My worth as a writer may be questionable, but my status as a bottom-feeding local celebrity (or, more accurately, "celebrity") is confirmed: I've been asked to be a panelist in The Gong Show Live this February at The Dark Room. Here's to hoping they're thinking of me as more of a Jaye P. Morgan type than a Jamie Farr type. Because, you know, I've always aspired to be Jaye P. Morgan.

In addition to the boot and phone issues I was bitching about before, other equipment failures include the washing machine in the garage. (Did you know that one potential mistyping of "washing machine," especially if you're me, is "wasgubg nacgube?" Has a nice Cthulhu-esque vibe. WASGUBG NACGUBE! IA LNDRMAT FHTAGN TIDEN! YOG-SOTHOTH RINSEN CY'CLE!) I bought the machine used in 2000, and it's been fine ever since. Now the spin thingy isn't spinning anymore, or something. Not sure what, but it's no good anymore, and it would cost more to fix than replace, and that's not likely to happen until after the first of the year. Thankfully, the dryer still works. But, for how long? For...how...long? Frankly, I'll settle for at least through tonight, after my first trip to a Laundromat in nearly five years. Yeah, I know. Your heart bleeds for me.

10:43am

Centralia! Now I know where I'm going to retire.

2:43pm

Ow! Quit biting the inside of my lip, big fangy tooth!

Joss Whedon has acknowledged that Serenity was a flop financially, and that the whole Firefly thing has ground to a halt. I hope he's prepared for a deluge of angry petitions.

4:10pm

It's official: I'm a Gong Show judge for the first three Saturdays of February. Meanwhile, upcoming Bad Movie Night gigs over the next five months include Gigli (featuring a scene re-enactment by me and Spiegelman), Evel Knievel, Bail Out (yeah, neither have I), the one-year anniversary encore of Red Dawn, followed by Mesa of Lost Women, Roadhouse, and Battlefield Earth. The last two were my suggestions, and I'm still stumping for Cool as Ice. This is how Didion got started, right?

11:33pm

Lilah came over tonight. As is our wont, we discussed our lives and the ghosts on the periphery, comparing scars and notes, looking back on 2005. We reached the conclusion that while everybody had a hard year (my personal traumas and losses pale compared to hers, it's true), we're stronger for having lived through it, and are looking forward to 2006, full of creative possibilities. There's a lot ot be happy about, and there's nothing better than simply being capable of being happy. So many poeple aren't, and I really do feel sorry for them. It must be an awful way to exist.

Then there's the cell phone issue. I like the little Nokia phone I got through Virgin Mobile before the tour, but their pay-as-you-go plan was getting expensive, which is of course the point. So I did a lot of math and determined that I could get a decent plan through Sprint, costing less than I'm paying now, and an upgraded phone for free. Well, "free" in the financial sense. The cost to my soul has yet to be calculated. The allegedly upgraded phone by LG arrived earlier this week (via UPS, always an adventure), and after about five minutes of working with it, I noticed something very unpleasant: my carpal was hitting in a big way. Something carpal-esque, anyway, which first struck when working for Organic in 1997, and has flared up every few years since then. I got a neat little cast-like apparatus from Kaiser to wear on my hand when it does, and the pain usually goes away before too long. But for as much of a texting fiend as I've become, pain simply will not do. There are also some UI issues, and I've quickly realized I have no real need for a camera phone (the Abandoned Monitor project can wait), especially one which is so easy to activate.

After a remarkably painless call with Sprint this morning, I'll be exchanging the existing hurty LG phone for another Nokia, which shouldn't be hurty at all. It also looks even more like communicator from the original Star Trek, what with the mesh pattern on the fliptop (the screen with the god-hand notwithstanding), and I'd be lying if I said that didn't count for something.

Ah, the travails of the privileged, huh? And have I mentioned that it's been raining lately? What have I done to deserve that?

