12/29/08

Looking Like A Little Ghost

Back in NYC. Flew the red-eye. I got so much stuff for x-mas. It's insane. I shopped like the world was about to end, which in fact it is. I got an H&M Gift card and went to the one in SF and found the very last size small Comme Des Garcons for H&M shirt. Fuck you.

Yesterday I came home, unpacked, slept, and met Tommy to go to the gym. Came home to silently eat and then met Grey for drinks. I watched Inside Bjork last night, it was like seeing a childhood friend again. Her music was really important to me when I was 12. Going home I always feel nostalgic, sad about my teenage self. I wish I could have gone back and given Teen Me some advice. I would have said "Get out of here and go to New York." Which would have been the right advice.

Yeah so I found my teenage journals, and I'm gonna start posting them here, I think. The good ones anyway. There are whole chunks of my life that I worked very hard to forget. I remember when my friend Brian dated this guy Davey that I had a crush on. I was so jealous, I was livid. I asked Cotton, our mutual friend, to never mention it to me. And then I forgot about it. It worked! Also I (apparently) used to drink a lot, and think a lot. I want to post an entry about goint to see Gravy Train!!!! at a house show in Oakland and drinking beers with them and making fun of them for being old. Old, at the time, being 20. That same night, East Bay scenester Coomers felt me up. I remember being really amazed by this. It was a piece of my sexual awakening, maybe. You know that scene in Their Eyes Were Watching God where Janey is sitting underneath the peach tree and it's quivering and it represents the World of Sex? It was like that, for me. Do the people that read my blog know about Zora Neale Hurston? Who even reads this thing anyways? The other half of my sexual awakening happened in April or May of 2005 when guy cruised me on the subway, casting me into being. All of a sudden: I have a body that you can see. This is a big revelation for queers. Some of us never have it. Some of us can't stop having it. To think.

Spending the morning on hold forever with the company managing my student loans. I can't pay them, I have to reorganize this. As time passes, I am increasingly certain that unless I win the lottery, sign a gigantic record deal / TV contract / book deal, or marry very rich, I will just never be able to pay this shit off.

This song and video is really beautiful, and maybe my favorite Garbage song ever. It makes me miss my own auburn-haired UK powerhouse girl power icon, La JJ:

12/27/08

And She Will

I went straight to Chinatown, to both Chinatowns, and you know what I was looking for. You know I found it. Couldn't make it to the beach but I've still got some tan lines. Honey I keep notes like Courtney Love. I found my childhood diaries. Diaries from when I was 16. My notes for my trip back to New York (that's where I live right now) says "EDAMAME." About her body she's taking notes.

Barely got any work done on my show, but did everything else on my to-do list. I'm coming back into town tonight. I'm leaving tonight, actually, I'll get back tomorrow morning at 6am. Do you want to have coffee with me?
So, I didn't get anything done except: relaxing. I feel like resting is a lot more important than other things, like prioritizing. California feels so weird to me. Everything is so low to the ground. The sky is gigantic out here it's like a blanket thrown over you. But I live on an island out here. Anyways. Politics of pleasure and relaxation. And healing. And resting. And turning on and dropping out. And the politics of she goes on vacation because she cannot deal with her life. this time not drugs, this time she goes on a real vacation. And you know she is not dressing up okay? She is not trying to impress anybody she just wants to relax before she gets back to work to kick your ass. And she just might.

12/24/08

Trying to Make Some Girl

Dreamed last night of eating meat. My friends were horrified so I spit it out, but honestly I didn't mind so much. Woke up with a stomach ache.

To clarify:

My sexual position is tomcat.

My sexual position is PJ Harvey performing "Satisfaction" with
Björk at the 1994 Brit Awards.







12/23/08

Hey Boy

God I love Brontez. I just bought his record.

He's like Elvis. I just start screaming.


12/19/08

Day Off

I'm flying home to California tomorrow. I'm excited to have a vacation, at last. When I get back, I'm going to be very busy. I'm working on a lot of things, it's pretty exciting.

I once read an interview with Martha Stewart, wherein she served the reporter lunch, and when the reporter asked about the recipe (Chinese-style stir-friend steak), Martha recited it from memory. Then said "You know, that's why people hate me."

