Franken will be senator, and Jesus never existed

I just read an article on the Huffington Post website saying Republicans are preparing for the loss of Coleman from the senate, and the victory of Al Franken. Talk about your close races! This has got to about take the cake. Sometimes I am proud of my former home state - often the only "blue" Midwestern state - although I can't say I miss it much.

In unrelated news, I see a new film is garnering a lot of buzz for being a full-frontal attack on Christianity and the very existence of Jesus Christ. The film is called "The God Who Wasn't There" and I'll definitely be seeing it. If comparisons to "Bowling For Columbine" are accurate I'm sure it's very one-sided, but I've been listening to one-sided b.s. my entire life on the other side, so maybe I'm just fine with that.

Let us celebrate the dawn of the New Age of Reason and the End of Religious Tyranny!

(Meanwhile, Israel continues to slaughter Palestinians in its latest conflict with Hamas, and has rejected further peace talks. Will it ever end?)

Zooming in from the macrocosmic to the microcosmic for a second: I've been wanting to add a disclaimer to my last post. Some people would probably wonder why I post such personal information on my blog. Well, first of all, it's not like millions of people read it. Only my "friends" and glorified acquaintances even know about it and I doubt most of them read it - who has time to read everything on the internet? Secondly, I intend this blog to be a mix of personal me-stuff and exterior reality that has nothing to do with me - a diary PLUS a response to politics, events in the world, pop culture, art, etc. As far as the me stuff goes, it's not going to be rainbows and bunnyrabbits, because that's not who I am. I have moods, I have a temper, I go through periods of depression and anger. I'm not going to hide it. I learned in treatment (years ago) that secrets kill, and I'm not going to have any. As far as posting personal dramas on my blog - well, it is MY blog, part of who I am is using writing as therapy, and being a published author and journalist, I find that writing it publicly as opposed to hiding it away in a little journal that no one will ever see is more effective.

ALSO - I did not mention the friends I'm currently feuding with by name. AND I made it abundantly clear to THEM the reasons that I'm currently on the outs with them, so the journal entry isn't some passive-aggressive way of not dealing with a problem. I'm usually pretty good at telling people when I have an issue with them. I'm a harsh critic of myself...and others. At times.

But let's be jolly and merry and have drinks and forget all this crap, 'cause it's New Year's Eve, so

HAPPY NEW YEAR'S EVE!

here's to a glammy gorgeous 2009

xo

tony aka glamrocktiger

End-of-year doldrums

“Exanimate” would be a good word for my mood right now. Actually, “frustrated and pissed off” would be better. When I stop drinking a lot of emotion comes to the surface that I’ve been repressing. I am pissed at one friend for having a fucking video camera and not using it for film projects, so I have to check out all the equipment from the fucking media center, lug it to where we’re filming without a vehicle, then return it on time. I am pissed at another friend – whose family I am pretty sure now is independently wealthy, though she never talks about money – for sitting on an EMPTY HOUSE that she OWNS here in Portland rather than letting a friend who is leaving Portland in three months live there and PAY HER RENT, or at the very least, store some stuff in her house FOR A STORAGE FEE, until I can have it shipped to San Francisco. And these two friends are also the ones who I’m supposed to be doing “Moonshine Boulevard” with, but I can tell neither of them is as into it as I am, and I’m just not going to put all that work into a project only to have it not come to fruition. And I am pissed at mySELF, too, for having insomnia last night, not being able to sleep, and consequently sleeping through the meeting I was supposed to have with my cast for “Art Police” this morning. So now that project fell through. Well, actually, just that cast fell through. I’m already working on another arrangement so I can still get this film made in January. I hope so. I am so artistically blue-balled right now. I don’t have sex – have been celibate for six years, going on seven! – creative projects ARE my sex, and realizing one is akin to a glorious orgasm, while this is like....the opposite of that.

Fuck. Maybe it’s just end-of-the-year doldrums. Let’s hope so. In that case things should start to look up in a couple days.

By the way, as a couple people may know, I had a blog on Today.com called “The Intellectual Homosexual” for a little while, but it fizzled pretty quickly, mainly because there was no incentive – they never paid me, though they were supposed to pay a small amount – but also because I just don’t think Today.com is the right venue for me. So that’s why I started at www.tonyletigre.com – to have my own forum and be completely independent, to post as often or as seldom as I like, and as much or as little as I like, on ANY TOPIC I desire to write about! Well, “completely independent” isn’t quite true since my blogs are still provided through Livejournal and Blogger.com, but it’s a step in the right direction.

