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Sunday, 10 August 2003 (heading for a spin) 11:57am An hour or so of exercise a week is still better than none, I figure, so I went to the gym this morning. I was there longer than I'd expected to be; the song on my (oh so very finicky) mp3 player wasn't quite done when my hour ended, and nobody was waiting for the machine, so I kept going. Since I was in the groove, and there were a few other songs I was wanting to hear, I made it for another half hour. Probably could have kept on for a while longer yet, but it's possible to overdo these things. The moron rock station on the gym's stereo (how come businesses never seem to turn on their radios or fucking teevees until after I walk in? are they trying to lull me into a false sense of security?) was doing a thing where they'd play "Dust in the Wind" and the tenth caller would have to make them stop somehow. The station's demographic is exactly the one that made that song a hit in the first place, but I don't think they appreciate the irony. Listening to NPR on the way home, I thought about the girl who worked the door at the Camp Trans Benefit, who told me after I read that I reminded her of David Sedaris. I fought back the impulse to point out all the ways we're different (for example, he's funny and brilliant), and instead thanked her for the compliment and reminded her that you can't kill the rooster. Much of being out with Rachel last night involved waiting in lines to look through telescopes. It was okay, though. Normally I loathe lines—it amazes me that people are will to stand outside clubs for hours in the hopes that they might get in—but this was different. It took thousands of years for the light from M-13 and The Ring Nebula to reach here, so it won't kill me to wait a half an hour to look at it. The simple fact of long lines at an observatory on a Saturday night at all was quite heartening, though I doubt that the weekend grosses of American Wedding are going to suffer as a result. Kirk Read, Alvin and Lynnee are reading at A Different Light today. Tomorrow night I have a photoshoot with Erin O'Neill. Tuesday is my physical at the Waddell, and from there I'm going to a show at the El Rio hosted by Michelle and featuring Meliza and Lynnee, amongst others. Wednesday is the writing group, and possibly Dark Sparkle with Monique afterwards. Thursday I'm editing kittypr0n. Friday is Chick Nite at Spanganga. I'm not actually participating until next month, but it's a show I'd like to see all the same, featuring (once again) Lynnee. On Saturday morning I'm editing the show, and Maddy's going with Allegra to see Bruce Springsteen at Pac Bell Park that evening. I don't know what I'm doing yet that night; possibly Dead Man at the Red Vic. Sunday night is a party for Other magazine. No screening room with kittypr0n this time, though.
A busy week. That's how I like them.
The audience was primarily gay men, not actually a group I've read much in front of before. There were two genetic girls in the form of Maddy and Erin O'Neill, Bambi and I were the m2f tranny population and Anders the f2m. Anyway, I seemed to hold their attention fairly well. It was also practice at actually holding the mic, something I don't care for—I've really come to appreciate a mic stand so I can have a hand free for gesticulatory purposes—but need to get used to.
We spent the rest of the evening with Anders and Erin. I got to see the bathtub I'll be nekkid in tomorrow for the shoot.
I'll also be dead. I'm quite looking forward to it.
I found you crying outside on the wall of Devil's Well...
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Saturday, 9 August 2003 (whirl away) 7:35pm Going to the Chabot Space & Science Center tonight with Rachel to look at Mars. It's the first quasi-organized astronomical thing I've done since city college, so I'm quite looking forward to it.
Figures that I didn't get much sleep last night, though. After Tallulah's show I went to Allegra's birthday party, and after
the bar closed Maddy and I went and got her a big greasy meal at JT's. (A mistake, as it turned out. Her body isn't so big
on the grease these days.) Didn't get to bed until after three, but my system
being what it is, I wasn't able to sleep past half past seven. Yay. Wasn't dozey at all seeing The American Astronaut
for the fourth time today at The Red Vic (fourth time seeing it, third time at that theater, to be precise), though, which is a
good sign.
This is where the adventure—The Arrangement—begins.
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Friday, 8 August 2003 (ceramic tincture) 9:14am We got paid yesterday. The notarized check stub doesn't actually list my hourly wage, but if I'm doing the math correctly, it looks like I've gotten a raise. A small one, but at least I'm above minimum wage—now it's closer to what I was making on unemployment. Between the actual pay, the check I'm getting on the side for commute expenses (I need to ask my dad about how that figures in taxwise) and Kelly's gracious mini-carpool donation, it's almost all worth the effort. It's more than anyone else wants to pay me, at least. And, since I'm not expecting my pay to go up again anytime soon, I'm hoping it puts me in a place where I'm just about worth the money, that even for the things I screw up (there's still the unpleasant business of those first, nonrefundable airline tickets which he wants refunded), firing me and hiring someone a couple dollars cheaper seems like more trouble than it's worth—and I need to remember that I'm not getting paid nearly enough to really devote my whole being to job the way I used to CNET. I'll do my best, but this is not what I am; this is how I fund what I am. There's a difference.
