On magazine racks everywhere!….
Update
Well, it wasn’t a gun-toting guy after all, but a meat-cleaver wielding guy, who thrilled our neighborhood on Sunday. And there was no boyfriend being threatened, no one else in the house, actually.
The Good, the Bad, and Eli Wallach’s Cute Butt!
Victor and Chris and I saw Waiting for the Friedmans yesterday morning at the Empire, recently reborn as a pseudo art- indie- film house, and a good thing, as it’s only a hop skip and a jump away from Big Chrissy’s. The film made a point of showing how pliable and elusive truth is, even to oneself. I left wanting to believe that no crime had been committed, but feeling that the father’s clandestine desire for boys had perhaps produced an inner guilt that led to an acceptance of his fate.
Earlier, on the way to Chris’ I was unable to get out of my garage, because a dozen cop cars had surrounded my hill due to some guy a few doors up who was holding a gun to his old boyfriend’s head, threatening to kill him. How inconsiderate. I called Chris and asked him to pick me up. No one was murdered, and we made it to the show on time. Sadly, things like this happen all too frequently in my little corner of the Castro (Pacific Northwest or bust, anyone?). Since I moved to this house, in 1987, I’ve found a naked guy in my garbage can (they sent an all-female swat team to extract him from his new home), had 4 runaway trucks fly down the hill and smash into cars, 2 of which bounced into my side garden and smashed it to bits, been the victim of a stalker whose actions unwittingly led to an insurance-financed rehabilitation of the front of my house and new terrazzo stairs (!), encountered, but not joined, numerous people having sex in the side entry to my house (before I installed motion detector lights) where I have also found numerous spent condoms and needles over the years (I didn’t mind the public sex, but the needles and spoogy condoms were too inconsiderate), been burgled, robbed, and had my car and bicycle stolen. And this is a good neighborhood.
Anyway, it’s great to live so close to the Castro Theater. Last night I saw The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, for the first time on a big screen. The credits alone were like a rollercoaster ride, and then those huge faces filling the screen. It was really Eli Wallach’s film–he was great, broadly comic and only half menacing, and certainly not the “ugly” that he’s supposed to be, and the character that you spend the most time with. We were even treated to a flash of his ass as he gets out of the tub. Most spaghetti westerns seem to be sprinkled with those little titillating moments of briefly exposed dripping body parts. If I ever make a movie, I’m going to be thrown off of a horse by some guy, in the distance, run straight up to the camera so that my beautiful face fills it up, and spitting, scream “Youfilthyrat!” really fast. And do that petulant aspiration that actresses like Claudia Cardinale in One Upon a Time in the West do when the camera zooms in on their quivering lips as they’re forcibly but readily about to be kissed.
Boring Fourth of July Weekend Update
I went up to Guerneville for a few days earlier in the week, Monte Rio, actually, with Bob, but got back into town in time to see the fireworks with Big Chris from Twin Peaks last night. The Russian River’s gorgeous right now, with the fog just off the coast keeping things a little nippy. Some really good restaurants are popping up here and there. I finally got a good meal at the Village Inn, rack of lamb and crab cakes, and a spectacular river view. Next door, at the Highland Dell, a new Italian Restaurant has opened that’s supposed to be really good, and Graton, which has been nothing more than an intersection for years, has burst onto the scene with three new restaurants, one of which, the Willow Wood Market Cafe, we supped at with Stanley and thoroughly enjoyed. The humpy straight daddies outnumbered the gay ones this trip, with every other one acknowledging my visual undressing with an affectionate nod my way. Coming up through Marshall, after barbequed oysters in Tomales, over the pristine Marshall-Petaluma Road, the scent of fennel and dried grass in the hot air, I passed through Petaluma and picked up a great new shelving unit, unmarked, but very much in the style of Gilbert Rohde, probably 30’s or 40’s, with an unusual inwardly canted door in the center. I scoured the Gravenstein Highway for Jalan, but came home empty handed.
Two Reeses over the past few days; stepson Reese’s concert at the Boys’ Chorus camp in Healdsburg, and then tonight Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde 2 at the Metreon Center, which was fun. The franchise will surely have her in the White House by Legally Blonde 6, if not sooner. Reese Witherspoon has steamrolled down a career path that has produced progressively less interesting and challenging roles for her, following her brilliant performances in Freeway andElection, although I’m looking forward to her Becky Sharpe in Vanity Fair. I haven’t been a-movie-ing much lately. I did see The Right Stuff with BC last night, and thought the editing was fantastic, and loved all the bureaucratic humor.
This is really a boring post, isn’t it? Fact is, I’m just bored. And I hate my new haircut.
fly at Marjorie Wood Gallery
I’ve just uploaded a new exhibition to the Marjorie Wood Gallery, an online animated sound installation by Su-Chen Hung called fly.
Check it out.
Victor-y!
Okay, here’s the final mockup for my Victor grid.
Now what to call it? I was thinking of calling it Victor, after its subject, or something related to waves, like Swell or Surge. Okay, definitely Swell. I like the golly-gee-ness of that word, and its relation to body function, the sea, pride, as an adjective, noun, exclamation… it extends the idea of the piece rather than just identifying it.
