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Men Who Hate Men Who Hate Women

Last month the book club I joined read Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and I have a few things to say about it.

SPOILER ALERT. Those who have not read or are in the middle of the novel will not want to read this post.

Perhaps I have a hitherto unknown proclivity for mystery novels, as I really got into the mystery of Harriet Vanger's disappearance in TGWTDT. But I found the resolution of the mystery a little anticlimactic, and Harriet's miraculous reappearance at the end was a bit hard for me to swallow.

A friend who heard I was reading the novel told me, "I didn't like it, because I felt like Larsson was a misogynist." Now, it's true that the original Swedish title of the book translates literally to Men Who Hate Women. But would someone who really hated women give his book that title? I didn't feel that Larsson was a woman-hater, reading the novel....a womanizer, maybe. What I did feel was that his female characters were two-dimensional. I found it hard to believe in them as real human beings. Maybe, for a variety of interesting reasons, it's difficult for a straight man to create convincing female characters. (Though certainly not impossible.) To make a comparison - last month my book club read Patricia Highsmith's novel (and Hitchcock film inspiration) Strangers on a Train. I felt that Highsmith was much better at creating believable male characters than Larsson is at creating believable female ones.

Lisbeth Salander, the titular girl with the dragon tattoo, was the sort of angsty, angry, tattooed, pierced, antisocial alternative girl-fox that I've encountered so many of in my adventures through the various alternative scenes and subcultures of the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere. And the way Larsson created her in his book, she had more in common with an adolescent boy than with most women I know, which could lead to an interesting psychoanalysis of the author, which I will refrain from attempting, because as an author myself I know that shit is annoying. The additional element of Salander being a brilliant computer whiz, hacker and personal background-checker - sort of an idiot savant amateur private investigator - was also a little tough to take, but not completely beyond the bounds of credibility.

I am in the middle of watching the film version of TGWTDT right now on Netflix. For the most part it remains faithful to the novel, so far, but there's something a bit lackluster about watching a film version of a mystery novel for whose mystery you already know the answer.

The God Question.....and the GlamRockTiger Answer

I want to be a good strictly rational scientific agnostic/pantheist, but I'm also drawn to mysticism at times. So I've decided: From now on on WEEKDAYS I will quote Richard Dawkins, scoff at those who read horoscopes and openly mock followers of organized religion. (You can mock me back...that's fair.)

On WEEKENDS I will express expansive feelings that "SOMETHING is out there," delve into tarot cards and numerology, and possibly even attend a Sunday Celebration at Glide Memorial.

As for HOLIDAYS....on Holidays I will just be drunk, and God, whether he exists or not, will be irrelevant.

The pope's comeuppance?

Atheist authors Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins want to arrest the Pope when he visits England in mid September. Wow...if they were to pull this off, it would be such a media spectacle. Godspeed you, my friends, I wish you the utmost success! Lord knows I would love to see that sick, creepy, pompous little degenerate get his comeuppance!

Chinese Laughter

Tonight I again attended one of my favorite events, Pub Trivia at the Presidio Cafe. It was so much fun. We just missed placing in the top three this time. I didn't drink a drop of alcohol. And still I'm so glad I went.

I have a team, and they are a fun group. One or two change each week, but there is a stable core of which I am, or am becoming, a part. We learn, we laugh, we eat fairly decent food, some of us drink, some of us don't. And usually we come in the top three.

I now know that the Statue of Liberty is the heaviest statue in the world, the U.S. is the biggest exporter of grain in the world, and the first woman to climb Mt. Everest was Japanese.

Although there seems to be some debate over which country has the largest standing army - China or North Korea.

I joined the team thanks to Bay Area Linkup.

On the bus ride home I watched the Chinese people enjoying a joke together. Even though I didn't understand a word of it, seeing them laugh, I laughed too. Which reminded me how unimportant spoken language can be to communication.

Bouncer Redux

Katy St. Clair got a bunch of hate mail in last week's SF Weekly for her previous "Bouncer" column in which she dared to question gay men's musical taste, based on the bland, formulaic, so-not-rock-and-roll music that is played in typical gay clubs. I thought she had a good point. And this week's "Bouncer" is really good, too. And really funny.

"No one wants to drink alone. Except George Thorogood."

"I was like a ronin grandma: I get to play with kids and then hand them over to their parents after about 40 minutes."

"All of this reuniting was of course facilitated by Facebook, that site we all love to hate, but check several times daily."

There's a part about how good babies smell, which includes this:

David's 11-year-old daughter thought this was weird. "He doesn't smell good!" she laughed.

"Oh, indeed he does," I said, like a wise old sage on the mountaintop. "When you get older, you take the time to stop and smell the babies." She nodded, no doubt edified by my wisdom.

Read the whole column here.

My version of AA's Serenity Prayer...

God grant me
The profanity to bitch about the things I cannot change,
The fierceness to change the things I can,
And the sexiness to know the difference

nightmarevolution

Also at Another Hole in the Head last night (see previous entry) I saw Nightmares in Red, White and Blue. This is a really great documentary on the evolution of the horror film, starting in 1910 with the first silent film version of Dracula and continuing up to modern times, when many people are turning away from American horror films because they've just become a contest to see who can be the sickest, most graphic and sadistic. It touches on SO many films and places each in its proper chronological context. It's similar in tone and style to the IFC films documentary The American Nightmare that I love (and own a copy of), but much more ambitious and exhaustive in scope, and features new interviews by horror greats like John Carpenter, Joe Dante and George Romero.

"What does it take to kick people in the ass hard enough to wake up?" Romero asks at one point, discussing the post-Sept. 11th American political landscape.

Also one of the commentators makes note of the fact that, when you meet the men who make horror films - Carpenter, Romero, Wes Craven, David Cronenberg, Eli Roth, etc - they are peaceful men, not mentally disturbed in a violent way, intelligent, politically active, liberal. "These men," the commentator states, "open themselves up to all the things other people repress, and it's the people who repress those things you have to worry about."

Good point!

Strange Symbol

Tonight, volunteering for San Francisco's horror/sci fi/cult film festival, "Another Hole in the Head," I saw a fantastic, and fantastically strange, film: Hitoshi Matsumoto's 2009 cinematic mindfuck Symbol. (A few years back he made a splash with Big Man Japan, which I missed but will see soon.)

This was one of the weirdest and most unpredictable films I've seen in recent memory. And the only one I've ever seen whose main plot elements include sushi, a man trapped in a seemingly holographic room, a toilet plunger, a key, a rope, a Mexican pro wrestler named Escargot Man, and....baby penises.

LOTS of baby penises.

I said afterwards, "That movie is a work of genius." Warped, surely - but isn't that so often true of genius?

A Taiwanese kid, a fellow volunteer, said he thinks Matsumoto was indebted to Stanley Kubrick and that the finale was a sort of homage to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. I can sort of see that, in the ending sequence.