6:28pm

It's actually been dry outside for a few hours, though still cold and windy. The precipitation is probably just waiting for me to leave the house for Bad Movie Night.

sometime after midnight

Bad Movie Night was fun, and dry all the way to The Dark Room. It was drizzly afterwards, but Mikl-Em and Danielle were kind enough to give me a lift home. The movie was It's a Wonderful Life, which I'd actually never seen before, believe it or not. I've never cared to, and I don't believe it was ever considered required holiday viewing when I was growing up. For that matter, I've never seen The Sound of Music, even though watching it on teevee every year is apparently a tradition in many households. Vash was certainly surprised when I told her (and more than a little amused when I went into a rant about pan-and-scanning on VHS and teevee versus letterboxing), though thankfully she didn't suggest that we watch the movie. In fact, not once in the going on three months that we've been dating can I recall her saying anything to the effect of oooh, you've never seen [name of movie]? we totally have to watch that! It's kinda refreshing, as is how it seems that she'd generally rather sit and talk than watch a movie, though I must admit that a few films have slipped into my GreenCine queue based on comments she's made. Everything in its own time.

I ran into Spiegelman on my way to The Dark Room, and we talked about potentially co-hosting Gigli for Bad Movie Night next month. He sounded enthusiastic about it. Can I just say that I'm highly if stupidly proud of the fact that comedians seem to like me? The host of the benefit on Friday night, with whom I've worked a couple times at The Dark Room, seemed especially effusive in her introduction of me. My sense of humor is very important to me; no matter the nature of the reading or performance, if I don't get at least one intentional laugh out of the audience, I can't help but consider it a failure. As a result, when people who people who (ostensibly) get paid to do it think I'm funny, it's about as high a compliment as I can receive. If I ever truly lose my sense of humor—and I don't mean something I need to "lighten up" about, don't ever fucking tell me to "lighten up"—haul me out back and shoot me. Put me out of my misery.

I think I lost it
Let me know if you come across it
Let me know if I let it fall
Along a back road somewhere
Money can't replace it
No memory can erase it
And I know I'm never gonna find
Another one to compare

Gimme some love to fill me up
Gimme some time, gimme some stuff
Gimme a sign, gimme some kind of reason
Are you heavy enough to make me stay
I feel like I might blow away
I thought I was in heaven
But I was only dreamin'

I think I lost it
Let me know if you come across it
Let me know if I let it fall
Along a back road somewhere
Money can't replace it
No memory can erase it
And I know I'm never gonna find
Another one to compare

I just wanna live the life I please
I don't want no enemies
I don't want nothin' if I have to fake it
Never take nothin' don't belong to me
Everything's paid for, nothing's free
If I give my heart
Will you promise not to break it?

I think I lost it
Let me know if you come across it
Let me know if I let it fall
Along a back road somewhere

Money can't replace it
No memory can erase it
And I know I'm never gonna find
Another one to compare

Lucinda Williams,
"I Lost It"

Last night I read at a benefit for an upcoming dance festival. I had some issues with the name of the show, but otherwise, it was a lot of fun, if underattended. Vash attended, and afterwards we walked to a big annual Hanakkuh party a friend of hers hosts. Part of the annual tradition is a cranberry applesauce supplied by Vash, and which she made earlier that day at the Black Light District. We didn't have any latkas, though, because the party was practically overattended (in contrast to the show), and we didn't last too long before deciding to head to the slightly lower-density environs of the District. Though it does sometimes feel a little crowded, what with Perdita being such a bedhog.

We talked a lot, Vash and I, discussing semantic elephants and the like. It was all good.

Meanwhile, The Dark Room is doing The Twilight Zone again next year. Since I've pretty much learned the hard way that I'm not going to be doing anything theatrical anytime soon unless I take some serious initiative, I'm consider adapting and directing this episode. It has that literally apocalyptic theme which I find so appealing, very Last Night. Maybe I can even cross-promote it with the bar. Nah.

