My next tattoo

Is going to be THIS image tattooed on my chest directly over my heart

Courtney Love @ The Boom Boom Room, NYE 2010

Even though I'm really annoyed and pissed off with Courtney AGAIN (for abruptly deleting her Facebook page after people had put so much time and energy into helping build up her photos, commenting on her opaquely repetitive posts, etc) I would give almost anything to be at her NYE concert tomorrow night at the STandard in NYC! Well, anything except air fare to NYC, the loss of my job (working New Year's Day), and the $250-and-up price of a ticket. (And that's just for standing room...to get a seat you have to pay $500-750, I hear.)

So I won't be attending the concert. In fact, I won't be attending any concert, since I'm getting up at 5am in order to work New Year's Day. I'd love to hear all about it, though!

On a related note...Courtney will NOT be releasing her album "Nobody's Daughter" or even a single from it on 1/1/1o as mentioned, promised, and hyped many times. In case any CL fan hasn't figured it out yet...you should not get your hopes up, or believe a word Miss Love says. Bless her wicked, lying, empty heart.

Homicide slump

The recession appears to be affecting that previously inviolable trump card of criminal activity - murder. To wit: I just read a newspaper headline saying San Francisco saw the biggest single-year drop in homicide on record in the year just past. Allow me to posit two theories:

1) People were just too depressed to report the murders

2) The additional killings migrated to Oakland, boosting its already impressive score

Cozy socks!

Last night, with some time to spare before work, I browsed Old Navy downtown and ended up spending $5 on TWO pairs of "cozy socks." (At one point they were selling for a dollar a pair...Old Navy's prices are still hard to beat. Although if you want to spend more for practically the exact same clothes, you can cross the street to The Gap....owned by the same corporation.) They really are cozy. They were in the women's section, of course, and come only in colors like lime green, yellow-and-white-striped and pink, to insure that only females will wear them. But did that stop me? (Photo above...yes, those are my grotesquely elongated flipper-like feet.) "I don't see why men can't enjoy cozy socks," I said to my co-worker afterwards.

"You can do whatever you want, kid, you live in San Francisco," she replied.

Yes, and I love that about this place. Of course, I was going to wear them either way, but you know, it's always nice to have permission.

(My co-worker also said, "Of course you had to buy elf socks, you big gay elf." Or some words to that effect.)

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS, one and all! I will be working on Christmas Day, which I don't mind at all, since it will take my mind off the fact that I'm an orphan for the holidays. And making double holiday pay won't hurt, either. More money for my rapidly approaching move out of Oakland and into The City.

THE City.

Bruno

All hail the insanity of Sacha Baron Cohen! The other night I finally watched "Bruno," Cohen's feature-length shocku-mockumentary based on one of the three characters he developed for "The Ali G" show years back. It was way more shocking, offensive and hardcore than I expected. Honestly, I didn't think it was still possible this late in the day for a film to make my jaw drop to the floor like that. I don't know if I can legitimately claim that I enjoyed watching the film - well, parts of it, definitely, but watching it is a fairly ulcer-inducing business, since it keeps you on edge and biting your nails with one painfully awkward episode after another. It gives you plenty of moments of laughter and hilarity, and you need them to release the tension of watching Cohen incite an African American audience of one of those tabloidy daytime talk shows to near violence by parading his adopted black baby in a miniature S/M outfit, or turn an interview with Libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul into a harrowingly botched gay come-on. I don't know if I've ever seen an artist place his or her self in so much real physical danger as Cohen does in this film. By the end you're amazed he didn't suffer serious injury, so good - and so fearless - is he at pissing off his interview subjects to the point where they want to beat him senseless. I don't see how Cohen could possibly be straight after making a film like this! This is not the sort of movie you want to take home to Mom. I'm sure it must have been unrated. Maybe the single most surprising moment is the extreme close-up of Cohen as he rocks out with his (shaved!) cock out and shakes it all about for the camera. Talk about pulling out the stops! I can understand the generally ambivalent reaction of the gay press to the film (is he friend or foe? Helping or hurting our cause?), but I personally have to respect someone willing to go full-throttle to make their film, no holds barred. Cohen is the opposite of someone who "preaches to the choir." He tackles the most hostile audiences time after time, and in doing so creates at least one moment of odd beauty amidst the warped hilarity. I'm thinking of the scene where he and his male admirer make out, grope one another and begin making love in the middle of a wrestling ring surmounted by a steel cage, outside of which churns a positively apoplectic audience of the sort of semi-animal, violently aggravated redneck thugs who consider watching two men beat the shit out of each other in a steel cage match the greatest possible entertainment. There is a slow motion shot in which Cohen and his man toy roll about and embrace on the floor of the ring, as hurled water bottles, chairs, every other object in reach showers down on them: a weird moment of peace inside a seething cyclone of hatred and fury projected at them by the enraged audience, who can't believer their rabid eyes. "Bruno" even offends me - and I consider myself pretty hard to offend - but I'm glad it was made. I just won't be watching it with Mom any time soon.

