Big Chrissy and The Deanosaurus have abandoned me for the evening, so rather than going out with friends or doing something intellectually or culturally stimulating, I decided to just be with me and have a mellow evening at home. I’m so easy to get along with, and I don’t have to change my clothes or wash my armpits. Our date began with Wong Kar-Wai’s pretty lousy first film effort, As Tears Go By, with maybe a few brief glimpses at a different director cowering under John Woo’s shadow, but generally little indicating the genius about to sweep filmdom with his dynamic emotion-based editing and disjunct color-saturated longing. But it was nice just being with me, and not worrying about disappointing my date or struggling to contextualize such a humdrum film. Me and I then cooked ourselves pesce all’aqua pazza, a fiery southern-Italian fish dish well-suited to the chilly evening and our flaming dispositions, served over some crusty old bread, and accompanied by a salad and some of the finest watermelon this side of Jefferson County. Now we’re finishing up our wine and giggling as we paw each other playfully before bellybucking our way towards a blissful close to the evening’s festivities, knowing full well that this is the month that The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, Preston Sturges’ masterpiece (forget what they say about Sullivan’s Travels, this is it), and Naked are coming out on DVD–bookends of independent filmmaking brilliance. I’m the only one who could possibly be turned on simultaneously by my Eddie Bracken imitation and David Thewliss’ abjection… Oh Coco!
It’s Here, It’s Here, It’s Finally Here
Zhang Ziyi, Gong Li, Faye Wong, Carina Lau, Maggie Cheung, and Tony Leung. My heart is beating so fast. The new Wong Kar-Wai film opens today, like the ice-cream truck has finally returned to town.
Last night I saw Happy Endings with D. Earlier we bumped into Nanocub, whose partner just passed away, at StarBears, and asked him to join us. Scott seems to be doing real well with coping and getting the support that he needs, while I was ready to fall apart at any moment. (I’m a projectile empath.) D was an excellent Momma Bear, cradling Nano like a little cub in his vast comforting D-ness. We ate dinner at 2223 afterward. I had the tomato tower, a signature dish that appears seasonally on their menu, but was disappointed that all the pyrotechnics served to mask the true stars, the heirloom tomatoes, hidden under layers of cheeses, grilled eggplant, peppers, crostini, etc… Drizzle a tiny bit of olive oil on a good tomato, a little salt and pepper, and I’m a happy bunny. Oh the movie–in D’s words, “It was good.” Actually it was remarkably similar to The Opposite of Sex, the director’s previous film, with the same sexually voracious ingenue and troubled relation to homosexuality and relationships in general, but somehow maybe more mature in its depiction of less-charicatured characters. Lisa Kudrow’s range as an actress is amazing, and Maggie Gyllenhaal was a treat to watch. Oh my god, and Laura Dern! She should be in every movie. Does Tom Arnold pluck his eyebrows?
Dinner Guests From Beyond Hell
My dinner guests are TWO HOURS late! I’ve already packed up the appetizer course (my best caponata, Red Hook and Humbolt Fog cheeses, cornichon, calamata olives, etc…) and also decided to serve the Prosecco with the meal, instead of with the appetizers, since they’re no longer on the menu, and instead of my special bottle of Gary Farrell Sauvignon Blanc. My mussells are starting to die. My flowers are wilting. My eyes are getting bloodshot. I’m not that hungry, either, having eaten half of the appetizers myself, and we’re going straight into dinner when they get here. I hope I can muster up a good mood. What would Miss Manners do? Oh, also, I called him at 9–this was following our conversation at 7 in which he said they’d be here between 8 and 8:30–and he was in a DIFFERENT bar across town from the one he was in during our 7 o’clock call, and said he was on the way. They are now TWO AND A QUARTER HOURS LATE!!! I’ll report tomorrow on their excuses…
Dinner Was Served. Eventually
And so they eventually did arrive, my dinner guests, promptly THREE AND A HALF HOURS late! Oddly, I was in a very jovial mood, and answered the door and gave them all big welcoming hugs, but shooed them inside, saying “Dinner’s ready, let’s go!” Two of the guests looked at me with blank expressions. “Dinner?” The third, with whom I had made the arrangements, looked at me with a slightly intoxicated puppy dog look and just shrugged his shoulders. Number One and Two, who had spent the entire day with Number Three, yet were oblivious to the dinner plans, were evidentally eating dinner and having drinks at the Top of The Mark while I was desperately serenading the mussels into keeping their valves shut. One and Two shrugged their shoulders, too, and gobbled up everything, even asking for more. I really enjoyed them a lot, too. They were very gracious and warm, and very sweet. Guest Number Three, meanwhile, kept running to the living room to check his voice mail and make calls to the person or people who had probably been waiting for hours for him to finish his dinner and join him or them wherever. Is this how it is in New York? And now, to sleep.
