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Saturday, 31 December 2005 (no longer their golden girl) 3:57pm Wanna know what I hate about inevitabilities? They always happen. Can't they take a break now and again? Like, the door-bender my car was in some months back. I was worried that rain would get in through the slight crack now visible between the passenger door and the frame of the car. Rain came and went shortly thereafter with no leakage. Then the rain came again and stuck around for a zillion years, and wouldn't you know it, the passenger side floorboard is soaked. Ironically, there's still no leakage from the gaping rust-holes in the roof. I'm so glad I never got around to having those fixed professionally. 2005. Man, that was a rough one. Quite a bit like '99 in some ways I don't care to contemplate, and when I really think about it, there were some major parallels between '98 and '04. (Don't ask me what. I said I don't care to contemplate them. No, not even with you.) Guess that means I should start battening down the hatches for 2011. I've learned a lot this year. Perhaps the most important lesson is: everyone should fall from grace at least once.
Vash and I are staying in this evening, though it's looking like the outside revelers might not get rained upon after all, certainly not
in the way we were last night when we went to The Dark Room to see Emperor Norton. Well, yay for them.
Why Didn't Babel Dark marry Molly?
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Friday, 30 December 2005 (the space between flames) 11:11am My erstwhile discman has been located, I think. I'm pretty sure I saw it being used to run sound for the hilarious Satan's Christmas Comedy Cabaret at The Dark Room last night. Same make and model, and the scuff marks seemed about right. It's found a good home, and it's doing important work, and (most importantly) it's been replaced, so I'm not going to say anything. Except that, damn, Esmerelda was schnookered. 12:12pm Uncle Skip, the keeper of such arcane knowledge, has done a bit of research into the whole grandfather-in-the-military story. Seems that between his military records and his birth and death certificates, there's reason to believe that my grandfather was not sixteen when enlisted, but seventeen or even (gasp!) eighteen. (Confession time: I think his name was Octavius, but I'm not certain. Oh, right, like you'd necessarily remember the first name of a grandparent who lived in another state and passed away while Dynasty was on the air? As if.) Skip and I are still working out the math on that one. I'd like to think this doesn't affect the bootlegging aspect of the legend—which, let's face it, is the most exciting part—but at this point I can't really accept anything as true without some sort of evidence. Maybe I can call the Spokane County Sheriff's Office and see if they still have records from the twenties, and be willing to share them with me. When they aren't out searching barns for bodies, that is. I think reading In Cold Blood is partially to blame for all this. Damn you, Truman Capote. I'm glad you're dead.
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Thursday, 29 December 2005 (canvas the town) 11:36am Sunday night, my father asked me about my work. All he could remember was that I was doing admin stuff, which of course hasn't been true for well over a year, and may have simply been a (reasonable) guess. When I visited in May I chickened out and didn't mention the pr0n angle, but that had just been the three of us (me, him and his wife) over lunch. Now Vash was here with me, not to mention Jonco and his wife, and that actually made me feel a little braver about something which shouldn't have required the slightest bit of courage. He was completely nonplussed when I told him that the majority of my work involves gay pr0n video on demand, not so much as a flinch or involuntary cluck of disapproval. Can't say I'm surprised, really, any more than I was surprised by his non-reaction when I described my former boss as emotionally abusive. Him and I have never been that close, never had much in common, and I probably seemed like only slightly less of a stranger than Vash. Someday, I may regret the distance.
According to my Uncle Skip (Aunt Betty, Uncle Skip, how faux-Rockwellian are those names?), my maternal grandmother never actually said she was
a flapper, but he suspects she was one. She did smoke in the Twenties, which itself was akin to burning her bra in the streets. The bootlegging story
about my grandfather is true, however, at least according to Skip. So many more stories to uncover...
Ultimately, it's just another example of the death of movie poster art, which has been twitching in a pool of its own blood and sick for many years now. Again, it's not the blatant use of sex to sell the movie so much as the utter artlessness of it, the confluence of elements which don't add up to a goddamn thing. There might have been the slightest seed (spooge?) of an idea, but it went nowhere at all. But, you know, that's par for the course. What really breaks my heart is when a decent or even (heaven forbid) artistic poster is dumbed down for the video release. It doesn't happen quite as often with current movies, as the posters are pretty stupid to begin with; you can bet that the video box for Flightplan will feature the same big scary head as the theatrical poster. But take something like The Last Flight of Noah's Ark, a long since forgotten Disney flick. Even Disney apologists will tell you that it "settles for mediocrity." But, my god, how beautiful is the poster? For a frackin' G-Rated movie, no less? I remember being taken by the image when I was a kid, and I wouldn't be surprised to discover that it was on the original video box in the early eighties. But that's not how you sell a movie these days, nosiree. What do people want to see, what will get them to buy or rent a video? A beautiful painting of a makeshift plane-cum-boat on a stormy sea? Hell no! Faces of washed-up actors kids have never heard of, and thats what Anchor Bay's VHS box delivered in spades. When Disney later released the movie on DVD, they decided to represent the action of the movie by an action shot of...um...people carrying stuff. Bet that one flew like Noah's Ark—right off the shelves, that is! And this is why I should never ever work in a video store again, no matter how much they pay me.