3:05pm

And now, via WFMU's Beware of the Blog, your moment of squick. The work of a photographer by the name of Charlie White, this may be the single most troubling image I've ever seen. I'm wearing extra socks to bed tonight, lest it return in my nightmares.

4:52pm

I was enjoying the movie, I really was. I was laughing at all the right parts, feeling touched and roused by others, and felt like we were on the same page. And then, the very last joke of the movie, the taste the film leaves in your mouth before the credits—one of the male characters is now a woman! I don't use the phrase "sex change" when talking about real people in real life. It's a reductive term which fails to express the vastness of the transsexual experience. In movies, however, transition has historically been treated as something as simple as flipping a switch, or at least as a single operation with no context.

It was no different in this movie. Nothing in it had lead up to this final twist, this final cheap jab; it was unrelated to anything which had been established about the character previously, and had no evident purpose other than because a man in a dress is funny. It could have been any of the male characters, really, but I suspect they chose this one in particular because he was bald with a deep voice, thus making the contrast all the more quote-hilarious-unquote.

What truly disgusts me is that this happened with a new movie in 2003. The movie was called A Mighty Wind, and I stumbled out of the theater feeling rather like I'd been slapped in the face with a waffle iron. I'd enjoyed Christopher Guest's previous movies, and while a certain degree of randomness and unpredictability was part of their charm, this felt like an unforgivably cheap shot, like he ran out of ideas and went for an old reliable standby, in spite of how little it had to do with anything else. If nothing else, it served as a reminder that trannies are still laughingstocks in the culture at large. Though sometimes it seems like we aren't doing much better around here.

7:57pm

Oh, yeah. And then there's an (independent) movie about a pre-op transsexual, in which the genetic girl playing the tranny is airbrushed on the poster (okay, Photoshopped) to look more masculine. Nice touch. And don't even get me started on all the wasted blue space in the top half of the poster, or the most meaningless tagline since Warrior. Legend. King. Someone somewhere thinks it's what will sell the movie, and maybe it will. How should I know? Maybe I really am a curmudgeon, like Doc suggested. I'd like to think so.

Hey, at least I'm not deluding myself by creating or signing meaningless online petitions about DVD cover art, or even stupider things.

8:28pm

I've actually done pretty well today for only having gotten a couple hours of sleep last night. (Best estimates put them at between two and four o'clock in the morning.) All the more reason for me to stay in tonight, even beyond the scary weather—it'll be good to be close to my bed when the crash hits.

Okay, now that that's taken care of—

Fur!

And as long as we're on the subject of clothing fetishes, wet! Especially from the eighties. See, the decade wasn't all bad.

12:45pm

We got a bunch of shemale pr0n recenty, and while sorting the performer IDs, I've noticed something rather troubling. No matter what the girl's name is or how feminine she appears (a few manage to overcome the inherent aesthetic limitations of the mugshot and look downright beautiful), if she's in Florida or Texas, she's listed as male. Residents of California and New York, on the other hand, are generally listed as female. Yeah, okay, I don't know the Texans or Floridians in question. It's certainly possible that in spite of obvious hormone use and breast augmentation they still identify as boys, and I'm being my usual counterrevolutionary assimilationist sellout self. (That's me, always trying to fit people into boxes.) It's possible, but I doubt it, and I trust my radar. Anyway, it makes me sad. I hope they're eventually able to relocate to more progressive states.

3:54pm

Evidently on something of a nostalgia kick lately, I've been Googling people I knew in elementary school and high school. Names I can remember, anyway, and which are unique. (Living in Fresno or Clovis narrows it down, too.) Thus far, two of them appear to be marathon runners. Go figure.

5:18pm

Holy fucking shit it's cold out there, colder than the right tit of the corpse of Jesus, y'know what I mean? And me with both a gig and a party tonight. I could sure go for one of those fur coats right about now. Ah, the tragedy.

