Movie Millisecond: Laura

Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944).

Daily Batman: The type

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I’m the type who’d be happy not going anywhere as long as I was sure I knew exactly what was happening at the places I wasn’t going to. I’m the type who’d like to sit home and watch every party that I’m invited to on a monitor in my bedroom.

(Andy Warhol.)

Et tu?

Heinlein Month — Do not let the past be a straitjacket

Whatever you do, do not let the past be a straitjacket.

(Robert A. Heinlein. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, 1966.)

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Hey. The pre-scheduled entries caught up with real time, and then I was too lazy and depressed to write more. But I’m fixing that now. Even got a Girl of Summer in the pipeline, because, hey, man, life goes on, and my dead friend liked boobies. (Hath not a short joyful EMT eyes?) So. The rest is personal. Dip out whenever you’re done.

“Jo Champa, Hotel Chealsea.” Helmut Newton, 1988.

Yesterday were the services. Sweet fucking Christ. I have been to some rough funerals in my life. I really have. But I’ve never been through any shit like that. That was some fucking shit. My lord. And now the most recent two entries in my journal have giant cusses right at their start, when I’ve been trying really valiantly this year to cut back (first for my daughter, as an example, and also because vulgarity is so often a refuge of a weak writer attempting cheap authenticity).

Photographed by Dara Scully.

Big Ben and I agreed to attend together. He got to my place an hour earlier than planned and announced he’d left his wallet in Fresno — a town I notoriously hate, like it’s a joke among my friends how much I make fun of it. I had an idea we’d end up making the longish drive to get it back later in the day, but I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t sure what the was going to hold: what if I wanted to go back to a reception and stay for a long while? What if friends had an impropmtu wake? We didn’t know what to expect. We slid down to C-town and got to the church about twenty minutes before Mass was scheduled to start, thinking that was prudently early enough.

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Besides being friends with one another in our own right, B-dubs and I moved in a lot of similar circles. It’s not a big area when you get right down to it. Even if you only joined The Party in the last 15 to 20 years, you’ve pretty much met everyone your age by now, at least with whom you’d have a dime in common, in one way or another. There wasn’t time enough or, in some cases, inclination (willingness to engage in a lot of catch-up and mutual depression) to say words to everyone I knew, even just as we walked through the parking lot and up to the church. In the very, very long line to sign the guestbook before entering, there was this crowd of EMTs and firefighters in front of us in uniform, and I started tearing up. I’m not an overemotional person, and it caught me off guard.

Art by TheSweetMachine on the tumblr.

It was a harbinger of things to come. A bossy aunt came out not long after and told the crowd that we’d all better grab a seat inside and sign the book later, because it was getting very full in there, and we entered the church. I’d never been to St. Jude’s. It’s not by any means the smallest church in which I’ve ever heard Mass, but it wasn’t large. But it was not at all equipped, I’m proud to say, to handle the number of people at my friend’s funeral. It was literally SRO. People could’ve probably crowded the pews a little more, but a lot of the EMTs had to stay in the back near the doors because they were still on call.

“Losing My Religion” by Mrs. Colbert on the da.

Right away, on entering the church, I was up against old, old friends, serving as B-dubs’ pallbearers. So we started crying. I think, in the back of your mind, or perhaps only in mine and some of my friends’, maybe more macabre than others? or just realistic?, there is the knowledge that you will pass from this earth and enter in to whatever, if anything — I believe and hope a very real something — comes next. Sometimes you discuss it loosely with friends, like your burial/cremation wishes, songs you want involved in your memorial, etc. But you don’t take it terribly seriously. To see our old friends standing at the back of the church with white gloves and red carnation boutonnières, guiding the elderly and close relatives to seats was a profound jolt, following on the heels of the uniformed contingent reminding me of what a life of service my friend left … I basically cried for the next hour. Standing for the casket’s entry made me cry. My strong, broad-shouldered, stalwart old male friends crying as they walked that casket toward the altar made me cry. The readings made me cry. The priest’s homily made me cry. The only thing that didn’t leave me shredded was the Eucharistic prayer, maybe because I’ve had it memorized since time out of mind and it gave me time to catch my breath.