I can barely see what I'm typing because of the glaring sunlight. I wonder if it shows.
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Thursday, 7 August 2003 (bruise violet) 9:16am Okay, so I lied. I didn't do it first thing Monday morning; I managed to find other, more ostensibly important things to do until now. Thankfully, The Boss only asked about it once and didn't seem to consider it a priority. He's not going to like what I have to tell him, though, almost as much as I'm going to not like telling him. And I didn't have the energy to tell the slow-witted fellow on the phone to call me "miss" and not "sir." The glare from the skylight is horrible today. It's more of a very high window than a skylight, actually, but it still sucks. In addition to the direct sunlight on my skin, I can barely see my monitor. Fortunately, I can wear sunglasses and nobody minds. I'm kinda astonished that nobody's made a vampire joke yet. (At Steven and Monique's house the other night, Violet quite literally stopped at the door while the rest of us went in, presumably waiting to be invited. Old habits die hard, I guess. It was so cute.)
Say what you will about what's happening with the governorship of California—I'd still rather be in my beloved
an comparatively freak-friendly home state than Illinois, where the governor just signed a law banning tongue-splitting. Yay freedom! Take that, Osaddam! I have no plans on splitting
my tongue, but I don't care to get any tattoos or piercings, either. I wonder how many people with those sorts of
body mods turn up their noses at forked tongues, because, you know, it's just plain sick and wrong, or
at least shows a lack of common sense.
(And never mind the more invisible changes I've made to my body, which, in some minds, is downright unnatural.)
I know Chupa's been considering it, and frankly, I think it would look pretty hot on her. Anyway, I love the reasoning
behind the ban: "They say the practice is dangerous and could lead to infection." Well, there you go. I guess they'll
be outlawing sex next.
01 Current 93 - Killykillkilly (A Fire Sermon) (12:25) A mix of Klub Klassics ("The Bog" and "In Search of My Rose" always take me back, but "No Love Lost" rather than the more obvious "Transmission" or "Love Will Tear Us Apart" because I like it better) and some extreme self-indulgence (just about everything else). And, yes, I received the memo saying Marilyn Manson isn't goth. Don't let's go there, okay?
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Wednesday, 6 August 2003 (credit in the straight world) 9:16am Kelly said I'm very butch this morning, since I was cruising girls (from a distance) at the grocery store. I'm pretty sure it's leftover from hanging out with Lynnee last night. He can have that effect. 10:38am I saw some pages from How Loathsome #4 when I dropped off Kelly yesterday afternoon, and was absurdly pleased that Chloe is wearing my coat. It makes perfect sense, of course, since I'm wearing it (as Chloe) on the cover, but still. Makes me glad I told Dax I was coveting it back at the Penis Flytrap show, and all the more glad that she's so generous. I proceeded to pick up Violet and head to Berkeley to see Lynnee featured at Steven and Monique's open mic. Not much of a crowd, unfortunately, but the promotion was kinda spotty. The Guardian should have listed it but didn't, and, well, Lynnee's not the best at the online promotion. It was okay, though, since he kicked ass anyway. It was a weird experience for him to perform at the Cafe Mediterraneum, though, since not only did the basis for Godspeed's Object of Desire use it as a base of operations back in her sex worker days, but Monique is evidently a dead ringer for her. (Likes 'em femmey, he does.) Everything comes around in its own way. So we were talking outside before the show when when Lynnee pauses to point out a very cute girl approaching from down the street. Because he's a pig and all. As she walks past, I can't help but notice that she looks a lot like Chupa from behind, especially the hair, something Steven observes as well. Lynnee then asks me to repeat the last thing he said. Of course, I haven't the slightest idea—I'd tuned him out and focused on the girl. Well, jeez, he'd pointed her out in the first place. He should have known better. Sunday's K'vetch was brought up, and Lynnee says he was pleasantly surprised by how quick I was on my feet. Which sounds like a backhanded compliment, but it really isn't; by his own admission the only way to really get a word in edgewise when he's onstage is to overlap and attempt to outjoke him, and that I really held my own, especially for a first-timer. Yay. I needed to hear that. At one point, a woman who looked like she should be a senator's wife grabbed my arm like Johnny from The Dead Zone (Christopher Walken, not Anthony Michael Hall) and said "You're so cute! You're complete!" Um, sure. Not only am I complete, I've got extras. The open mic is held upstairs, but from where I usually sit I can see the front door. Therefore, when I saw the ultrafemme walk in I knew Lynnee would soon be almost twice as distracted as I'd been earlier when she inevitably came upstairs. It was actually more interesting to watch Lynnee watching her as she walked to the restroom and back. As she started go back downstairs, Lynnee asked if she wanted to stick around for a while—I could tell he wanted to rush away from the mic stand and over to her, but, well, he's professional, and the show must go on. Still, though, I enjoyed the potkettleblackness of it all. Something tells me he's been known to tune out of conversations a few times himself. So many of my friends are pigs, and I love them for it. Afterwards, we went back to Steven and Monique's. They showed us some recent paintings, as well as the mostly-completed Sexgoblins book. It's still in Quark format on their computer, but it's already quite beautiful. One of the things I dig about them is how enthusiastic and "Isn't this cool?" they get about showing off such dark art. Besides the fact that they're inherently friendly, the fact that there are so few people in this culture which appreciate what they do surely has a lot to do with it.
