Tales of Post-Twinkie Ennui
Three men of middle-eastern or Mediterranean descent locked themselves in the lavatory of a Las Vegas-bound Northwest flight, and were discovered attempting to shave their body hair. The plane made an emergency landing.
Praise God! When will the depilatory madness end?
Bob is at the Opera tonight, sans me, for Turandot. We went to see the production a few years ago when I was buddies with the Development Director, who gave us free front-row right corner seats. The far right corner. There was all this hype about the lion that they made for the production–it was even paraded through town for the opening–and sets by David Hockney. Because of our seats, we were able to see only a giant paw and the waving hand of the princess, and the far left corner of the Hockney set.
I am listening to the strangest compilation of sounds, burned onto a CD and presented to me by Mamooshka! last night. He came over to feast on chicken molé poblano with me at Big Chrissy’s, and he also presented us with the strangest but oddly compelling bottle of wine, shaped like what you would imagine a ribbed condom to look like if it were filled with 750ml of wine and made of glass. Chris and I kept rubbing it all night, like Marylee stroking the oilwell on her daddy’s desk at the end of Written on the Wind. So the CD–imagine Nino Rota lost in the Bulgarian Girls’ camp with Serge Gainsbourg and… and.. was that a harpsichord? What am I listening to? Mamooshka!, thank you for making all these sensory experiences possible.
The one thing I regretted was not being able to indulge in Mamoo’s dessert completely, due to an allergy to pecans (note to future hosts and hostesses). As a kid, my parents, who are generally wonderful supportive liberal freethinkers, somehow could not grasp that I was allergic to pecans, or especially walnuts, because the family pastry from the old country had walnuts in it. Dad learned to make it from his mom, and she from hers, and on up the tree… Even now, when they come to visit, and Dad proudly offers me the family pastry, both he and my mom together ask in that same sincerely surprised and disappointed way when I once again gently decline to have a near-death experience to prove to them that I am allergic “You’re allergic to walnuts?”
I’m having a little Miguel Arteta film fest tonight all by my Chrissy. I so admired The Good Girl and Chuck and Buck, particularly Arteta’s balance of parody and sincerity, and artifice and depth, that I’m watching Star Maps, his first film. Okay so maybe one film doesn’t qualify as a film festival. If a film from 1930 is “classic” and Barry Bonds is a “legend,” and you can order Huevos Rancheros “with eggs,” then a “film festival” can be me and my little movie.
There was an interview in this morning’s NY Times with Mr. and Mrs. Guy Ritchie, which reminded me of an interview with Madonna from 1996, while she was in Budapest filming the movie Evita. She gave an interview to a reporter from the daily Blikk, a Hungarian newspaper. The questions were translated from Hungarian to English, and Madonna’s replies were translated from English to Hungarian (with some final editing by Garry Trudeau) back into English…
BLIKK: Madonna, Budapest says hello with arms that are spread-eagled. Did you have a visit here that was agreeable? Are you in good odor? You are the biggest fan of our young people who hear your musical productions and like to move their bodies in response.
MADONNA: Thank you for saying these compliments (holds up hands). Please stop with taking sensationalist photographs until I have removed my garments for all to see. (laughs). This is a joke I have made.
BLIKK: Madonna, let’s cut to toward the hunt. Are you a bold hussy-woman that feasts on men who are tops?
MADONNA: Yes, yes, this is certainly something that brings to the surface my longings. In America it is not considered to be mentally ill when a woman advances on her prey in a discotheque setting with hardy cocktails present. And there is a more normal attitude toward leather play-toys that also makes my day.
BLIKK: Is this how you met Carlos, your love servant who is reputed? Did you know he was heaven-sent right off the stick? Or were you dating many other people in your bed at the same time?
MADONNA: No, he was the only one I was dating in my bed then, so it is a scientific fact that the baby was made in my womb using him. But as regards those questions, enough! I am a woman and not a test-mouse! Carlos is an everyday person who is in the orbit of a star who is being muscle-trained by him, not a sex machine.
BLIKK: May we talk about your other “baby,” your movie, then? Please do not be denying that the similarities between you and the real Evita are grounded in basis. Power, money, tasty-food, Grammys — all these elements are afoot.