For anyone interested, I think you can still find the remains of the old blog here.

The fish who drowned in moonshine

Somebody left this Care Bear outside the Taco Bell by my house. That's kind of sad, right? I guess that makes it a Nobody Cares Bear.

I just got off the phone after about an hour with dear mum, wishing her a happy birthday – FOUR TIMES, since my cell still drops calls continuously when I’m at home and it’s using the wifi connection. She sounded in great spirits, although she’s afraid she’s going to have to move to a smaller room since her rent went up $40, but when I asked how much her income also went up (it does every January) the figure she gave me came out to $39, so I don’t get how it really makes a difference. I told her to crunch the numbers and talk to her people and get back to me and if she needs me to I’ll send her a check each month to cover the difference so she can keep her big beautiful room that she loves. I called and left Anthony a message about how much I love Little Britain and there’s a sketch in it where the queen or some other aristocratic fat bewigged lady is lying on a couch dictating a memoir to her assistant who sits there typing it, and every so often she stops and asks, “How many pages is that?” and the assistant checks and says, “Twelve,” and the silver haired lady utters an exclamation of disappointment and goes back to recounting more anecdotes. I watched it with my roommates the other day and said, “That’s me and my cousin writing his memoir on Hana!”

A friend of mine (I'm not sure whether to use peoples' names in a public forum, some people are shy and sensitive about that, while others are like me and don't care) said the original title of my book made her think I sounded like a trustafarian. If she meant "Live Through Me" it is (intentionally) a bit grandiose sounding, yes, but it also references the fact that people who absorb other peoples' journals and diaries are in a way living vicariously through them, just as I used to absorb Virginia Woolf's life through her diary back in my freshman-in-college days (I'm with the Indigo Girls on that one). It also relates to my mother, who is disabled and living in a nursing home in Minnesota, telling me every time I talk with her on the phone that she nows lives vicariously through me and my sister. (Naturally, she's excited about me going to Maui in the spring.) And lastly, it is (also intentionally) a reference to Hole's album "Live Through This," which although I don't really listen to it any more (just as I don't read Marvel comics any more), defined a certain era of my life and is probably one of my 10 favorite albums of all time.

If she meant the title "Como me llamo" made me sound trustafarian, I'm not sure why, unless just because I'm a white American using a Spanish title - but I'm studying Spanish in school, I genuinely find it to be a beautiful language, and learning a second language is good! Maybe she meant the translation of that title, "What is My Name," but I'm not sure why that would be either. It certainly has a personal resonance for me, since I've been changing my name to one thing or another practically my entire life, as my family can well attest. I was born with the first name Joseph, called "Joe" throughout my childhood (my sister, mother and cousin still have that name in their phones and address books for me). At one point I was toying with the first name Simon, at another J.D. At another (now highly embarrassing) point when I was a teenager, it was going to be Gary Glamdring! (Good God.) So when I legally changed it to Anthony LeTigre in May 07 it was only the culmination of a long history of wondering, more or less, "What is my name?" I still have a poem with that title in the booklet I'm publishing in January and I'm going to work this whole question of names into it as a theme.

Nonetheless, the final title I'm going with is "The Fish Who Drowned." Unless I think of a REALLY KILLER new one within the next week or two.

What are you doing for New Years? I get invited to parties (of course!), but I'm really kind of over getting drunk, and how much fun will a New Year's Eve party be without booze? I guess I'll find out.

I'm meeting with my three cast members tomorrow afternoon to discuss a script I wrote called "The Art Police" which they're going to help me film in January! And the neo-noir reimagining of Sunset Boulevard that I'm conceiving with Kirk and Melanie is starting to look really promising, and I've bestowed upon it a working title - "Moonshine Boulevard."

Is Al Roker really black?

What is it about NBC weatherman Al Roker that makes me think of a white comedian in blackface? Something about the way he looks ... or the way he talks ... can't put my finger on it. Has he sort of taken over the "Bill Cosby" niche in American pop culture?

I think if I was black I would loathe him.

Further proof that British comedy is still the best in the world

Two words: LITTLE BRITAIN! A BBC-produced programme that aired between 2003 and 06, written by and starring comedic geniuses Matt Lucas and David Walliams. I just discovered it, and have spent much of the last few days in comedy heaven after finding that you can watch most of seasons one and two instantaneously if you have a Netflix account. To think some people originally had to wait for each individual episode to be produced!