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Wednesday, 28 December 2005 (making everything succeed) 9:52am I don't watch teevee. I certainly haven't been watching the second season of Battlestar Galactica with Maddy the last few days, and I'm not looking forward to downloading the new episodes starting next week. If I did, however, I'd hope that Showtime picks up the recently cancelled Arrested Development, which is too good for the networks anyway. Not that I'd know. 2:32pm After dinner and Xmas tree lane on Saturday, Vash and I went to Deja Vu, which calls itself quote Fresno's Premier Gay Night Club unquote. It wasn't quite ten yet and the crowd was kinda thin, but it seemed like a fun place, and I could tell it would be packed before too long. There was more than ample security out front (much moreso than any queer bar in the City), so we were in no way unsafe. All the same, I decided not to hint to my mother beforehand that we were heading that direction, just in case. Some of my xmas loot from various sources included the massive Time Out Film Guide, Love All the People: Letters, Lyrics, Routines by Bill Hicks (from Maddy earlier that week), and The Truth (with jokes) by Al Franken. Vash observed that we're big on giving books, which is something I've always been rather proud of. Whatever else you can say about my family, we're a bunch of voracious readers.
I gave Vash Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s, very much to fellow Weimarophile sister-in-law's approval. (Evidently it's one of the better books on the subject.)
Of course, we don't entirely traffic in print; I couldn't help but notice that Vash kept looking at the Battlestar Galactica Season One DVD set I received, picking it up
from the table, turning it over, putting it back down, glancing at it some more, picking it up again, and so on. I'm rather proud of the fact that we're able to keep ourselves occupied by
things other than teevee (even really really good teevee), especially considering how little we see of each other. I have the Black Light District, she has Wonderland, and never the twain shall meet, even though each of us is always welcome in the other's world. Anyway, as far as Galactica goes, I suspect an exception might be made.
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Tuesday, 27 December 2005 (no longer his dominant) 3:20pm During our Xmas eve driving tour of the empty husk of downtown Fresno (including a swing by the highly inappropriate City Hall), Vash and I did some browsing at Emerald Thrift, one of my old favorites. I scored a Liberace record for my burgeoning collection, and found a neo-flapper dress which actually fits me. This got me to thinking about an old family legend which I'd never quite trusted, so I asked my mom that evening over dinner at DiCicco's. (A look of borderline shock crossed her face when Vash ordered the Eggplant Parmigiana, my mom's favorite for as far back as I can remember.) She confirmed that yes, my maternal grandmother had in fact been a flapper in the twenties. Photographic evidence exists, but she has no idea where they are. Why said pictures haven't long since been located, framed and placed on the wall of every home she's ever owned is a mystery to me. She also confirmed that my maternal grandfather was arrested for bootlegging whiskey across the Canadian border during Prohibition, and was given the choice of either going to jail or going into the military. He chose the latter, specifically the Marines, though he had to lie about his age to get in. I believe her, of course, but the story kinda falls apart for me on that last detail. Unless he lied to them as well, wouldn't the cops have known that he was too young for military service, and by offering that as an option they were encouraging fraud—or whatever crime it is when you lie to the military? Then again, it's not like they could Google him to check his story.
In any event, that's the sort of thing which makes me feel very boring. Admittedly, this is a wild tale of misspent youth, and by the time either
of them were my age they had most definitely straightened out. Hell, when World War II rolled around my grandfather re-enlisted
even though he was married and had two (2) children, including a daughter who would spend the majority of her first five years without him around.
But my own youth was sadly non-misspent, so I guess I'm trying to make up for it in my thirties.
