10/26/12



Can you love something which does not reflect, validate or confirm your identity or sense of self?

Can you love something without becoming it?

Can you love something while knowing that your love runs the risk of potentially accidentally hurting, invading, destroying the thing you love?

10/22/12

We All Tired



I love this song so much. I forgot how much I love this song. I say this all the time, and I mean it all the time, but this is my favorite song. My favorite song right now, I mean. An all-time favorite.


New Dress.

Friday night we Perfect Little Daniel and I had B0DYH1GH band practice, for our upcoming Halloween Gala show at CultureFIX next week. Playing the hits both new and old. It's such a pleasant surprise to sit down and think: "What songs should we play? What songs do we even have?" and then to remember, one by one, how many really fantastic songs we have and are going to play. I guess it is, like so much else, a matter of perspective. If you stick with anything long enough, eventually you either make enough stuff you start to feel proud of it, or you develop and hone the capacity to regard it as worthwhile. That is some general advice. For free! But specifically, with regard to B0DYH1GH, I've always been exceedingly proud of our output, because we're fucking great. Everyone who's come to any of our shows has been blown away, and it's hardly difficult to see why. So it's a double treat. Easy to get into and hard to get out of.

*As a reminder, kids, you can download B0DYH1GH's first myth-tape, "PRETTY BEAUTIFUL" over on EastVillageBoys.

After band practice PLD and his room mate Diego and I drank my favorite wine, Mateus. I used to drink it all the time in college, but haven't been able to find it in New York City in many years. There's a sort of bizarre liquor store right next to PLD's house, though (it seems like it used to be a movie theater and now it's a liquor store) and they have a bunch of Mateus for some reason. So whenever I go to PLD's I buy a bottle of it.



We were talking about Dusty Springfield, and how Dusty used to like to drink Mateus too, because it's very sweet, very pink, very fizzy, and you can make lampshade base out of the bottle and it'd look so cute. Those aren't the reasons I started drinking it in college though. It's also very, very cheap. Like $5 a bottle cheap. Drinking some on Friday, through, it wasn't so great. Maybe it's that the stock they have at the bizarro movie theater liquor store is old, or maybe my palette's been refined over the years (not likely) but it seemed pretty gross. Anyway, $5 is a fucking bargain.

After wine, we went to Nowhere Bar for the first installment of Spunk Fridays, the new dance/multimedia/performance party thrown by dear heart Aaron Tilford of Spunk Arts Magazine. It was way cute, and I got to see Joseph Keckler there and it was nice. I did kind of chill out early, though, like a little fucking baby.



finally it has happened to me right in front of my face my feelings can't describe it

Some new things I'm excited about are that I have two new stories which are just coming out right now!

First, I have a new short story called "WONDER" in the new issue of Birdsong!


You can get your copy by e-mailing BIRDSONG.

Also, I am so thrilled to have a new three-scene story I wrote, called "THREE" in this new arts magazine but together by Gio Black Peter and Christopher Stoddard:



SATANICA RELEASES WORLDWIDE 12-12-12.
ONLY 350 COPIES will be printed, numbered, finished by hand and signed in blood.
CLICK HERE TO PRE-ORDER NOW before they sell out, and receive your limited-edition copy on 12-12-12.

Edited by Gio Black Peter and Christopher Stoddard, featuring: Antonio Mingot, Blake Butler, Brian Kenny, Bruce Benderson, Bruce LaBruce, Carter Harrington, Christeene Vale, Christopher Stoddard, Daniel McKernan, Drrty Pharms, Edgar Retro, Felix Werbowy, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Gio Black Peter, Jackee Word, Jason Napoli Brooks, Jessica Yatrofsky, John Weinrich, Jordan Fox, Lee Adams, Lonely Christopher, Mason Chambers King, Matt Lambert, Max Steele, Maxwell Snow, Michael Alig, Micki Pellerano, Miguel Villalobos, Paul Gunn, Richard Kern, Shisa, Slava Mogutin, Sleazy, Stephan White, Susanne Oberbeck, Travis Jeppesen, Tyler Stone.

SATANICA Magazine Promo One from gio black peter on Vimeo.

So that's cute, huh? Here's a picture that dear heart Walter took of me the other night on our way to go out dancing.



I needed a haircut so bad! Don't worry, I got one the next day.