Anyway, if you want your mind blown by something truly strange, I recommend checking out Symbol. If you're in San Francisco, it plays one more time - on Saturday the 24th, at Viz Cinema - as part of Another Hole in the Head!

Dogshit galore

J.F.C., does EVERYONE in San Francisco own a dog?

That adds up to a lot of dogshit.

By the way, if one more person tells me that dogs are loving and cats are cold and selfish, I'm going to throw fresh dogshit at them.

You can look at dogs and see that they're loving...I see them as needy and constantly in need of validation. Whereas cats, rather than being selfish and disinterested, are merely more secure in who they are.

Basically, human-dog relationships are more codependent.

Yes, this is a generalization and not true of all dogs (or all cats).

But, on the flip side - Yes, there are people who get crazy and "hoard" their cats, and end up with way too many of them, but that stereotype is of a mental illness that by no means represents the vast majority of people who own cats.

There are more domesticated cats in the U.S. than there are dogs.

Although you wouldn't know it here in my city!

Where the Wild Things Weep

“I like the way you destroy stuff, good technique, there’s a spark to your work that can’t be taught.”

So says one of the Wild Things to Max in the film version of Where the Wild Things Are. I fancy the makers of this film had high hopes of it being something like the Wizard of Oz of our time. Spike Jonze directed; Dave Eggers co-wrote the screenplay; Tom Hanks is a co-producer. Catherine Keener plays Max's careworn mother. The Wild Things - portly, ramshackle muppet-monsters - are voiced by well-known actors like James Gandolfini, Forest Whitaker and Paul Dano. And the soundtrack features songs by Karen O and various other musical hip-stars. It's all very cool. And it's awfully emo. There's a lot of intimate talking, sharing of secrets, sensitivity to other peoples' shortcomings. There are times when it feels like a therapy session. I enjoyed it, but it didn't have quite the impact I wanted. Whether that's due to the shortcomings of the film or to my own status as a jaded, cynical adult, I can't say for sure.

Generally, when adapting a book into a film, I think it's best to maintain as much fidelity as possible to the source material. The problem with this film, of course, is that the source material is a slim, succinct children's book with nowhere near enough dialogue or action to fill an hour-and-a-half movie. The screenwriters had to fill all that extra space with their own imaginations, and unfortunately, their imaginations aren't nearly equal to that of Maurice Sendak.

I was going to say "Jim Henson has nothing on the Wild Things," but then I read this article stating that it was the Jim Henson Creature Shop that was behind their creation. Call it a muppet monopoly!

One gripe: the film missed my favorite detail about the book as a child: the way Max's room grows, over the course of three pages, into a moonlit forest wilderness!

Tosh-point-Bullshit

There's a new media "personality" who has displaced both Perez and Paris Hilton as the most noisome, aggravating, idiotic and annoying figure on television...it's Daniel Tosh, whose "comedy" seems to be really thriving on Comedy Central of late. (I run into it when I flip to that channel early to watch The Daily Show.) He is German. He is physically attractive. He is hot. But his material is absolutely moronic and his comments on it drag it even lower than it is to begin with. And his audience and their stupid canned laughter seem so fake. Why is this guy still on ANY channel, let alone Comedy Central, which is supposed to specialize in things that are actually funny? His jokes and video clips are all of the lamest, most anti-intellectual, sensational variety, and his comments on them are so insipid they make Joel McHale on The Soup look like a genius. Is this an experiment to see how low American audiences are willing to go?

Pop culture does NOT have to be brainless tabloid fodder with absolutely no redeeming artistic value. The great thing about Pop Art was the ART.

It's shit like this that makes me mourn the loss of great comedians of the past like Richard Pryor and George Carlin all the more.

Here comes the fog again...

Some people who live in San Francisco complain about the fog, but those people are fools. The fog is one of my favorite things about this beautiful city - and there's no shortage of things to like about San Francisco. Sure, I love a sunny warm day (like today) as much as anyone - I love to get a little color in my pale Anglo-Saxon skin. But I don't whine and gripe when we're fogged in, which happens pretty regularly on top of Mt. Davidson where I live now (until I move into my own condo at year's end). I love the eerie, ethereal quality it imparts to reality - I feel that it's my own imagination, the interior of my mind, made visible.

Sometimes it's as thick as cotton wool, and we could be living in the midst of a dense rain forest, for all we can see of our surroundings when looking out the living room windows.

A dinner guest last night said, "I don't know of any other city that has fog like this." Someone suggested, "London," but even in London the fog doesn't persist the way it does here - sometimes lasting all day, or even days on end, without ever letting up.

But you won't hear this tiger complain...

The Goddess

At the recommendation of one of my new roommates, I'm watching The Goddess, a 1958 film (dir: John Cromwell) starring Kim Stanley, who was better known as a stage actress - this was her first film role. The movie is reportedly based on the life of Marilyn Monroe, but it was released four years before Monroe's death.

Stanley's performance is top-notch, to say the least.

Sometimes I feel that I really love old movies, and other times I feel that I love the idea of old movies, but the reality of actually sitting down and watching them - well, let's just say I like to multi-task while they're playing. This is a case in point.

Go, Katy, go!

When I first moved to San Francisco last year, I quickly became a fan of Katy St. Clair's "Bouncer" column in SF Weekly. This week's column starts with a sentence that, if I had not already been a fan, would have pushed me over the edge.

"I know scientists are working diligently to isolate the so-called 'gay gene,' but while they are at it, I hope that they can also pinpoint the part of a gay man's brain that likes shitty dance music."

I've been hoping the same thing for years now. BRAVA, girlfriend! From a boy in the Bay who does NOT like shitty dance music, and cringes every time Britney or Lady GayGay or any other cheesy, dialed-in dance-pop crap starts playing on the jukebox of any bar or club I happen to be marooned in, on those relatively rare occasions when I find myself so marooned.

Read Katy St. Clair's latest Bouncer column here.

A plumcot by any other name...

In produce news, this just in: pluots are fucking delicious! I first had one on Maui last year, a golden-yellow miniature globe of sweetness that I can only imagine as the fruit of the gods, comprising a glorious mixture of plum and apricot. Pluot, I am given to understand, is actually a trademark of a hybrid fruit previously called a plumcot, which is about 70% plum, 30% apricot. There are also apriums, with a reversed ratio, being more apricotty.

I didn't see pluots at Safeway this afternoon, and asked the produce guy (it's always a good idea to make friends with the produce guy), who told me "they should be in soon."

Set a case aside for me, please!

Fantastic!

Good morning, everyone! Did you know that 9 out of 10 doctors agree that "Faggots are Fantastic?" And the tenth one has shaky hands - I wouldn't let him operate on me!