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But then my friends gave their eulogies and it was all over. It was pointed out what a remarkably, not just bullshitting like people do at funerals, but a remarkably live wire and loving spirit he was, how he literally lit up rooms and took care to take care of everyone he met. It grew as a theme that B-dubs lived his whole life, essentially, to protect and make at ease everyone else, and that we could only honor him by trying to keep taking care of each other. That’s how it ended. Everyone in the church was just in pieces. So we exited on that, this horribly emotional note. Like I said, I have been to some rough funerals, but I’ve never heard free, open weeping from so many people at a service. It was some shit, honestly, I’m not describing it well enough. God. Harrowing. Big Ben agreed it was the worst thing he’d been to so far, too. I think the priest put it best when, during his homily, after speaking about Brandon’s faith and dedication to serving others, he simply spread his hands and said, “He was too young.”

Photographed by Logan White.

After stunned chat outside the church, we caravanned to the cemetery for the graveside service. The priest said the very familiar words about dust to dust, and the valley of darkness, etc, that have always held a ritualistic comfort to me. One by one, the pallbearers came forward and placed their gloves and their boutonnières on the casket. But then — then — B-dubs’ cousin began to speak. I have very few friends, and dear they are, as specifically faithful as I am, and I am 1000000% okay with that. I’d say a majority of my friends do not believe in any god nor afterlife, and I’m truly all right with that. If they got questions about how I roll, I answer them, but I really don’t try to suggest religion to them unless I am asked. It’s been the source of debates between me and many of the people who were in attendance at these services, the idea of the co-existence of intellect and faith (hey, college).

via my pandaeraser.

This cousin began by saying that Brandon’s completion of the sacraments of the Catholic faith did not qualify him for salvation, but rather his loving relationship with God did. I was fine with that. Then, he moved forward in praise of a relationship with God and Jesus, with a format very familiar to me, that of his personal testimony about his journey to salvation. Okay. Cool. I’ve heard that lots of times and, though I sort of cringed at first, thinking, “Normally I’d be more receptive, but, come on: is this the right place — like, what has this to do with today?” I was still tentatively on board, willing to see where it lead. I’m sorry and angry still to say that it lead only to more of the same. He spoke for some easily fifteen minutes, asking everyone to read the Word (okay) and pray about it (okay), but also to repeat a personal prayer he wrote, out loud along with him. Afterward, he had us close our eyes and then said, “Raise your hand if you really repeated the prayer.”

Photograph by William Gedney, via the collection at Duke’s online library.

The uncomfortable, growing dissatisfaction I had pretty much burgeoned to full-blown dislike at that moment. At one point he threw down the Bible, but I’m not sure he noticed. He’d complained in his opening statements about not having a podium, so I’m sure that played a role, and I guess the important thing to him was what he was saying, not the source of the quotes he was citing in his very targeted proselytizing once he’d finished with them. I just know I wasn’t the only one to inadvertently have a sharp intake of breath on that one. But there was a general all-over shifting of feet and nervous sighs throughout, to be honest. This was not an issue of religious tolerance: it was an issue of inappropriateness.

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Like, dude, we are graveside. It is not an appropriate setting for a) your story; b) talking about Jesus actually very well, but relating it back to yourself again and again rather than to your cousin; and c) evangelizing to these bereaved friends of your cousin, when with a prayer for discernment it might be easily seen that now is hella not the time. Not to mention, just personally, I felt that if his argument that justification for salvation was by faith alone and not works nor acts, then why did we need to repeat his prayer and raise our hand, or not, over the issue of repeating his prayer, like guilty five-year-olds who were being asked who ate the green crayon? It all sat very, very poorly with me.

Photographed by Giasco Bertoli.

