Art Police online, makes me feel fine!

Hey, my new short film "Art Police" is finally finished, take 10 mins. out of your busy life to watch it and let me know what you think! I think it's funny as hell and I'm so proud that we made it. We even recorded our own soundtrack. I sang vocals on the "peppy Art Police theme song" at the end.

xo


tony aka glam

snobs / angels / megalomania

New issue of Just Out comes out today and I have three articles in it: one on a book called "The Best Nonreligious Quotes Ever" (Kevin Reedy), one on another book called "How To Be A Gay Porn Star" (Mike Donner), and one on the 12th Annual Hat Party at Chameleon this Sunday (where I will see each and every one of you, right?) I stopped by Chameleon yesterday and talked over both the Hat Party and my party, and left just as a health inspector with a clipboard arrived (Health Police!) Pat said we should be able to project "Art Police" on the wall for my party, but we need speakers; the movies he usually projects during business hours are silent. He told me about the Salon Q that Chameleon hosted a few weeks back. Sounds like it drew a good crowd (he estimated almost 200 people), but based on other things he told me I'm glad I didn't go. He said there were uppity attitudes and when a stripper Pat had hired showed up to perform, some of the gays got snooty, asking "What is a stripper doing here?" and Pat's attitude in response was "You aren't at a business meeting, this is a party." I said, "There are lots of snobby gay guys that are just no fun."

Funny how hearing a little thing like that sets me off. I think back to that cocktail hour for queer journalists that I attended a while back, where someone, I think it was that Zuckerman person (apparently Sam Adams' boyfriend du jour), when introduced to me played the snob card and was like "Where do you come from? Who do you know?" I guess I was supposed to prove my right to be amongst such lofty company by ticking off a list of names of my connections to important and powerful people. Like Byron Beck, maybe? (He was there. We didn't talk.) I don't know which was more unpleasant: the snobbery oozing from him like cobra venom or the fact that the venue selected for our little social status contest served eight-dollar drinks at happy hour. (Let's live in the real world: if we're journalists, most of us aren't exactly raking in money. Let me pick the venue next time. Actually, let me pick the people, too.) I kind of felt bad for him, though, because I sort of know what he was getting at: he didn't know what box to put me in, because I don't fit in any box. And even though I greatly enjoy journalism and the opportunities it affords me to network and meet great people, it is hardly the extent of my ambition to be a freelance journalist for the rest of my life. I am not just going to write about people, I'm going to be someone who is written about. I have visions of being the center of a cult of personality. I've had them for a long time.

Maybe I AM a megalomaniac. I have certainly been afflicted with delusions of wealth, power, fame, etc. for almost as long as I can remember. Except, to paraphrase John Hurt playing Quentin Crisp in "The Naked Civil Servant," (above, with Greenwich Village drag queen) I would question the word "afflicted." I think I would have to ask whether "delusions" are really all that bad. What it really boils down to is that I have long had - maybe ALWAYS had - a strange certainty that I am on course to something great, that at some point I will have some measure of wealth or fame or success (or all three!), almost as if I'm guided by some sort of angelic spirit. I would say that I feel "blessed" if that word wasn't so tinged with religion. That's why snubs by snobs just can't hurt me. I like people who are just NICE. It's the easiest thing in the world to be and takes much less energy than copping attitude and it's so much more pleasant to be around. Of course, there is a time and a place for attitude - and don't I know it! - but there's no reason to be rude and snobby simply for the sake of it. People who are obsessed with proving and maintaining their social status are a sad, desperate lot, and I will happily pass right by them on my way to endless treasure that will never be theirs and has always been mine, without even an effort, since the very beginning! Social snobs are insecure and afraid to be themselves deep down.

I am neither. And actually, I never have been...even going back to elementary school! I dress how I want, do what I want, say what I really think. Boys who wear brand name clothing don't impress me. Boys who make their own clothes do. I'm not in it for money or social status or any of those things, really, although I'll accept them if they come, and I have a feeling they will, eventually, if I just keep going in the direction I'm headed. Maybe I'll find out fame and artistic recognition and material comfort aren't important to me after all. Maybe I'll fall in love and it'll be mutual (whoa nelly!) and I'll learn how to fully love another human being, the one major aspect of human existence that I'm still in the dark about. Regardless, my life is rich and full already and now that I've finally made a serious commitment to take better care of myself and really go for the gold, the good times are really only starting. I have something that most people don't have. It's a sort of invincibility that comes from my calm and unyielding conviction that wherever I'm going, it's somewhere great, and no matter what happens when I get there - even if it's not exactly what I expected in my starry-eyed youth - it will be OK.