MADONNA: What is up in the air with you? Evita never was winning a Grammy!
BLIKK: Perhaps not. But as to your film, in trying to bring your reputation along a rocky road, can you make people forget the bad explosions of Who’s That Girl? and Shanghai Surprise?
MADONNA: I am a tip-top starlet. That is the job that I am paid to do.
BLIKK: O.K. here’s a question from left space. What was your book Slut about?
MADONNA: It was called Sex, my book.
BLIKK: Not in Hungary. Here it was called Slut. How did it come to publish? Were you lovemaking with a man-about-town printer? Do you prefer making suggestive literature to fast selling CD’s?
MADONNA: These are different facets to my career highway. I am preferring only to become respected all over the map as a 100% artist.
BLIKK: There is much interest in you from this geographical region, so I must ask this final questions. How many Hungarian men have you dated in bed? Are they No. 1? How are they comparing to Argentine men, who are famous for being tip-top as well?
MADONNA: Well, to avoid aggravating global tension, I won’t say. It’s a tie (laughs). No, no, I am serious now. See here I am working like a canine all the way around the clock! I am too busy even to try the goulash the makes your country for the record books.
BLIKK: Thank you for your candid chitchat.
MADONNA: No problem, friend who is a girl.
Mamooshka, what a grand feast Big Chrissy and I are preparing for you, our honored South Bay guest! …And in honor of your slightly closer proximity to our nearest southern neighbor, we are making a South-of-the-Border fiesta–special for you!
Although lard will not play as primary a role in our fiesta as it typically does—It’s bear vs. twink host here in San Francisco, so this will be more like a New World experience through the tastebuds of a Eurotrash supertaster.
So Reese enjoyed the full Rosh Hashana treatement tonight–lighting candles and the “mick-a-licka high mick-a hiney ho” prayer, chopped liver, chicken soup and kreplach (sp?), roast chicken, potato kugel, and creamed spinach. At one point, he asked me, “Coco, why are you celebrating this occasion with us and not Chris, since he’s not Jewish, like you?”
A lively discussion ensued.
He’s in the tub now, cleaning his Jewish foreskin, which, thanks partially to my input, he has.
Okay, I think this is it–#V. I decided to stick with the simpler version and drop 4 of the corner images, saving me about $500 in framing, too! Woohoo! Portland, here we come…
Okay, so I’ve come up with a few ideas. They don’t look too much like my mock-up of a few days ago, except that the first one is a near reversal of the mock-up (I use an old Hasselblad and everything’s backwards). In the first piece, your eyes are drawn to the left, but to a space that’s kind of confusing, and just not very interesting. It’s that ass in the upper left corner that I want your eyes drawn to–and the images below it seem to have too much weight, drawing you away. Perhaps this is good?
The second piece I feel is easier to look at, and there’s a nice tension between the left and right sides–the eyes are directed into the work through the ass and out the other side–cachoong! I want some fabric in there, though, and is it too simple…?
I want to tell you about my dinner last night, in Chinatown. I’m not going to tell you the name of the restaurant, because you’ll have to promise to take me there in order to get it out of me. $35 prix fixe. My friend Su-Chen organized the dinner, and was one of two people in our group who could communicate with the chef/owner, who speaks only chinese. The eight of us filled the restaurant–Su-Chen, Bob, me, Michael, Denny and Ed, and Jeff and Nick. Jeff and Nick were new to me, and made a striking and dynamic couple–one a furry round software engineer with a goatee and Madras shirt, the other a slim Taiwanese recent MFA graduate with ultra cool brushed metal rectangle glasses and white Guyabera shirt. Anyway, there were 12 appetizer courses, and 14 main courses that I can remember, each a meticulously prepared work of culinary art. The cuisine was based mainly on jiangzhe cuisine, from around Shanghai. Most dishes were lightly sauced, and with a few bright ingredients each, except for a small ham hock cooked in a brown sugar/soy sauce that was the one heavy note, oh wait, and the inside-out fried fish with the sweet tomato sauce. Here are the dishes that I can remember…
APPETIZERS
Boiled peanuts
Pressed sliced tofu
Soft tofu with chinese greens
Drunken chicken
Salty duck
Compressed tofu with malanto greens
Deep fried crispy shrimp
Jelly fish salad
Sliced 5-spice beef
MAIN COURSES
Scallops with egg white
Orange beef
Squid with mystery stems
Kung-pao chicken (you’ve never had it like this!)