This past Saturday night, I was a go-go dancer with Nath Ann at the SPANK loft party in Bushwick, right down the street from my house. It was just too too too much fun. I can't even. So much fun. Here's a picture of us having so much fun, by Christopher Gagliardi. I basically never smile in photos FYI so this is rare. Remember it.



And then last night I hung out with my friend Marcus, who just got his Master's Degree that morning. We met up with Sister Pico to go see Jess Paps' band HEAVEN'S GATE perform in Brooklyn. They were so good! You can hear their music and see some shine they just got from Spin.

I'm gonna go grocery shopping and eat dinner before going to this Taylor Swift tribute show tonight. Saving the gym for tomorrow, so I can burn off my excitement before going to go see the High Priestess Chan Marshall.

Sometimes I like to pretend that Chan is short for Channifer.

10/17/12

ELECTION YEAR BY BILLY CHEER

Great Minds, they think alike, n'est-ce pas?

"Turkish floats above my head like the smoke from the joint, which I like a true Californian, smoke too greedily. The meticulously polite, offensively charming boys are somewhat outraged that I drag three times before passing it on. “In Turkey,” says one of the boys in his round about English, “We smoke once.”"

-- From the Most Brilliant Girl In the World, La JohnJoseph's blog about being in Turkey.

"Barry also had a knack for interceptions. When a joint was making the rounds, he often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted "Intercepted!," and took an extra hit. No one seemed to mind."

-- From Barack Obama: The Story, by David Maraniss (2012).

There are times when we have to do what we have to do.

10/7/12

Miffed



A few weeks ago Bradford had a lovely house party. He had invited just about everyone, gently suggesting that if you wanted to drink something that you'd be well-advised to bring it yourself. Being as we are now at the end of the world, there's a kind of vogue for politesse, and everyone brought bottles. A good problem to have. Throughout the night, the sound of empty bottles clanking around the kitchen counter gave way to the sound of bottles being knocked off of the counter, falling on the floor, and the attendant giggles and apologies that come with such spills. At some point, someone spilled a bottle of wine all over the kitchen floor, and then hustled to clean it up. So: crisis averted. But then later, I was standing in the kitchen, hoping to sip from the Dionysian dregs, talking to dear heart Sam about something or other, and a nice-looking boy knocked a(nother) nearly full bottle of red wine form the counter. I didn't hear it, or see it, being engrossed in a conversation, but I did feel an unusual tickle: most of the wine had spilled into my shoe. So while everyone jumped to get out of the way, the spiller was running around trying to find a towel to clean up with, I was laughing hysterically, my left foot being tickled by what smelled like a perfectly serviceable Merlot.

Gasping for breath in-between peals of laughter, I said to Sam: "Oh, how great. This is just like in Ancient Greece!" He seemed perplexed, other boys turned to look. "You know," I continued, "Like, in Ancient Greece? When they'd pour wine into their shoes?"

A cute boy in glasses, who seemed very much like some kind of an Expert, jumped in: "That never happened. What are you talking about?" I thought, since he was just intruding on my conversation maybe he didn't understand what I was talking about, didn't have enough context.

"Oh." I clarified "Someone spilled the wine and it went into my shoe and it tickled my foot. And I was saying that it's like what they used to do in Ancient Greece, pour wine into their shoes. Y'know? In ANCIENT GREECE?"

He shook his head. "They didn't do that." He seemed to take umbrage with this for some reason. I didn't know what his problem was. Maybe he was Greek, and he thought I was saying something mean about Greek people. Which, hello! I wasn't. I would never do that. I love Greece!
- Some of my best friends are Greek.
- They invented fags!
- I love Greek food!
- I love that "Greek" is an old-fashioned euphemism for sodomy. I think that's just great.
- I once had a boyfriend who was Greek, he was fantastically sexy we used to "Greek" all the time (until we didn't). It was great (mostly).

Besides, even if someone is Greek, I'm allowed to talk about Ancient Greece. It was so long ago. We're all Ancient Greeks. Why did this guy get so upset just because I said that someone spilling red wine into my shoe was just like in Ancient Greece? I was going to say, y'know, there was that episode of "I Love Lucy" about pouring wine into people's shoes. And that took place in Ancient Greece too. But then I realized that the episode I was thinking of took place in Italy, which a Greek would not appreciate me getting mixed up. Maybe it took place in France, which seems like a bigger insult, somehow.

In any case, I realized that I wasn't thinking of pouring wine into shoes, but stomping on grapes with your bare feet to make wine. But I wasn't about to back down.

