Invert(e)

Kansas City Fucking Company

One of the unfortunate aspects of getting older than no one warned me about is the loss of my icons. Death is, of course, inevitable no matter how successful you are, but lately it's as if someone has taken a chisel to my past and chipped away pieces until all I have left is a core of - at best - unreliable memory. Did things actually happen the way I remember them or do I just remember them the way I wanted them to happen? Either way, the memories are there and every time I recognize a name in the obituaries, they come flooding back.

Like Jack Wrangler.

He was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, chiseled hunk of burnin' love - propelling many a session of self-love to a sticky conclusion for me. But this was the mid-70's, and porn wasn't as portable as it is today. Home videos were at least five years away and computers hadn't even entered into the national consciousness as anything other than confusing business machines. There were adult bookstores, to be sure - some with video arcades where you could drop a quarter in the slot and see 2 minutes of a 7 minute 16 mm film loop. Grainy and fuzzy, but porn nonetheless.

Nyuck, nyuck ... YUCK!

Hello again - sorry for being away from the blog for so long, but the ninety degree learning curve of my new job and the demands of finishing up a short story have kept me from posting. But like last night's onion-smothered enchiladas, I have returned.

Two recent events have conspired to drag me back to the blogosphere - the arrival of Volume Five of The Three Stooges Collection, the re-mastered chronological release of all 190 Three Stooges shorts, as well as the recent announcement that the Farrelly brothers (Dumb and Dumber, There's Something About Mary) will be shooting a Three Stooges movie starring Benicio Del Toro as Moe, Sean Penn as Larry and Jim Carrey as Curley.

I'll get back to that once my stomach settles.

Waaaay back when I was a little queerlet, the highlight of my day was right after school. Not only was the horrid school day over with, but there was the Poopdeck Paul show on channel 2 (WJBK in Detroit), hosted by Poopdeck Paul, a faux sailor/TV host. The Popeye cartoons he ran were only okay, but I thought the Three Stooges were the funniest thing I'd ever seen.

ANOTHER THING

I didn’t drop acid just to see Watchmen: the Mermen were playing at the Independent that evening as well. It’s hard for me to talk about the Mermen, even though they are one of my favorite bands ever, especially live. They take surf music to a whole other level, incorporating the chaos of the ocean, the noise, the danger, ripping undercurrents, and they mix it up with a calm, gorgeous, low-tide beauty. Yet, somehow, they remind me even more of one of those sand mandalas that Tibetan Buddhists create over a period of three weeks, only to sweep it away before they can get attached.

It’s weird, I always somehow forget—between the live gigs—how great they are. They give me goosebumps on top of goosebumps, their music blows my mind and takes me away, and hearing them play is a deeply satisfying experience. And yet . . . .

I think it’s because they are the least gay band I have ever loved.

Hore Trips and Falls and Goes To See WATCHMEN

I’ll tell you one thing: none of the reviewers who panned Watchmen saw it on acid. It’s a strange, dark, twisted movie, and it helps if you see it in a strange, dark, twisted, and utterly open frame of mind. Hello, LSD.

Sitting in Metreon Theater #13 (only a few years old but already dowdy and depressing), feeling pummeled by pre-preview bullshit, I just want the damned lights to go down already. I’m busy praying none of my clean and sober buddies are into Hollywood blockbusters based on post-modern comic books.

Hmmm, at least a third of the seats are empty, although this is an afternoon showing on opening day.  Makes me wonder if some people are already smelling trouble. I imagine there are fans staying away because Alan Moore wants nothing to do with the movie. After all, we know one guy who isn’t watching Watchmen: the man who created it in the first place.

Finally, a preview of the next Seth Rogan movie and I think I have never loved any Hollywood movie star as much as I love him, so, obviously, I am coming on.

LET'S GO, BATMAN, YOU AND ME . . .

Christian Bale can sit on my face and scream obscenities any time he wants to. Can’t you just hear it? “You fucking little prick. Shut up and take it. No. Noooo. NO!! Motherfucker. You want me to fucking shoot all over your fucking face? Do you? Fucking cock cum fucking shooting, no, no, no . . . “

This could go on for hours.

Everybody loved ‘The Dark Knight’ but me; I was extremely disappointed. Bale exploded off the screen in ‘Batman Begins,’ but it seemed as if someone was sitting on his chest in the second film. Heath Ledger exploded in that film, lots of gadgets and shit exploded, but not Batman. He pissed and moaned and took it. Actually, that makes him sound sexier than he was. For me, the lack of sexual energy just killed the whole movie. I love Christopher Nolan, but if he can make a movie with Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, and Aaron Eckhart, that doesn’t turn me on, well, something is wrong somewhere in the universe.