I feel like I'm always on the verge of reciting a recipe. But I'm scared to because then I think people will resent me. But you know what? People already resent me and I haven't even recited the recipe so if I'm gonna get shade thrown at me by haters then I may as well LIVE. IT. UP. right?

This is all to say that I wanted to recite the following recipe. In addition to the things you read about here on my blog, or things I tell you about, one of the things I do is write monthly horoscopes, under a pseudonym. I'm going to share with you now the horoscope I wrote for myself:

"January finds Leos getting back on track. Financials organized, health regimen reinstated, new hairdo. Leos love to prioritize themselves, and this is the perfect month to do so. How else can you cope with the demands of your adoring public if you haven’t attended to your own needs first? Once you give yourself the attention you deserve, you’ll soon find everyone else following suit."

Whatever. That's why people hate me. Some people, I mean. Most people (e.g. my friends) don't mind. Anyways.

I wanted to draw everyone's attention to this movie that Stuart Sanford made.

It's on his blog. It's called: 24 Hour Day Off. I've spoken at length about my feelings for Ferris Bueller. That film illustrates a lot of what about our contemporary culture pisses me off. The golden-boy worship thing. The crucifixion of the older sister. I have often said that the only useful part of that movie is the shower scene.

Stuart Sanford extends this moment, elongating it past the point of pleasure. He shows us leisure stretched into a grotesque caricature. Pleasure and relaxation stretch into torpor and anxiousness. Stuart Sanford's art makes a genius of history. Look: gays / fags / queers / disenfranchised youth / people who do not have the leisure and socially-scripted charisma of Ferris Bueller have always had to construct our own realities. We have to locate our signs of pleasure and transactions of self within another culture's frame. Stuart Sanford makes this location, the cartography of the Faggot, a glorious conceit. Stuart's boys are endlessly cumming, are caught in petrified euphemism, their glorious secret smiles are given back to us, forever.

12/16/08

Hollywood Life Didion Life




Spent yesterday home sick from work. Had a cough so bad I got dizzy. It was also the first snow day. I drank black cherry bark tea and watched the movie "Friday". I ordered vegan japanese food and made hot cocoa with soy-milk. Spent the afternoon flirting with the guy I like in e-mail, talking about how come you never wanna take me out? You know so much about Dusty Springfield you oughta quiz me. Dear Everyone: there's no quicker way to a Leo's heart, even when he's home sick eating anti-anxiety pills and staring out a snowy window, there is no quicker way to that fiery passionate center of romance than to tell the Leo that you're jealous.



Making a list of turn-ons and turn-offs and luckily more things turn me on than turn me off. I still don't feel like sharing the list yet, but suffice it to say that in my book, turn-offs include name-dropping. That's a good clue for you if you're trying to impress me (which you should probably be doing). That all being said, I learned about drinking black cherry bark tea from two sources: the writings of Gloria Naylor (it is, in fact, a voodoo remedy) and one-on-one advice with Lady Miss Kier (it is, in fact, a voodoo remedy).



Suck it, winter.

12/15/08

The Light Fantastic

Sipping cough syrup at my desk. I've cleaned my room and I'm making stacks of all of my books. I'm counting things like I'm pretending to organize them, but I'm also making plans to throw things out.

This is the proof of my empathy, the indication of just how intuitive my style of love-making is.
Deft and sure and sleight of heart I am showing you (not telling you) that like characters in an opera I can with a single motion accomplish dual goals: I catalog and I kill. To measure something is to change it. So I am counting your qualities as I am saying goodbye.



This photo is from a project that Stuart Sanford did, and I am as always totally excited and happy to have been involved with and know him in any capacity. So you should check it out. Thinking Grace Jones. I mean, as usual.

Friday night I had the release party for Graphic Glory, which was great. Ran over to my office party, which was also fun, but too much. Spent Saturday sleeping. Went to the Birdsong reading, then a few bars, then Dan's party, then the Metropolitan, where I ran into my long lost and much-admired friend Alex Da Corte. That was great. Sunday Tommy made me go see Let The Right One In, since he loves horror movies. I actually thought this one was really sweet. We watched cartoons at my house and I fell asleep early.

I'm going home to California next week, and I'm excited to be mostly alone. I want to go shopping and eat Thai food and dig through crates of records at Amoeba and buy cheap bad cigarettes and breathe some fog for a while, you know?