Somebody's Mother

I have posted an ad in the rideshare section of Craigslist, because Courtney Love's Hole - her new, improved Hole - is playing Live 105's BFD at the Shoreline Amphitheatre this Sunday, and it would be shameful of me not to make an honest attempt to finally see this borderline psychotic, borderline genius, enduring freakshow of a woman - an icon in whom I have, for some highly questionable reason, invested so much emotion and significance for at least 15 years now - live and in concert, at last.

How would I describe Courtney to an alien from another planet who had never heard of her? Well, to me anyway, she's sort of a rock-and-roll (Bride-of-) Frankenstein combining the poetry of Patty Smith and Anne Sexton with the fiery scorn of Lydia Lunch, the punk-rock style of Siouxsie Sioux and Exene Cervenka (not so much the talentless Nancy Spungen), the sheer emotional intensity and towering cultural iconicity of Janis Joplin, the combatively controversial persona of Madonna and Yoko Ono and Sinead O'Connor, the fragility of Tori Amos and a dozen other vulnerable and more traditionally feminine singer-songwriter types, with...the glass-and-gravel vocals of PJ Harvey and Johnette Napolitano and Medusa and Medea, the on-stage spontaneity and unpredictability of Iggy Pop and Wendy O'Williams, the plastic surgery of Amanda Lepore, the trainwreck life-as-performance-trash-ness of Frances Farmer and the late Anna Nicole Smith, the smoky glamour of an old-school movie star like Clara Bow or the younger Bette Davis, the oversexed brashness of Blanche DuBois....shall I go on? What I'm saying is, girlfriend is COMPLEX. She's not just a walking study in demonology, she's....sort of a walking study of womanhood in the 21st Century. She's an enigma, and I love enigmas. For all her TMI and metaphorical nakedness, seeming to throw it all away and tell us all the truth, there is something central and secret that she never actually gives away. That must be what keeps me guessing, and paying attention.

I just received my copy of Hole's new album, Nobody's Daughter, today - the first real, solid, physical album I've purchased in...years? (I stopped buying music about a decade ago? Abandoning it, for some reason, in favor of other art forms like film and literature.) And it's pretty fucking good. Good enough that I'm sure after a few dozen more spins it'll permanently bond itself to my soul and psyche the way ALL of Love's four previous albums - including her not-entirely-terrible solo album, 2004's cheekily titled America's Sweetheart - have done.

For better or worse, she fills a space in (un)popular culture that would be naught but a gaping hole in her absence.

From the liner notes of Nobody's Daughter (quoted without permission, yet with respect):

Nobody’s Daughter is dedicated to all the motherless children and fatherless babies in this world. This record is dedicated to the light and to the eternal clonthian fire. This record is dedicated to numinosity and to vengeance and to sobriety. To the delusion of the ten world and to the endless cycle of birth life old age and death with enlightenment firmly in our sights.
We are dedicated to the deepest love, the truest love and the purest self love. We are dedicated to a rapacious greed for living and for Gods sake holding onto yourself in a hurricane knowing you are so loved.
This is dedicated to complete surrender. Just give in baby, just give in and you will find the light inside of yourself full of hate and fury, piss and vinegar, cracked mirrors and total self annihilation.
But the light, the light will overcome, just hang on. And in the end, Love and nothing but Love.

Feline Personality Disorder

This morning, after observing a couple of my new roommates engage in droll displays of loveydoveness, I had a little epiphany of the power and freedom that my “single” state affords me. Most people belong to or are attached to other people, or else in a pathetic state of wanting to be so attached – the relationship becomes both a strength and a hindrance, at least it appears so to me – but what do I know? Well, I have had some experience with dating, in the mists of the past. Maybe I’m codependent and so I color all relationships I see as codependent – it’s possible. But I don’t feel very dependent at all, in that emotional / physical way. I am not attached, and do not belong, to anyone but myself, and I find this to be the ideal state – the best fit for me.

The “power” this confers on me is that, being unattached, I can attach myself or belong temporarily, in the moment, to anyone I choose, at any given time, then withdraw back into myself before any serious loss of independence occurs. I can share moments of closeness, laughter, intimacy with people, but it’s not a commitment, there is no contract – I refuse to sign a contract. I like the feeling of being completely unfettered and able to do anything I want at any moment without consulting anyone else or compromising my actions because of how they may affect other people. Of course, I still have to compromise in many ways, especially now that I’ve moved back into a cooperative living arrangement – but not to the extent that people in serious, long-term relationships have to. Being single is not loneliness to me – it is freedom.

Now, does this not describe the personality of a cat - many cats, anyway - to a tee?

Speaking of cats...I wore my kittycat T-shirt out on the town last night (you can see it in the photo above! although that's from Halloween 2008), and a woman on the train complimented me for it. I've heard SF described as "a dog-lover's city if ever there was one." If that's the case, I'll be going against the grain as usual...

Obama Called Indian Slur By South Carolina Senator

Now this is just plain sloppy racism. At least get your racial slurs right, people! If you're going to be part of the proud tradition of offensive racial prejudice in this country, RESPECT it. Obama's not Indian!

Last Bitch Standing!

With all due respect to the recently departed Rue McClanahan, and her immortally hilarious portrayal of slutty old Blanche on The Golden Girls, Betty White is officially the Last Bitch Standing! Well, her and Cloris Leachman - who I hear will be reunited with Betty, her old Mary Tyler Moore show co-star, in a new TV series!

In Praise of Cheese

I wrote this poem today.

In Praise of Cheese

Because of you I will never be vegan
The ne plus ultra of dairy deliciousness
you’re part mold but you never get old

Cows and goats and sheep and yaks
Casein and vinegar and lemon juice
Rennett and wood smoke and protein galore
Calcium and phosphorous and curdled milk
But please, no head cheese for me!

Where you came from we may never know
Pliny the Elder attests to your antediluvian sophistication
Egyptian hierogylphs record your youth in pictures
One-eyed Polyphemus kept sheep and goats with you in mind
John Heywood claimed the Moon was made up of you

Fresh, or whey, or pasta filata
Soft or firm or hard or curd
Sharp or mild or medium
Soft-ripened or blue-veined or rind-encased
Salty or stinky or herb-enhanced
Creamy or crumbly or craggy

All of the above!

Spread on bread or bagels or crackers
with peppered salami and piquant red wine
everything goes better
with a little bit of you

Penicillium candida
Almond-encrusted Kaukauna cheeseballs
(a perennial holiday pleasure)
rock-hard as Gruyere, milk-soft as Brie
even sprayed out of an aerosol can

Some people claim that you cause autism or nightmares
while others insist you help them sleep

It ain’t easy bein’ cheesy
But life without it would make me queasy

Tyrosemiophilia: my new hobby
Let’s call roll!

