Well, Tarnation disappointed me a bit. Yes, I was very moved by Jonathan’s story, but his narcissism bugged me after a while, and all those iMovie effects for effects sake. Still, a wonderful film, with some very inventive editing and an aura of contained wildness perfectly suited to the subject matter. A key moment occurs when Jonathan bugs his grandfather, practically about to keel over, about his mother’s memories of child abuse. The grandfather shrugs him off at first, and then gets upset, and tries to leave, but Jonathan presses the fragile old man, as if in denial of his mother’s mental state, or fearful of his own fate. Last week I saw the brilliant The Fog of War, a documentary from a parallel aesthetic universe. It terrified me, how a few men could affect history so profoundly. You see McNamara being bulldozed over by LBJ, unable to influence Johnson’s course, just as in Tarnation the helpless Jonathan is dragged through abusive foster homes and his mother through a “treatment” that, in his eyes at least, leads to her disintegration.
Burt, Bob, Emily, Claudio, Alain et Moi
Emily and I saw The Leopard yesterday afternoon. Burt Lancaster looks at himself in the mirror, chamberpots in the background, and a tear rolls down his cheek. I wanted that scene to last for hours. You see his resignation to the passing of his life, and way of life. That big beautiful sad face. Italy is in the process of being unified under a constitutional monarchy. Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon spin on the ballroom floor until dawn, the dazzling new Italians.
I told Bob yesterday that I think it’d be best if we didn’t have contact for a while. Like maybe forever. He’s so angry and resentful, and can’t see me as anything but the spawn of Beelzebub. My good will, cheer, and offers of help only make him angrier and more resentful.
Garibaldi finally blasted his way through the gates and threw out the Hungarian occupiers of my home. Our way of life is gone–no, his way of life is gone. I spin on the dance floor with my dancing bears…
Tonight on TCM
Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell
I am so in the mood for this cast…
Gina Lollobrigida
Shelley Winters
Phil Silvers
Peter Lawford
Telly Savalas
Lee Grant
It’s like my dream dinner party.
Olympics, Baskets, Lone Star, Mike Leigh
Big Chrissy and I are watching the Olympics on the big screen. D is safely locked up for the night–I’ve left messages with his doctors and will talk with them tomorrow about new med strategies and phasing out the shock treatments. BC and I are watching beach volleyball, which had to be dreamed up by some straight dude. Did you catch Misty and Kerri rolling on top of each other after their win tonight? Did the ancient Greeks play beach volleyball naked? Thank the gods for Greco-Roman wrestling–and that hot Polish dude. Isn’t there dude beach volleyball? Why isn’t that aired during prime time? My and BC’s comments are pretty much restricted to basket sizes, butts, and back hair. Did you know that one group in the ancient Olympics used to award crowns of celery to winners of their particular event? When I went to Greece a few years ago, Chris loaned me his cell phone for emergency use–“Chris I’m calling you from the Parthenon!” “Chris, that’s the sound of goats in Arcadia!” He tells me he’s still paying off the bill for all of my emergencies.
This weekend we picked up little Geoffy and swept him to SFMoMA for the William Eggleston show. Man, what color. I’m so through with black and white. For a while, anyway. Geoff’s really such a fun guy, like a big kid. He gave us some candy that he brought home from the Mother country, and I ate a whole bag of the colorful shiny chocolate thingies today. I know, I should be injecting botox into my face before my high school reunion, not 500 grams of saturated fat. I got to see him again on Sunday when Dean Smith called from the Lone Star and told me to get off my butt and get on over to the bar. I had been hiking with D earlier and recovering from massive quantities of dim sum from Ton Kiang. I want to die in Ton Kiang—a steamed barbequed pork bun stuffed in my mouth and a smile on my face. So I rushed on over and joined Dean and his lover Doug, BC, Davide, looking frighteningly stressed out–aren’t they taking care of you in your new home? You need to come back home to 20th Street and chill, dude!–and lots of bloggers glimpsed and waved or winked at. Is it always that crowded on a Sunday afternoon? What fun! Denny, the namesake of Bob’s recent book, was there, and we commiserated on our Bob-lessness, and another Bob, former media curator at SFMoMA and perhaps interested in bears too late to take an interest in what I’m doing, but it was nice to see him in a different context.
Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party is coming out on dvd, and if you haven’t seen it, you should. Alison Steadman’s performance is one of the great comic performances of the last century–just brilliant. She was Mike Leigh’s Dietrich.