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Monday, 26 December 2005 (the despair of the season) 8:24am I'd daresay the experiment was a success. 10:29am One particular experiment that was not a success was making it through the holiday without hearing Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Xmastime." Everything was fine until Vash and I stopped at Casa De Fruta on the way to Fresno. While we were admiring the wide range of garlic salad dressings when those distinctive synth notes came over the loudspeakers. I guess once is to be expected, huh? Later than night, we drove down Xmas Tree Lane. A sign instructs visitors to tune to the Lane's low-power FM station for "Xmas Tree Lane" music. For those of us who prefer silence (as silent as it could be as one of dozen cars creeping along), many of the houses had speakers set up outside, thus allowing us to hear the music whether we cared to or not. It seemed to mostly alternate between "Wonderful Xmastime" and (some Kenny G song). Right, okay. Three times. Plenty. So xmas night we're at my Dad's place, along with my niece and two of my brothers and their assorted others of significance, chatting with my father and his wife—the latter of whom at one point realized aloud that there was no xmas music. I ruminated even more aloud that I was really enjoying the lack thereof. (My mom, bless her heart, didn't play any music earlier that day.) I wasn't loud enough, or was too subtle because on went the radio to KJWL and their two-day commericialless xmas marathon. It wasn't so bad at first, leaning heavily towards older big-band kinda stuff. But...well...you know how this anecdote must, by definition, end. My mom gave us the walking tour of her new house on Saturday afternoon. Though it's slightly smaller, three bedrooms instead of four and not quite as vast a front lawn, it's exceedingly similar to the house we lived in until I was ten years old—the house which can, as I'd suspected, be seen from the front yard of the new place. The wood paneling and closet layout in the game room, the brick wall and fireplace in the living room, the tiling and cupboards in the kitchen, so many design elements of such a seventies vintage, things which my mom's insanely handy boyfriend will single-handed bring into a more millennial design aesthetic, much like he did with their current kitchen. So, it won't always so closely resemble the old house, and that's for the best. Except for there being one missing the layout of th bedrooms is the same, including quote-mine-unquote: southwest corner of the house, window facing the south, walk-in closet, next to the bathroom...I mean, again, it's not the old house, but except for a few details it's the same design, and when you're standing in certain places, there's no way to tell the difference. I still haven't been able to wrap my brain about it.
Everyone liked Vash (as I knew they would), and thankfully when we left Fresno her first words were not anything resembling «Well, we're never doing THAT Again.»
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Friday, 23 December 2005 (letting it bleed) 5:13pm Half-day at work, followed by some erranding downtown and talking with Maddy for half an hour outside CompUSA (and then Billy shot a man in a drug deal gone horribly wrong, dumping the body off the shallow western end of the Richmond Bridge), and finally a swing by Other Avenues to pick up various items for tonight, as Vash and I are engaging in the hallowed "making latkes the night before going to Fresno" tradition. Well, it could become a tradition. Nothing is real. Everything is permitted. It's funny; though xmas is in two days, I'm feeling remarkably non-stressed by it all. Yeah, I still want to rip my ears out of my head when I'm assaulted by xmas carols in public, and the office Secret Santa ritual yesterday served to remind me how much of an enigma I am to most of my coworkers. (Little do they know how much heat I've gotten in the past—and will surely continue to receive in the future—for, shall we say, insufficient opacity. she can't be trusted! she'll spill all your secrets on her blog! I certainly hope someone has thought to warn Vash about how dangerous I am.) But I'm not as sick and over it as I usually am by now. Maybe it's because I'm living by myself. Neither The Ex nor Maddy were exactly the biggest fans of the holiday, but they were a hell of a lot more into it than me, and that always caused some strife. Then again, maybe it's because I'm still shuddering a little bit from the emotional apocalypse that was roughly nine o'clock xmas eve through nine o'clock xmas night in New Orleans last year, a time which I'm surprised I haven't written about yet, whether for publication or not. I think it might be because even though it's all true, it'll read like what it was: over-the-top melodrama, unrealistic in the way that only reality can be. Which is all the more reason, I suppose. (I should point out that I am not at all talking about the amazing time we had with Poppy the night before at the (since hurriance-damaged) Commander's Palace and beyond, easily the high point of our trip. But, to say things went downhill after that is to indulge in the most unimaginative form of understatement.) Or maybe it's that I'm dating a Jewish girl. Who the hell knows?
Speaking of my office, our remarkably non-seasonal holiday video is now up on the Tim & Roma! Show page. (Direct RealMedia links:
56K, 150K, and 350K.) Viewing tip: Sister Roma! is playing
Jenna Jameson. It'll make a lot more sense if you know that. Or not.
In case you don't know what Roma! looks like, she's the pale blonde tranny dressed all in black. Um, that's no help at all, is it? Okay, she's
the pale blonde tranny dressed in black without dark eye makeup who has actual speaking lines. On the other hand, the pale blonde tranny dressed in black
with dark eye makeup who doesn't get any lines to herself (but does some Cable ACE Award-worthy nonverbal acting) is,
as has been previously established, playing Daryl Hannah in Blade Runner.
