anglophilia / "Bad News" / community media

Today I spent three more hours editing the footage Emie and I shot last month, and I have another session scheduled for tomorrow. I plan to have a rough cut finished by the end of that session, and have reserved a dub rack as well so I can burn a DVD copy of that rough cut to watch with Emie and Justin this weekend, during a break in filming "Art Police."

It started as a funny throwaway, a B-side to Art Police, and it's turned into a fairly intense trainwreck of a mini-movie. The working title was "Monsieur LeTigre Speaks" but I changed it to "Bad News" tonight. It could be a PSA for why people shouldn't abuse alcohol. But I kind of like its trainwreck intensity. I'm afraid when Emie sees it, though, she's going to want me to cut all of her parts out, because she's definitely not the charismatic person she can be when sober. But there's something very compelling, to me anyway, about completely raw footage of someone having a drunken meltdown on camera, and being just totally emotionally naked and vulnerable. I hope I can convince her to keep some of it in.

Most of it is not very flattering footage of me, either. I intended this film to be about self-doubt, conflict, contradiction, negativity, drunken retardation, the voices in your head that argue and cause you to engage in self-warfare. It ain't supposed to be pretty, and it sure as fuck ain't.

Then I helped "Alexandra Paris" with her studio production - speaking of trainwrecks! - and it had that "we're winging it" feeling as always, especially since her co-host never showed and didn't even call, so her Leprechaun-like little boyfriend (who I think must be bisexual at LEAST) stood in for the co-host, and actually did a pretty good job. Alexandra was working the Adams/Breedlove fiasco pretty hard, of course - apparently Beau is posing naked for Unzipped, a men's adult magazine. So he's doing the same thing the media are with the controversy: exploiting it for everything it's worth. At one point after she'd been reaming Breedlove for his shameless self-exploitation, a caller went on the air and hissed the words, "Horse shit!" and then hung up.

I couldn't help it, I blurted out: "IT'S BEAU BREEDLOVE!" in the midst of the live show.

That's what's fun about that show, though - you can do things like that and they just become part of the DIY anarchy of community media.

I hope they have a facility like this in San Francisco. I'm sure they do. Probably more than one. (Photo of the Portland Community Media Warhol-style "Staff Wall" above.)

Alexandra used her televisual platform to rebuke some rowdy (black) kids on the bus earlier that day who had been disrespecting other passengers on the bus, putting spitballs in their hair and such. I've witnessed some pretty depressing behavior on the number 6 bus myself, including a cracked-out lady and her giggling little brat of a child who attacked a gay guy sitting in front of her, calling him a faggot and blaming him for being responsible for AIDS and stuff. The guy held his ground pretty well, but I felt bad for him all the same, and got the hell off that bus at the first opportunity.

A side effect of my intense love for Ben Whishaw is that I'm becoming an anglophile. I may have to move to England in five years or so when I'm done with Maui and San Fran. But I've been talking with Anthony almost daily lately, and my excitement grows exponentially with each conversation. We are going to have so much fun. We really are two of a kind...and FAMILY, on top of that.

I have this interesting premonition that during my six months on Maui I'm going to actually be HAPPY, in the truest and deepest sense, for the first time since....I was a kid?

Or ever?