite songs, by the Paris Sisters, 1961.

Creepy Stalker Neil Maciejewski

A couple of days ago, I posted web"master" Neil Maciejewski's phone number, after his umpteenth creepy post to this blog---asking people to call him and tell him to quit his ongoing stalking of me, my parents, my friends, and members of the Joan Crawford message board that I moderate...

In response, Maciejewski chose to contact a 17-year-old male Joan fan from the Joan Crawford message board, saying that he had a private detective on the case and was going to prosecute both this kid and me for giving out his phone number... That's pretty psycho for a couple of reasons.

One...Neil Maciejewski posted both his home phone number and home address publicly on Facebook. Which is where I got the information. Now, how on earth can someone prosecute anyone for "revealing" information that the person already posted himself?

Two...This teenager that Neil Maciejewski e-mailed has been receiving numerous unwanted e-mails from Maciejewski for months now and has repeatedly asked Maciejewski to stop e-mailing him, even having to go as far as changing his e-mail address to avoid Maciejewski's messages. He had nothing to do with the Facebook phone number, yet Maciejewski immediately looked for an excuse to e-mail him...

Neil Maciejewski: STOP YOUR OBSESSIVE STALKING, you psycho creep! (You constantly and publicly claim that you have such a healthy home-life... If so, then perhaps it would be truly healthier if you spent more time participating in your alleged "healthy" relationships than bothering strangers online. From the way you behave on the Internet, you'd think you lived alone in your mother's basement with only pictures of the American Idol contestants and Madonna for company.)