On waking up with a beautiful glowing feeling

Pilates is fucking amazing. I've only been doing it for three days and I'm starting to feel like there are bricks forming under my skin. I wake up feeling like I'm glowing with health and energy (this is partly the vitamins and going to bed sober, as well). At this rate I'll be toned in a month! Even my writing is getting more taut. At first you have to read the instructions and look at the photos and keep it in your mind like a formula, but it's cool how after you go through the motion a few times it becomes automatic, and you can go into your meditative state and just focus on breathing. It's also bringing my libido back to life and making me horny. All yesterday I felt like I had a big love magnet in me and attracted love everywhere I went. Didn't hurt that it was also a gorgeous day (off and on). Spring is trying to let its bright light shine.

Left the house around noon and the sun was out, walked to Fred Meyers for mini DV tapes for the Hat Party, then met Kirk at Pho Green Papaya for lunch. I had the pho tom yum, my new favorite menu item. Kirk had the seafood pho and then complained that he'd made it too hot. I like it so hot it almost makes me cry and I have to blow my nose into my napkin. Feels like it's burning impurities out of my system. Melanie called to say she's coming to visit next weekend! I really hope it happens this time. Maybe we'll go camping or visit the coast, like in the old days. Kirk said he's writing a book about how you can channel water into a source of energy and use it for resistance and exercise instead of just being lazy in it. I told him a couple premises for comedy sketches I've been discussing with my cousin (we're talking about starting a little comedy sketch show in San Francisco something like Little Britain! Maybe we can call it Little Sodom!) He did what he always does when I tell him an idea - he immediately takes it in his own hands, builds on it, distorts it, and turns it into Kirk's idea. I find this somewhat annoying and finally told him that I think he and I have different comedic styles. Mine is "Kids in the Hall" and understated, his is "Jackass" and overtly clownish. He also tried to tempt me to drink beer when I'd made it clear I'm not drinking any more (except MAYBE the night of my going-away gathering, but we'll see), not that it made any difference - I have truly entered a new phase of my life, and it's only going to ramp up when I leave Portland. It was nice to see him all the same, and he was nice enough to drop me at the media center after lunch.

There I picked up my laptop and edited Art Police for hours at Tiny's, listening to too much Bjork and just enough Hot Chip, until a table of loud, obnoxious rocker type boys rehearsing their loud, obnoxious film script at the table behind me became so distracting I had to leave. (Dude, this is a CAFE, not your favorite DIVE BAR!) If you've never edited film before, you would be stunned by how much work it can be - and this is for a film that will clock in at less than 10 minutes. I edited continuously for four hours, and I've still only completed scene one of four - BUT it has become so fantastic that I'm really excited for people to see it now. I played with the video effects palette and discovered all sorts of things, including how to fix bad lighting. The opening credit sequence is splendid. The gang is really going to be surprised when they see it, I think. I was disappointed in myself for missing the Gold Coyote deadline, but now that I see how much work it's taking to make it really good, I'm not so much, because even if I had been totally focused that one day or two when I was too messed up to work, there's no way it would've been done by that deadline, given the timeline we made it on. I plan to have the final cut by this weekend and hopefully up on YouTube as well!

After editing myself into a stupor I did camera for Alexandra Paris's show for the last time. It was sweet, she gave me an on-camera send-off at the end of the show, called me a "faithful camera man" and said I'm welcome back any time I'm visiting Portland in the future. She and her guy are coming to the Hat Party this weekend, as are Vicky, Edgar, Seventh, Element, and a cute boy who I met last night while doing camera, he was helping out in the control room. Only problem is, he's 20 and I'm....32.9.

This week's One Day At A Time has a little blurb about Matthew Goode (who played Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited!) with a sexy accompanying photo (above) I sent a naughty response to their letters section, but I'll keep it to myself until I see if it's published. I still think Ben Whishaw is hotter and a more phenomenal actor, but Matthew's all right too, in both departments. I read the only part of the WW worth reading - Rob Brezsny's astrology column - and it said that I'm not setting my sights high enough and that the cosmos is giving me license to ask for more and dream big. Oh, cosmos, I hear you calling, and I am listening, baby!

Joseph Pilates / U.S. of Ant / copies of my book finally!

Finally got the printed copies of my book today! Apparently they had been sitting at the printshop for weeks now without me ever receiving notice – go figger. If you would like to buy one, they’re $5! If I sell just 20 copies at that price I can make back my printing costs. The book is called “What I Really Want Is.” It is a diverse collection of writing, some of it more than a decade old, most of it newer. Email anthonyletigre@gmail.com to order.