The Weekend and the Emeco 1006 Chair
The weekend was been quite fun–is it over already? We got an early start on Thursday with the Bruce Conner films at SFMoMA. Bruce was there, introducing 14 shorts from the past 40 or so years. I had seen or slept through most of them in art school, and it was thrilling to see them again, and while awake, and with him there. The first film was the most memorable, editing like fireworks, images flashing quickly by to the sound of Ray Charles singing “What I Say,” live in concert. My other fave was a film set to the tune of Devo’s “Mongoloid,” with all found imagery from strange science and health films, or people engaged in meaningless and unexplained exertion–a very clever wedding of sound and imagery. How wonderful to have an icon of 20th Century postwar art still here in our town. Big Chrissy and I then had dinner at Zuni with our bridge partner, Sarah, and her friend, Ruth, who is a very interesting and engaging filmmaker. I told her about the bear show, and she has an interesting idea for a film that she’d like to include in the show, so I’ll be meeting with her in a few weeks to see if it would work out to include her. I think we’re going to call the show “Hairy Bodies.” How does that grab you?
Friday Reese performed in his drama workshop’s summer show. The kids wrote and performed a piece called “Kid’s News.” One piece of news concerned the disappearance of George Bush, with Condoleeza Rice, “head of security,” reporting in a very deadpan voice, “The president has been missing for three days, and no one seems to know where he is,” and another about the retirement of the Ice Cream Man, with several kids screaming hysterically about the different flavors that they were going to miss, and the news announcer declaring, “Well, folks, you heard it here, they all scream for ice cream.” My favorite commercial was for Old Old Navy, with the kids dressed up like old people, “I got my Hip new Hip at Old Old Navy!” I joined up with the boys later on at Jack and Steve’s for the opening ceremony of the Olympics. I almost cried, I’m such a sucker for pomp. And man, Greece really pulled it off, with the fabulous centaur, the monolithic cycladic sculpture breaking down into other sculptures, and Bjork’s dress smothering all the athletes. I want a dress like that!
Saturday morning I saw Open Water with Dean, and loved it, especially the creepy scene in the pitch black storm, our doomed divers and the sharks swimming around them illuminated only by the lighting! Aaaaaaaah! What’s that bumping against my leg?!!!!! Later that night BC and I saw a hypnotic butoh performance by InkBoat, called “Ame to Ame,” which means “Candy and Rain” in Japanese, two words sounding the same but having different meaning. It was the most romantic butoh I’ve ever seen, “romantic” not being a term I’ve ever thought of in relation to butoh. Two dancers, one male and one female, alternately mirrored and repelled each other’s actions, a meditation on desire and illusion. Among the words that appeared in the music that sound the same in Japanese but have different meanings were “river” & “skin,” “flower” & “nose,” “belly” & “field,” and my favorite, “hair” & “god.” Hey, it’s the same in my language, too!
Today I shot a few more rolls of D, this time with a red backdrop. I’ll be winding up the photography on this project this week, and hope to finish it before the end of September. In addition to my composite Red, Blue, and Green pieces, I’ll be making a central piece consisting of images from all of the pieces, bringing them all together into some wild new 3-colored form. Yeah baby!
It is just an amazingly beautiful day today! I love living here! I love you! And I’ve finally figured out which chairs to buy for my kitchen! Yes, the main obstacle between me and my divorce party–3 aluminum “1006” chairs made by Emeco! Unfortunately they are $330 each, but I’m hoping to find some vintage ones for considerably less, like $30 each, okay, $75 if you insist. They were designed for the Navy just after WWII, and the design hasn’t changed at all in all those years. They were made to withstand torpedo blasts, so I’m sure that there are some out there somewhere in good shape.
Find this chair for me:
Broken Laptop, Tom & Me, Neel
I actually BROKE my beloved G4 laptop last night. Opening it gently, as I always do, and CRACK, the hinge snapped like a potato chip, and the monitor went black. I’m experiencing phantom word processing. Oh the pain… I’ll be posting some fabulous little things on eBay later in the week to raise the funds for my replacement limb, so stay tuned…
So I saw Collateral today, deciding I needed to get out of this horrible sun storm. It was actually quite good, with excellent performances, beautiful photography, and edge-of-your-seat tension. Michael Mann’s getting better, and yes, even Tom Cruise, although in attempting to make him look older, by graying his hair, they ended up just making him look silly. I feel like we grew up together, me and Tom, so he has a special little place in my shrunken heart.
Neel is going to be staying a few days in my studio, so come on over and say howdy. I think I should just forget about art making and open a home for wayward homos. Are you, too, about to be homeless? Look no more, my back door’s always open.
I Love the Internet
So this morning I send a little fan e-mail to Mick Lasalle, the Chronicle film critic, whose writing I enjoy a lot, and I get an e-mail back within 90 minutes–he even remembered me sitting behind him at a screening of Lady of the Night and A Free Soul at the Roxie in 1995 and enthusiastically discussing Norma Shearer’s bias-cut satin dress.