Guest Update
So, 45 minutes ago he calls to tell me his partner is going to pick him up from the corner of 14th and Church. 15 minutes go by and he’s at the corner of 17th and Diamond asking for walking directions… That was a half an hour ago. He’s about a 5 minute walk away. It’s hard to tell someone to forget about it when they’re only 3 blocks away. But what could have happened in 3 blocks? They are now THREE AND A QUARTER HOURS late! It’s actually so absurd, it’s getting funny. The intertia of the situation is such that I can’t seem to stop this dinner from happening. Something beyond my comprehension is unfolding…
Birthdays and Poodles
A big happy birthday to my big bunny warmer, Big Chrissy. I’m making dinner for him and Reese, who turned 12 last week, but was out of town with his moms, so that we could celebrate their births and the combined inflexibility and roller coaster ride of the Scorpio/Leo/Leo mix together. BC and I are going to try to find something for Reese’s clubhouse today, which he’s constructing in his basement for his Lipstick Club. BC suggested a poster of the Man Ray lips in the sky. Reese has already confiscated my disco ball, and now wants my 3D poddle photo after seeing it in the living room of one of the suburban houses in Edward Scissorhands. I’m reluctant to part with my poodle, so I have to find something even grander on the kitsch scale.
Leglifters, Organic Peaches, Skits, Tony’s
So BC’s nieces are here, and we’ve been channeling the teen beat all weekend. Friday we went to see the Giants actually win a game, after a brief stop to see Connie’s stellar show at LIMN. We sat way out in left field–where else?–and listened to the two chicks and one guy behind us get progressively louder, more intoxicated, and quite friendlier with each other. The left field seats are situated where social interaction and eavesdropping easily command more attention than what’s happening in the diamond. But still, I tend to obsessively watch for “leglifters,” the guys who lift their legs when batting. I haven’t formulated an hypothesis yet on the difference between the leglifters, the legtwisters, or the kneeknockers, but I know there’s some relation to something significant beyond batting average.
On Saturday morning, Big Chrissy wasn’t content with just us taking the nieces to the farmer’s market, he decided to make it extra special for them by enlisting the aid of the Mayor of the Farmer’s Market, Philip, to lead the tour and provide the appropriate level of pomp to the stroll through Vegetalia. Afterwards, I whispered to the girls, “Now, did Chris tell you who Philip is…?” Thank you Philip for making their day.
The next evening, after a Thai excursion to Osha on Valencia, we moseyed on over to Mission to take in the latest skits from Uphill Both Ways, led by our very own Dave. The trio performed various new comedy skits that had us giggling quite profusely, but the cellphone piece, in particular, had us hyperventilating. Dave has this amazing big outdoor voice that seems totally ready for prime time, or Broadway, and that completely fills the Dark Room Theater with booming hysterics. I’d love to ride a roller coaster with him.
This morning we drove up the coast to Marshall for oysters at Tony’s. I don’t know why I told you all that we were going to Scott’s, or why you all nodded your heads like, “Oh, Scott’s, great.” It’s Tony’s.
I’m pretty bushed from Nate’s funeral tonight on HBO. The show continually astounds me, the only show with dialogue taken from real life, my life, and real therapy sessions, my therapy sessions, and not abstracted theatrical representation of them. I’m hoping that something equally dramatic and accurate will takes its place so that I don’t have to create my own mini-series. I’m into watching these days.
Kids News and Sunday Brunch Chez Coco
So Reese attended a summer theater camp over the past few weeks, culminating in a performance Friday afternoon of various improv pieces, a few musical numbers, and “Kids’ News.” For Kids’ News, the kids wrote and delivered various snippets of news pertinent and appealing to the average 12 year old. The show began with Reese singing the theme song, which he, of course, wrote and composed. The little dude belted out his little ditty like it was a Broadway show tune, as if the news should always be preceded by a histrionic Sam Harris/Star Search jingle. For his bit of news, Reese played Karl Lagerfeld, announcing that Victoria (“call me Vicky”)’s Secret was out: bras lined with gummy bears. Reese clings gleefully and stubbornly to his pre-pubescence, but the developing Liza Minelli can not be suppressed.
