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Thursday, June 19, 2003

Got invited to the Justin Timberlake show by Mr. Timber himself. Who would have ever believed that he was a fan of mine? That boy is filled with surprise and is soooooo cute and put on an incredible show. He wasn’t hogging the spotlight either, which surprised me. He made his back-up band and dancers a major part of the show like an ensemble piece. A very smart move on his part, i might add. There was a wonderous whimsy afloat, all out passion and joy, with no showboating which in a production this mainstream is completely unbelievable. Justin is a kid who definitely is going to grow as a solo artist, at the moment his music is limited but what he showed at this concert makes me feel that he will definitely start writing songs down the line that will have more substance. Maybe I’m just giddy because I got special treatment from such a young darling child. At the after party he even sought me out and flirted, and was affectionate and touchy, but not in a creepy way, he really seemed sincere, and believe you me, I didn’t just fall off that turnip truck and would have felt immediately if he was just going out of his way because he felt it was important to court me to gain underground counterculture credibility, but then again is that soooo bad? His embracing something thats outside of his corporate realm should definitely be applauded. Maybe I’m a crazy troll and a fool, but I did kind of feel a little tranny chasing vibe from him. The boy DID sleep with Janet Jackson, and she’s become such a drag queen that being with me is just a few steps away, eh? *****Oh I should also note that his publicist was not exactly featuring my ghetto realness self, but I just laughed it off. Poor Christina Aguilera. She has a great voice, but is too unfocused. Talk about histrionics. Overkill, overkill, overkill. I do give her props for ridding herself of the blonde bombshell look and she has noticeably gained some well needed curves, which added a resonance to her voice, but she needs to take a few lessons from Justin and in general just tone everything way down all the way to chinatown. I still like Christina more then Britany.
Got a hot emug from Marcu Siegel who is living and loving in Germany with his hot actress girlfriend Susanne Sacche who is the star of Bruce La Bruce’s latest opus Rasberry Reicht which is set in the 70s and is about the Bader/Meinhoff terrorist gang. Marcu is a true libertine. He has a juicy buttery sexylina of a girlfriend and also a studly booty bandit boyfriend named Daniela Romana, who is such the tale tale stud that after he plows his tricks they have to go to the doctor and get their asses sewn back up. Now thats virile. Marcu's missive includes an update on some of the people in Berlin I met when I was stationed there doing a performances for 5 months. I’ll just let you read it in his own sweet words:

I am so lame for not responding sooner to your mail which brought me joy and bonerus erectus. But this past week and a half was very crazy. You see, Susanne's twins celebrated their tenth birthday on one day and then had separate parties on two other days. With the helping out of the lovely single parent S., I was also a bit busy. So
other pleasures fell by the wayside as they say...

Great news that the Fierce Fest will bring you back next Spring. We'd totally love to be a part of it. It would be great. I think the spring will be a good time for us all, so we should be able to do it then. Let me know how things develop and we could chat about it all.

Daniela and S. are meeting regularly to plan our next CHEAP projects. They want to apply for money to fund us, so that we could be independent of all these pesky institutions here. Maybe we could work out something, somehow together here or there as well. With one of the grants, you've got to be all international, so maybe we could get
money to fly our sorry asses to LA or your racehorse ass here. We'll see.

There's so much gossip, and so little time. I'll give you a juicy bit though: So, the thing is Christina, you know from Cheap Jewelry, Susanne's old best friend and everything. She's continued shedding her skin, so that there's only a slimy Eve-y residue remaining. She's all submissive and devoted to that fucked up liberal sorry tired
playwright-director René Pollesch, who has for the past six months come out somewhat sheepishly about the fact that he's got a hustler boyfriend. René's put Gordon, the h.b., into his tired plays this year--the last one starred Volker--all of which talk about his guilt feelings about "buying love, buying true feelings, are they still
real? etc." Pathetic. Anyway, René told Christina that he gave Gordon a job as an actor so that he'd stop hustling. Better a kept actor then a kept whore, I guess. René's so fucked up about sex. Christina told Susanne the other day that René finally broke up with Gordon, because G. was totally unreasonable. He wanted René to buy him a
sportscar. Sounds pretty reasonable to me. Anyway, Christina's totally all judgmental about Susanne's CHEAP club underground success and about her letting herself get deliciously plowed by the well-hung Daniel (not Daniela) in Bruce's new film. Christina tries to think it's all cool and everything, but she can't deal. And Susanne doesn't
really think it's cool or not cool; it just is, you know. Anway, Achmed (you remember him, the sexy fucked up Yemeni-East German boy who Daniela used to fuck) was on a gay chat line the other day and connected with a guy. They got together, jerked off, and were talking. It turns out the guy is a Hustler who was an Actor--"for the
last six months" he said. Achmed said, "you're not with René Pollesch are you?" The guy was like "No, not anymore. I mean, he was like all into loving me and feelings and shit and I just wanted to become famous, rich, and have a sportscar. So I ditched him." Pretty good, huh!

ok. i'll try to send more in the next days...we all send you much gossipy love
marcu

I’m so glad I’m an international black woman with friends on every corner of the earth.