I told a friend the other day that I felt lonely. That's not entirely true. I feel bored, I guess, by dudes. Do you know the feeling when you are watching television and you've watched the commercials and the opening credits and sung along to the theme music and the actors get out on the set and start making all these stupid jokes and then you realize that you've seen this episode before? This is how I feel, with regards to my love life. Why not just stop watching tv? I am working on some interesting new art projects and I think I've had more than enough sex to give me things to write about.

And I'm reading Ariel Schrag comic books and thinking about you and the thing that opens up in my mind every time I remember you is like a black hole, not even light can escape I find a well I cannot peer down into no matter how thirsty it makes me.

I remember you picking me up for our first date when I was 17 and you were 19 (I'm pretty sure). You met me at the mall in Oakland Chinatown and I took you to this crazy candy store that I loved. I got a watermelon slushie which still had the black pits. We sat at the fountain in the center of the minimall and I spat the seeds into the water. You told me about how growing up, you and your brother spent the summer getting stoned and eating lime popsicles and playing nintendo. You drove me to a minigolf course and while I aimed between the arms of a fiberglass windmill you stood behind me telling me that I had no reason to be ashamed of my body. Sburban families gawking at your buzzed hair, piercings and tattoos, they watched you come up behind me and put your arms around my waist. How could they have known that without that I wouldn't have known where my hips really were? Similarly how could I have ever predicted that a few years later I'd be tracing the shape of imaginary hands and keeping you on top of a list of MY FRIENDS WHO ARE DEAD, picturing and remembering the weight of you on top of me and how you sounded plaintive, insistent and expectant you on top of me on the floor of your apartment on 14th street the first time I ever went to Manhattan in the summer of 2002.

12/12/08

Goobye Icon



I only blog celebrity obituaries.


Cleaned Ashtrays

I'm gonna write my next play on an airplane after I eat some pills. I just have too many ideas to type out down here. Gotta wait until I reach cruising altitude. I'll wave to you but you'll just be a dot, lover.

12/8/08

ROMANTIC

CHRISTMAS IS THE NEW VALENTINE'S DAY
--Danielle Rosa







Feeling it.

We went through Hell just to get to Hell


MY FAVORITE BAND IS QUASI




I don't know how Janet Weiss and Sam Coomes met. I know that she didn't learn to play the drums until she was 22, which has always been a particularly inspirational bit of knowledge to me. So after college Janet moved from San Francisco and started playing music with Sam Coomes. And they started this band, called Motorgoat. The third person in the band eventually dropped out and moved away, leaving Janet and Sam. And they fell in love. They made recordings for years in their basement. They released a cassette of experimental recordings made on obsolete keyboards that kept breaking. They worked awful day jobs, Sam Coomes worked at Kinkos for three years while playing music in his basement at night, with the woman he loved. They put out comp tracks and played back-up for Elliot Smith. They got married.

(And doesn't that sound great? It's a real kind of fantasy for a certain type of west coast Americans. For me in high school, it was the description of a dream. Being in love, having a career as an experimental indie musician. Pacific Northwest, man. That sounds great doesn't it?)

Then they divorced each other, and kept the band going. They released R&B Transmogrification, a gorgeous, fuzzy kind of indie-pop record ABOUT THEIR RELATIONSHIP ENDING. It is some of the most beautiful, aching music I have heard. I remember buying it because it came as a bonus when you purchased the LP of their following album, Featuring "Birds", which is maybe my favorite record of theirs. On both albums, there's a kind of musique verité happening. Sam and Janet are writing songs ostensibly about one another. How awful is that? To know that your ex is writing songs about you, but then you're also in the band where they write the songs, and then you PLAY ON THEM. Their stage shows are known for utter chaos and palpable onstage tension. She gleefully drums along, kinetic genius that she is, while he sings "Flesh wound heal, broken bones mend / You're not my friend / I never want to see you again." He helps arrange a mod-ish Janet-penned ditty titled "Tomorrow You'll Hide". He compares her in one song to a chocolate rabbit (sweet, cheap and hollow, natch). This is the sound of an actual break up. This is how wonderful it can sound to stay with something painful and bad. They've released a bunch of records since then, all of which are excellent. In high school I saw them perform and they fought continuously onstage. Sam started to play a song on the guitar with Janet, then announced that it wasn't working, the guitar was fucked, and he wanted to skip it. She argued with him, through the microphone, and urged him to just tune the guitar and play the song. He refused. Try it again. He refused. She played the drum part from the song anyway. He hurled the guitar just past her head, at the brick wall behind her. They moved onto the next song. She mocked him in front of their fans. I was in heaven.

