Wake up on cathode, crumb cake coffee cups cigarettes coleslaw, over easy Mame, I'll take a side order of that which is trailing off like smoke above the shimmering rim of your carafe. The waitress works the dining room with a bustle that is actually like the bump and 'dodge-ems' at Kennywood. Silverware ta tinks the chipped china and conversations stop...then start, to echo and build, a rhythm like a crescendo, and falls in a million interesting ways, like Merce Cunningham falling, or John Cage falling or the way Brubeck writes that sort of falling passage. Or when your car passes a semi on the Akron interbelt going 90 miles per hour. Leaving then beginning the selective type cast, the sitters of this early morning curtain call; alt-girls try to find a place for Uber purses and sip selectively herbal packets of tea, taking long ass lip stick drags on their clove smokes. All the young dudes handsome out the early morning with bed heads and glasses, t-shirts and jeans, boots and socks, water and ice, coffee and cream. Plastic vinyl table cloths cover a disconcerting 'Windex�' 'Wessonality�' wipe and shine...wipe and shine...away the matte finish of the former sitters sitting the morning away in the breakfast diner. The sun streams in through the windows, a pinkish cast to the sky forecast snow, then a meltdown for a one last dance, time on the edge of the neighborhoods of this steel mill shut down slow down town. I small talk Eric 'New Bomb Turks' with his girlfriend, we laugh about Philly, have you been to the Melrose? that same old sing song commercial? and packets of that Cannoli recipe with chocolate and chic peas. I disseminate into my black coffee, my computer, my note pad, turning the page of a book I'm not really reading...slowly letting this morning drag me into the afternoon, and soon out the door that rings a bell.
10:22 AM :
Thursday, December 20, 2001
Hollywood operates on the MAYA principle; Most Advanced Yet Acceptable. It's a business! The film which received the most Golden Globe nominations A BEAUTIFUL MIND, based on the book by Sylvia Nasar about mathematical genius and nobel Laureate John Nast starring Russel Crowe, directed by Ron Howard and produced by sissy boy David Geffen deliberately leaves out homosexual themes found in the book. Well, we wouldn't want to muddle up the storyline now would we. Who says David Geffen knows how to keep us gay guys in our place. Hey, didn't you put a happy ending on the Scarlet Letter too?! This is all so reminiscent of the scene in the Robert Altman film 'The Player';
Griffin Mill: It lacked certain elements that we need to market a film successfully.
June Gudmundsdottir: What elements?
Griffin Mill: Suspense, laughter, violence. Hope, heart, nudity, sex. Happy endings. Mainly happy endings.
June Gudmundsdottir: What about reality?
10:00 PM :
Wednesday, December 19, 2001
I'm baking a love cake 4 lips pressed close together 1 ounce of teasing, 2 ounces of squeezing and 4 ounces of pleasing. Press well together in a young man's arms and serve with a little sauce. Then again, I can hardly think of anything more classy than the following:
The big inflexible strict pimps, their members in full bloom-I no longer know whether they are lilies or whether lilies and members are not totally they, so much so that in the evening, on my knees, in thought, I encircle their legs with my arms-all that rigidity floors me and makes me confuse them, and the memory which I gladly give as food for my nights is of yours, which, as I caressed it, remained inert, stretched out; only your rod unsheathed and brandished, went through my mouth with the suddenly cruel sharpness of a steeple puncturing a cloud of ink, a hatpin a breast. You did not move, you were not asleep, you were nor dreaming, you were in flight, motionless and pale, frozen, straight, stretched out stiff on the flat bed like a coffin on the sea, and I know that we were chaste, while I, all attention, felt you flow into me, warm and white in continuous little jerks. Perhaps you were playing coming. At the climax, you were lit up with quiet ecstasy, which enveloped our blessed body in a supernatural nimbus, like a cloak that you pierced with your head and feet
....Jean Genet's Notre Dame des Fleurs 1943.
St. Nick gets his freak on! A cheeky Santa has been given the bum�s rush by Harrods� bosses � for baring his botto in their grotto. Picture.