American, Baby Swiss, Camembert
Danablu, Emlett, Feta, Gammelost
Havarti, Iberico, Jarlsberg, Kikorangi
Lairobell, Mascarpone, Neufchatel
Olivet, Parmigiano, Queso Fresco
O Romano, where forth art thou?
Stinking Bishop take a bath!
Taleggio, Ulloa, Valencay, Wigmore
Xynotyro, Yorkshire Blue, and Zanetti

Like gems rain down your lovely names
More cheese, please!

G. K. Chesterton claimed that poets have neglected you
So, you see I’ve done my best to make sure that’s not true

Eccentrics-only Dinner Party

"Our nation was founded by intellectuals."

This quote comes from an interesting little Wordpress essay I just found called The War on Intellectualism, by Julian Edney. I have known since junior high that appearing to be too smart or intellectual was, in our backward culture, a liability rather than an asset. I have been reading the autobiography of Leonard Woolf (husband of Virginia Woolf) and early on, speaking of his childhood, he asserts, “Then as now, intellectuals were despised.”

That's why my favorite TV character right now is Sheldon (played by Jim Parsons) on The Big Bang Theory. (Watching TV doesn't HAVE to make you stupider...you just have to moderate and be careful what you watch. For instance, stay away from Paris Hilton's New BFF.)

You might say, "You read too many books." And I might reply, "You should read more books." (US Magazine doesn't count!)

I want to help create a wave of "intellectual chic" to get people back to the critical-thinking, revolutionary, enlightened, intellectual roots from which this country grew. Whether that's still possible or not, I don't know...but I have to try. I don't want to settle for a dumbed-down world.

"Doing the research for this essay," Edney writes, "Has turned me into an appreciator of eccentrics, the difficult people not invited to dinner."

I would like to invite those people to dinner.

Literary pedigree

I can't decide whether I want to be the male Virginia Woolf, the 21st-century Edgar Allan Poe, or the gay Charles Bukowski. I guess all three blended together, with a side of my own special sauce. (Photo above is a pop-art portrait of Poe that I found online - unattributed to the artist.)

OK, San Francisco...

I've been on the fence, but I've made my decision - I am committing. You and I are officially going steady. I belong to YOU now. Hopefully for a good long time. I think it's the view from the living room of the house I just moved into (on the top of Mt. Davidson) that pushed me over the edge. I'll have to take some photos when I have a good camera again - it is truly mind-blowing! I have once again stumbled onto a miracle, it would seem. How quickly things change...

brain vs. body

My sense of being a character in my own novel has been particularly strong lately. I really think that, more than most people, I am separated physically and mentally. If I could be pure mind and no body, I think I would be perfectly happy. Physical gratifications - like eating a delicious meal when you've been very hungry - I would miss to a certain extent, but the pros would outweigh the cons. Whether this desire to be rid of the body is "good" or healthy, I'm not sure; but I do have a notion that it will make death easier, when that time comes.

Giant Monsters Attack!

Just back from a talk – very appropriately, in Japantown – called Giant Monsters Attack, part three in the TokyoScope Talk series (the next, on June 11^th, is themed “Sex”!) – it kicks off a week-long “Kaiju Shakedown” hosted at the same venue (1746 Polk), starting tomorrow night with a screening of “Godzilla vs. Gigan.” (Visit the VIZ Cinema web site for detailed info.) There was a panel of three hosts, including August Ragone, the author of a book on Eiji Tsuburaya, “Master of Monsters,” which I will have to read. It was a great talk. Not a huge crowd, but good-sized enough – 40 people or so spread through the theater – and good-natured, full of questions both jokey and earnest afterwards. (One guy asked, “Was Godzilla a chick?” ‘He’ did have a son, after all.)

Various clips were shown which were quite good, including soundless super-8-mm footage from one of the early kaiju films of the actor capering around in the Godzilla suit, apparently trying it out for flexibility, as well as the skillful Tokyo “factory women” painstakingly constructing the miniature sets destroyed in the films, gluing each tile and shingle and intricate piece one by one by hand. Also the clip from 70s TV series “Zone Fighter” in which Godzilla makes his first television appearance. One old guy sitting close to me watched every clip with a smile on his face and chuckled at 5-minute intervals throughout the entire program. Very amusing posters from international releases of the films – including very odd and misleading ones from Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany, and America – were shown as well, and newly remastered discs of the original Gamera (the giant flying turtle who was Godzilla’s chief rival in the 60s) were given away by raffle.

The presentation ranged from the birth of the G-film franchise in the 50s to the present day – a new Godzilla film is due to be released this spring! On the more philosophical topic of what Godzilla means or stands for and the difference between Japanese and American giant monster films, there was interesting talk of the Japanese spiritual tradition called Shinto, and the idea of Godzilla as a destructive deity or divine incarnation of nature such as the Hindu goddess Kali – dark and “evil,” in some ways, perhaps, but still a part of the “plan” of nature. This seems an interesting counterbalance to the oft-proposed idea that The Big G is a symbol of the atomic bomb, an unnatural and evil byproduct of humankind. A great talk, and I’m glad I went.

Also discussed was the way that Godzilla and his or her movies function as a "gateway drug" to Japanese (pop) culture, as they certainly have for me.

Overheard on the bus on the way out: a group of drunk German guys on the bus: one of them said, “In Chermany you can pee anywhere, you can’t do that in America, if the police see you, you pay a lot of money, and maybe you go to chail!”

My romantic life

Today, having finished my morning work shift, for the first time I don't have to dread going home. That's because yesterday evening a friend came over with a rented minivan and helped me move out of the Richmond district flat where I have spent the last month in a state of hostile limbo and into a residential hotel that is going to be my home for the next month or three while I set about rebuilding my life here in San Francisco. It ain't much, but it's mine, and at this point all I want is a little independence, four walls and a roof of my own, until I determine my next more permanent living arrangement - and some permanence in life (and employment) is my main goal at this point.

This city, and the Bay Area in general, have thrown an awful lot at me since I moved here not so long ago (was it really only last September?), but as of this writing, I'm still standing, and I must admit I take a certain pride in surviving the latest in the seemingly endless minefield of setbacks that life (the universe, God, providence, kismet, quantum physics, whathaveyou) has strewn across my path since leaving what looks in retrospect like the womblike and embyronic candy-land of Portland. By the time my time inside the Golden Gate is through, I'll be able to write a book called How to Survive in San Francisco Starting From Absolute Scratch, with the subtitle Despite Moving Here on the Spur of the Moment, Knowing No One, Being Unfamiliar with the Area and Renting a Room Sight-Unseen Over the Phone, Being Mugged at Gunpoint in Oakland, Losing My Job, Being Unemployed and without Income For Nearly Three Months (with Absolutely No Savings), Moving In with a Dishonest and Sexually Inappropriate Maniac, and Being Forced to Apply for Food Stamps and Government Assistance Because I was on the Verge of Being Homeless.