Why doesn't our PBS provide us with comedy this scandalous, outrageous, and provocative? They are far too conservative; I can't imagine a show like Little Britain, or Absolutely Fabulous, being produced by OPB. No wonder England is so merry.

Apparently there is a Little Britain USA now being produced by the same gents, I'll have to check that out as well.

If you like laughing, you should check out this series.

If it doesn't make you laugh, your sense of humor is impaired.

Turkey, absinthe and slush

Friday 12/26/08

Christmas dinner at Christa’s was lovely, except that I got way too drunk. Christa’s apartment is very small: the size of my first studio in the old Melcliff. She has a murphy kitchen (like a murphy bed! a false wall that folds out!), bathroomette and just an elegant oriental style partition separating her sleeping pallet from the rest of the space. We were supposed to bring everything over on the bus to her friends’ house in Southeast, but one of them had to go to the hospital, so we just spent the night chez elle, which suited me fine, aside from a mild sense of claustrophobia. We talked about the weird relationship people have to celebrity. I compared the arc of celebrity from the silent film era to now as roughly equivalent to a person’s attitude to their parents, starting with the infant/young childhood period where you idolize and deify them (Garbo, Dietrich, Valentino), then into a more honest appraisal of them as more or less equals who happen to be on a pedestal, to the modern era where we want to knock them off the pedestal and have messy, self-destructive celebrities (Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Amy Winehouse...but I AM going to write my paper about how Courtney Love is responsible for that entire cultural trend...dubious achievement though that may be). Christa said that weird love/hate dynamic that people have towards their idols is why she doesn’t want to be a public figure any more and has withdrawn from the local spotlight, which apparently shined on her quite brightly at one time, mainly for her transgender activism. She also held forth on why Chanel is a great label: it’s formal wear, yet edgy, and it has consistently had that dynamic, although it’s not as good since Karl Lagerfeld took over the label. When I arrived Christa had an amazing appetizer spread of gourmet cheeses, bread, a yummy yogurt-based cheese sauce, jalapeno jelly, crackers and a sausage pate. I had to make a conscious effort to stop so I wouldn’t ruin my appetite for the main course. The turkey was really good, a touch dry, but nothing to complain about, plus all the fixings were there and they were GOOD: real mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, cranberry orange relish (my contribution, along with a bottle of three-buck Chuck from Trader Joes), even a green bean casserole. And phase three was dessert, but I steered clear of the bread pudding (because it had raisins, which remind me of insects somehow) and a meat mince pie (because my mind and stomach just will not accept savory pie – this could be an obstacle if I ever make good on my wish of living in London). We took a plates of dinner and dessert to Christa’s friend where she works, just a few blocks down. The Snow White Crepe cart was open – Christa said it’s always open – with no customers in sight – we walked by and caught a glimpse of the Asian family who runs it in there, their daughter practicing playing flute, looked like they were having fun. (Maybe they live there and that’s why it’s always open?) We did flaming wishes where you make a wish and write it on this invisible paper and then roll this little piece of sort of waxy crepe paper into a tube and place it on the paper where you wrote your wish and then light it on fire and it goes up into the air and is consumed in flame in a self-contained, non-fire-hazard kind of way, and I wished for more photos of Barack Obama shirtless. I can tell you that ‘cause it’s a frivolous wish and I don’t really care whether it comes true or not. (Plus it will.) If it was a genuine wish I wouldn’t have revealed it ‘cause that ruins the spell, or so the wisdom goes. We took photos with the huge white gargoyle outside the building Christa works in (see above). Afterwards I said I’d buy us all a round of drinks so we went in search of an open bar and ended up at the Red Cap where they were doing $1 well drinks for Xmas eve. Christa & Joel both got white russians & I got a Maker’s Manhattan. I was ogled by horny drunk homos when I went up to pay. I still feel like an alien when I’m in a mainstream gay beer. Christa reminded me of the difference between “gay” and “queer.” Queer being alternative in every way, not just sexuality. I am most definitely queer, not gay. (I don’t even know the name of Madonna’s last album. That’s proof.) Back at Christa’s we broke out the absinthe and I got carried away with it. I don’t think the kind of absinthe made in Portland (Trillium is the brand) is the same as the authentic European stuff, though, ‘cause the law that “legalized” absinthe a year or two ago specified a limit of 10 mg of thujone (the active ingredient in wormwood) per liter, which means it’s not as potent. Maybe they should change the name to “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Absinthe.” I smoked pot, too, for the first time in...two months? So I got silly and overly talkative and said embarrassing things and some bullshit, and Christa ended up kinda having to kick us out, halfway through The Big Lebowski (that’s AFTER watching an hour or so of Kids in the Hall, which Joel & I agree is the best comedy troupe EVER, above Monty Python), and the only reason I was able to stay that late (til almost 3 in the morning!) was ‘cause the MAX happened to be running every 15 minutes ALL NIGHT LONG in order to keep the tracks clear of snow. It’s all turned to slush now, and slush sucks, I’ll take the nice fresh dry snow with the creme brulee crust over slush any day, although I have to say I went out for groceries earlier and the gray slush had the beautiful look of sparkly silver satin in the light of the streetlamps. I’ll give it that.