The other day I went down to the Slauson Super Mall in Funkytown to do this style piece for the LA Weekly. I had a great time with my editor Kateri Butler and her rock n roll photog and the photog’s assistant and the assistants assistant. It was a fun day but I forgot just how ghetto the ghetto can be. The security guards weren’t featuring me, and neither were some of the Korean shopkeepers. Koreans are so suspicious sometimes. One lady even said, "Are you coping my designs?" PLEASE. Why would anyone copy a bad knockoff?. I wanted to stay for the entire shoot, but I had an appointment at my studio with an arts bigwig visiting from Europa, who is interested in having me as a guest curator or do some performance/installation event. I’m sure Kateri gave them shiftless Negroes and Korks hell, what they don’t realize is having an article in the Weekly will help their tired businesses, and honey that area needs all the help it can get. Being in funkytown reminded me why I don’t want to live back in the hood. The romanticsm behind it is more interesting then the reality.

My meeting with the arts programmer went well. I was smart to take the bus on Slauson to the Blue line and then the blue line to the red line to my MacArthur Park Studio. I don’t want to talk about the meeting because it might jinx things.

Had dinner with Hector and his lover Erikla at their tiny house in Silverlake on Maltman. Hector cooked a mighty fine meal. I also did my laundry and gave Hector a reading list of classic novels he should pick up. I love how he enjoys improving that Chicano mind of his. I took his copy of Against the Grain (A Rebours) by J. K. Huysmans. He’s not ready for that yet.

Hector and I went to Chico’s in Montebello to see the sexy strip show. My favorite dancer Obregon was up on top of the pool table working it. He has the most wonderful smooth skin, and now that he’s gained some poundage, his booty is even bigger and his whole titty cavity just juts out at you in 3D. Wow. I gave the boy my entire paycheck in tips. He remembered me from Spicy Beef Curtains and was very loving and sweet. There sure were a bunch of amazing papi thugs on the crowded dance floor. Chico’s is my favorite gay bar in all of greater Los Ang.

Worked all morning on my Gay Marriage article for the Weekly. I had to send it off by noon. Luckily it came together nicely. Hope my editor Laurie likes it. Got together with Ron Athey and Crepe Suzette for lunch. We were suppposed to eat at café des artiste, but one of their pipes burst and the place got flooded. I love seeing my favorite Brazilian hostess all frantic. She’s a gem. We wound up eating at Hamburger Hamlet on Hollywood Blvd across the street from the Chinese Theatre. I love the food there, but it sometimes gets a little too touristy, we sat in the bar area and was able to enjoy some privacy, thank god.


Tuesday, June 17, 2003

Ran into Lawrence Elbert at the tired sauna. Lawrence was my producer/cinematographer and editor for several of my experimental film projects. When I met him he was an eager beaver Cal Arts student and was going out with one of his professors Matias Viegner who had invited me as a visiting artist. Lawrence was a fan of my work and offered his services. Like most students he didn’t have any good ideas, but wanted to get some experience under his belt, and a lot of my projects are very high profile. At the time Lawrence seemed seemed ambitious but not a careerist in that Eve Harrington sortof way that I detest in people. Being I was without resources, the fact that he had at his disposal equipment from Cal Arts made a candy coated light bulb go off in my head. Since he was a conservative looking and somewhat attractive and muscular, I didn’t think that we shared the same aesthetic. His looks were very deceiving. He was a lot cooler and "with it" then I would have imagined. Talk about pre-conceived notions. Most gay boy film students are so clueless. But Lawrence knew his excrement. I saw some of his work which at that time consisted of a few really good documentaries on the rent boy and porn scene and his thesis feature Days of Pentacost which was a remake of Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill, Kill and starred showboating supremas Alexis Arquette, Marcus Keilland Nazario and the truly talented acting chopsis of Melena de la Moja: aka Mario Gardner. Who is now dead. Lawrence met a lot of performance art people via his internship at LACE gallery.
Days of Pentacost was beautiful to look at, but a remake of Fasterpussycat? You can't improve on that. Tura Satana IS a female drag queen. So although his original ideas weren’t completely my cup of cocoa, I was impressed with his talents as a cinematographer and editor. In these areas he is absolutely brilliant.