Monique wants to go to a goth club in the City with me, provided it isn't Death Guild. Dark Sparkle,
here we come. Next week, anyway.
you are not bad.
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Tuesday, 5 August 2003 (days that never were) 10:32am So Bubba Ho-Tep, which Maddy and I saw in February during the San Francisco Independent Film Festival (with Bruce Campbell and director Don Coscarelli sitting behind us, no less) is finally being properly distributed. Which is a happy thing, because it's a fun movie and deserves to be seen. Unfortunately, it means that there'll a lot more writeups like this one, from a typically sloppy Film Threat article article about Campbell: See, in Bubba, Campbell is playing Elvis. Elvis at 68-years-old, that is, and he's in an East Texas nursing home, suffering from a cancer-ridden penis and waiting to die. Then the rest home is attacked by an ancient mummy who is sucking the souls from the residents from any available orifice. There's only one thing for the King to do: team up with an elderly black man who thinks he's JFK and take on this Egyptian ghoul.Some of what I'm about to say could be considered spoilers, so proceed at your own risk. (By the way, Billy Zane deflowered Sherilyn Fenn's character on Twin Peaks. Since the second season is never ever going to come out on DVD, it hardly matters, does it? Can't be a spoiler for something nobody's ever going to see again, can it? But I digress.) "The King" teams up with "an elderly black man who thinks he's JFK." Let's process, shall we? Both the movie and the Joe Lansdale story on which it's based spend a fair amount of time on just how Elvis ended up in that rest home. Long story shortened, it may not actually be Elvis, but an Elvis impersonator. He's not even entirely certain himself. The issue is never really resolved—I'll bet that if you asked Lansdale, he'd shrug—and it doesn't need to be. I personally think the story is more poignant if it isn't Elvis. The article, and most others I've read about the movie, doesn't even hint at the ambiguity. It's Elvis, and that's that. Why? I'll bet it's because the fanboys who've thus far written about it are so creamy over the idea of "Bruce Campbell as Elvis" (a brilliant bit of casting, no question) that they don't even want to think about the possibility that, if you pay attention to the actual story, that may not really be the case. It's all too complicated. Bruce as Elvis! Woohoo! Meanwhile, the Ossie Davis character simply "thinks" he's Kennedy. Sure, his story, involving dyed skin and a brain operating from remote, is far-fetched. But when the plot revolves around a mummy—let alone one who wears a cowboy outfit, for reasons which I don't think quite survived the translation from page to screen—doesn't "far-fetched" become a relative concept at best? I mean, if you can accept within the context of the film that supernatural, soul-sucking mummies are real, why can't Kennedy now look like Ossie Davis? Granted, my personal theory is that both characters are deluded, which makes the film all the more touching. And, yes, I'm aware that the synopsis of the film on the official site also says he simply "thinks" he's Kennedy. Sometimes an official synopsis can be poorly written. Take a peek at UPN's Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode guide to see what I mean. Anyway, could it possibly have something to do with the fact that most of the people writing about the film are white Bruce Campbell fanatics who don't know or care who Ossie Davis even is? Hell, the only credit the Film Threat article gives for him is Cotton Comes to Harlem. Ouch. I'd have probably gone with Jungle Fever, but that's just me. He's so calmly fierce in that movie, it gives me chills just thinking about it. But, once more, I digress. After the screening in February, Campbell and Coscarelli—both of whom still seemed amazed that someone of Ossie's stature would agree to do a little cult film—answered audience questions. One they did not answer, but which I think illustrates my point was: "Did Ossie Davis's character remind anyone else of Chef's dad from South Park?" Ugh. Sometimes I'm embarrassed to be a pale-skinned film geek.
jeez—you may have pale skin, but you still need to lighten up!
