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!