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Thursday, 22 December 2005 (not easily found) 10:55am Slapping together an mp3 cd this morning, it occurred to me that I haven't actually bought a Who cd since...gah. I don't know. A used copy of the Remastered-with-Bonus-Tracks version of The Who By Numbers, maybe, and that was some time during the Clinton Administration. I buy one cd a year on average, and that's only if I can't find it via usenet piracy (arrrr!). Hey, I'm never going to make a living from my art, so nobody else should get to make living from theirs. If I could steal the food right off their children's plates, I would. Have I said "arrrr!" yet? 9:40pm Ah, is there any greater gift to lazy writers than public transportation? Around half past eight this morning a grumpy-looking derelict of the sort Summer used to call "crusty" got on a single N-train which was certain to be overstuffed with already frazzled commuters long before it reached Duboce Tunnel. He (grumpily) flung a large duffel bag across two bench seats, then took up three more across from them with a red backpack and his own reclined body. He immediately closed his eyes and started to doze, perhaps having grumpy dreams, waking only when someone unsuccessfully attempted to sit down next to him. My fellow cattle eventually moved the duffel to the floor, unseen by its sleeping flinger, and a much smaller person managed to squeeze in next to him. His other bag still occupied a space which would have been much better served by an animate object. I am very lucky by public commuter standards; I enter at one terminal stop and exit at the other, so I'm all but guaranteed a seat. Therefore, from my position of relative non-inconvenience, I can say it was difficult not to be somewhat amused by the man's utterly shameless territory grab. Maybe it's the (socialist? leftist?) in me applauding the sight of someone so desperately lower class taking what they can get, expanding the fill the available space in a way generally reserved for the well off. It made me chuckle in all the ways that seeing an SUV parked in a space marked "compact" makes me growl and spit—the latter only if I'm sure nobody's looking, since I'm a conditional revolutionary. This is not me saying the gin-blossomed grinch was doing the right thing, or that it was even especially defensible. It was just hard to hate him for it. Besides, I can't pretend to be a judge of right and wrong anymore.
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Wednesday, 21 December 2005 (breaking the L barrier) 6:51am Instead of my usual political ranting (if Dubya ever clicks on this link, he'll sure get the what-for!) and gossip about other people (did I mention that Susie broke up with Billy because he gave her the crabs and then I saw her make out with Jimmy behind the roller rink and after they smoked dope he stuck his finger up her coochie?), I'm going to turn the focus inward, try writing about myself, my own life and experiences. That'll be a radical shift in format, huh? 11:26am Not so much for xmas as for the hell of it, a drone musician pal of mine from Portland (he attended last month's reading) sent me Leif Inge's 9 Beet Stretch on three mp3 CDs. That particular format is necessary, since the piece is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony digitally stretched out to twenty-four hours, without evident distortion or change in pitch. May well be the most beautiful thing I've heard in a long time. I'm half-tempted play it over the span of a few months on my show, something I've also considered with Robert Rich's Somnium. I probably won't, but it's an intriguing idea all the same. 12:10pm i had no reason to be over-optimistic 1:30pm I'm not sure how I can really express how much this site would have helped when I was going through my major Who phase as a teenager. Actually understanding the words? What a concept. Between their accents, Pete's obscure and often absurd lyrics, and the craptastic non-fidelity of MCA's double-album cassettes, I could almost never figure out what the hell they were singing. But I loved them anyway, and got through some pretty dark times with their help. I bonded with at least two of my English teachers in high school over The Who; my freshman teacher loaned me his copy of Keith Moon's solo album after making me promise that I wouldn't show anyone the inside. Speaking of solo albums, Pete's Empty Glass was a daily Walkman listen for me in '89, especially that summer, on a tape backed with Nothing's Shocking by Jane's Addiction. That was the summer in which I did acid for the first time, a day or two after seeing a reformed approximation of The Who at the Oakland Coliseum. And I still remember the chill that went down my spine in 1987 when heard the synthesizer solo in the instrumental title track of Quadrophenia, listening through headphones in my grandparents' guest house in Loon Lake, Washington during what would prove to be our last visit.
I haven't listened to them much over the last decade or so, certainly with nothing resembling the ferocity of back then. I've acquired as much as I can via the
internet (arrrr!), and it certainly sounds a zillion times better. I wonder if I would hear something different now. Admittedly,
"Dreaming from the Waist" sounds more like Pete spelling out my anxieties than ever.
And, though I largely discovered them on my own—I knew my brother was a fan growing up, but I also knew he was an R.E.M. fan from early on, and it took
the better part of two decades for me to discover them—I suspect it's genetic.
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