Rescue me from Oakland

Ever since being mugged at GUNPOINT here in Oakland a month ago, I've been eagerly looking forward to the day I move into The City - to be closer to work, and just to live somewhere I feel that I belong. My quality of life has suffered considerably lately. I now see menace and danger where I used to see ethnic diversity and think how cool (and sort of typical of me) it was that I was the random tall gringo living with a Mexican family. (I still love Latino families and the way they stick together and live together in an extended group, from grandparents to little kids, and my roommate's sister cooks authentic Mexican food good enough for any restaurant. Their familial bonds are sort of what I've always dreamed of, and never had, having grown up with a small fractured family - basically just my single mother, my sister, and me - and my Cousin who lives on Maui - that's about all the family I have.) Well, I'm making it my foremost goal now, to move into San Francisco by February 1st. I need to save a bit more money, but will begin aggressively looking for a shared living situation at the beginning of January. Before I came to the Bay I envisioned a great job - utilizing "The Secret" (watched it on Maui), and I scored a really good job with great benefits shortly after arriving. Now it's time to apply that to my living situation. Because it's hard to be happy with anything else in your life if you aren't happy with where you live. At least in my experience.

I've had a nearly lifelong dream of owning a fabulous Victorian home, and in the meantime, renting a room in one seems a nice conceit. San Francisco is certainly one of the most likely places for that to happen. I did live in the attic of a Victorian in Portland, Ore. during the summer of 1997 (the summer that inspired so many William S. Burroughs-style writings that have thankfully perished with the passage of time), right across Ash Street from 3 Friends Coffeehouse, but my circumstances at the time were not auspicious. I'd like another chance to do it RIGHT this time.

Let's just see how well this quantum physics, "manifest your destiny" thing works.

Christopher Plummer

I love well-written memoirs. For a while now (I'm so slow these days) I've been reading Christopher Plummer's "In Spite of Myself" which came out a year or two ago. It's a warm, funny, appropriately theatrical account of the author's career in show business, starting with the stage, moving into the golden era of TV (the 50s) and then films. Plummer paints loving portraits of the vast galaxy of eccentrics, show-stoppers and stars he's shared the stage and screen with over the course of his life. You sense him exaggerating sometimes for dramatic effect, which gives the book the tone of a play or performance, and when the curtain goes up at the end you want to stand up and give it an ovation. Plummer makes you miss bygone worlds you never knew, swept away by time but leaving such raucous memories and impressions. For someone who loves theater and the eccentric personalities and tall tales that go along with it, this book is a jewel. There are a number of passages where the writing becomes very moving and poetic, touching on deep sadness, then always galloping back into the comedy and spectacle of life that obscures and alleviates that sadness. One concerns the death of Plummer's mother. Another early passage (p. 88-89) that illustrates the excellence of the author's style describes Myrta Guinness, an oddball recluse, member of the famous Guinness family, who lived alone on an island in Bermuda, where he collected mechanical music boxes and lavishly entertained the young artists he liked to surround himself with. The anecdote continues:

He was, I discovered, a sad, shy and lonely soul, bereft of purpose and blessed with no particular gift of any kind save one: he played the musical saw more brilliantly and more hauntingly than could be dreamed possible. In the half dark, he would bend that menacing saw over his knee and with his bow delicately brushing the shining metal, he would transport us to another world, a world of high-pitched unearthly beauty. It was the song the Sirens sang - it had wrecked ships, it had lured men to their watery deaths. As he played, an extraordinary thing happened - his face visibly altered, he was suddenly vibrantly alive, he had brought his own youth back.