I’m Catholic, dudes. Do you just kind of always expect me to unload at some point about how you all should be, too? And how properly to do so? Because I was offended as all-git-out and I couldn’t believe how blasé some of my most atheist friends were about what to me was this needless and selfish diversion, as if they’d anticipated uncomfortable evangelistic pressure from the beginning. When Big Ben asked me in the car whether I was up to going to the family’s smaller reception after the other gauntlet points of brutal funeral and heart wrenching graveside service we’d passed, I said, “I don’t want to go anywhere that douche is going to be.” He replied immediately, “That was pretty bad. But everyone grieves differently. Would Brandon have been okay with it, since it was his cousin? Probably. He’d want his cousin to have that time.”

I wiped away my tears, started the car, and said emphatically, “Fuck that guy. If that’s how he grieves, he sucks.” We did not go to the reception.

A little under three hours later, we were in Fresno, retrieving Ben’s wallet. That joke which I am famous for is, “No one should go to Fresno. Not on purpose.” But it’s really a diverse town, like any. Anyway, after we got the wallet from his friend, the friend asked for a cigarette because his girlfriend had asked him to quit smoking and he knew we’d have one. As we stood outside, at our friend’s insistence safely behind his apartment building in case his girlfriend came home unexpectedly — yes, we ribbed him without mercy both for his dishonesty and for his paranoia — Ben described the scene at the graveside with the cousin. The friend, who’d said plainly that he did not believe in an afterlife but felt that funerals were important for the living, which I liked, asked questions about the mourners’ reaction to the cousin’s unnecessarily aggressive come-to-Jesus sidebar. I’d stayed silent about that part of the services, still steaming. Ben jerked his thumb at me and said, “She was pissed.”

“Don’t see the sorrow,” photographed by meninalua on the da.

The friend clucked his tongue but then said, “Maybe that’s how he needed to grieve.”

What the what, man? Am I the only one whose sense of outrage is not overshadowed by sorrow? Or am I the only one who is blindly seeking refuge in outrage instead of sorrow? Maybe? And not to mention, I found comfort in aspects of the funeral that were Catholic and so culturally and familially familiar to me, but what of my friends raised outside that tradition? Did not my “stand up, sit down, kneel, repeat after me, say this when I say that” comforts probably confound and alienate those friends who were not accustomed to it? What right have I got to judge which are off-putting and which welcoming religious behaviors? I was sooo mad. You should have seen me. Wet hen-style. Fairly? Not, most likely. Oh, angry, mixed-up me.

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But what I really want to say is good on those friends who gently chastised or tried to guide me back to zen-ness, for being yards more tolerant than I the alleged Christian witness of the bunch was evincing with my bitterness: they displayed a genuinely universal forgiveness for which I think many who recognize the love that bonds all things in this world without necessarily having an origin story for that love are seldom credited. I, on the other hand, wanted literally to point-blank fire a nail gun in to the eyeballs of my dead friend’s cousin’s head. Which is not at all loving. I know.

Now I’ve talked a great deal about one aspect of the day which was really not as big as I’ve made it out to be in this entry, and it’s not some hint of how repressed or larger it looms in my psyche than I knew by my writing it. It’s just that in a day so filled with grief, it was the thing I could describe with a more familiar emotion — outrage. The grief I will take a long time to get to know. The events of the day made me cry right away, as they happened, a big enough pain that I didn’t have time to push it down, it spilled over with me fully aware that I was unhappy. Most feelings don’t get that far in my cognitive process. So I know it’s going to be a journey to get cool with this dreadful shit.

Heinlein Month: Hot Man Bein’ Hot of the Day, James Dean, “Pussy magnet” edition

“If you would know a man, observe how he treats a cat.”

(Robert A. Heinlein. The Door Into Summer. New York: Doubleday & Co, 1957.)

James Dean being all handsome and fly with a couple kitty cats, and scope those specs no less! Heat.

A very big guy for pretty much only this type of pussy, Dean’s cat’s name was Marcus. It was a present from Elizabeth Taylor.

Finally, a pen and ink drawing which was auctioned two years ago by his museum on good ol’ eBay. Dean drew it for Geraldine Page, his co-star in a Broadway play. I don’t really want to know what those two are doing, but you have to admit it’s a pretty damned good drawing, as bestiality sketches go.

Movie Millisecond: “You shouldn’t smoke”

Closer (Mike Nichols, 2004).