"Look," I said, "Ancient Greece was thousands of years ago. I'm sure that, at, like, some point in the last two or three thousand years, that somebody poured wine down somebody's shoes, okay?"

And I stormed off. But then I thought: did the Ancient Greeks even wear shoes? Did they just wear sandals? You can't really pour wine down a sandal, as such.



Sam and I went back to the room with the stereo and after much consensus, everybody said they wanted to put on Sam's favorite singer, Sade. Which I know woefully little of, but I like everything I hear. How can you not? She's apparently been quite a touchstone for young McKinnis. Just look what he wrote about Sade.



Been thinking very much about the idea of siamese fighting fish. Partially because they're the title/subject of one of my favorite songs, by Snowpony (from their amazing first album), and partially because that idea of being pretty and being stupid and bred only for fighting really resonantes with me. We want to see pretty things eat each other. I think I probably want to see myself be pretty and also see myself eaten.

I've been lucky enough to be working with some amazing supportive people lately and realizing that I might have some unresolved anger.

The art project I was working on is changing and will probably not be the thing I thought it was going to be. It might still. I might need to do something really crazy and destroy (parts of) myself. It's hard. I hate being scared, and as much as I've admitted on this blog over the years, I've never admitted this: I am terrified, completely and utterly, of being angry. Of losing my temper/losing control. I don't want to rage, I don't want to make aggressive or angry art as such, but I am becoming more and more cognizant of the fact that the thing that scares me is: what if I actually got pissed off, instead of making excuses? This might be abstract.

So many people, or scenes, or ideas, or whatever, have become objects of my anger. My little brother used to be my punching bag when I was a kid. It's so hard to just say what you're angry about. What do I even have to be angry about? It's being too scared to say what I feel like I need to say. I'm furious at all the time I've wasted being too scared to say I was mad.

Another thing I like about Siamese Fighting Fish is that the males help the spawning process, by building bubble nests.

The other day I took the train next to this girl who is close friends with an ex of mine. She was and has always been exceedingly nice to me, but my ex (her best friend) and I have fought very bitterly. He'd been absolutely cruel to me, on purpose, going out of his way to hurt, shame and humiliate me. For my part, I've lost my temper with him, raged directly to him and told him how hurtful he was being. And he made me feel bad for that too. We don't speak. He hates my guts, thinks I'm a crazy person. I also think I'm a crazy person but I also think I don't even have any guts to hate, really.

But, regardless, this girl, privy to all of this, was so sweet to me. It was unnerving. It made me realize the power of niceness. But you know, that power only exists if,

Or, that power can only appear when,

Or, I (personally) can only notice that power in relief against the failure of anger. And by failure I mean the logical conclusion. The end. I can only appreciate niceness if I really mean it, if it means something to me. And I think I need to know about the other things that mean something to me.

All I want is for everyone to like me, and that desire makes me mad. Miffed. Furious, even. Anyway, I know who I have to convince. My work is cut out for me. I'm cutting it. I'm trying to figure out what I need to do and then I'm going to figure out how to do it. I swear. I'm outside my studio and I'm about to go in for three hours and do God knows what, in the service of finding out how to do exactly this.



10/3/12

Partial List of False Starts

- I bought a hairbrush the other day, to brush my wig for the B0DYH1GH show tonight. It's actually two hairbrushes, a big one and a little one, that were sold together. It made me think about having kids. Like, if I had a kid I'd give the kid one of the brushes. But that's now how parenting works, I guess. It's not just sharing, giving the kid the leftovers or scraps. No. That's not even how you're supposed to treat a pet.

- I can never sleep enough. I wonder if I'm sick, or poisoned, or hexed somehow. Sometimes I can't sleep; can't fall asleep or can't stay asleep. But now I can fall asleep just fine. I'd love to fall asleep right now. I just can never sleep enough. It's like pouring water through a colander, I can't get rested enough.

- False Start:

- I bought these new jeans and they're kind of too tight. This is the sort of thing that I feel like any rational person would be able to deal with, but which throws me into an existential crisis. Am I not the size I thought I was? I've never bought jeans from this company before, so I don't know if their sizes run small. I haven't actually bought new jeans in a long time, so I don't actually know what too tight even is. Aren't new jeans supposed to be, like, broken in? Does that refer to stretching out a little bit or shrinking? Are they actually so tight that they make me uncomfortable, or am I just not used to wearing new jeans? In any case, they were on final sale for $30 (marked down from like $3,750) so it's hardly the end of the world. But still. Why isn't everything comfortable? The reason everything isn't comfortable is because, in part, I don't know what comfortable is. Probably no one does. Probably no one is 100% certain of what "comfortable" is, but maybe I'm just admitting it more than your average Joe. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm special, I suffer especially, and the crux of the suffering is knowing how special/different you are. You're welcome!