Sometimes I dream about the house of my childhood, in what used to be deepest suburban Fresno but will probably be considered the outskirts within a decade. Decent-sized joint with four bedrooms (master for parents, other three spread amongst the four children—though if memory serves, Jonco and I continued to share a room even after our older brothers vacated theirs), three and a half bathrooms, living room, game room (probably called a den in other contexts, containing a pool table, a piano, and the teevee with my beloved Atari 2600), kitchen-attached dining room and more formal dining room used primarily for special occasions and otherwise considered off-limits to the kids, back yard with a pool, two-car garage, and a spacious front yard lacking only an apple tree with a tire swing in the front yard to achieve All-American status. (That's All-American with an N, mind you, not All-America. See, Fresno has been deemed an All-America City, a dorky idea made all the dorkier by the dumb spelling. Then again, so has Roswell, not in spite of the UFO thing but partially because of. I have to admit, that's pretty cool.) A bay window was added on at some point during the ten years I lived there, probably towards the end, though certainly before my parents splt up when I was eight.

In the dreams I'm back there, probably never having left, neither young nor old, being there seeming no odder than anything else in a dream. (When I told Vash that one of the reasons I've never had sex in a dream is that I've been in a stage of near-constant monogamy, for fifteen years, and when I'm dreaming I don't realize that those rules don't apply, she gave me a look of utmost sympathy and assured me that I should never have to worry about that again.) I can only wonder what it'll be like the first night I stay at the house my mother just bought, which happens to be on the exact same block as the childhood house. Seriously. As near as I can tell, it's a few doors down and across the street. May even be able to see one from the other. I guess I'll find out when she shows me the place next weekend.

What I'm really hoping for, but not holding my breath about, is that she'll become friends with the people living in the old house. I so very much want to see the inside, to see what they've done with it. Does the game room still have that wood paneling which was de rigueur for homes in the seventies? Is the living room's shag carpet as shaggy as ever? Will the whole place seem, well, smaller?

Ah, life. It's just so fucking weird.

Walt Disney Pictures is so eager for churches to turn out audiences for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which open[ed last] Friday, that it's offering a free trip to London - and $1,000 cash - to the winner of its big promotional sermon contest.

The only catch is that the sermons must mention Narnia, based on the hugely popular children's books about four British children who walk through an uncle's magic armoire into an enchanted kingdom.

A sermon contest. Jesus fucking Christ. That's their right, of course, and Oscar forbid I contribute to the persecution of xtians. Beside, it's not like the Church hasn't been corrupt for a very long time. Nothing new under this particular sun. They bastards just aren't getting my money, is all.

1:53pm

Tear it down and salt the Earth.

9:29pm

Sundays were the worst.

Okay, Tuesday nights were bad, too. Tuesdays were CCD, which stood for “Confraternity of Christian Doctrine.” Not that I ever remembered; I asked my mom every few years, but the information never stuck in my head. I resented it too much. I’m pretty sure it was what other churches called catechism. All it meant to me was that my Tuesday evenings were blown to hell because my mother was putting me through the Catholic rigors.

Still, that wasn’t as bad as Sunday mornings. See, Tuesdays were already fucked because I’d been at school all day. But at least Sundays had potential in theory, since I didn’t have to go to school, and could sleep in. But, no. Whichever parent I was with that weekend would wake me up early, force to put on the “nice” clothes with the collars I hated so much , and drag me to nine o’clock mass at a Catholic Church across town. (I know, I know, it’s has a funny name.)

The service was over by ten, and the post-ritual socializing of my current parental unit was typically through by eleven. Sometimes we’d go to brunch afterwards at some place like TGI Friday’s , which was cool, but more often we’d just go home. Even though I’d typically have the afternoon and evening to myself, it didn’t matter. The day was shot. There was no way I could be productive, or even really enjoy myself. All I could do was count the minutes until it was the time that I normally got home from school, at which point it ceased feeling like the weekend and my depression increased. Late Sunday afternoon light depresses me, even now when I have a job that I enjoy and no longer dread Mondays.