Some days quitting smoking is harder than others. It’s cliche, but I’m very nervous about a major examination I’m taking tomorrow and I’ve been finding myself wanting to smoke more than any time in at least three weeks.

Heinlein Month: Year of the Rabbit — Intelligent application of science

If we blow ourselves up we will do it by misapplication of science; if we manage to keep from blowing ourselves up, it will be through intelligent application of science.

(Robert A. Heinlein, “The Pragmatics of Patriotism”. Address at the U.S. Naval Academy. April 5, 1973.)

Teevee Time: the Simpsons — Six of one …

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“Sideshow Bob’s Last Gleaming.” The Simpsons: Season 7, Episode 9.

Movie Moment and Hot Man Bein’ Hot of the Day: Corey Feldman, Teddy Duchamp edition

It’s been forever since we had a Hot Man Bein’ Hot of the Day. Shame on me! Some lady fan service. Depending on your viewpoint.

Stand By Me (Rob Reiner, 1986; adapted from the Stephen King novella “The Body”). This is the first of what I hope will be a series of Corey Feldman entries. He’s totally an O.G. hottie. Did You Know?

Okay, so before you castigate me as a freak and a pedophile, let me explain.

Understand that I’m coming at the “hot” aspect with the eyes of the little ’80’s girl who saw him in this and Gremlins, Goonies, Lost Boys*, et al and conceived a giant, throbbing, lifelong crush on Corey Feldman. My feelings when I see him with wet hair and his dorky glasses are timeless because of this. I am not generally turned on by pictures of 15-year-old boys.

Yes, he was 15. He was just playing a 12-year-old. Moderately better, yes? So please all around don’t look too askance at this entry. Appreciate with me that Terry Duchamp is all kinds of pimp in this movie! A total Unlikely G. That’s hot at any age, in the general-heat way, not the get-it-on heat way.

Totally pimp!, but I’m still feeling hinky. Gonna end this one early. Look for more Corey Feldman, hopefully with greater legality of age, in the near future.

*Don’t even act like I’m not in The Lost Boys because I totally am. I’m on the carousel in the boardwalk footage. Never Forget.

**Yellow subtitled caps are via One Day, One Movie, white subs are from FilmSubs, both on the tumblr.

Milton May: Out of the earth

Oh, Milton May. You say goodbye, but I say hello — to John Milton June! Coming tomorrow.

This is a far more relevant picture for me than you, likely.

Out of the earth a fabric huge
Rose, like an exhalation.

(John Milton. Paradise Lost, Book 1, 710.)

I’ve been trying to quit smoking so I can, like, live longer or whatever. Mixed results but I’m doing pretty well all in all. I just hate to admit anything like that because then if you fuck up or fall off the wagon everyone knows and people can’t know things about me. Anyway, hence the smoking picture simply because of the word “exhalation.” I’ve made flimsier illustrative leaps to promote vice along with literature, but usually for nudity, not cigarettes.

Fight Club Friday: Destroying something beautiful

Painting by Danae8 on the d.a.

You take lymphoma and tuberculosis —

No, you take tuberculosis. My smoking does not go over at all.

Destroying something beautiful: sometimes Marla feels like doing it, too. I can say I mean to quit smoking cigarettes, I can say I know I should, I can say I don’t know how, and that everyone should have a vice and I’m banking on them discovering a cure for cancer by the time I get it, and a million other excuses or clever deflections, but it’s all lies, and worst of all to myself. I just don’t want to. I’m not ready.

So I guess that’s what I’ll tell my lungs when they decide to try and fail me, too. Sorry, guys — I wasn’t ready to quit.

Sharon Tate Month, Day 7: Smoke follows beauty

“You must remember I was shy and bashful when I reached Hollywood. My parents were very strict with me. I didn’t smoke or anything. I only had just enough money to get by and I hitchhiked a ride on a truck to the office of an agent whose name I had.”

“That very first day he sent me to the cigarette comercial job. A girl showed me how it should be done, you know taking a deep, deep breath and look ecstatic.”