Did pilates today for the first time, a DIY session, just following the instructions in the book I checked out yesterday called Pilates For Men. After just one session I have a really good feeling about this. I learned that Joseph Pilates (photo above) invented these postures and exercises to help soldiers wounded in World War I recover. I plan to do pilates every day from now on, plus I’m still doing my regular exercises – 120 pushups a day (and I’m doing them RIGHT now, which means they’re harder, but I’m also starting to have a chest for the first time, in a skinnyboy way), yoga postures, various other stretches. My body is going through an adjustment period that will be a little rough. I abruptly quit drinking, stepped up my exercise regimen in a big way, started taking a heavy barrage of detox vitamins AND eating healthier all at the same time. It’s gonna pay off, though. I predict by the time I leave for Maui I’ll already look and feel trimmer and healthier.

Treated myself to some new underwear from Ross today. I hardly ever buy underwear.

Just watched an episode of The U.S. of Ant on Netflix, where Ant discovers that there are homosexuals living apparently contented lives in Montana. Wonder of wonders! I gather Ant is something like the Byron Beck of the Logo network: glib, makes every hackneyed joke you can think of, can’t think outside the gay box, but that’s what they’re paying him for, I suppose. He is good at talking to people, making them loosen up, getting them to laugh. Can’t stop thinking about sex even for 30 seconds, of course; that’s what his identity is based on. I’m sure he’s a decent enough guy, though, and it was nice that he didn’t just profile gays in the Castro or something overwhelmingly obvious like that.

Pilates! Detox diets! Starbucks sucks!

As part of my new program of fitness and health I stopped by the library today (had to return the Christopher Plummer memoir “In Spite of Myself” ‘cause someone else had a hold on it, too bad ‘cause I was really enjoying it, he describes so many eccentric aristocratic theater people of bygone days), and picked out some books on detox diets, pilates for men (the vast majority of these health/fitness books are for women, do men care less or are they encouraged not to care?), plus Amy Sedaris’s “Hospitality Under the Influence” book, but most especially one that jumped out at me called “The Healthy Guide to Unhealthy Living,” by David J. Clayton, M.D. (image above). He had me at hello with these lines from his introduction:

If you work a sensible, nonstressful 9-to-5 job; if you’re in a monogamous relationship; if you abstain from smoking, drugs and alcohol; and if you are completely content in life, this book is not for you. But if you’ve been known to drink, smoke, hook up, work too hard, or eat fast food for six meals in a row, this book will help you manage your bad habits, and may change the way you see your choices.

I’ve already started reading it. He says adrenaline was helpful when our ancestors fled from lions on the plains of Africa, but is more of a liability now, say before you have to give a presentation and your knees are knocking and your muscles uncomfortably contracted. He recommends a six-month vacation in the Virgin Islands to restore health and sanity in a non-medicational way, if you have the means!

I just picked up a movie I’m reviewing called “Loins of Punjabi,” then stopped in at Starbucks to do some laptopping, but they’ve made some horrible deal with T-Mobile and don’t offer free WiFi to their customers! Can you believe it? I could tell by the reaction of the girl at the counter that she thought it was stupid, too, and she directed me to Panera Bread up the street, where they offer free WiFi with no strings attached and are super cool about it – the girl here even told me, “You can order a coffee and get free refills and stay here all night if you want.”

Panera Bread good, Starbucks bad.

A new literary magazine starting up here in PDX called "Perceptions" has accepted two photos for their first issue, but it doesn’t go to press until May. They’ll mail my contributor’s copy to Haiku.

Did I mention we inserted a sort of Grade B horror/Herschell Gordon Lewis homage moment into Art Police? It was a spur-of-the-moment inspiration of mine and involves a severed finger, complete with theatrical blood and....ketchup packets. Should be pretty funny.

I stopped in at Art Media and used the gift card I got at Jean’s dinner party a while back to buy some new charcoals and drawing supplies, because another part of my regiment to get myself back into shape AND back into full creative flux is to make at least one drawing or piece of visual art, even if it’s just a sketch, every day from now until I leave. (And after.)

And of course, the day after I whined about Portland weather, we got one of the (mostly) best and brightest days we’ve had in a while. When it’s lovely here, it is lovely indeed.

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.

Bad News!

It is with some reluctance that I put this link up before I have Art Police finished and viewable on YouTube/Vimeo, because this little film, "Bad News," is very much a B side to Art Police, and started as almost an afterthought, but I guess it's funny enough to show people. Especially now that I've cut out the most embarrassing bits.

Actually, it's still kind of embarrassing, but if others can find amusement at my expense, I guess I regard that as sort of a charity duty that I perform for other humans.

I should probably add a disclaimer about how some of the commentary I issue here, which is excerpted from my writing collection, is satirical and tongue-in-cheek. Then again, a lot of it does reflect things I've thought or that I feel on various topics. It's about 50% scripted, 50% improv with Emie bringing her special blend of off-the-cuff belligerence to the proceedings. She stole the show. But I let her steal it. If I was Andy Warhol she would be one of my superstars.

The Hat Party is one week from today and I'm in one of the frenzies of packing, cleaning, getting shit done that always follows a lazy interlude of irresponsibility.