I knew that he could give my work a slicker sheen. At the time I was working with Ricky Castro doing the Fertile La Toyah Jackson video magazine. And Ricky’s camera work left a lot to be desired. Ricky is a genius and extremely talented, but his execution was sloppy and ragged and I wanted to progress and keep the good ideas flowing but make things look a little bit more pristine. Well I connected Ricky and Lawrence, and I though the ultimate test would be to see if Lawrence could handle Ricky who is, how shall I put it? A bit abrasive. Yes thats one way to say it. Well they actually got along, and Lawrence wasn’t flakey like most youngish gays. He had a decent work ethic, which was surprising because as its important to point out, he was good looking with a nice body and usually those kind of boys don’t really need to work hard, because there is alway some man there who will support them.

Well Lawrence and I continued to make magic together for several years producing the films "Designy Living, VooDoo Williamson, and cultiminating in our masterpiece "The White To Be Angry" We actually got along quite well, even though I had to fight a bit during the editing with him. His Texas conventionality would sometimes get the better of him, sometimes in an edit I would insist on something be cut a certain way and he would go on about filmmaking rules that of course mean absolutely nothing to me, but usually he would say "oh I can’t believe it actually does work like that" so it was a nice give or take. But of course working with a black drag diva can take its toll on anyone. Me and Ricky eventually parted ways and so it was inevitable that me and Lawrence would as well. I guess certain people are only meant to be in your life for a short period of time, then you move on. I take that certain gene from my mother where keeping our individuality is more paramount then maintaining certain friendships or romantic relationships. When my mother was over someone they ceased to exist, whether it was a relative or close friend. She was the ultimate loner. And i guess in many ways i'm the same way. Of course i'm much more social then my mother was, and much more demanding on friends and acquaintances. When my mother dropped you, there was no anamosity she just wasn't interested in your company any more and that was that. I'm a little bit more grand, but its been so long since i talked with Lawrence that i can't remember why i was upset with him in the first place. I think he felt slighted by me or something like that, and then i must have gotten all haughty and thought, "How Dare he----I am the all powerful Doll" I also ran into one of Kembra Pfhaler's New York friends later in the evening. God it was girlfriend night. Not a good sign.
It was surprising running into Lawrence. We’ve never bumped into each other anyplace in the last 4-5 years or so. He looks good with a little bit of extra weight. I think he was able to hold at bay his white middleclassism in light of his hedonism. I really feel that he has a great movie to make stored deep deep in some dank recesss. I’m sure he won’t be able to figure that out for quite some time though which is sad.

Had breaky with Professor Jennifer Doyle at Madame Matisse in Silverlake. We had a good time. It will be the last time we will get to hang out because she has a conference in Spain where she is making a presentation replacing Emelia Jones, then after that she vacations in the South of France. Her mothers good friend owns a home there. I hope La Doyle gets lots of hot young french penii. She deserves it. We also ran into cute Skot of the band 400 Blows. Now he is a delightful boy who is a true bohemian. Not one of these psuedo boho’s that run rampant in downtown, Silverlakey and Echo Park. This kid is the real deal. When I interviewed his band at my old Koreatown compound for the LA Weekly, I took pics of them butt naked and Skot had no qualms bearing it all. I love it when boys have enough good sense to do what Ms. Davis tells them to.