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Monday, 4 August 2003 (foreign corridors) 7:11am A few tactical errors were made. I see that now. I had just made up my mind that I was going to read the new piece when Lynnee asked me to temporarily sub for Tara. That should have been a sign that I needed to change my mind again and read something a little lighter, like the piece which I'd originally planned on reading at this month's K'vetch, the followup to what I read last month. But, no, I'd decided I wanted to run with the new one, especially after the (delayed) reaction from the night before. Except that it really was a bit too heavy to lay on the audience right out of the gate when I was also going to be requiring their goodwill to accept me as a cohost, something I'd never done before. That I'm a regular probably helped, but I still may have fux0red the vibe and made it more difficult to roll with me than it would have been otherwise. The people I spoke to afterwards told me I didn't come across as the fumbling newbie I felt like (though Tristan told me I need to remember to breath, and as usual, he's right), and most importantly, Lynnee told me I did a great job and was really funny. (I didn't buy his "My favorite substitute host for Tara ever" line, but it was nice of him to say.) I was just trying to keep up with him, and while I never quite matched his pace—who can?—I'd like to think I could at least see him on the horizon. I do think we played off each other pretty well, and we picked up most of each others' cues. It was a lot of fun, and I hope I'll get to do it again sometime, somewhere. Anyway, while the "this is about me and nobody else" disclaimer was necessary, I shouldn't have mentioned the previous evening's walkouts before I read, since that set the wrong mood and may accounts for why the reaction was so somber overall. They were expecting something dirgey, when in fact it's supposed to be both funny and harsh in equal amounts. The last couple times I've read it the jokes worked, and that's crucial since they balance out the aforementioned. Last night, they fell flat. Not that there weren't a few (seemingly intentional) chuckles here and there, but the reaction was not at all what I'd been hoping for. It also makes me wonder if my timing is off, if I've written something which I'm not quite polished enough to deliver properly. Timing really is everything, in both comedy and drama.
I've been asked to perform at Tarin Towers' Chick Nite
series at Spanganga next month, which is pretty cool. Seeley Quest also said that after watching me
monopolize both the jukebox and the dance floor (both bad habits of mine) on Saturday night before the show,
sie'd like to go out dancing with me. Hell yeah.
i told you from the start
Death Guild again tonight, I think, for a record-smashing second week in a row.
Lauren's definitely not going to be joining me—it had been up in the air last time—but
there's always future weeks. Besides, my hair still has most of its shine and bounce and shape
from getting it down on Saturday, I'm going to get as much mileage out of it as I can,
damnit...
That's something I kept reminding her, that she's not really stuck out there, that she has an escape plan—visiting in this fall, returning in this spring—and needs to focus on it. I also gently scolded her for not having told us she was getting on the bus flat broke a couple weeks back. Fortunately, Ted was there to see her off and gave her a twenty, but I made her promise that next time she'll tell us. I also made her promise that she'd stop being such a damn luddite and actually use her email, since it'll make her feel a lot less lonely—and she's feeling really, really lonely out there. Conversely, I promised to call more often. It seems a fair deal.
She thanked me profusely for calling, saying it cheered her up. I'm glad I was able to make her feel a little better. It's so difficult sometimes
to know how to help.
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Friday, 1 August 2003 (godmod grotesk burlesk drag) 8:57am The last couple times I got sick before an important reading, I was already feeling it by this point. Nothing so far. I think that means I'm out of the woods. It's a good thing I don't believe in jinxes, huh? At least one listing for tomorrow refers to me a performance artist. Whooboy. I hadn't planned on taking my clothes off, but now I guess I don't have much choice.
After editing last night, I walked to the Van Ness and Market Rite Aid, conveniently located
a few blocks from the studio. The pharmacy was open, but deserted customer-wise, so I was
able to pick up my prescription and get in and out with no problem. Yay. It'll kinda suck
to do it on a regular basis, but it certainly beats the alternative.
Anyway, it looks like I'll be on for real next Friday, and she's asked me to bring along goth music. Okay.
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