All I ever wanted to know about pig-sodomizing hillbillies I learned from "Deliverance"

12/25/08
Christmas Day! And even more snow. “Lucy kind of looks like a lemur,” my roommate Scott just said. I just finished watching Deliverance, the 1972 film. (It says something about my warped sensibility, I suppose, that Deliverance is my idea of a Christmas movie!) It’s sort of a 1970s version of The Lord of the Flies. I’ve known I should watch it since I stumbled upon a review of the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre (a lifelong obsession) on Rotten Tomatoes that said “Texas Chain Saw is, along with Deliverance, the quintessential example of a film that is not really about what it appears to be about.” The most notable thing about it is the guilt the men feel about what they do to survive: murdering their attackers. The fact that they feel they need to lie and hide what they did even though it was perfectly justifiable in light of the circumstances. I spoke with Mom yesterday; Jocelyn’s originally ectopic pregnancy has corrected itself and moved into her uterus, so she is officially pregnant with her fourth child. Mom goes on and on about every cute little baby-talk thing that the kids say, and all the cutesy widdle baby names they have for each other and everything, and it simultaneously bores and nauseates me, and I have to get off the phone with her. No matter how often I call her or how long we talk, it’s never enough for her. And her constant references to her impending death are more annoying than saddening or anything else. She cheapens it by drawing attention to it continuously in advance of the fact. Well, time to get all bundled up and brave the snow! On my way to Christa’s for turkey dinner. Meghan left for Tacoma this afternoon & Scott goes up there tomorrow night & they’ll both be gone til Monday, so I’ll actually have the whole house to myself all weekend!

My boring commentary on the boring gay marriage debate

It is funny to me that the two big "gay rights" issues that have come to mainstream attention in my lifetime have been 1) gays in the military and 2) gay marriage. Two institutions that I am highly ambivalent about as is. And you could hardly pick two things that affect me less on a personal level than joining the military or getting married. As an atheist - well, pantheist, actually - I also hate how both sides use religion to back up their stances. Honestly I'm just kinda bored of the whole issue. It's a tempest in a teapot.

So: I am opposed to marriage in general. Not just the gay kind.

I am also opposed to celery, Hallmark Cards, and people who wear dresses or skirts OVER blue jeans.

(Why would you do that to yourself?)


HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYBUDDY!