Compared to all that, my life right now - as of last night - seems downright romantic to me, romantic not in the Danielle Steele sense, but in the "starving artist scraping by in the big city, just starting his adult life," novelistic way. I got to eat breakfast and lunch at work this morning, and took home leftovers which I will warm up in the microwave for dinner. I made some tips and got my first paycheck this morning, which I deposited in my checking account, now slowly recovering from my recent depressing dip into total indigence. The building I live in is pretty much equidistant between Chinatown, North Beach and the Financial District - a lively and exhilarating place to spend a month or two while I start over again on a new footing. This evening I will arrange things in my room (including two plants I brought with me - a jade plant and a spider plant - because they're the closest thing I have to a pet right now, and I regard them with the affection usually reserved for sentient creatures), watch a little TV, read - I'm in the middle of five biographies right now: of Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, President Obama, Virginia Woolf, and Jean Cocteau - and make sure I have all my dates and appointments accurately recorded in my planner. I will get a good night's sleep, wake up before the sun tomorrow, take a shower, and get ready for another day of work, and whatever else may happen after - which is really anything, at this point.

Infinite possibility and no one to answer to but myself makes Tony a happy tiger.

VOTE FOR THE 2010 NEWNOWNEXT AWARDS!

VOTE FOR THE 2010 NEWNOWNEXT AWARDS!

Back when it was real, man

Overheard today in San Francisco: Young, scruffy rocker dude, on the sidewalk near Union Square, tells a random group of tourists, "I saw the Stones in concert back in '94, man!" Points to a 20-something tourist girl and says, "You weren't even alive then!" Then his voice trailing after him down the sidewalk: "Those were the REAL days, man! Back when it was REAL!!"

Community Quilt

I'm really gaining appreciation for how San Francisco is like a patchwork quilt, each swatch its own different design (district, 'hood), sewn together into such a magnificent whole. I've been educated about the "microclimates" here - how it may be cold and overcast in the Richmond where I live, but all you gotta do is hop over into Eureka Valley (Castro) and it's sunny delight. It IS sort of like Portland on a large scale, only far more diverse racially and culturally - and meteorologically.

Do I sound like Terence McKenna here?

Here's a weird feeling I had the other day: I was eating some horseradish cheese, but didn't know that, 'cause I was eating pieces of 3 different cheeses and absentmindedly thought i was eating the white cheddar instead. I swear the cheese tasted like cheddar until I thought, "Wait, this is the horseradish," at which point ... it tasted like what it really was - horseradish. It was like the ultra high tech hologram equipment that projects what we think of as "reality" was delayed for a second

The best argument yet for passing health care reform...

Rush Limbaugh will leave the country if it passes!

No pigs were harmed in the posting of this blog entry.

Woolf the monk and Clooney the drunk

Part of me still finds the Academy Awards a nauseating, insular clique of overly privileged mutual admirers...but I'm glad The Dude finally won his Best Actor Oscar (of all those nominated for Best Picture, I most want to see Crazy Heart), and that a female director finally won. Just one question: was George Clooney super drunk, or what?

On an unrelated note, I was recently reading about Virginia Woolf and how those who visit her former home, Monk's House in Rodmell (photo above) - now open to the public as a museum - are surprised to find how small and unadorned her bedroom was, her narrow single bed, and how equally bare-bones her writing lodge, located through the garden, was as well. Lisa Williams in Letters To Virginia Woolf writes of the "chaste and monastic life" Woolf led that allowed her to get so much transcendental writing done. It made me think one day - I've had the this fantasy-future glimmering in the back of my mind for a long time - I will have to leave the city, leave technology behind, and be like Woolf, or Thoreau, go out in the woods, live in a cabin, relinquishing all my material possessions, in order to accomplish writing the great novel or book or whatever it may be that I feel lurking brilliantly yet unobtainably in the depths of my soul and psyche. That was sort of the idea in going to work in Glacier Park a couple summers ago, but it didn't turn out that way. Work ate my summer, and sharing a tiny room with three other guys made that sort of solitude impossible.

The so-called Bloomsbury Group influenced my attitudes, values, and personality a lot at a formative age. Too bad the literary upper middle class they belonged to has all but disappeared. Still, I consider them spiritual predecessors and want to carry on their talent for enduring friendships that last a lifetime. That seems to be harder than ever in a modern urban setting especially, but I'm determined.

On another unrelated note, it just so happens that I appeared (briefly) on channel 2 KTVU news last night here in the Bay Area! They were filming a segment on the LGBT Community Center in San Francisco while i happened to be there perusing the job listings. A friend of mine found the media clip online, if you want to check it out.

Cheers!

glam

Who needs a wig...

I'll just scalp Robert Pattinson and wear his hair!

EZ Egg Cracker!

Is this the most ridiculous thing you've ever seen, or what?

Without Her We're Nothing!

Continuing my trend of being intentionally atopical and anachronistic, I was just watching Sandra Bernhard's one-woman show "Without You I'm Nothing" On Demand on Comcast. (Not the album by Placebo, although I'm sure that's lovely as well, Brian Molko fronting that band and all.) It came out in 1990, and I vividly remember watching it when I was still in high school. It's been years since I saw it. She is such a weird, muppety-looking woman. But I really think "Without You I'm Nothing" is something close to genius.

Auntie April's Soul Food

If you only knew how incredible this is! Growing up in the frozen wastes of northern Minnesota, I always called my aunt "Auntie April." This was my Cousin's mother. Well, the other night he called to tell me to look up an address, right here in San Francisco, because I would sh*t my pants. I typed in the addy and the image above popped up. How incredibly funny that he happened upon this by chance, and that it exists at all, let alone right here in MY new home! Not to mention the fact that this Auntie April is evidently black. I have never encountered another "Auntie April" and thought my aunt (who left this mortal coil back in 2001) the only one. Turns out she's alive and Cookin'. And what's she cookin'? Chicken and waffles, that's what! I said we have to go have brunch there the next time Cuz is in the City. I bet the owners of this joint pronounce it Antie April though instead of the correct, Midwestern way that I learned - pronouncing it the way it's spelled.

On a related note, I wrote about my cherished Auntie April in my nonfiction piece "Lament For the Disappearing Girl" which was published in Portland Queer, edited by Ariel Gore and released under Lit Star Press last year.

Men's vintage PRADA Black Leather Pants

I just put these up for auction on eBay! In case anyone's looking to get in touch with their inner rock star, and has some cash on hand.

UPDATE: SOLD, sorry!

Was Johnny Weir Robbed?

I would say yes, possibly robbed of a bronze medal, definitely scored too low. Wouldn't be the first time this controversy has surrounded figure skating judges. JW however is handling it with admirable grace, especially considering his long-term rival Evan Lysacek won the GOLD. Good for America, sad for me.

Check out this article on the subject.