After all, I once began a poem with these lines:

     This is America
     And if I wanna eat mushrooms and go watch a flick
     Then declare from the rooftops that ‘Batman Begins’ is
             The Best Movie of All Time
     I not only can but it’s my duty
     I mean, God, are you fucking kidding me
     Somebody’s gotta have some fun in this battle-scarred, plague-ridden
              nest-befouled, lunatic no-asylum in the void
     It sure the fuck isn’t the people I serve

Switch Hitter

Tired of “watching trans movies where everybody dies or is really sad,” filmmaker Brooks Nelson felt compelled to film his own, Switch: A Community in Transition. 

The documentray suggests that comunities shoulder much of the “responsibility” for their trans memebers’ gender transformations.

“I didn’t change,” Nelson insists.  “I became more who I am—so really, the burden falls on everyone [else].  I peeled back stuff to reveal who I really am.” 

Meanwhile, he says, friends and family members—and the tightknit progressive community in Portland, Oregon—were forced to switch gender pronouns, incorporate new names and examine their own assumptions about what it means to be male or female. 

 “In all the different spheres that we all occupy,” Nelson argues, “People in them have different responsibilities to the person who is transitioning.  My boss’s responsibility is really different than my partner’s responsibility. I’m expecting different things from him…like[to] step up as an employer and say, “This is a bad law for some of my employees,’which means a lot more to somebody making those laws than you or me calling in.”

  “I feel completely blessed to live in this kind of amazing community. If anybody is going to have a stab at some of these frank conversations we wish would go on, it would be this community.  Its age diverse, its race diverse, its got class diversity—ability—everybody gets to bring this kind of unique perspective to the table.”

Contradictory Hore

I don’t understand why rock and roll isn’t enough. It’s scary, violent, sad, dirty, beautiful, and gorgeous, sometimes all at once. It’s deeply satisfying and it ought to be enough.

But, no.  We human beings still seem to need fast cars and smart bombs, waterboarding and global warming, nuclear weapons and fast food full of transfat and fecal matter. It’s a nightmare, modern life.  Being alive in, what, 2009? is as frightening as any nightmare I’ve ever had, and let me tell you, I’ve been chased by plenty of evil aliens in my sleep. I’ve been shot in the head and died. I flew and I fell. I led young pretty girls into a basement where an axe murderer was waiting for them. I’ve woken up in some awfully cold sweats. It’s easy to feel relieved when you wake up, until you remember, oh yeah, President Bush, the Middle East, Korea, the Economy, health care, ice caps, Polar bears, whales, penguins, coral reefs, rainforests, drugs, AIDS, MRSA, Mormons, Sarah Palin in 2012, the next Katrina, the next earthquake, my rent going up, my tips going down, kidney stones, gall bladder stones, my boss, my other boss, co-workers, customers, Hellfire and Damnation, I mean, Jesus Christ.

Are we having fun yet?

January 2009 Publishing Notes

The buzz: Farrar, Straus and Giroux will publish Alex Ross’s new book, Listen to This, based on his New Yorker essays, discussing basic musical concepts in a conversation about classical and pop music, in 2010, along with Wagnerism: How a Composer Shaped the Modern World.

Spiegel & Grau will publish A Place to Come Home To by Margaret Robison, Augusten Burroughs’ mother, drawing on years of her journals and diaries about her early life in southern Georgia, her marriage; raising two boys whose own memoirs would become publishing phenomena; and her descent into psychosis, followed by a massive stroke; and now a hard-won ability to speak, write, and reflect on her life.

Riverhead will publish Sarah Waters new novel, The Little Stranger, a ghost story set in 1940s Great Britain, in Hundreds Hall, a centuries-old house of declining health and fortune, in the spring of 2009.

Running Press is releasing a line of gay historical romances written for straight women. The series will launch in April with Transgressions by Erastes and False Colors by Alex Beecroft. Two more titles are set for fall 2009.

December Publishing Notes

The buzz: Abrams will publish Gore Vidal’s illustrated memoir in the Fall of 2009. The memoir will combine personal reflections with a social history of the twentieth century, and never-before-seen images of political and cultural icons from Vidal’s personal collection. ** World Parade Books will release Edward Field’s memoir Kabuli Days, Travels in Old Afghanistan this month.

Touchstone Fireside will publish Gyles Brandreth’s next three mysteries featuring Oscar Wilde as a sleuth aided by his real-life friend Arthur Conan Doyle. ** Sphere will publish mystery writer Val McDermid’s next two books, including a new Tony Hill for publication in 2009. ** Holt will publish Louis Bayard’s next two literary suspense novels.