Cook up your own LP bowls! Martha Stewert would never be as daring as to bake black plastic or 'SATAN-ize' an apartment. Readymade Magazine is readymade for ambitious folks who like to 'make' things. Tagline 'Instructions For Everyday Living', tackle 'FUNdue' or check out the store and turn your home into a museum with customizable blurbs. Example: 
Untitled (Apple Cinema display) 2000-2001 Semi permanent sculpture/installation with glass metal plastic and electronic components (Collection of the artist). W245.X932
12:46 PM :
Tuesday, December 18, 2001
I promised myself I wouldn't, I knew that I shouldn't but I did it anyway. There's nothing I can do about it, what's done is done, this is the year that was, 2001.
There are photographs, and then there are indelible images. UPI photographer Frank Johnston found himself face down on the cold floor of a Catholic church in Nha Tho An Hoa, Vietnam. It was May 15, 1967. "I looked up and saw a Marine with what they call the thousand-yard stare," Johnston recalls, "and I lifted my Leica and snapped his picture. The soldier�s gaze never left my lens."
I remember the Times headline for the review of John Cameron Mitchell's Hedwig, it read something like 'Betwixt and Between a Glam Frontier'. Sitting in the dark of the bombed out, soon to be renovated, please can I have this as a disco, otherwise known as Gordon Square Theater. The band on stage, Dave's friend Miss Melvis from the band Chump, waiting....waiting...and my line, if this were real life we would be waiting hours for the singer to show up, then again, this wouldn't be theater, and thank god it is. Hedwig explodes from the back of Cleveland Public Theater and the post-punk, art rock, subversive neo glam spectacular blows up in your face. I'm so glad I waited on viewing the film, and honestly, I haven't been this 'blown away' by a piece of theater ever. It is pure genius from beginning to end. Simply the embodiment of my time spent in clubs and nights pressed to cable tv watching Bowie's 'The Man Who Fell To Earth'. Easily the most fluid of rock musicals, the music coupling with the story in such a perfect way. I am now addicted to both soundtracks, 'Wicked Little Town' my favorite. This line from the NYTimes; Hedwig as an 'expatriate girlie boy snared in a sexual limbo in the American heartland while hopelessly pursuing his/her artistic doppelg�nger'. It's touching really for anyone who has ever questioned, her indefatigable survivor sensibility, her journey to wholeness. Stephen Trask's score is tough, rock and roll, meaty, with an instrumentation being more of a hint toward glam/or punk, rather than the structures or melodies themselves being suited to a particular time. It's a score that I will easily be listening to for some time to come. I'll save the synopsis as not to give away any of the goods, but it is filled with outrageously funny monologues, that comment on our desire to cultivate a pop sensibility. The whole 'Sizzler' gag, hey David, didn't you guys start out playing 'Ground Round'? before hitting punk rock stardom?! You did! The Cleveland Public Theater production is fantastic, directed by Lester Thomas Shane and Randy Rollins, it plays as tough as expected, you might even say gritty, seedy like a ripped pair of stockings, it's a seriously hard assed, no hold bars extravaganza. The band, most notably guitarist Miss Melvis of the Blackmonkeys/Chump fame, and Steven A. Mehlman drummer for the Vivians, Heathers, Screwtractor and Sissy, lay down some crunchy furious licks. Thinking, why I don't see 'more' live acts. Dan Folino as Hedwig is fantastic, although I wouldn't mind if he camped it up a bit more, worked on his drag fierceness instead of the 'butch guy first time in drag act', although, I have no gripes, as he ass whoops every song he sings, he is an amazing vocalist, the kid blows the theater down and this is over all the rat scrambling playing that happens, it's like a sonic explosion. The piece is THAT good, I can't think you can fuck it up too much, perfect for productions by enthusiastic theater groups. all glittering and glorious, my only regret is I didn't get down to New Orleans to check out Rico's production, I'm sure it was fantastic! Now on to watching the DVD, a great value as it includes a documentary about the making of Hedwig. Now where did I put my Lillian Vernon catalog?!
This is old but I thought I would pop it in anyway considering my fascination. Patricia Cornwell (file under lady books to enjoy while eating a low fat cookie and herbal tea) is certain that she has discovered the true indentity of Jack the Ripper: Walter Sickert, an Impressionist painter who walked the same East London streets as 'the Ripper', and 20 years later produced a gruesome series of paintings of murdered prostitutes. The 113 year old mystery still raises some interesting questions and discussions.
9:38 AM :