Paper Heart

Tonight I watched Paper Heart, a pseudo-documentary by "performance artist" Charlyne Yi, and guest-starring the neurotically amusing Michael Cera, about Yi's refusal/reluctance to believe in love, featuring interviews she conducts with bikers, people who have been married for 50 years, little black girls on a playground, and even (in a well-intended if slightly obvious attempt to be inclusive) a gay couple. Unfortunately I found this "documentary" (in quotes because about half of it is obviously scripted in an unconvincing attempt to make it seem like a documentary) problematic, to put it mildly. If Monster and Little Miss Sunshine are examples of indie films that make mainstream movies look phony and bland, Paper Heart is an example of another kind: it illustrates why people (usually older, more "establishment" film reviewers) make fun of indie films and the way the genre has become a formula, as genres are wont to do. Paper Heart isn't Juno, or Sunshine Cleaning (neither of which is great - they're just good); it's the equivalent of a 10-page zine badly xeroxed in black and white by a 12 year old (with the only sold copies purchased by her parents and one equally geeky friend).

The main problem, for me, is that I find Charlyne Yi disingenuous and, to put it bluntly, annoying. She makes a documentary about how she's never fallen in love as a sort of reverse-psychology way of finding a guy to fall in love with, and presents herself on film as a boring, apathetic, socially maladjusted "nobody" as a thin veneer to cover the truth, which is that she's a socially maladjusted, apathetic, boring nobody with no personality. Her voice is annoying. Her inability (or unwillingness) to communicate verbally is annoying. Her attempts to be mysterious and enigmatic by never revealing what she's thinking are simply dull. She pulls all the tricks out of the "indie movie" bag, including segments of (very poor quality) animation inserted at several points, breaking down the fourth wall by having her director argue with her on camera, and the seemingly obligatory scene in which she sings a bad indie song (sort of a low-rent version of the already rather low-rent Mouldy Peaches whose music featured so prominently on the Juno soundtrack).

If Charlyne Yi really is a performance artist - and that wasn't just some fiction cooked up to give this turgid film the appearance of verisimilitude - I'd suggest she stick to her day job: the one clip of her doing stand-up comedy is painful. (In the clip where she interviews the little girls on the playground I thought, "She relates to them because she is on the same level they are, intellectually and emotionally.") The concept of "fake documentary" has been done so much better by others - Christopher Guest comes to mind. The interview segments are obviously real, and are the only semi-interesting part of the movie, but Yi is such a piss-poor interviewer, making no attempt to ask interesting questions or follow up answers with intelligent segues, that they too fall mostly flat.

Ultimately I think Yi's roommate/friend interviewed over the phone early on gets nearest to the truth when she punctures this vapid act, saying she thinks Yi does actually believe in love very much and is just putting on a show as a sort of "hard to get" act for people with absolutely no social (let alone romantic) skills. "And I feel sorry for the guy she marries," the friend ads. Well, you might feel sorry for the audience of this documentary as well. Guest appearances by affable funnyguys like Cera and Seth Rogen can't save this one: Paper Heart needs to go to the paper shredder.

Reading this over, I kind of feel bad that I'm being so harsh on a film that is good-natured, gentle, and basically vulnerable. But should I let those guilty feelings get in the way of saying what I really think about a film when I'm reviewing it?

I can see, to some extent, what Yi and her co-writer/director were trying to do with this documentary, but the blunt fact is, they failed.

The gay bar of my dreams

Is there a gay bar in San Francisco for guys who prefer vintage and thriftstore outfits to department store/designer chic, Nina Hagen to Britney Spears, and Ben Whishaw to Brad Pitt? If so, I want to go there. Often.

Hole Show Thwarted by Squat Riot!

I have just read that the first surprise show that Courtney Love's newly resurrected band Hole was supposed to play at Proud Galleries in Camden last night was canceled because CL wasn't allowed to leave her house due to a "squat riot!" I'm guessing that means a bunch of people squatting in a building refused to leave and the bobbies were called in? (Link to article from Rolling Stone.)

However, there is further excitement in the air (and further reason for me to wish I was in Merry Old England just now): Love is speaking tonight at the Oxford Union, and on the 17th Hole plays a sold-out show at the 02 Shepherd's Bush Empire in London.

Our Lady of the Hole-y Trackmarks Returns!

The All-Drug Olympics

So far 30 athletes have been kicked out of the Winter Olympics (which start this weekend in Vancouver) for failing drug tests!

Unhappy Hipsters

A contact of mine on Livejournal directed me to this site, which is a lot of fun.

Five great performances

I watched The Paper Chase (1973) with my flatmate tonight. It inspired me to post this list of five great cinematic performances I've seen recently.

John Houseman as Professor Kingsfield in The Paper Chase. (Photo above.)

Liz Taylor in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

Susanne Sachße in The Raspberry Reich.

Abbie Cornish in Bright Star.

Burl Ives in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.

Raspberry Revolution

Bruce LaBruce is a funny motherfucker. The other night my roommate and I watched The Raspberry Reich, which I hadn't seen before - surprisingly, Netflix has it! Where Otto: or, Up with Dead People is sort of a softcore porn gay zombie movie with satirical and political underpinnings, Raspberry Reich is more of the sort of film Andy Warhol may have made about midway through his film career if he had been working in East Berlin in the early 2000s and simultaneously more overtly political and more hardcore pornographic than Warhol ever was.

There's no denying it's a very homoerotically - no, homosexually - arousing film, and at the same time, I found it more entertaining than I expected. There were definitely moments where I felt, "LaBruce is just using the appearance of political subtext to satisfy his desire to see cute 'straight' young dudes get it on with each other." Well, no harm there, imho. BLB obviously has the same taste in guys that I do. The film is replete with hypersexualized Marxist propaganda and slogans such as "Out of the bedrooms and onto the streets!", "Heterosexuality is the opiate of the masses!" and "The Revolution is my boyfriend!" Of course, historically in Communist countries pornography has been outlawed and repressed, but that would only enhance its usefulness as a talisman of the sort of rebellion and revolution yearned and struggled for by the film's characters (particularly the hilarious Gudrun, portrayed by Susanne Sachße, who is much like the figure of Medea Yarn - an anagram of Maya Deren - in Otto.)

No doubt about it, this is fun stuff, bridging the gap between art and hardcore porn, with a heavy dollop of radical socialist politics thrown in. Not everyone's cup of tea, no doubt. I won't be recommending it to mum any time soon. But somehow, despite the explicit sexual sequences, I never found it more than...innocently charming. If you enjoy/can stomach films such as Shortbus, Caligula, Salo: The 120 Days of Sodom, Warhol films like Flesh and Chelsea Girls, and early John Waters movies like the infamous Pink Flamingos, this may work for you. If not, just play it safe and read about it here.

As for my own attitude, Perry Farrell summed it up best years ago: Nothing's shocking.

And...

