What I'm reading right now

I've always loved and felt at home in libraries, ever since I used to hide out in them to escape the terror of middle/high school in Hillsboro, Oregon and other lovely places where I got to grow up. What kind of world would we have if there were no public libraries? (Well, there would still be bookstores, which are even better in some ways, but they aren't free.) I always loved the quote from Jorge Luis Borges etched in the stone vestibule of the magnificent Central Library in downtown Portland:

"I have always imagined heaven to be a kind of library."

I know exactly what he means. An endless library, like a labyrinth of books and shelves and floors without limit, that never closes, and that contains every book, zine, magazine, newspaper, and publication ever written by anyone ever anywhere. I used to read voraciously, and nothing pleased me more than spending hours with a big glass of iced tea and maybe some cheese and crackers reading inside by candlelight, or outside by sunlight, feeding my head, growing wiser as I absorbed the knowledge and experience and imagination of other people, places, and things.

Lately, after losing my love of literature and reading to various other worldy pursuits and difficulties that diverted my attention elsewhere, I'm regaining my love of reading. Here are a few things I'm currently reading:

THE HYPOCRISY OF DISCO, by Clane Hayward. A memoir of her hardscrabble hippie childhood and how she broke out of it and rebelled by joining the mainstream that had always been denied her by her hardcore macrobiotic hippiedippy mom. I've been looking on it as inspiration for the memoir my cousin and I are writing (which is coming along nicely now). My first impression was that the writing (I don't know if Clane had a ghostwriter or not, I'm guessing no) was adequate, workmanlike, but struck me as one draft short of a final draft, and could be improved in terms of grammar, punctuation, and the general arrangement and quality of the writing. But since I've read more of it I've come upon some passages of beauty and warmed up to her bare-bones style. I've always enjoyed memoirs and autobiography.

THE ANCIENT SECRET OF THE FLOWER OF LIFE, VOL. 2, by Drunvalo Melchizedek. I don't have volume one, so I'm probably starting at the wrong end of the pool, but this was loaned to me and it's the sort of arcane, mystical text treating of paranormal matters past and present, hard to find I'm told. The theory goes that there is a sort of basic geometric shape, The Flower of Life, which is reflected in everything from celestial bodies to human bodies to intangibles like human consciousness to the Ancient Pyramids of Egypt. I definitely have a certain predisposition for mysticism and this book is feeding it. Lots of fun if you're the type of person who likes watching TV shows about UFOs, "unexplained mysteries," crop circles, Ripley's Believe It or Not, et. al. Seek it out and unlock its secrets!

BRIDESHEAD REVISITED, by Evelyn Waugh. I know, you know. But I'm almost finished with it now. I've found it immensely enjoyable reading and would class it as high literature. But it's too bad Waugh wrote at a time when he had to avoid direct mention of the fact that Sebastian was gay, and that's why I remain defiant in my passion for the film version which came out last year, with un-closeted Sebastian played by beautiful actor Ben Whishaw.

AUDTION, by Barbara Walters. An avoirdupois memoir by the queen of sappy TV interviews and elderly View co-hostess. It'll be a guilty pleasure, when I actually start reading it. It's a few down from the top in the stack right now. I laughed when I heard my Cousin talk about how Barbara uses Elisabeth Hasselbeck as her puppet to voice the conservative views that Barbara herself doesn't want to spout on The View, since she doesn't want to come across as the old person baffled by the progressive state of modern culture that she is. But hey, beneath all that hairspray and makeup beats a heart of solid brass.

Fake meat in a can (better than it sounds!)

The editor of the Gay & Lesbian Review Magazine responded to my pitch for an in-depth comparison of the different versions of Brideshead Revisited - novel, miniseries and film - by saying he liked the pitch but it won't work out because it just so happens that they've published a piece on the movie version, featuring an interview with Julian Jarrold, in the issue that just came out! It's a bummer since of all the suggestions I got, that would probably have been the most perfect venue for the piece. So I'm kind of at an impasse with that. On a slightly more positive note, though, Out Magazine just wrote to tell me they're publishing my letter on the same topic in their next issue - the one I wrote in response to their piece on the recent re-issuing of the miniseries in a new DVD package.