“I tried to do as she said,” Miss Tate explained, “but the first breath filled my lungs with smoke and I landed on the floor. That ended my career in cigarette commercials.”

(“Sharon Tate Leaves You Breathless.” Robert Musel. Stars and Stripes Magazine. January 1, 1967.)

Special thanks to the SensationalSharonTate blog, you can read the full article here. I love how matter-of-factly self-effacing Sharon Tate comes off in interviews — a sense of humor about oneself is such a good quality.

Seek the headwaters of the river of pain

Got a lot on my mindgrapes, more than I expected to. I’m just a little black raincloud, hovering over the honey tree. Stuff has been sneaking up on me. Tricksie feelings of Ways About Things hiding and falling out of every closet I open up.

Going to do some State of the State assessment tonight and find out what condition my condition is in, in the best ways I know how. Friendohs, beer, maybe some World Cup or something on the television. Get a feeling of security and normalcy while my wheels are turning. Send vibes and I’ll catch you on the flip!

William Blake Month: Alas! the Female Martyr

For a Tear is an Intellectual thing;
And a Sigh is the Sword of an Angel King
And the bitter groan of a Martyr’s woe
Is an Arrow from the Almighty’s Bow.

(William Blake, excerpt from “To the Deists,” in Jerusalem: The Emanation of The Giant Albion.)

Alas! the Female Martyr
Is She also the Divine Image?

(William Blake, For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise.)

Langston Hughes Month: “To Artina”

I will take your heart.
I will take your soul out of your body
As though I were God.
I will not be satisfied
With the touch of your hand
Nor the sweet of your lips alone.
I will take your heart for mine.
I will take your soul.
I will be God when it comes to you.

(Langston Hughes, “To Artina.”)

Synecdoche and possession in the eye of the male observer — murdering the Object: it is a Thing.




Photographer unknown, picture comes from a vintage Pirelli calendar shoot. Kind of a Jane Birkin Inspiration Station thing happening. I approve.

Daily Batman: The Courage of the Deed

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If human beings had genuine courage, they’d wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween.

— Doug Coupland

Langston Hughes Month: Dig and be dug in return

I stay cool, and dig all jive,
That’s the way I stay alive.
My motto,
as I live and learn,
is
Dig and be dug
In return.

(Langston Hughes, “Motto.”)

Langston Hughes Month: Quiet Girl

I would liken you
To a night without stars
Were it not for your eyes.
I would liken you
To a sleep without dreams
Were it not for your songs.

–Langston Hughes, “Quiet Girl”

Daily Batman: Poisonville’s Dinah Brand, of Red Harvest, edition

Excellent photographs are titled “Batwoman” and come from maanuuu on the deviantart. Words, by pulp king and detective fiction master Dashiell Hammett, come from Red Harvest, the only published, novel-length account of one of the Continental Op’s cases.

Hammett, Dashiell. Red Harvest. New York: Knopf, 1929. Print. (30).

The widely-imitated plot of the book — in which an initially disinterested outsider is called in to help settle accounts in a small town beset with the strife of several disparate groups in a power-struggle for control of the town’s assets, then manipulatively turns the groups upon one another while attempting to remain detached himself — has inspired, among other works, the films Blood Simple, Yojimbo, Last Man Standing, and A Fistful of Dollars.

via Mark Sutcliffe books.

My life will only be complete when the Coen brothers just plain make this movie, with a screenplay adapted directly from the book by, say, James Ellroy. Please. You guys, I will gladly help you with whatever — ad copywriting, finances, and even craft table shit. Make my dreams come true, Coen brothers.

I think every geek has a secret list of ultimate-collaborative-fantasy movies that have never been but ought be made. This one is mine.

Per mi amico: Cappy 2nd ed.

Or is it the third? Either way. Breaking news: Some guys are just plain ol’ rock stars and you cannot keep a good pimp down!

All photos are Christian Bale by Ellen Von Unwerth, Interview magazine, February 2001.