How to stay busy while hibernating

This morning I was really happy when I called the bookstore and Kim told me not to bother coming in today, there won’t be any customers. So my first shift is next Monday, and the snow vacation continues. Of course, I’m never the kind who sits around doing nothing for very long. Today I made lots of phone calls – to Richard, to Smitty of CoG, to Ben Pink, to Pat, to Christa, to Kirk to ask him where he put the rest of that peanut butter cookie dough, to Godaddy to figure out how to link my blogger.com blog to the tonyletigre.com domain name I’ve been sitting on for over a year now. It was surprisingly easy and now I finally have my very own website and the name is MINE! I’ve written a script for a very short film called “The Art Police” and my little cast – me, Richard, and Smitty and Jack of CoG – are meeting next Tuesday to discuss the film shoot, which we plan to do the first or second week of January. I’m sure it won’t take more than one day to do it: only two locations, an art gallery and an artist’s studio, and the final product will only be 5 or 10 mins. long. Ben Pink, who was in New York when I called this afternoon, seemed entirely cool with us shooting the gallery scenes at the Launch Pad, as long as we obtain the permission of Caleb, next month’s artist, for his art to appear in the film, of course. Hopefully he won’t take it personally that one of his pieces will be singled out as an example of “bad art” by the art police in the film! I met Pat at Taco Bell a little bit ago and he gave me some more addresses to enter into the database; he’s considering pushing the Hat Party back a little bit since the weather has thrown such a wrench into everything. He invited me to his employee Xmas dinner Thursday night but I’m already committed to Christa’s party instead. It’ll just be me, Christa and Joel. I’m bringing red wine and jellied cranberries, the kind that come out in the exact shape of the can, ridges and all. Some things you never grow out of. Besides turkey and cranberries, Thursday night’s menu may also include maryjane, absinthe, and Kids in the Hall, among other things. How much better does life need to be? I really can’t believe my good luck right now. I’ve barely worked (as in, a real hourly-wage job) since I got back from Glacier, yet I’m in better financial shape than I’ve been in years, also getting in better shape physically since I’ve been drinking less and exercising more, also experiencing a re-surgence of artistic inspiration which I think will only increase when I get to Maui and San Fran, and the future holds only more adventure and even greater things to look forward to. I am in the middle of re-doing the entire layout of "The Fish Who Drowned" (the book formerly known as "Como me llamo," and before that "English Snowflakes") for a different format, and Smitty's friend from the print shop got back to me with a quote today: $104 for 50 copies, folded and bound, with a thicker cover stock for the front and back covers. About what I expected. So now all I have to do is finalize the layout and content and bring in the file! I really have a feeling about The Nightshade Family – the creativity incubation collective I intend to start after I establish myself in S.F. It is not going to be a queer-only membership. I don’t segregate people by their sexual orientation, or gender expression, or any of those other Portland buzz-words that frankly are pretty played-out in my opinion. I am far more interested in the fact that people create interesting, provocative art than who they sleep with or the ways they deconstruct patriarchal oppression. Another thing I’ve learned from my current living situation is that living with people who are very different from you can sometimes be a really ideal thing. My current roommates on the one hand are so different from me that we could come from other planets, or so I thought for a long time, but I’m discovering they are more canny than I gave them credit for, and certainly not conservative except in terms of dress and behavior. They could not possibly be called hipsters, and that is a GOOD thing. All I need to do is think back to that nightmarish nest of hipster scum at 6125 NE Mallory (aka The Meth Baby Mansion) to be grateful for the tranquil, low-drama existence I currently enjoy. MORE SNOW is supposed to be on the way – Christa said it’s the longest stretch of this kind of weather in recorded history for Portland – but I can’t honestly complain. It’s been good to me!

Hair as white as snow

Monday 12/22/08

It is STILL SNOWING! In fact I heard 5-6 more inches expected today. I’ve never seen anything like it in all the time I’ve lived in the PDX metro area. It really is almost Minnesotan now. We should invite the drowning polar bears down to hang out and hunt seals. Kirk is downstairs right now opening his bottle of champagne and squeezing juice out of his little oranges to make fresh mimosas. We’ve patched things up although he continues to annoy me, and I him, all the time with almost every conversation we have. He’s been here three days now, using the blizzard as an excuse to escape his house and Cori, who I gather he’s a bit burnt out on. It’s been fun, like an extended slumber party. It’s a little hard to stay motivated, but all I have to do today is type up the Poison/Austin piece for Just Out and interview Kelli Dunham (lesbicomedienne) over the phone for another piece – stuff that doesn’t require leaving the house. Last night Kirk, Scott & I went for a walk around 11 p.m. after being locked in the house all day and going a bit stir crazy. Kirk turned back when we got to Glisan, but Scott & I walked all the way to Biddy McGraws – only to find it just closed! – and back, probably about 2.5 miles. It was nice to get some exercise, and it’s not that bad out when the wind doesn’t blow. Back at the house I finally persuaded them to watch 30 Rock and I think Kirk & Scott saw that it really is a great show. Kirk also made peanut butter cookies last night using a recipe from the Seventh-Day Adventist cookbook I got ages ago from Dave & Ann Reed! I found a copy of an old photo in it I’d forgotten about: me and young DeeDee playing on the tire swing back on the Reed farm, myself about 4 years old, and with a snow-white mullet! That hair would be so ironically cool in Portland right now.

My book is finished!

I have finished my collection of writing, "¿Como me llamo?" (means "What is my name?" in Spanish). The cover, prologue and a few other sample pages are up on my Flickr page, http://www.flickr.com/photos/glamrocktiger/. I'm looking into a way to print a small batch (just 25-50 copies) to distribute to select friends at my going-away dinner party in March. It's just 50 pages long and double-sided it'd be only 25. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know. I could print, collate, bind them myself through the IPRC here in Portland, and that'll probably be what I end up doing, but someone suggested finding a cheap printer online who would do 50 copies for like $100 or something, and they'd look more professional.
Is that still possible?

~TLT~

I'll be taking this with me to San Francisco and seeking a more substantial form of publication in the future.