Now to skip from obsessions present to obsessions past: I tracked down and ordered a case of Choplets and a case of Veja-Links, the hard-to-find meat substitute products I was introduced to by the Seventh-Day Adventist farm family who babysat me as a child back in Minnesota. They arrived today and were a delicious treat when I came home from job-hunting. They taste just like I remember them and I had an entire can of veja-links, then turned it over to see that serving size is "1 link." (Riiiight.) What IS it about textured vegetable protein, wheat gluten, etc. that is so compulsively scrumptious? And why is this particular brand (Worthington/Loma Linda) so hard to find? It's like one little lady is making them in a cottage in the Midwest or something, and she only supplies a limited number. Anyway, we'll eat well for a while.

Suggestions, please!

I want to pitch an in-depth article (anywhere from 1000 to 5000 words) comparing/contrasting the different versions of "Brideshead Revisited" - novel, miniseries and film - and need ideas of a venue for such a piece.

Something literary, highbrow, intellectual enough. It'll have a gay slant to it, so gay publications seem an obvious choice, but magazines (I'm thinking Out) are usually fluff pieces; they don't go in depth and they aren't overly literary. It's more about clothes, cocktails and other ephemera. Or politics. Book reviews are usually blurbs. I'm part of a dying breed, I suppose....the literary intellectual.

It could be a film magazine.
A literary magazine.
A British publication of some kind.
Just a high-end publication in general that publishes essays, such as The New Yorker. (And I'll send it to them, but they'll send a form rejection letter if they reply at all. I mean, they're THE NEW YORKER, and I'm just...me.)
Does McSweeney's publish this sort of thing? I forget.

Thanks for any ideas you may have

xo

glam aka tony

Le chemin de l'amour

Did you know "anti-Semitic" means not just anti-Jew (as many Americans in our pro-Israel country think) but also "anti-Arab"? An Arab friend of mine pointed that out to me recently, and he got me, because I only hear about the Jewish side of things, never the Arab side.

I just watched a movie called "The Road To Love" (Le chemin de l'amour en francais, dir. Remi Lange) about a French-Algerian "straight" guy who sets out to make a documentary on gay Muslims in the modern Maghreb region of North Africa. My first impression was that its production values were harrowingly low, the entire thing being shot with a shaky-hand home video camera. But knowing from first-hand experience how much inspiration and motivation it takes to realize even a short film when you're operating in a very independent, no-budget, making-it-up-as-you-go-along context, I shelved my initial impression and watched the entire film. It makes up in sweetness and novelty what it lacks in sophistication. I learned some things, too, particularly about the Siwa Oasis of Egypt, which in ancient times had a reputation for being what we would now call very "gay friendly," acknowledging marriages between men, and with its chieftain/pharaoh/whathaveyou keeping harems of boys for his pleasure. Towards the end the two main boys, Farid and Karim, make a pilgrimage to the grave of Jean Genet. (The film is in French.) There's also a segment where they go to Marrakech (Morocco) in search of gay bars which they don't find; instead of organized establishments exonerating and enshrining homosexuality like we have stateside, they happen upon covert roaming bands of homo people who acknowledge one another with subtle (or not so) cues. It's all quite fascinating to see how other (religiously biased) cultures deal with this issue that we've more or less come to accept in our secular capitalistic way.

I remember a friend of mine back in PDX telling me about going to the big market called the Medina in Marrakech and how it's like a labyrinth that can be scary because if you've never been in it before you can become trapped and frightened, and gangs of gypsy children will offer to show you the way out for money, but if you refuse them, they'll help make it a nightmare for you that you won't soon forget.

Hmm. I might have to go with a seasoned guide, if I do go.

ALSO, the new issue of OUT has a page on the reissue of the 1980s "Brideshead Revisited" miniseries, as though pointedly spitting in the face of my verbose love for the film version that came out last year. They give one indirect and dismissive mention of Jarrold's film, only to assure us there's no way to match the way Jeremy Irons and...whatsisname, who played Sebastian Flyte..."languorously inhabit" the characters from Waugh's novel.

Well, I just moved the DVDs of the miniseries to the top of my queue on Netflix. I'll be seeing them soon. I already have a good idea of what I'll think. I'll probably find it intoxicating, addictive, lots of fun, sexy in a restrained way, etc etc, and of course a more faithful and in-depth treatment of the book.

But that's not going to make me love the film version any less. I like its bold revisionism.

And only the film version has Ben.

But I will withhold judgment until I've given the hallowed 1981 series its due.