I saw Janet on the street in NYC a few weeks ago. She's maybe my favorite (former) member of Sleater-Kinney because she seems the most down to earth. My friend Cotton does a really good impression of her, which is also an impression of Molly Shannon's character Salley O'Malley on SNL, in which he pictures Janet as continually announcing "I'm 50!"

Tell Me That You Wanna Bore Me


In the dream I watch a girl on roller skates riding down the street. I am also the girl on the roller skates, or I know / recognize her. She skates down the street to where a man is lying on the ground. He is unconscious and is having some kind of a seizure, he's shaking all over. He is wearing dark sunglasses and dirty clothes, he looks blind, like a homeless person. She kneels beside him.

In the dream I become aware that the man is hearing something. The girl is working with some kind of program that exposes "undesirable" people to this weird sound. She administers the sound to the people via headphones, and she also collects them once they have heard the sound. Once someone has listened to the sound, their brains become scrambled, they have no identity thoughts or feelings. It's some kind of mind control program and I notice that the girl's skates are pink and that she has a matching minibackpack. In the dream I am terrified of hearing this phantom mind-controlling sound. In teh dream I have a secret fear that I know the sound, that I recognize the sound and have just been trying to ignore it. I realize that by admitting it, I know I've exposed myself to it, and that it's too late. I imagine that the sound is like white noise made up of every human voice saying very concievable thing. It sounds murky and hissing. I wake up at noon in a cold sweat with daylight streaming into my room, to the sound of the gurgling of my humidifier.

House Intrusion

(From Lover, Ferocious. Billy Cheer and Scott Panther at Scott's apartment.)

Scott: I heard them last night.

Billy: What?

Scott: Rats.

Billy: You don't have any rats in your house.

Scott: Billy I heard them running around in the kitchen in the middle of the night.

Billy: I think rats are cute.

Scott: Why do you have to think they're cute? They're not living at your house. They scare me.

Billy: I used to have a pet rat, it died of cancer. They're really nice. They're very intelligent.

Scott: I don't know why you think this is so funny, Billy. I have rats. Your boyfriend, who cares about you so, so much, is really upset about something and you keep making jokes. That's just great.

Billy: I'm sorry.... I care about you too, Scott.

Scott (examining a minuscule pimple or something on his arm): I think one bit me. I think it came into my room while I was asleep and I think it bit me.

Billy: That doesn't look like a bite.

Scott: What if I got rat AIDS?

Billy: I don't think you don't have rat AIDS. I wouldn't worry about that.

Scott: Well, you should be worried. You're exactly who should be worried, because if I get rat AIDS you're going to be the first person I give it to.

Billy: That's fine, I'm immune to rat AIDS anyway.

12/7/08

from LOVER, FEROCIOUS (Dixon Place 2/24/09)

From THIS IS FAG CITY

Animal Rhapsody 12" Remix Version

Look, I did this portrait using the internet:


It's you, having completely BLOWN-IT.

Next, please.

12/4/08

Bitches I've Been






Hello again, lover.


PUPPETEER: GOLD CODES

I am thrilled more than I can possibly say to share with you that East Village Boys has posted another of my stories from Scorcher. It's maybe my favorite thing that I've ever written. Todd has done incredibly illustrations and I am so, so proud.


Chodron Advice

"The difference between theism and nontheism is not whether one does or does not believe in God. It is an issue that applies to everyone, including Buddhists and non-Buddhists. Theism is a deep-seated conviction that there's some hand to hold: if we just do the right things, someone will appreciate us and take care of us. It means thinking there's always going to be a babysitter available when we need one. We are inclined to abdicate our responsibilities and delegate our authority to something outside ourselves. Nontheism is relaxing with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment without reaching for anything to protect ourselves.