I had a wonderful time with the Cappy while he was here yesterday and today. I think it will be impossible for me to be in a bad mood for quite a while. Tomorrow I am lunching with Miss D, finally, and I think I should see the Fountainhead soon; he called today but I was busy with my best boy — of all things we were looking at vintage CandyLand boxes online to try to pick out our versions from childhood, because we played kidlet — and spanked her ass like bosses!– but were chagrined by the changes time has wrought in the character designs. The Cappy in particular was very disappointed in the revamp of Queen Frostina.

It’s funny: I always forget how ridiculously and simply wonderful it is to just hang out and jabber for hours with the Cappy on end. He really is a brother from another mother. The time truly flies.

Also, this morning while we were driving around a few memory lanes, I called bullshit on a red light after already having sat at it for at least a full minute; I just up and went. Halfway across the incredibly busy intersection I had this horrible adrenaline-charged panic that surged through me shrieking, “Shit! What the fuck am I doing?!” but fortunately I hit the accelerator and hightailed it the rest of the way out of there, to the accompaniment of multiple horns honking — but no one even had to brake, the timing was completely surreal. Thank god. All we can surmise is that, focused on our conversation and lulled by the fact I’d been driving around over an hour, I saw it was briefly clear and atavistically bolted. I do have a well documented lack of patience, so it’s possible!

Between catching up with Miss D tomorrow and trying to rid my computer of a frumious bandersnatch that’s been redirecting me from search results to adware (total folklore), I will probably only be spottily updating the journal. Until then! Salute — I’m off to bed!

Music Moment: The Song Remains the Same, The Donnas — “Drive My Car” edition

The Donnas – Drive My Car (Beatles cover)

All-girl rock band The Donnas covered the Beatles’ “Drive My Car” (McCartney, Lennon) for Razor and Tie’s 2005 tribute album This Bird Has Flown – A 40th Anniversary Tribute to the Beatles’ Rubber Soul.

In late 1999, I found their ragtag little POS website (oh, those halcyon early internet days of crummy block-text and midi’s on Angelfire and Tripod!). Intrigued that they were all the same age as me and hailed out of Palo Alto, I actually went ahead and bought the album The Donnas Get Skintight, my first over-the-internet music purchase. Some stupid fucker stole it out of my car in 2003, along with the original soundtrack to the Chita Rivera cast of Kiss of the Spiderwoman and Poe’s album Haunted, among several other albums in my little CD binder. I hope that dickhead is still enjoying them, but most likely he or she threw them away.

Oh, my god, they were BABIES! By extension, if they were all born when I was, then I was a baby too. Man. This brings back memories. I most definitely necked to this album.

I rebought Poe (actually am on my fourth copy now because I play it so much in my car while speeding over bumpy country roads and chainsmoking and screaming that it gets scratched up) and the musical, but, with the advent of mp3’s and suchlike, I have never felt the need to repurchase The Donnas. Sorry, girls! Hope this unpaid and unprovoked publicity makes up for my lackage!

Brett Anderson

Asked a girl what she wanted to be
She said baby, can’t you see
I wanna be famous, a star of the screen
But you can do something in between

Baby you can drive my car
Yes I’m gonna be a star
Baby you can drive my car
And maybe I’ll love you

Allison Robertson

I told that girl that my prospects were good
she said baby, it’s understood
Working for peanuts is all very fine
But I can show you a better time

Baby you can drive my car
Yes I’m gonna be a star
Baby you can drive my car
And maybe I’ll love you

Beep beep’m beep beep yeah

Maya Ford

Baby you can drive my car
Yes I’m gonna be a star
Baby you can drive my car
And maybe I’ll love you

I told that girl I can start right away
When she said listen babe I got something to say
I got no car and it’s breaking my heart
But I’ve found a driver and that’s a start

Torry Castellano

Baby you can drive my car
Yes I’m gonna be a star
Baby you can drive my car
And maybe I’ll love you

Beep beep’m beep beep yeah
Beep beep’m beep beep yeah
Beep beep’m beep beep yeah
Beep beep’m beep beep yeah

Yeah, so just in case you were wondering, that is what motherfuckin’ rock stars look like! Man, I need to go buy another one of their albums.