Hat Party / acting / Mercury vs. Village Voice

The Hat Party was fun, but the after-party crowd didn’t turn out. Neither did several of the people I went to the trouble of putting on the guest list. (Grrrrrrrrrr. I’m not mad at Vicky, though. She had a valid excuse, plus she’s going to let me store my boxes in her basement until I can have them shipped to San Fran, which is a lifesaver.) It was exciting until 10 or 11pm, then tapered off sharply, and I left around 12:30. Got great footage of the performers and the hat contest. Seventh and Element showed up early and made quite an entrance, since Element was wearing nothing but a leather harness and black jockstrap, and shaking his bare ass on the dance floor. I was glad when they appeared, though, ‘cause the party needed that extra push into un-inhibition. Sean and LeeAnn both snapped mass photos. The cute go-go boy from last year wasn’t there, they had other ones instead. I met a girl named Alison, Baby LeStrange’s friend, who is a film editor and photographer and gave me her card. Also a guy named Gregor, a former Silverado bartender, with whom I traded old memories of the City Nightclub and Portland back in the day. He said when My Own Private Idaho was filming River and Keanu would come to the City and Keanu would smoke pot in the bathroom constantly and River was “a weird guy.” (He’s also the first person I fell in love with, before Dylan, and before Ben Whishaw, unless you count Krystal Capps, but that was a different, platonic sort of love.)

Joel showed up after 10pm and said he loved the way Art Police turned out. He said every time Justin was on screen it made him laugh, and that Emie has the quality of a silent movie star – those big, expressive doe eyes. (“You should make a silent film with her.”) He also praised my editing, saying “You created spaces that didn’t exist.” It’s true that editing is where the magic really happens: you can take a bad movie and make it a good one through editing, that’s how potent it is to the final mix. Kirk said I should check into doing some community theater when I get to San Francisco, which is something I was already considering. Acting will help bring out my emotions more. I’m already starting to come alive again. I feel like the last eight years or so have been a slow recovery from the time I almost died from drugs, and for a long time after that I was in a sort of semi-zombified state, half alive you might say, which is why I related so much to Andy Warhol (post-assassination attempt Warhol, I mean). But I think I’ve finally made a full recovery. And corny as it may sound, it’s a certain English actor I’m obsessed with that brought me the final step back to being fully alive. Because if you lack the ability to love you can’t be full alive as a human being.The moment I first saw “Brideshead Revisited” in the theater it instantly became one of my favorite movies of all time. I’m going to do a series of expressive portraits of Ben when I get to Maui, I’ve decided. I did a preliminary drawing last night, and it came out really well. I think I’ll send it to Ben, in fact. I believe I am actually friends with him on MySpace.

Yesterday after seeing "Sunshine Cleaning" Joel and I had lunch at the Sunshine Cafe (where I had one of the worst gyros I've ever eaten and a semi-decent peanut butter cookie) and I brought up newspapers, saying I'd like to find one to write for in San Fran. I said the Village Voice would be my ideal, and Joel said the VV is only so revered and important because it's in New York, "If the Mercury was in New York it would be the Village Voice," he said, and I said I thought most of the writing in the VV is better than what's in the Mercury - the Stranger might be a better comparison - and I went off on the relentless snarkiness of the Mercury, and Joel said he likes that their reviews of bad movies are brutal, just tearing the film to shreds, but I said yes, they do that well, but they don't have the OTHER side of it. Let's say I wanted to write a review of "Brideshead Revisited," a film that truly moved me, that I think is beautiful and the highest cinematic art. I want to write a review that expresses that in a sincere, passionate, truthful way. And the sort of review I would write about a movie I loved wouldn't fit in the Mercury. They're too concerned with proving their coolness by being cynical and snarky to genuinely and unselfconsciously praise the beauty of a film. That is a LAME definition of cool and not one I will ever accept. I want to write for a paper where I can express the full range of my responses to art without tailoring them for a mentally deficient or emotionally lopsided audience. If you've read my film reviews in Just Out, you know I can decimate a shitty movie with the best of them, but that is hardly the range of my abilities.

All I care about is telling the truth as I see it.