It was from going to church that I developed the habit of always having a book on my person. I picked it up from my oldest brother, who would read until the last possible moment, usually our mother telling him to put it away because the service was starting.

Aside from being able to get in some reading time, the other respite from the deadly banality of Catholic mass was the Children’s Liturgy. Shortly before the sermon began—but after what felt like an eternity of sitting and kneeling and sitting and standing and kneeling and standing and sitting and then doing the whole thing over again—anyone under the age of consent was sent out of the main chapel into a smaller room where we were given a dumbed-down version of the Bible readings. At least there I could get a bit more headway into my book. It also provided me with the means to avoid the rest of mass.

Painfully shy, I hated the ritual of exiting the chapel and heading for the Children's Liturgy, since there was no way to do it without being seen by the entire congregation. I was convinced they were all looking at me, this tall misfit boy who was already towering over the other kids, not to mention a good number of the adults..

Even worse was returning to our seats after the Children’s Liturgy. Eventuaaly, I realized that I could get away with not returning to my seat in the chapel. Instead, I lurked around the back entrance, paying nominal attention. I really wanted to just go into the lounge or cafeteria and read until the service was over, but I just knew someone would narc on me to my parents. At least if I was standing in the back, or drifting just outside the doors, I had plausible deniability.

The suckitude of Sundays took on a whole new dimension when, as a teenager, I graduated from CCD to “Youth Group.” This meant that not only were Sunday mornings shot, but then I’d have to turn around and go back to church that night. I was never home for the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation as a result, instead having to tape it and watch it later. Okay, I would have taped it anyway, but thanks to Youth Group I wasn’t home to pause during the commercials. That, as much as anything, led to my rejection of God, the bastard. What sort of Invisible Man Sitting in the Clouds would cause such suffering?

As should be obvious by now, I did everything I could to resist church indoctrination. Baptism sure as hell wasn’t my idea—it was nonconsensual, can it be undone?—nor was First Communion. There was talk of me becoming an altar boy, just like my closest brother had been. It was taken as almost a given that I would be. I found the idea heinous, and wanted nothing to do with it. Wearing the robe, everybody watching, having to remember all the steps? More pressure than I could handle. In a display of self-determination which was downright uncharacteristic for me at that age, I made it clear that I did not wanna, and the bullet was successfully dodged.

First Confession was also my Last. I went into the booth and softpedaled like mad, confessing to having negative thoughts about the kids who would terrorize me at school, which really doesn't count. What, did anyone think I was going to tell the priest, someone I knew and considered a nice guy, about the really bad things I’d done? About my genuine misdeeds, the ones I’d managed to cover up? Or that I was fascinated by the concepts of cross-dressing and changing sex, that I was already spending hours researching the subjects, that deep down I wondered whether or not I was really a boy? Not goddamned likely.

The last couple years of CCD lead to Confirmation. In theory It never happened, because my will eventually grew stronger than my mother’s, which also accounts for why my hair started to grow long around that time. However grudgingly, she began to accept that in spite of her best and certainly well-intentioned efforts, I would never be the short-haired Confrimed Catholic she so wanted me to be. Youth Group was, perhaps, the last attempt to bring me into the fold, for me to accept the gift she felt she was giving me.

Sunday nights in the newly built part of the church, sleek and modern and fluorescent compared to the whitewashed brick of the main building. The tone of Youth Group was different from CCD, looser, more geared towards “the youth,” teenagers, us. We even had the occasional all-nighters, sleepovers with food and snacks and music and horror movies—I first saw The Hitcher, the movie with Rutger Hauer as a psycho where Jennifer Jason Leigh is torn asunder (offscreen) in a house of worship, which makes you wonder why the hell such a big deal is being made about Bingo (I was there, people, and it’s a lot more chaste than you might think)—and, of course, a Ouija board. Kid you not. The notion that horror movies or occult board games were somehow un-xtian was of no concern to me, and in fact didn’t cross my mind at all.