Monday, June 16, 2003

Bricktops was zany, with an appearance by the unpredictable group He Who Cannot Be Named from Zurich, Switzerland via Luzanne. They had the audience rolling around on the floor with laughter. Of course Mr. Uncertain was his usual frolicsome self, enchanting both the males and females in the house with his precious supply of youthful beauty.
A gaggle of well dressed flappers who work for Women’s Wear Daily were having a grand ole time dancing and whooping it up. I took a lot pictures of these fun loving gals. Party planner to the stars Bryan Rabin stopped by and was looking very sexy and trim. He introduced me and performance artist Ron Athey to Robert DeNiro’s young and extremely handsome mulatto son Raphael DeNiro. Wowza! The boy is a bootypie!
Film costume designer "Crepe" Suzette Mathelson(Blue Crush, Crazy/Beautiful) also dropped in wearing a gorgeous french designed hat and an ultra unique ring by this Israeli jewelry designer. The ring looked like a silver and crystal brass knuckle. She also brought along her cute little doggie "Fendi" Baguette and actor Josh Lucas(Sweet Home Alabama) and his girly friend Thora Birch. I loved Thora in Ghost World.
The next day I went to the IFP Los Angeles Film Festival’s Great Nickelodean Show at the Directors Guild with "Crepe" Suzette. I thought Outfest was an ill festival, well this IFP takes the pie’s cake. LA use to have a brilliant film festival called Film-Ex back in the late 70s and early 80s. Going to IFP really confirmed my hatetred of icky industry types. What is that saying i have: lined pieces of white paper from a three rung notebook. The
Nickelodean Show was incredible, of course it was sparsely attended. No one in LA knows when anything is really good, they are such sheep.
It was an utter delight to see such rare films as Le Scarab d’or(The Golden Beetle) from 1907 and Le Voyage dans la lune from 1905. And get a live vaudeville show thrown into the bargain.
After the movie we went to visit Suzette's production designer friend Franco who she’s known since they were children living in South Afrika. He is Peruvian and Greek, and reminds me of my production designer friend Jose Montana who is mixed with Bolivian and Swedish and designed the rock video for REM’s "Losing My Religion" Jose works more on big budgeted car commercials these days. Suz and I also had din din at that pizza place in Laurel Canyon that use to be Coyote’. The food was delish. We then went by where Lady Bunny was staying at Loretta Hogg’s leased house near Hancock Park. Loretta use to be part of the club kid society of New York in the late 80s and early 90s. The scene that the movie Party Monster regales, now she works for The Courtney as in Courtney Love.
Of course I didn’t check my phone messages and Lady Bun Bun cancelled the desert party, which was fine and dandy as I already had quite a long day of it. Used Suz’s cell phone to call Bun, and she wanted to get together in the morn for breaky, since she is leaving in the afternoon. Something tells me that I won’t be able to wake-up for an early breakfast, but Lady will be back in town for Gay Snide where she is performing at the tired festival in WeHovial, so I’m sure we’ll espy each other.
Spent Sunday being very lazy. Bricktops takes its toll on me, and with all the running around on Saturday with the "Crepe" I really didn’t have much re-cuperation time. Spent early Sunday evening at my sister Teresa Ray’s in Hollywood. My poor crazy hermana is becoming like my mother. She spent so much time as her caretaker in her final years that now that my mother is dead, my sister doesn’t have a purpose in her life, so she’s mirrored my mother and has taken on all her eccentricities. In other familial news: My nephew Mark Taylor got laid off from his job at USC and only his wife is working full time. With all those very young children that he has, I don’t know how they are surviving on just one small salary. Teresa says he has cooked up some zany scheme where he’s going to be selling cheaply made clothes from the orient. Yeah and I’m moving into a beachfront house in St. Petersburg, Russia. My poor niece Terri Lynn and her no account husband are still living with her mother and my other sister in the Park LaBrea Towers. My sisters can barely afford the $1400 a month rent, but with my niece her husband, and all her children also living there, they are
all surely to be kicked out soon, and now is not the climate to be without a place to live. My other nephew Brian Keith is still in the army stationed in South Korea. He tried to get out of the armed forces, but they are not letting him go. He’s been in the army now for 8 unbelievable years. I told him not to sign up, but he couldn’t find any other work and of course he’s sired a million children that he can’t afford to take care of. I’m so glad I’m not a breeder. Having a need to follow societies dictates in marrying and procreating awfull children is so brainless why do so many people fall into the trap?
Overslept so i didn't get an early start on work at my office/studio. I'm way behind on a million deadlines. At my studio today my neighbor, this older black gentleman who is a photographer showed me his loft space which is huge on the west wing of the 8th floor. He has several suites joined together and he lives in the place, and has been living here in this building which was built in 1917 since 1986. His rent most be really really cheap. He’s a really nice man. My LA Weekly colleague Ben Ehrenreich, son of the famous feminist writer Barbara Ehrenreich has an office on the 9th floor. There is also some loud rock n roll band that rehearses on the 9th floor.
On the first five floors are what i call botanica abortion clinics. On the ground floor is a pharmacia where this really cute latin boy with nice skin and dark spiky hair works. This kid is in his early 20s and really beyond gorgeous. Across the hall from me is a girl i hardly see who is some graphic designer and next to her is a clothing design team of mother and gay black son. Next to them is some communista revolutionary Bader/Meinhoff group who may be secret terrorists, or at least thats the feeling i get from them. One of these days I'll come to work and my entire building will be surrounded by police helicopters and yellow tape.
I guess to sum it up my studio/office is in quite the happening building. Of course anywhere Vaginal Davis migrates becomes the new hot place. Remember what happened to Korea town? I turned it out so well, that i got outpriced and vanquished.