I ran into Cliff at PSU yesterday – little Cliff who I made “Pestilence” with last year for our video class with Holly Andres. He said, “Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere else?” I guess I copied him on the email I sent out before I left for Glacier. Melanie arrives late Thursday night, and Lisa next Tuesday (St. Patrick's Day), and then it's only a week until I'm leaving on a jet plane for the islands! Oh, joy! My adult life begins NOW.

Garcon Stupide / Fat Actress / being a penniless aristocrat

Here it is March at last, and I wrote my last (pro-rated) rent check to Meghan last night. I can’t lie: I am so ready to be gone, and if I could hop on the plane to Maui right now I would. I guess I must have changed, because Portland probably hasn’t, but the fact is now with the prospect of semi-tropical sunlight in the near future, I find this dreary chilly gray climate really dispiriting and de-motivating. I spent most of yesterday editing at the media center, got the final cut of Bad News done, turned it in for broadcasting and put it up on YouTube, which I probably shouldn’t, because it’s going to have a stultifying effect on me, and certainly no one who sees it is going to want to touch me with a ten foot stick, I look chubby and bloated and most unattractive, but to be true to the spirit of that little project I had to play the clown. It’ll only make it more dramatic when I transform into a golden creature of light and toned muscles and sun-kissed skin on Maui and then go bag me a boy on San Fran! I didn’t plan ahead again so there was no laptop I could check out to bring home with me, so now I have to wait until Wednesday when the media center is open again to go in and finish editing, which sucks when you’re in the thick of the project and just want to keep working till it’s done, and obviously now we aren’t going to be able to submit Art Police to Gold Coyote: the deadline was yesterday. That’s probably my own screw-up fault, although even if I had really devoted every minute to editing it still would have been a dreadfully narrow shave so to speak, and it turned into a lot more work than expected, both the shooting and the editing. There are other places I’d like to submit it to anyway: the 10 or Less festival, and Slamdance, although I think that happened in January, so it’ll be a long wait. What I can do, though, is bring it down to San Francisco with me and shop it around there, introduce us to a whole new tableau of artistic personages. But I’ve definitely got to make it a priority to get my own film equipment in the near future so I don’t have to always be at the mercy of the fickle gods of community media. (Much as I love it.) Certainly I need to get a hard drive of my own, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to install Final Cut Pro on my laptop any time soon: I asked Neal (cool old bearded chap who seems to not only work but LIVE at the media center) how much it costs and he estimated the full suite at around $1300, Final Cut by itself at $800-900. Yeeeowwch. When I got home Meghan was having dinner with her friend Brian who made a Rollerderby documentary and (I presume) his dude, and they invited me to join them, but I wasn’t really hungry, and was in a frantic mood of getting things done (cleaning, packing, laundry, etc.) so bowed out. The truth is I relate to people way more based on temperament, taste and style than sexual orientation. I’m a weird mix of lower and upper class, not so much middle. That is, I grew up in pretty much Midwestern, white-trash poverty, but never felt I belonged there, that it was just kind of a cruel joke, and I’ve always felt I belonged in a castle in England somewhere instead. Basically, I’m an aristocrat with no money and no pedigree. I’ll have to make my own money and start my own pedigree, I guess. Nico said she can take Lucy, and will let me have her back later if the opportunity arises, and I think that’s a better option than Vicky, who has four cats (and one angry husband) already. Cousin Ant says I’ll probably smoke more weed when I get out to Maui because “it’s the national pastime.” It probably wouldn’t be a bad move to forego the liquor and pick up the pipe instead. Although I’m thinking I may not need much of either from here on out. I want to get addicted to exercise: an addiction that’s actually good for me! I watched Garcon Stupide last night. A good example of how a movie can be full of NC17 kinky sex and still be....not very sexy at all. I wasn’t really turned on once. The extremely restrained scene in Brideshead Revisited where Sebastian kisses Charles (this is my blog, I’ll be as obsessive as I want, thankyoukindly) is so much sexier than the one in Garcon Stupide where the lead boy watches his trick sit on a giant dildo. French movies are so cerebral, in the sense of being concerned with thoughts and dialogue and “interior reality” rather than straightforward plot and action, which I suppose I should like, but honestly there were a number of scenes that struck me as an amateur film project for college, dialogue scenes that went on way too long and would’ve benefited from some cutting. I also got Fat Actress and it’s sooo funny, sort of like Curb Your Enthusiasm with a female protagonist, but there were only four episodes of it made. Too bad Kirstie Alley got skinny again. Shit, this Sunday is the Hat Party, isn’t it? And I haven’t a stitch to wear.