In addition to separating a fourteen year-old boy from his Star Trek, which is bad enough, the most difficult part of Youth Group was that, for some reason, some old friends from my first elementary school were there. I’m not sure why, since they didn’t actually go to my church, but there they were, people I hadn’t seen since the fourth grade when my mother and I moved into a different school district. It was not exactly a joyous reunion. After four years, we were going in different directions, and didn’t get along so well. It was a pattern that would repeat many times over the years, but usually without the element of lost contact.

As it often will, Salvation came from a secular force. When I was sixteen, in 1989, I started working until midnight on Saturday nights. My mother either took pity on me or admitted defeat (possibly both), and stopped getting me out of bed on Sunday morning. She expressed some hope that when I no longer worked late on Saturdays that I might return to church. I can’t fault her for trying.

All of that said, Father Negro was a good man.

For those interested in such things, the Tim & Roma! Show I had to miss back in July is online. Don't click on the word "More." It doesn't do anything. Yeah, I know.

In more horribler news, Sister Roma!'s makeup case was kifed out of a car on Friday night. If you want to contribute to Sister Roma!'s Emergency Makeup Fund—has there been a worthier cause this year? I don't think so—then, drop me a line via sherilyn at sfgoth dot com.

6:34pm

Doing my radio show tonight. Not sure for how much longer, though.

11:43pm

Okay, maybe I won't be calling it quits on the show just yet. Got a caller from Los Angeles, listening online, raving about how much he liked what I was playing. (It was the mp3 from this WFMU blog entry, mixed with the netcast of CHML 900 AM in Ontario, which broadcasts old radio shows from nine to eleven Pacific Standard Time. In this case, it was a Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis program.) Just a little positive feedback is generally all it takes to get me going. That's either my flaw or my strength as an entertainer: so long I'm making one person happy, it's worth the effort.

Overall, the long night was a lot of fun, and the video turned out even better than I'd anticipated. (Go, Mr. Pam) Sure, I can clearly be seen fucking up one of the Big Dance Moves, but I suppose it helps if you have me next to you pointing at the screen and saying see! right there! i fucked up one of the Big Dance Moves! Otherwise, it might not be as noticeable as I think.

Presently, a not unattractive girl in forties/fifties garb grabbed me by the arm and lead me over to a table where some of her friends were sitting. Placing a slim digital camera into my hand, she said in a bubbly voice, We Need A Drag Queen To Take A Picture Of Us.

Christ. What was it, the kitty ears? I'm okay with being parsed as not a genetic female at a pr0n industry party, but—

then you'll have to keep looking, I bristled, because i'm not a drag queen.

The bubble burst. In a tone which implied that I was edging seriously close to ruining her good mood, she said All Right, All Right, How DO You Define Yourself?

I should have told her it was none of her business and that she shouldn't leap to conclusions, of course. I had that right. (Sort of. The last thing I needed was it getting back to Tim that I'd inadvertantly insulted some important muckety-muck in the industry.) Juanita More was onstage, Suppositori Spelling was somewhere on the premises though not in the immediate vicinity, but hey, one boy in a dress is just as good as another, right? What's the difference? Aloud, I said, i'm transsexual.

Fine, she said in a giving-the-baby-its-bottle tone with an exasperated roll of the eyes, We Need A Transsexual To Take Our Picture. And I'm weak, so I did.

There were a some pronoun slips throughout the evening from people who really should have known better, and one (self-described) twink was really forward with his questions. Vash was next to me at the time—we were on one of the ample couch/bed combos at the afterparty—and when the twink asked if I was a boy or a girl, Vash responded She's A Girl without hesitation. Sensing the inevitable followup question, I added used to be a boy, now a girl. He replied, So You're A Bottom, Then? Vash and I just looked at each and laughed.