Nontheism is finally realizing that there's no babysitter that you can count on. You just get a good one and he or she is gone. Nontheism is realizing that it's not just the babysitters that come and go. The whole of life is like that. This is the truth, and the truth is inconvenient.

Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something; they come from a sense of poverty. We can't simply relax with ourselves. We hold on to hope and hope robs us of the present moment. We feel that someone else knows what's going on, but that there's something missing in us, and therefor something is lacking in our world.


Rather than letting our negativity get the better of us, we could acknowledge that right now we feel like a piece of shit and not be squeamish about taking a good look. That's the compassionate thing to do. That's the brave thing to do. We could smell that piece of shit. We could feel it; what is its texture, color, and shape?

We can explore the nature of that piece of shit. We can know the nature of dislike, shame, and embarrassment not believe there's something wrong with that. We can drop the fundamental hope that there is a better "me" who one day will emerge. We can't just jump over ourselves as if we were not there. It's better to take a straight look at all our hopes and fears. Then some kind of confidence in our sanity arises."

-- Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart

Overheard

The woman behind me at City Bakery is in a hurry, and is feeling private about the food she's just bought. She hands the cardboard box to the cashier.

"Hot food."
"Okay."
"And I need to put it on a card, all right?"
"Okay, fine." He puts the food on the scale. "Eggs?"
"Excuse me?"
"Did you get eggs?"
"Yes."
He pauses while he's typing on the weight. "Any bacon in there?"
The woman is caught off-guard. "Yeah..."
The cashier raises his eyebrow. "How many pieces?"
"I don't know."
"Like... one piece? Two pieces?" He starts to pick at the tape on the cardboard. "Three?"

When I got to work, one of the lawyers told me about a meeting he had. Someone was excited to make a movie, and brought in an investor they were particularly proud of. The client and the investor wanted to get started with the production counsel paperwork right away. The lawyer told them that unfortunately they had to sign a retainer letter for the before he could being working for them. Sort of like a deposit. The client turned to the investor, who waved his hand.

"Oh, I'm good for it. Just get started. Listen. All the cookies in the Northeast? I sell."

I thought that was pretty exciting.

Evaporate Together

This song always makes me happy. I've posted it before, I'm sure, but it's pretty important.

Other Rooms

Nightmare: I am in a strange San Francisco-style apartment. I'm here to move into a room. It's in the center of the apartment. My bed is a big futon frame. There's a Christmas tree here. It's the living room they're renting it out like it's another bedroom, because they all have different schedules. It's with two guys, and a girl. The girl I know, I used to go out with her room mate, we got along. They ask me to stay over one night, calling it a "home-stay" and I sleep in the futon. I wake up and everyone's at work and I am locked inside the apartment. I want to get out but for some reason my fear of offending them is preventing me from doing so. One of the boys comes home / comes out of his room (has he been home all along?). I ask him, angry, if this is really a bedroom they're renting out, because it looks a lot like the living room to me. It seems like I'm sleeping on the fold-out couch. The boy gets angry that I don't like it, and starts attacking me. I wake up.





Still interviewing room mates. Hopefully done.
Thank god.

12/3/08

B.A.M.

So do you want to be the vengeful, spurned former lover or the passionate lover who actually gets to fuck? Do you want to be the beautiful object of affection or do you want to be the the poet who tells the world how petty it is?

Once, my friend Matt and I were talking about someone who had hurt him. A girl he thought had no redeeming qualities (though of course I will acknowledge now that every living being has redeeming qualities). He said "You know, she's the worst person in the world. There is no one worse that her." And following this line of thinking, said "The only thing worse that being her is being the person who wants to be her." Ouch. This has given me a lot to think about. Who do you want to be? Who do you wish you were? I think about this a lot. I ask myself this question often.

PEOPLE I FANTASIZE ABOUT BEING:
  • Laura Nyro, singing "When I Die"
  • My friend Chuck, who died but was gorgeous and free and precious and too sad to realize it
  • My friend Grey who dropped everything and moved to SF and pursued his dream or whatever and now he lives where dreams do. (Which is to say at night).
  • International Art Superstar La JohnJoseph
It's an exercise in experiencing love for these people. I can't be them but I can embody the things about them that I like. I also often fantasize about being any and all of my former lovers. Just to know what the fucking problem was, right? I often fantasize about being other people because I don't enjoy being me, really. Not all the time.