The Only Faith I Need. And Being In Love. (Me??)

Where to pick up the pieces, and which pieces to pick up, those are my questions right now. Creatively I’m finally almost back on top. School, on the other hand, is not good...not good at all. I am so burnt out on it and have no motivation. Kind of stuck in this unpleasant stage between leaving one place and starting a brilliant new chapter. Six months on Maui! And San Francisco afterwards. I am the luckiest S.O.B. ever, and it's weird to have this one family member - and one so fabulous it's like I invented him myself out of some psychic need - care enough to extend this invitation to me, after living a life in which "family" has always been pretty much nonexistent, or else depressing and tragic to the point where I just have to shut it out to keep from going to pieces. And I've kind of been going to pieces lately.

Oddly - but not oddly for me, really - it's a new movie that's instigated a sort of landslide of emotions that has been threatening to bury me lately. It's Brideshead Revisited, the new film version, which came out late last year - I saw it alone in a theater full of elderly nursing home church people of some kind (I had to pick a Sunday afternoon!), who were probably all hooked on the '80s miniseries, and watched the film in total silence, then shuffled out, possibly completely offended by some of the bold changes in the new version (including the one brief kiss between Charles and Sebastian that brings the gay subtext to the surface, and the brilliant ending that switches Charles' conversion to Catholicism into a tolerance of faith despite his own professed atheism) - but it is these very changes that I love so much, I know I've been one of those people in the past who vehemently protests when someone does a modern "update" and changes an author's work, so this is an example of seeing the other side of that debate. Then again I haven't read the novel yet, although I purchased a copy I plan to read on Maui - with the poster imagery from the new film version on the cover! I may be the only one talking so passionately about this film, but hey, never stopped me before. And then of course there is Ben Whishaw, who I've already sung a thousand love songs to before, and his, in my opinion almost astonishing performance as Sebastian in the new version. I'm in the peculiar place of being enamored of this character on the one hand, wanting him to be real, wanting to know him, wanting to save him from self-destruction, and on the other hand feeling that he represents me, in some ways, more than any other character I've seen in a film in half of forever. But he's different than me, too, and Ben's performance is helping make me a better person. I've watched it a number of times recently with four different groups of people - definition of friendship: people you share your obsessions with! - and I study his character - his gentleness, his manner of speaking (God the British accent is hot! Maybe the hottest of all), just the look in his eyes - and take from it things I can use to improve my own personality. This is a roundabout way of saying that I'm in love - I really am, like head over heels, and this never happens to me - with a character from a film, and by extension, with the actor who portrayed him (there's no denying looks are part of the equation!) The unfortunate thing is that this being in love business can be dreadfully depressing - the worst soul ache a human can feel, I think, except maybe a mother losing her offspring, I'm guessing. It happened to me long ago with a real person, ONCE, and I simply couldn't bear the pain of it and made a resolution to never let it happen to me again, so I gave up love and sex and relationships and the whole thing and just said it's better to be alone, and that's how I've been forever. Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe it's a harbinger of good things to come. I'm definitely approaching a major turning point.

I am so glad Sam Adams didn’t have to resign in the face of this artificial, tawdry, tabloid-in-a-teapot controversy. At the same time, I will say that I would never advocate damaging newspaper boxes because people don’t agree with your opinion, which apparently happened to Just Out. Marty Davis posted something a while back cautioning people to beware that everything they post on Facebook can be read by every major media outlet in Portland. I’m sure that caution wasn’t intended for me, because it’s probably pretty obvious that I’m not very shy when it comes to revealing personal thoughts as well as vehement opinions on virtually any subject. I COPIED my letter to WW’s editor to every major media outlet in Portland! I also sometimes write about some really personal stuff and put it up on public websites. I’m not fully sure why, some form of mass confession maybe, but also simply because I want people to know me, warts and all, and then I guess I really write a lot of it for myself, a self-psycho-analysis thing, and in case it's interesting enough for anyone else, why not share it? I don't really care if people know the less savory things about me or the sometimes severe mistakes I make or the more unhealthy impulses I sometimes succumb to. I don't want to hide anything. I disclose everything and I like people who are similarly honest and strong enough to make themselves as vulnerable as I sometimes do. I believe in myself and that is the only faith I need.