- Am I getting sick? I feel bad. I feel exhausted. My skin feels weird, I can't think straight. My stomach hurts. I'm performing tonight and tomorrow night and going out with my friend on Friday night and then Saturday I'm getting a sorely-needed haircut. I can't be getting sick. I was just sick. I've been taking all kinds of immune system boosters, weird supplements. Are they what's making me feel bad? Sometimes you just feel bad. It could be for any reason. I bought some elderberry extract. It's so weird and rare for me to try a new herbal remedy or supplement which I haven't already tried. I'm a witch. I know everything already. That might be another symptom. 

This is a good look. I want to dress like a cluster of elderberries. 

- Yesterday I got up so early and by the afternoon thought that maybe I was getting sick. What does it mean to be exhausted, really? I totally skewed my day earlier and now I'm stuck. I'm on, like, European time. Paris Fashion Week time. I saw all the shows online and I didn't like any of them except for Junya Watanabe's sportswear ("Sports? Where?!") and the Comme des Garçons collections. CdG was LITERALLY a clusterfuck. I will have more to say on that score anon. But look, I found some more CdG ads from bygone eras, when Rei was on a slightly less obtuse trip. In the 1970s and 1980s. 










- It's nice, it's cool to be playing two shows this week. Tonight and tomorrow night. I can do this! Watch me go. 

10/2/12

Fizz for You

Some vintage COMME des GARÇONS ads, to brighten up a dreary, drizzly Tuesday.








1978




1979


1981




1985






1986




1986

10/1/12

IT'S OCTOBER FIRST

I'm sorry for the late notice, but I'm doing two shows this week, and I want you come! First, on Wednesday 10/3/12, B0DYH1GH is performing at this really cool new event thrown by Max Bernstein, performing with some of our favorite people.



APOCALYPSE WOW 2: WAY BEYOND THUNDERDOME
A NIGHT OF COMEDY AND MUSIC

FEATURING:
KATE BERLANT
CAROLINE CONTILLO
JOHN EARLY
CASEY JANE ELLISON

MUSIC BY: B0DYH1GH (MAX STEELE AND DANIEL PORTLAND)

HOUSE BAND: DJ JEALOUS ORGASM (JOE HEFFERNAN)
HOSTED BY: MAX BERNSTEIN

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3
Doors at 8:30/Show at 9
FREE!
UPSTAIRS AT ISA
348 WYTHE AVENUE
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK 11211
FACEBOOK INVITE

And then on THURSDAY 10/4/12 I'm performing by myself as Max Steele and the Party Ice at PUSSY FAGGOT. I haven't done a Party Ice show in a while, and I am really excited to kick out the jams back home at my favorite party, Pussy Faggot, with the gang of dear buddies, and of course, MISS PENNIFER ARCADE. I am just sickened with anticipation.



PUSSY FAGGOT! JUBILEE: All Hail The Queen
The Return of Penny Arcade
Thursday, October 4, 2012
The Delancey
168 Delancey St. (at Clinton)
New York, NY
Admission $10 / $6 with SPECIAL RSVP LINK

Back home at The Delancey, this special edition of PUSSY FAGGOT! features DJs…
+ ANDREW ANDREW
+ TOM JACKSON (GAYLETTER)

and performances by…
+ MIKE ALBO
+ RAUL DE NIEVES
+ CLINT MICHIGAN
+ MATTY CROSLAND (of the Pixie Harlots)
+ JORDAN FOX
+ JOSEPH KECKLER
+ BIANCA LEIGH
+ HEATHER LITTEER
+ LOTUS EATER MACHINE
+ AMBER RAY
+ BEN RIMALOWER
+ SARAH SCREAMS
+ MAX STEELE AND THE PARTY ICE
+ TURSI
+ ISIS VERMOUTH
+ JACK WATERS & PETER CRAMER

Door by LA CHINA LOCA

FACEBOOK INVITE

Gosh I hope y'all can come.

Hey you guys it's the first of October, you know what that means: