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.)

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.

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.

Goldilocks and the three laptops

Spent some time at the Fireside Coffee Lodge yesterday, which kind of has the feel of a hostel. Actually with the fireplace and all the stout hairy men it kind of feels like “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” except that Goldilocks is nowhere in sight, and the three bears are fixated on their laptop computers. I’m waiting for a call back from Kevin Reedy and still brainstorming questions for “Daddy Donner” about How To Be A Gay Porn Star. I put the Sluts and Squares performers in touch with Pat, who will hopefully line them up for the Hat Party, and in so doing I’ve realized that I’m pretty good at this connecting-people thing, juggling different people I know in my mind and thinking “you would work good with so-and-so,” and I’m thinking that may be a career path I should pursue, a way to make money while I devote my free time to various creative endeavors of my own. Meghan said she read a book recently by a guy who talks about different personality types and the “connector” type, which I guess I am, is not something everyone has, it’s a talent.

Prior to getting caffeinated at the Fireside I dropped off the final version of What I Really Want Is at Minuteman (man I hate the #72 bus, the one that runs along 82nd Ave: always crowded, always the most depressing collection of people imaginable), so I will soon have 50 copies hot off the presses to give away and sell. I’d like to give away half at my going away gathering and sell the rest for $5 each, that way I may just make back printing costs. I got off the #4 bus on Division and 35th and walking south to Powell I passed a house that had an upside-down mannequin embedded in the yard with her legs pointing straight up to heaven – photo above. Texted Melanie to say they were playing Grey Gardens free at Pix Patisserie – I happened to be walking very near her old house (still her house, but no one’s living there right now, weirdly).

Posted my list of things to sell and give away on Craigslist and within minutes had several people inquiring especially about the Super 8 camera, which I realize now I should’ve sold instead of given away, I just figured they’re so old people can’t really use them any more, but the kids who ended up picking it up (along with the desk and lamp) said they saw one go for $50 just the other day. Oh well, I got it free, I pass it on free and share the wealth. They seemed like nice kids who’ll put it to good use. It is so nice to get rid of stuff. Only the office chair left now, and then the “for sale” stuff, which of course is going to be harder to unload. Scott is taking my bike pump for $30. I left Fireside at 4pm to meet Kirk at the Berlin Inn for happy hour – we had the whole place to ourselves. Kirk pointed to this club called Blue Dragonfly that we could see from our window and asked if I’d ever been in there, and the waitress coming by told us about the one time she went there and had a really bad time, and they cut her off even though she wasn’t drunk, because she was dancing like a hippie – I guess it’s a reggae/dance hall/hiphop joint, but they don’t like hippies. I picked up a bottle of gluhwein from Edelweiss on the way out (I’m taking a little break from sobriety...but no more heavy drinking.) After Berlin we stopped by Biddy’s for a pint and Kirk took more of his glass-enhanced photos of me. At home I got stuff ready for the guys who were coming to pick it up, and now a lot of nice space is opening up in my room. Lucy, of course, is getting nervous.

I sketched my future plans for both Kirk and Scott: Maui for six months, then San Francisco, then maybe I’ll dip down into South America for awhile, polish up my Spanish, maybe visit the rain forest where Terence McKenna and his brother had the experiences detailed in True Hallucinations, then stop by New York for awhile, visit some people I know there, then across the pond to England, where I’ll investigate Bloomsbury and Hogarth House and other haunts of Virginia Woolf (ending of course at the River Ouse), then over to Spain where I will do the Camino de Santiago pilgrimmage and NOT die, then nip up to Germany for some of the world’s best beer straight from the source – find the Schwelmer brewery – luxuriate in the artistic decadence of Berlin for awhile – then to Italy, which everyone says “changes you,” by which point I will have shacked up with Ben Whishaw, and we’ll travel together, and finally when I’m pretty old and the artistic mission is fully accomplished, Ben and I will settle down in Africa – Botswana or Kenya, not sure exactly where yet – to observe and live among hippos in their natural habitat. Yeah. It’s all pretty much planned out.

The fish who drowned in moonshine

Somebody left this Care Bear outside the Taco Bell by my house. That's kind of sad, right? I guess that makes it a Nobody Cares Bear.

I just got off the phone after about an hour with dear mum, wishing her a happy birthday – FOUR TIMES, since my cell still drops calls continuously when I’m at home and it’s using the wifi connection. She sounded in great spirits, although she’s afraid she’s going to have to move to a smaller room since her rent went up $40, but when I asked how much her income also went up (it does every January) the figure she gave me came out to $39, so I don’t get how it really makes a difference. I told her to crunch the numbers and talk to her people and get back to me and if she needs me to I’ll send her a check each month to cover the difference so she can keep her big beautiful room that she loves. I called and left Anthony a message about how much I love Little Britain and there’s a sketch in it where the queen or some other aristocratic fat bewigged lady is lying on a couch dictating a memoir to her assistant who sits there typing it, and every so often she stops and asks, “How many pages is that?” and the assistant checks and says, “Twelve,” and the silver haired lady utters an exclamation of disappointment and goes back to recounting more anecdotes. I watched it with my roommates the other day and said, “That’s me and my cousin writing his memoir on Hana!”

A friend of mine (I'm not sure whether to use peoples' names in a public forum, some people are shy and sensitive about that, while others are like me and don't care) said the original title of my book made her think I sounded like a trustafarian. If she meant "Live Through Me" it is (intentionally) a bit grandiose sounding, yes, but it also references the fact that people who absorb other peoples' journals and diaries are in a way living vicariously through them, just as I used to absorb Virginia Woolf's life through her diary back in my freshman-in-college days (I'm with the Indigo Girls on that one). It also relates to my mother, who is disabled and living in a nursing home in Minnesota, telling me every time I talk with her on the phone that she nows lives vicariously through me and my sister. (Naturally, she's excited about me going to Maui in the spring.) And lastly, it is (also intentionally) a reference to Hole's album "Live Through This," which although I don't really listen to it any more (just as I don't read Marvel comics any more), defined a certain era of my life and is probably one of my 10 favorite albums of all time.

If she meant the title "Como me llamo" made me sound trustafarian, I'm not sure why, unless just because I'm a white American using a Spanish title - but I'm studying Spanish in school, I genuinely find it to be a beautiful language, and learning a second language is good! Maybe she meant the translation of that title, "What is My Name," but I'm not sure why that would be either. It certainly has a personal resonance for me, since I've been changing my name to one thing or another practically my entire life, as my family can well attest. I was born with the first name Joseph, called "Joe" throughout my childhood (my sister, mother and cousin still have that name in their phones and address books for me). At one point I was toying with the first name Simon, at another J.D. At another (now highly embarrassing) point when I was a teenager, it was going to be Gary Glamdring! (Good God.) So when I legally changed it to Anthony LeTigre in May 07 it was only the culmination of a long history of wondering, more or less, "What is my name?" I still have a poem with that title in the booklet I'm publishing in January and I'm going to work this whole question of names into it as a theme.

Nonetheless, the final title I'm going with is "The Fish Who Drowned." Unless I think of a REALLY KILLER new one within the next week or two.

What are you doing for New Years? I get invited to parties (of course!), but I'm really kind of over getting drunk, and how much fun will a New Year's Eve party be without booze? I guess I'll find out.

I'm meeting with my three cast members tomorrow afternoon to discuss a script I wrote called "The Art Police" which they're going to help me film in January! And the neo-noir reimagining of Sunset Boulevard that I'm conceiving with Kirk and Melanie is starting to look really promising, and I've bestowed upon it a working title - "Moonshine Boulevard."