This morning BC, Philip, Dean & Doug, and the charming new(to me)comer Davey stopped by for brunch in the garden. Happily, the heat of yesterday gave way to typical cooling San Francisco summer breezes, the fog caressing the slopes of Twin Peaks but never wandering over our part of the sky. Philip brought over some scones–ginger and almond–designed as vehicles for my 2005 Proprietor’s Reserve Italian Prune Plum Jam, but totally upstaging it with their light and buttery deliciousness. If only Philip belonged to me and not the rest of Culinaria… Anyway, I made a virtually fat-free fritatta to balance Philip’s butter-rich baked goods, and served some salad, bacon, and watermelon to round out our taste bud stimulation. I think I forgot the umami bud, but came close by oversalting the fritatta. I had such a swell time, and really enjoyed meeting our new friend.
The videotaping this week has gone really well. My project is veering into completely different terrain, different from what I had planned and expected, but I’m going with the flow, and feeling excited following the currents. I hope to wrap up shooting this week and get to editing next week, but who knows which way I’ll drift this week, so don’t count on seeing or hearing anything concrete just yet.
Moon Worship
Last night I attended a Lunar Society dinner at John’s. Unlike intellectually challenging dinners of years past (I’ve been going since the late 80’s), this dinner was tilted decidedly in favor of cuteness. It began interestingly enough with a female guest, A_, in the parlor with her husband, and I immediately remarked how excited I was to see a woman at the dinner, as the last and only woman whom I’ve ever seen at a Lunar Society dinner was Zoe _, around the time of the Persian Gulf war and the Navy’s attempted dismissal of her. A_ responded that actually she lived next door, with her husband, a former owner of Big Internet Company, it turns out, who became quite wealthy when the business was sold to Even Bigger Internet Company, and that they were just joining us for drinks. They’re now living in the house that Lana Turner’s daughter, who stabbed and killed Johnny Stompanato, used to call home. A guest of theirs stopped by, looking for them, and joined us for a while. He was a former documentary filmmaker turned home-theater specialist, who went to the Art Institute a few years before I did. We chatted about the experimental film scene here in the 60’s and 70’s, and the current transition of intellectual property.
The theme of the evening was red, and at the appointed time to toast the moon, John remarked how Mars, the red planet, was going to be at its closest to earth in a long time, and if viewed through a certain telescope would appear to be as large as the moon. “But the moon is always just like the moon,” he said, and we drank to the moon and its circuitous relation to the evening’s theme.
John is an epidemiologist, and thus consumed by numbers, so everyone was given a medallion to wear indicating his numerical hierarchy within the society. John is always Number one. I was Number Three this year, seated next to Number Two, whose job it was to entertain the people on our end of the table. He was quite an enjoyable fellow, having moved to the city in the 70s and full of interesting tales of gay days gone by. Everyone else was younger than I, except one other guy who thought I was older than he, and he was in his mid 40s. Sigh. He said it was the gray sideburns that gave me a “distinguished” air. He was one of the many “retired” guys around my age, who talked flippantly about this and that. Most of my attempts to lead the conversation into lively territory were quickly diverted. The guy who sat across from me, in response to a mini-conversation about terrorism (Number Two was going to London in a few weeks), remarked that he’s ready for any biological attack against San Francisco, always carrying around a bottle of Purrell in his “man bag” for just such an emergency. He was a real sweetie, a defense attorney with plenty of interesting and trashy tales of seedy criminals unsuccessfully seeking retribution through the civil courts. Somebody passed around a pipe at one point and I took a few puffs. Following the cocktails, wine, and my limoncello (which I brought and served with John’s dessert), I grew quite anxious about what might come out of my mouth, so I just sat back a bit from the conversation to hear psychedelic pieces of this and that. John described some list of something, I just remember the numbers, but I think he was telling someone about the Tibetan levels of hell, and another former cop described his new career as an internet purveyor of Asian porn. (His card promised “Interesting Design” in addition to “The Hottest Asian Studs on the ‘Net”).
I stared for a long time at the clock on the dining room wall, which has the hands running backwards, with numbers placed in a counter-clockwise arrangement. When I figured out that it was 11:45, I grabbed my coach and fled back to BC’s before turning into a slightly pickled pumpkin.
How Do You Take Your Coffee?
From the many interesting objects I collected in Japan…
