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.

suicide / sunshine cleaning / otto the zombie

There was an attempted suicide at the 82nd Ave MAX stop yesterday late afternoon, just as I was rushing home from the media center to do my exercises and get ready for the Hat Party. We stalled at the Lloyd Center stop and the operator announced that there was a person "involved with a train in some way" but that they were "getting it cleaned up," which sounded gruesome. I know all the gory horror movies I've seen haven't desensitized me to violence, because the thought of getting off the train and seeing human remains made my stomach churn. I considered getting off at the 60th Ave stop and walking up. But when we got off, there was no sign of any carnage. The news crews all had vans and cameras on the overpass, but the word "attempted" sounds like it didn't work for whoever the poor person was. (You thought you were depressed before!) I didn't get to watch the news 'cause I was at the Hat Party.

More on that later.

Speaking of human remains, I saw "Sunshine Cleaning" this morning - Joel accompanied me - we both loved it. Amy Adams is kind of a warmer, likable, younger Nicole Kidman. Alan Arkin of course superb as always, and Emily Blunt very funny as well. Definitely an "A."

As part of my gearing-up-for-Maui-and-then-San-Francisco process, I've resolved to make at least one drawing or visual artwork - even if it's only a rough sketch - every day from now until I leave, to tone up the parts of my brain used in drawing and painting, which have probably atrophied since I've been inactive in those mediums for so long. I'm relieved to find I haven't lost anything in the interim, in fact I think I'm better than ever. I'm ramping up to begin painting again when I get to the islands. I think I need to paint and draw nothing but cute boys for a while, because when I make picture of people I'm attracted to, they always come out well. I'm motivated to finish and to make them as attractive as I find them. Hence the portrait of Otto from the Bruce LaBruce film "Otto; or, Up with Dead People" above. (Otto played by Jey Crisfar, who unfortunately swears on his MySpace page that he will never show his ass on camera again.)

I just ordered a copy of Otto off Amazon. It's a keeper. Definitely the best gay zombie porn film I've seen.