In 2009, Arsenal Pulp Press will publish Fist of the Spider Woman: Tales of Fear & Queer Desire, edited by Amber Dawn. ** Da Capo will publish Catherine Friend’s The Last Farm Standing, a look at the state of small, sustainable farms, and how sheep may be the answer to our environmental woes.

Author Stephen McCauley is working with on a film adaptation of his novel The Easy Way Out. Filming is set to begin in March in Paris. ** Showtime announced that it is developing Perry Moore’s book Hero, the story of a young gay superhero, into a hour-long series for the network. Moore will be writing the script and will executive-produce the series along with his partner, Hunter Hill. The two are also collaborating with comic book legend Stan Lee and his Pow! Entertainment partner Gill Champion. ** Nicole Kidman will star in and produce the film version of The Danish Girl, based on the novel by David Ebershoff, about the world’s first post-op transsexual, Einar Wegener. Charlize Theron will also star. ** John Hurt will star in the film An Englishman in New York, about Quentin Crisp’s later years. ** John Boorman is attached to direct the $25 million, CG-animated pic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, adapted from L. Frank Baum’s original novel. Unlike the MGM classic, it will not be a musical.

Hore on Holiday

For Thanksgiving, I was gonna drop acid and go to the beach—alone, because I didn’t make plans, and didn’t pester anybody for invites until the last minute, which was more embarrassing than I thought it would be—but the day was supposed to be sunny, and Marshall Beach (formerly, Bad Boy Beach: don’t get me started on that) remains one of my favorite places on Earth, plus I hadn’t dropped acid in a year or two, so this plan sounded fine to me.

I was gonna go over to Pierre’s, after he actually called me and said I was welcome to share Thanksgiving dinner with him and his studly model brother, Andre, and his lovely ex-wife, Pam, with whom I used to work, and I kinda wanted to go because Invert(e), the book-zine, just came out and I can’t wait to show it around, particularly to Pierre, since so much of that piece revolves around him and his cock and his ass and his face and skin and his funny if slightly skewed sweet soul, even though he already heard me read the whole thing out loud at the San Francisco Public Library a year ago, for one of Michelle Tea’s Radar Readings, which are always such great events because God she’s talented, as a writer, and as a host, and as a curator, an all around lovely human being, but I digress.

I was gonna go without pot for the first time in six weeks.

The Damnation of Hore

Leaving my apartment at 9:30 this morning was quietly amazing: only Art could get me up and out this fast. (Okay, art, and sex, but I had quite enough sex-play last night, thanks. My dick is still sore; my nipples, numb.) Art with a capital ‘A’ doesn’t get much grander than an opera at NYC’s Met. This event was a high def simulcast—on a multiplex screen in Bloomingdale’s mall—of Berlioz’ The Damnation of Faust, staged by the guy who did Cirque du Soleil’s ‘Ka’ in Vegas.

No way was I missing that.

Never mind that I had stayed up until 3 a.m. fiddling around with this guy and that guy and then the internet. The alarm had gone off, I wolfed down breakfast, threw on practically the same outfit that worked well enough in the South of Market gay bars, and walked the six or seven blocks briskly, thinking I had enough time, but not a lot extra. The streets were not exactly thronged with pedestrians, but one young man marched past me carrying four or five homemade signs. My gaydar ping-ed, and I realized there must be another demonstration against Prop. 8. Oh dammit, I thought, I’m not good enough, I don’t care enough, I’m not . . . something . . . enough. I just wanted to go see the Berlioz version of Faust with something approaching a clear conscience and without being reminded of more reasons why I should be sitting in a pool of self-loathing. My step faltered, but I didn’t seriously consider changing my plans.

Tranny Triptych

This is Morty Diamond's new short film, "Tranny Triptych" starring Morty and Glenn Marla and edited by Ethan Weinstock. 

Morty has made two feature length films, "Trans Entities: The Nasty Love of of Papi and Wil" and "Trannyfags."

He's also the editor of the anthologies From the Inside Out: Radical Gender Transformation, FTM and Beyond and the forthcoming Gendered Hearts.

Enjoy!

Taylor Mead-Lovin' Hore

Taylor Mead is in town and I just got to see him, doing a poetry reading, plus Q&A session, after a screening of the only complete print left in America of Lonesome Cowboys: A Clown Underground by Andy Warhol. Or was that really by Paul Morrisey? Whom-ever, right, Andy? Anyway, it may be Morrisey who gets directing, writing, editing, and producing credits, but . . . the way we heard the story tonight, he Taylor was the only one to read the synopsis during the making of the movie (there was no script, of course) and in the middle of some campy rant when he mentioned a specific mountain and the path to get there, Andy came up to him and said, ‘Oh, Taylor, too much plot!’ Obviously, Warhol was still making sure it was his movie.

Taylor is so lovable, it's funny.