Saturday Night’s the Night I Like
I forgot to mention Pink Saturday! You know that guy who always puts on the show above Walgreen’s? Well, this year he did not fail to delight and stimulate–simulating, quite convincingly, and even committing actual acts of sodomy (in the privacy of his home, of course, and to 500,000 guests), and with a WOMAN, which somehow seemed perfectly in keeping with the wild tenor of the evening. She even went down on him, while the crowd screamed in delight and horror. Across the street, on the balcony above the Bagel Brothers, a cute but not quite drunk enough little bear dude teased us all by rubbing his crotch aggressively, pulling his pants down a bit, and then casually turned back to his beer, frustratingly in and out of character. He did moon us at one point, but by then our attention was seized by the Walgreen’s guy, who had changed his thong and hopped into a pair of cowboy boots. Up the street, in front of the Castro Cheesery, a wannabe go-go boy put on a great performance, I was even turned on by his skinny little body jiggling his pants slowly down down down. His excitement at being watched grew visibly and sweetly as the audience encouraged him, and he shaked and waved his hard little pecker at the audience and at one point suddenly turned around and upended his ass to the crowd below for a rub and a poke. I love and encourage public sexual abandon. The 70’s are back, girlfriend.
Gay Day
This weekend got off to a nice start with the Joe Goode Performance Group at Yerba Buena, the perfect opener for the gay festivities to come. Joe’s performances contain spoken word, dance and theater, whimsically intertwined, drawing from American icons like Agnes DeMille, twisted with a gay sensibility. Sometimes narrative seems to intrude too much, though, and then gets lost in sentiment. The best thing he ever did was a performance I saw years ago at Theatre Artaud called 29 Effeminate Gestures, that brilliantly deconstructed the gay self into a series of highly articulated movements and facial expressions.
Big Chris and I went to the gay parade, and had a great time, one of the more festive parades in recent memory. At a BBQ that I went to afterwards at Peter and Luis’, I had an interesting conversation with this guy named Bradford, who used to have one of the largest Barbie clothing collections but is now collecting and selling vintage couture from the 50’s and 60’s, an interesting character himself. Anyway, we both related the upswing in mood to the visibility and acceptance of gays by mainstream culture and to the recent Supreme Court decision, everyone thrilled and hopeful, in a party mood.
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence won my vote for favorite float, based on a USO show, called “U Ass Ho,” featuring lots of big hair, a caged pope, (a play on this year’s theme–“Gotta Give Them Pope,” instead of hope) the Andrew Sisters, and Dick Cheney as Slim Pickens from Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, straddling an enormous “Weapon of Ass Destruction.” Other faves were the Sunset Scavenger dudes and their trash can ballet, more big haired drag queens, the GAPA “sushi boat” float, Armistead (I’ve got to photograph him–he’s too cute) and Laura Linney, a very scary buxom Dorothy screaming “I’ll find my own way back home!!” and of course all the furry bellies.
People were saying that this parade was more political, but it was a political sensibility closer to compassionate conservatism than to the Lesbian Avengers or ACT-UP style political activism.
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Victor v.1
I’ve got what I think is a first draft of my Victor grid. The lower right quarter doesn’t feel quite resolved yet, but I thought I’d post the piece in progress and see what your thoughts are. If you have any, let me know. (Keep in mind that the tones will be quite different in the printed piece—we’re just looking at composition today.)
I’ve also come up with an idea for Tim, but it’s so unlike anything I’ve ever done, that I have to sit on the idea for a few more days before I solicit any feedback. Stay tuned.
There’s Always Tomorrow
The PFA in Berkeley is currently running a Douglas Sirk festival. On father’s day, Emily and I saw a stellar film, There’s Always Tomorrow, which paired Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray, 12 years after their fatal tryst in Double Indemnity (1944). This film was about a bored father and toy manufacturer, MacMurray, whose children and wife take him for granted, into whose life the enchanting former employee Stanwyck reappears, many years after fleeing with no notice to her boss, with whom she had fallen in love, unbeknownst to him. She’s now a successful dress designer, in town for a conference where she’s delivering a speech, and she comes back conveniently just as he’s falling apart. They spend a weekend together, quite accidentally, and quite innocently, at a sunny ranch where MacMurray is scheduled to have a business meeting, and where Stanwyck is delivering her speech, but MacMurray’s older son happens upon them and assumes his father’s having an affair. MacMurray does indeed fall in love, and later in the film, rushes over to Stanwyck’s hotel and tells her he loves her. Truly a woman’s film, but from the perspective of the husband, whose love for another woman is explained as being the fault of the ungrateful kids and the wife who’s too concerned with her duty to the rest of the family. Everything turns out fine, of course, with hubby and wife and kids reunited and secure in the comfort of the family structure, and Stanwyck on the plane to New York, tears on her cheek, leaving her true love, but with the knowledge that it was a love that could never come to be. The son also ritually passes into manhood with a more complete understanding of the complexity of love and duty. The film was filled with cliches, the entire dialogue for instance, and all the characters, but Sirk somehow convinces us of his world and draws us into it. The photography also evokes classic film noir motifs with harsh shadows in the oppressive house, followed by bright outdoor light for the liberating weekend with Stanwyck. Stanwyck is an inversion of the classic femme fatale, luring Fred MacMurray not away from his wife, but back to her. She, for instance, confronts the children strongly when they ask her to get out of town, asking them how they could blame their father for loving another woman when it’s THEIR fault!