Does anybody have Michelangelo Antonioni’s or John Coplans’ e-mail address?
Proteus Inhibitor
John Greyson, what gives? You were supposed to liberate gay cinema, and now you seem imprisoned by its conventions.
Proteus was moving, with slight gestures that seemed borrowed from his previous work, but with less meaning, like the use of anachronism, which I guess meant to remind us that times haven’t changed that much, I mean they’re still chaining gay men together and tossing them off boats for buggering each other, right? Oh, it was fine, I almost cried, but I’m a sap for 18th century sodomites. The love story was given too much importance, I thought, when other more interesting elements were introduced and then not followed through, like the reasons why the prison warden let the affair between the two prisoners continue.
Yesterday we celebrated Reese’s 11th birthday. Bob made a totally over-the-top Baby June (from Gypsy) cake for Reese–upright, doing the splits with hands thrown up in the air, golden locks spilling down over her shoulders. Her skirt was made of puff pastry triangles filled with whipped cream. Her meringue arms were a little too close to the candles, though, so we sang the happy birthday song at quadruple speed as they started to burn. The candles were those trick candles that wouldn’t blow out, so the arms nearly burst into flames as Reese blew and blew in smoke-filled Angie and Megan’s little kitchen, full of coughing kids. Big Chris and Bob got along swimmingly, and he even charmed Megan, a feat not for the timid. Okay, there’s Mrs. Roper again, “Miiii-ni!” Off I go, nighty night…
D, Davide, Me and Peter Parker
D, Davide, and I were Down-With-Love bears tonight, eating popcorn and watching Spiderman in our jammies. Peter Parker was the perfect date for these Down-With-Love girls. D needed to get away for the night and hadn’t seen the first Spidey, so I said we could have a pajama party at my place. D’s snoozing away now in Manny’s old PJ’s, as I blog and Davide surfs in the kitchen. Earlier D and I took a trip up to Sonoma County for the best hamburger in the Bay Area, and then a hike along the Bolinas Ridge trail. The fog and breeze made the hike very dramatic, like a Terence Malick film. We then zipped back to town for the very solid The Clearing, with stellar understated performances by Robert Redford, Hellen Mirren and Willem Dafoe, and Mole Poblano at El Toreador. I don’t have much interesting to say about today, it was just fun, no metaphors or profound thoughts, just a nice day with my dear friends. And now, to sleep. Nighty night cats and kittens.
Baskets
Last night Reese asked if we could watch The Bad Seed, the camp classic with Patty McCormack as the perfect child who murders her schoolmate when he wins the penmanship award instead of she, and sets on fire the creepy gardener who knows too much. Reese has been listening to the songs from a musical based on characters from The Bad Seed, Gypsy, and Pippi Longstocking, and was eager to learn about the original characters. We went up to BC’s to watch it on the big screen. I don’t remember it being such an interesting film. Little Rhoda, the bad seed, seemed to represent a transition in feminine identity, or an extension of the anxiety that one saw personified in the femme fatale of the previous generation. After dropping off my little Step Seed at his moms’, BC and I hightailed it to the “Beautiful Losers” opening at Yerba Buena. I bumped into Larry, back in town after his stint at the Whitney to promote more bland art on this coast, Victor, who was a knockout in his cute cap, camel jacket and open-neck shirt, (really Victor, you need to dress like that all the time), Davide, melting in seamlessly with the other 20-somethings, and absolutely none of the art–way too crowded to see anything, but who goes to openings to see anything? And how many times are they going to show Barry and Chris? They are very interesting artists, sure, but there is something other than the Mission School aesthetic happening in this town–take off those curatorial blinders, critics. We then sashayed over to the Lone Star, to bond with all the truly beautiful losers, those few stuck in town while everybody else is engaged in drunken belly-bucking on the shores of the Russian River. I chatted up Misha, who is just about the sweetest thing there is this side of syrup, hugged Drunk Girl, and again the sad Davide and the dashing Victor. I didn’t get to pee in the trough. Chris insists that it’s the only way to get over my paruresis (pee-shyness). Last week at the RR Eagle trough, as things were just about to move forward, a guy walked in and of course my bladder clamped shut, as he sided up next to me, and of course there was a mirror hanging right over everything, amplifying my exposure, and his unabashed google search, so I just blurted out “I’m sorry, I’m pee-shy.” He said, “Oh, I’m sorry,” very gravely, and bowed his head as I gathered up what I could of my pride and shuffled off into the stall.
“What would you give me for a basket of kisses?”