We just got our dining room table a new cloth, it's lookin' good. Good Taste will host many nutritious epicurean gatherings here. And just wait until it's painted BURGUNDY with gold trim!

A room of one's own

Check out this photo of the bookshelf I got (for FREE! bottom shelf needs bracket fixed but that'll be a jiffy) today, it really transforms and solidifies this section of the room. I am so proud of my room. It is my art right now. Haven't been painting, or writing much (except journal), but this room was EMPTY - and poorly painted - ...when I arrived. I have never invested so much in my living space before. An not just my room, but the entire flat I live in is undergoing a major renovation and rejuvenation. In the past year or so I've started "thinking outside the canvas," and lately the creative mediums I have worked in most are food and decoration/interior design.

My crush just got crushier...

Check out young Brit beauty Ben Whishaw with his newly shorn locks! I'm loving the cropped look on this elfin thespian maestro...currently on stage in "The Pride" (directed by Alexi Kaye Campbell) in which he plays gay, again (and apparently rather explicitly) with Hugh Dancy. Here is a titillating interview with the two of them talking about the play from New York Magazine.

Hey Bay Area boys who like to cook and dine...

My cooking / dining club "Good Taste" is seeking to revitalize itself with new members and a focus on in-home dining! Check out the Craigslist ad I just posted.

Animal rights activists threaten those they disagree with

I am an animal lover, and I've never really worn fur, except some really old things of my cousin's that he ordered off some antique collectibles site, and that was for about two minutes. But I eat meat and I wear leather, so who am I to dictate to others how to conduct themselves? When I read an article like this - in which Olympic figure skater Johnny Weir decides to take the tufts of fox fur off his costume in order to appease activists who wanted to intimidate him into obeying them - I start to feel that animal rights activists have become the thugs in this scenario. They threaten with violence those who disagree with them or who do not follow their rules. I part company with PETA and its ilk at this point. Live according to your own self-righteous rules, but DON'T try to forcibly impose them on others. Other human beings are not required to follow your regulations, however benign or altruistic they may be.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Last night while waiting for the split peas to mushify themselves into soup we started watching Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. I'd seen the film version of Edward Albee's play several years ago at my apartment in Portland (back when I lived on the same block as Holocene!), but my new flatmate, who is a history teacher, pumped me up with a discussion of all of its historical, political, psychological themes and references (George and Martha Washington, the Cold War, fear of communism, Freudian elements, the war between the sexes, etc.) which had largely gone over my head before. Movies, like poems, you sometimes have to go over twice before you glean their meaning - the first time they just kind of wash over you. After seeing it for the second time last night I can definitely add it to my list of favorite movies.

I first read some of Albee's play back in college while going through my hardcore Virginia Woolf / Bloomsbury phase. (When I finally make it to England, I'll definitely be making pilgrimmages to Woolf /Stephen sites such as the River Ouse, Gordon Square in Bloomsbury, Hogarth House, Charleston, etc.) Imagine my disappointment when I discovered it actually has absolutely nothing to do with Woolf! In fact the title seems to be meaningless, although I was thinking about it and came up with a theory - Woolf was childless her entire life and often felt she wasn't a fully successful woman because she'd never created a life. Since the movie is filled with references to babies and children (who are never seen, only talked about), it seems the choice of title may be a sly reference to Martha and George's predicament, with the weird theme of their imaginary "son" who dominates much of the dialogue in the second and third acts without ever actually solidfying into a flesh-and-blood being.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is filmed in gorgeous, high-contrast black and white that bathes everything in a silvery, gelatin-plate luminescence. The cinematographer (Haskell Wexler) uses an extreme wide-angle lens in many of the close-up shots that adds a grotesque, funhouse-mirror effect that accentuates the dramatic tension of the action. It's a brilliant, drunken trainwreck of a movie. Fun for the whole family! My flatmate says, "This was Albee's attempt to lift the veil on American family life and show the ugly truth beneath it." Interesting, because that's the same premise of some of my other favorite films as well, such as Blue Velvet and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Strange bedfellows?

I love the way Liz Taylor plays Martha, but Sandy Dennis as Honey aggravates me. I want to take her weak little wrists and just break them. Interesting how when someone takes vulnerability to an extreme, it brings out your sadistic impulses - you want to hurt them, because they seem to be calling for that response from you. I tend to admire strength in women and vulnerability in men. Although sometimes the opposite in both cases, as well.

I think I want to write a play in a similar style about the Castro District, where I was job-hunting yesterday. About its evolution / transformation over the years from working class neighborhood (named after one of the Spanish missionaries, lots of Irish immigrants) to gay ghetto beginning in the 60s, and finally into its current sad state of utterly gentrified yuppiegaiety.

I'd still work there, though.

Five Happinesses are better than one!

Riding home from the waterfront yesterday (after a long walk and a visit to the farmer's market), I passed the Five Happiness Mandarin Restaurant. Asian restaurant names rule.

Also, according to two new shows I just watched on Discovery, sasquatch probably does exist, and the Loch Ness Monster probably doesn't. You have to take each paranormal phenomenon on a case-by-case basis, just like with conspiracy theories.

Golden Oreos

Isn't it curious that Oreos have chosen this moment - with Obama in the White House - to go golden?

2010: Year of the Tiger!

So it is, according to the Chinese zodiac. Naturally, this sounds promising for me, even though my Chinese zodiac sign is the dragon. Specifically a FIRE dragon, since I was born between Jan. 31 1976 and Feb. 17 1977.

I had really nice flying dreams last night for the first time in a long time. I consider this a good omen for the new chapter of my life I've embarked on now that I've moved out of Oakland and into a beautiful Edwardian flat in Central Richmond (between the Golden Gate Bridge and Golden Gate Park). In the dream I felt that the ground level was dangerous and I wanted to soar carefree above it. I was doing quite well last night. Interesting how within the dream it's a matter of confidence and focus: if I lose focus or start thinking too much about what I'm doing, I start to lose altitude and sink toward ground.

Yes, I can see the Freudian aspect of this. But it can't be simply phallic, can it? Women have flying dreams too. I've always associated it more with healing, serenity, a healthy state of mind, positivity and kinetic energy. A good note to start a new year on.

Grizzlies vs. wolves! Killer whales vs. great white sharks!

I ignored the Golden Globes last night to flip between the Discovery Channel, which was airing a new 2-hour episode of its Planet Earth series (which is really the best, most beautifully filmed nature series I've ever seen), and channel 9 (public broadcasting) which had a new episode of Nature called Clash: Grizzly Bear and Wolf Encounters. The interactions of these two top predators of Yellowstone certainly make for fascinating viewing. Sometimes the wolves keep the carcass, sometimes the bear (when it's big enough, or hungry enough) takes it away from them, and the wolves simply wait patiently until the bear is finished. As for the Planet Earth footage, have you seen the images of the so-called "chandelier ballroom" of Lechuguilla Cave? (A secret cave whose exact location is not available to the public, and which the Planet Earth crew had to negotiate for two years to get to film.) Fucking incredible. There are lifeforms there that live by eating the rock itself. Scientists say that cave, which was completely sealed off from the rest of the planet for millions of years, and contains some of the purest water on earth (completely free of pollutants), is similar to what might be found in subterranean caverns on the moon.