Thinking about this lately, and my friend's comment about the only thing sadder than being someone is wanting to be someone else. It's true, you rob yourself of a lot. You can totally undermine yourself by wishing you were somebody else. (Am I writing a Pink song? Wow.) A few weeks ago i was thinking about this in relation to feeling romantic.

I am doing newer artwork, I'm moving past my sphere of comfort. In the past, the point of a lot of my work was "Nice try, no one will ever like you once they see the real you." And that didn't work so well. Then, the point became "Ha Ha, you love me! You admitted it so you lose!" where I was the one doing the admitting.

Now my punchline is that people are desperate to connect with each other and love each other and then they do and the scary thing is that I admit it and the other person says "Yeah. And?"

Ok so anyways the phrase as a romance thing came to me recently: BRAG ABOUT ME

And it's winter, and I'm trying to make some things happen.

We Need New Heroines




R.I.P. ODETTA

12/2/08

Well Gosh

Wednesday after work I met up with my friend Kevin, who in the months I've known him has made quite a few jokes about blogging, but of course I soon come to discover has his own blog. We met up in the totally overcrowded Union Square Greenmarket to shop for Thanksgiving. Kevin helped me get my new favorite clothes, so if you see me looking especially fly, it's because of him. He was wearing the most beautiful blue leather jacket that I have ever seen. We retired to Kevin's new apartment in the East Village where he plied me with cognac and hummus and good bread. Wednesdays are good.

Thanksgiving I woke to an empty apartment, ate a really wonderful brunch and napped for most of the morning. Eventually met up with Richert and Jeanne in Park Slope. Jeanne is a food blogger but I'm such an asshole I forgot her new blog. Anyways. Her house is maybe the nicest apartment I've ever seen in NYC. And the food was all vegetarian and extravagant and amazing and I had pretty much a perfect Thanksgiving, actually. We drank spiked apple cider in Prospect Park and played croquet, for fuck's sake. Top that. I learned about the magickal midwestern delicacy known as Gifta.

Friday I had another wonderful day alone in the apartment. Cleaning, mostly, I guess. Met up with Tommy and Lauren at night for a "writing date" in which we breifly discussed writing then ate nachos and went on a bar crawl through the Village. Writers: who knew? Went home and puked all night. Woke at the crack of dawn, sick as a dog, to meet up with long-lost friends for a memorial service for my friend Spencer who died in October. I woke up feeling sick and gross and dangerous. As I got dressed (all black cotton turtleneck teased punk haircut tailored couture pants postmarxist Angela Y. Davis meets Ian Svenonius for the New American Obama Hope team REALNESS), I looked at myself in the mirror and all of a sudden got an incredible nosebleed. I decided "I'm still going to this thing." And I did. And the service was beautiful. And I've never been to a funeral before, not for someone that wasn't family. And it did, really, help me with my feelings about loss. Came home and had a 101-degree fever. Ordered vegan Japanese take-out, took some codeine and watched Slackers.

Woke up feeling fine, fine fine.

Sunday I wrote that story for teh German zine, about the first time we slept together on a pile of casio keyboards. Do you remember? You said "Well, now we can start a band". That was cute. It has some good points in it, I'll show it to you some time. Met up with Tommy, went shopping at Patricia Field and bought some good knives. Saw Synecdoche NY, went home and played Sega Genesis.

I don't have to convince nobody of nothing, honey.

cares about fashion


12/1/08

Do-Over

I just wrote this really stupid missive blog post about how frustrated I was, struggling with feelings of inadequacy and rejection. Anyways I deleted it because who wants to add more negativity, right?

Plus also I'm thinking about the people that upset me, and they deserve to feel good. It's hard but true: even people you totally cannot stand deserve to be happy or whatever. I'm a lot cooler, I'm letting it go.

The other point of the blog post which I have just deleted is to say how out of frustration and feeling bad all the time, I'm starting to feel like maybe if I just swing it the other way I could actually know another human person.

Oh fuck it i'll let the fact that I'm on the internet this morning cheer me up. Thanks!

Breaking It You Buying It



(http://interviewmagazine.com)



Sort of dopey