Picture of the week!

Thanks to Damien for sending me this photo. Love it!

R.I.P. John Lennon

29 years ago today, John Lennon was murdered by a disturbed individual with no apparent motive. I still think "Imagine" is possibly the most perfect song ever recorded by a human being. On December 8th, 1980, the world lost a genius for whom there simply is no replacement. R.I.P., John. May you bliss out in strawberry fields forever.

Courtney reminds Britney who invented the term "Celebrity Trainwreck"

Oh, my goodness. With her second solo album "Nobody's Daughter" FINALLY due to be released January 1, 2010 (a most intriguing looking date, 1/01/10, let's hope it's binary code for MAJOR COMEBACK!), Courtney Love just made headlines by claiming that Britney Spears' dad molested her. The Spears camp has replied in an amusing fashion.

Bill Murray's brilliant cameo

I saw "Zombieland" at the Red Vic MovieHouse in the Haight the other night, and really enjoyed it. Not a work of high art, necessarily, but a very entertaining flick with an endearing "alternative family" message. Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg (sort of "the other Michael Cera") make a most amusing contrast. (Interesting to see two men - well, one man and one boy - play a dynamic that would traditionally be portrayed by two people of different genders. Wellllll, OK...maybe they're not exactly Bogie and Bacall.) But the best part of the movie is Bill Murray. His cameo is so brilliant, it would make the movie worth seeing even if the rest of it was pure dreck - which it isn't! Go, Bill! This scene should be used in college courses on filmmaking under the title, "How to write a stupendously brilliant celebrity cameo."

Cirque in Union Square!

Cirque du Soleil, in the City right now with their new show "Ovo," made a public appearance in Union Square this afternoon. Since I work two blocks away, I took my lunch break at the right time to dash down there and catch them in the action. "Ovo" is insect-themed and the performers were acting very insect-like, copying the mannerisms of ants, praying mantises, etc. It was a fun sight to behold. Suddenly, without warning, they fled en masse to their tour bus (Bus du Soleil?) and drove away, waving from the top of the double-decker! A fun way to spend a lunch break.

I fell under the potent spell of Cirque when I ushered for their show "Corteo" in Portland early last year, before I went to work in Glacier National Park. As an usher - unlike the poor kids in concessions who had to spend their whole work shift in the outer tents hawking popcorn and hot dogs during intermission - I got to watch the show every night inside the Grand Chapiteau, which is truly grand. I never lost my sense of awe at the vast size of that huge tent, especially when we met before showtime for a pre-performance huddle before any audience members entered to fill the vastness of the space. The show was beautiful, something I'll never forget. Even after seeing it a dozen times, my heart always picked up the pace when the first act after intermission ("Paradise," the trapeze act) started. The amazing soundtrack, the dramatic lighting, and the perfectly timed buildup to the act's climactic moment, which always made the audience gasp. I didn't gasp, but I marveled, and felt proud of the performers, of how good they were, and happy to be part of something so magnificent, even in my humble capacity.

The Obama Deception

Today on BART I glimpsed the newspaper headline, "Liberals distance themselves from Obama." I'm afraid it's true. Cynicism is realism at this point. Obama is owned by the same people who owned Bush. They are people who make money off war (hence 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan! Although I think Obama's lack of emotion or enthusiasm during the speech at least shows his conscience is conflicted about doing the bidding of the Emperor), and engineered our recent economic collapse (and others before it). That's why Geithner is Secretary of the Treasury, Bernanke is being re-confirmed, and we haven't taken any serious steps to change our economic structure so that a major recession like this doesn't happen again. The bail-outs are a band-aid on a third-degree burn. Huffington Post, led by Arianna Huffington, has published one article after another on this subject for a long time now.

Fuzzy Little Drunks

From my Mom's favorite publication, SMITHSONIAN Magazine, Oct 2008: "Pen-tailed tree shrews [one pictured above...cute!] and at least six other small mammals in Malaysia imbibe naturally fermented bertam palm flower nectar, which is up to 3.8 percent alcohol, like beer. The animals are the only ones (aside from humans) known to drink regularly, say the researchers, from Germany and elsewhere, who saw no 'motor incoordination or other behavioral signs of inebriation.' The animals appear to have a high alcohol tolerance."