Pork with brown sugar sauce
Shrimp
Julienned snow peas and bamboo shoots
Julienned celery and compresses tofu
Tofu and edamame
Wheat glutten cubes with fava and ginko beans
Mushroom and basil skewers
Whole fried fish, with sweetened tomato sauce
Whole duck with yellow plum sauce
Crispy garlic eggplant
DESSERT
Corn and coconut milk soup
Mmmmmmmmmmm….
It’s been a while, blog, and I haven’t been terribly busy, just lazy, eating lots, drinking more, entertaining out-of-town guests from New York, the midwest, and Tokyo while also enjoying some time alone in the house while Bob’s been away on vacation, and not getting a thing done, although I am working out again, after a 3 (or 6) month hiatus. Yesterday the Parrots of Telegraph Hill (a noisy flock [?] of 80 or so parrots that were set loose in San Francisco around 1972) came and visited my hawthorne tree, having a sensational time eating the berries and squawking hysterically. I love them. Around this time of year they come to my garden and eat the berries and poop all over the place. Just like relatives.
I shaved my beard off this morning. I haven’t been able to convincingly transform myself into a bear, or even a cub, so it’s back to being a twinky–a 36 year old one, though, with 20 extra pounds and graying hair. This is not an age that I know what to do with. Can I fast-forward to old and distinguished?
Okay, so it’s back to work tomorrow. I have to finish this piece for my show in Portland this week. Big Chrissy is going to model for me tomorrow. I’m taking no chances, and have designed the outline for the piece.
I usually don’t work this way, so I’m extremely nervous that it’s not going to work, especially since I’m starting with a 2-dimensional draft and I want to make a piece that’s multi-dimensional. Typically I respond to my subject without a finished piece in mind, and then find inspiration in the individual images, piecing them together like a jigsaw puzzle. Stay tuned for the results… or the lack thereof.
I and BC are bonding with our G4s–we’ve discovered the voice recognition software. Frequently I can be heard screaming “Computer, BEARLICIOUS” or “Computer, FUR BEAR DOT NET.”
Handsfree, finally.
Here’s the latest, #IV…
It looks like I’ll be showing some new work, possibly just one big piece, in a three-person show in Portland, Oregon, in November. TJ Norris is opening up a gallery there, called SOUNDVISION, that looks to be an exciting addition to the west coast art scene. The other artists are Bruce Eves and Ira Tattelman, and the show is to be called Male v.2: disembodied + reconstructed. I’m thinking of making a single photographic piece that will either fill an entire wall or occupy it in some dynamic way–maybe a wall of lightning.
Does anyone know anybody in Portland?
Stay tuned…
So my meeting with the museum curator went great. She was very encouraging and amazingly honest. At one point she asked if she was being too rough, and when I responded that since most of my friends tend to be too nice to say “Chris, this isn’t working for me,” I encouraged her to be honest since I respect her opinion and that I could take it, well then she really let me have it, but it was all really accurate and smart and she even confirmed some of my own misgivings about several pieces. 
She said the work was very strong, and when looking at Scylla and Charybdis, she actually gasped and said, “I’ve never seen anything like this before…” and added that it showed a real deep engagement with my subject matter and with looking.
So anyway, this morning I went to see a film at the Jewish Film Festival that a friend of mine from New York, Lily made. It was a little gem about Lily’s relationship with her father, more specifically about her coming to terms with the complexity of her father, who cheated on his wife but then later took exquisite care of her in her dying days. Lily asks her bedridden dad, his legs amputated, why none of his children can communicate with him, and he just blows off her question–she’s left to deal with the subject on her own–and she does just that. Afterward we had lunch at Luna Piena, which I guess is now just Luna, with her west coast friends and family, and drank wine that David made. Which is probably why I have a headache at the moment.