Then this morning I caught a National Geographic episode called The Whale That Ate Jaws, documenting the first-ever eyewitness account of a killer whale attacking and killing a great white shark not far outside of San Francisco Bay in 1997. It was a really fascinating program! Orcas are so smart (as one might expect, being basically giant dolphins) they know how to turn the shark upside down to place it into what's known as "tonic immobility," meaning that it goes into a trance, its brain floods with serotonin and it's basically helpless at that point. Even more amazing, once one great white is killed, it releases a chemical into the water that alerts all the other great whites in the area and they all flee en masse hundreds of miles away to escape further predation. Absolutely astounding.

This raised a fascinating question for me, though, which wasn't addressed in the segment. If scientists can re-create the shark's death chemical and use it to make sharks flee with lightning speed even in the middle of a feeding frenzy, as was demonstrated in the show, couldn't that chemical be sold to human swimmers and used as a fail-proof shark repellant in waters inhabited by great whites? Surely someone else must have thought of that by now...

Johnny Be Good!

Yesterday flipping through TV channels I noticed that the men's free skate was on NBC, airing live from Spokane - the competition that decides who goes to the Olympics in Vancouver next month! I immediately called my mother, who before I could say anything said, "I was hoping you'd call so I could tell you Johnny Weir is about to skate!" I said, "I know, that's why I called you!"

Johnny looked nervous and his performance was subdued compared to the more flamboyant things he's done in the past - it looked like he was playing it safe, and doing as many spins and jumps as he could to rack up points to make up for ones he'd previously lost. His costume was typically sparkly and fey, with tufts of white fox-fur lining the shoulders and along the arms. I understand he designs them himself. I love the unapologetic way he embraces the effeminacy of male figure skating rather than trying to butch it up. As he said in an interview,

I wear pink. I have no problem where my sport is as far as our fan base. Figure skating is theatrical, artistic; it’s elegant, it’s extremely athletic. There’s a very specific audience for that. I can say I don’t watch football games, so I don’t understand why a football fan would come to watch figure skating.

You go, boy! I'll even forgive you your Lady GaGa obsession. (I'm Just Not That Into Her.) And I'm definitely looking forward to watching what transpires on the ice in Vancouver in February. Chin up! You're a star, AND a champion.

I got the Weir quote above from this nice article from today's New York Times.

ALSO, Johnny's new program Be Good Johnny Weir premieres TONIGHT on the Sundance Channel at 10:30pm! Read more here.

Incidentally, my Mom's favorite sports to watch are figure skating and bull riding. How funny is that?

Whishaw as 'Ariel' in Tempest

Ben Whishaw is going to play "Ariel" in the new all-star film version of The Tempest! A role which, according to Wikipedia, was played by women from the 1600s up through the 1930s, when men reclaimed it.

Also, here is an update on "Kill Your Darlings," the movie about the Beats that Ben is supposed to have a role in, playing Lucien Carr, who murdered the older man that Allen Ginsberg was having a relationship with during his college days at Columbia University. A noir-ish account of a murder involving the Beats (with Jesse Eisenberg as Ginsberg and Chris Pine as Jack Kerouac)? Could be a groaner, but...I'll watch it, if it ever gets made. (Ben doesn't sound too hopeful of that happening in this interview clip.)

Little earthquake

Why do DMVs have to always be absolutely the most depressing, sepulchral institutional buildings known to humankind? Doesn't everyone have to get a driver's license, even fancy rich people? Yet all I see when I go there, generally speaking, are the most down-and-out, unwashed people all corraled together as though selected for some sort of government population-culling program. This was certainly true of the San Francisco DMV between Fell and Divisadero which I visited a few weeks ago in an attempt to get the state ID I lost after being mugged a while back - only to be bluntly turned away after waiting in line (and having some crackhead cut in line in front of me) for a good bit of time, because I didn't have a certified copy of my birth certificate. Don't get me started on why I didn't have my birth certificate...it's such a ridiculous and infuriating catch-22.

Anyway, I found a loophole out of the catch-22 and did recently - at long last - receive a copy of my birth certificate. On Friday I walked a good way and then took two buses to the DMV in Oakland on Claremont, only to find the doors barred in my face - it's inexplicably closed the first, second, and third Friday of every month! Yes, I know I should've called before I went in, but I had only recently looked up their hours on the web, and I swear it said they were open 8am-5pm Monday through Friday! (In other words, normal DMV hours.) Maybe this is some new 2010 bullshit due to budget cuts that just started this month? I was pissed, but hope wasn't lost: on the bus ride in I'd noticed a pho house on Telegraph Ave just blocks from the DMV. It had seemingly materialized in response to my desire, because I'd been craving pho on the way in, but the disciplined part of my mind was going to make me wait until I'd completed my grim errand to the always-depressing DMV before I rewarded myself with a big delicious bowl of Vietnamese beef noodle soup trimmed with lime, fresh basil, cilantro, bean sprouts, jalapeno peppers, sweet plum and red hot chili pepper sauce. (There are certain foods I get cravings for sometimes that are almost overpowering: sometimes I want a good burger, sometimes I crave Mexican food with beans and rice, sometimes I would give anything for a nice slice of cheesecake, other times I would gnaw off a limb for a good bowl of pho.)

I ordered a large and the waitress brought out a bathtub full of pho, with even a little side-dish of kim chi, something I've never had before with pho. I spent a delicious hour slowly absorbing every flavor, in every combination, that the pho had to offer. So that alone made the trip worthwhile.

Then I walked to the MacArthur BART station, a matter of blocks away. I got on and noticed the train wasn't moving. Eventually the conductor came on the PA system and announced, "Folks, we've just had word of a 3.8-magnitude earthquake near Milpitas. Hopefully we'll be moving shortly."

I hadn't felt anything. And in a little bit the train did start moving. But I can already say I've been through my first Bay-Area earthquake.

Bright Star DVD release

Out on DVD on Jan. 26th here in the states is Bright Star, Jane Campion's beautiful and heartbreaking cinematic rendering of the brief and star-crossed love affair between poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne, starring Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish. I saw it in the theater, and left a little misty-eyed. I can't handle movies this achingly romantic and sad very often, but every once in a while, you've got to, just to remind yourself you're human. Of course, I will see (and own) every movie that Ben Whishaw appears in, but I have to say, if there's one performance in Bright Star that cries out for an Oscar nod, it's that of Abbie Cornish. She makes Fanny Brawne the sort of independent, creative soul you really care about, admire and feel for.