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Saturday, November 20, 2010

SCHLUCK DEN DRUCK
Had wonderful Tenderloin rehearsal where we re-shaped a new song I wrote called Austerity,Austerity. This song has a great grove to it. Felix Knoke also created a little Tenderloin logo that I will have to send to Larry Bob so he can put on the web site. I am so excited about the Tenderloin explosion. Thank you everyone for giving me feedback on our song Cheeseburger Spit.
On Thursday I met with Baby Diaper Joel Gibb of the Hidden Cameras at Café Rix on Karl Marx Str in Rixdorf area of NeuKoelln for coffee, and then we went back to the Diaper’s compound for a delicious Quesadilla dinner made from the strong and sexy hands of Mr. Gibb himself. Cat Stevens was the soundtrack music playing in the background.I adore Cat Stevens who is now a convert to Islam and goes by a different name that I can’t remember at the moment.After dinner we went to West Germany niteclub which was turned into an art opening called Love Speech. One of my Weissensee students Annette Knol was part of this group show, but I didn’t see her and so we left and had drinks at The Nobel Elf aka: Mobel Olfe. I normally don’t like going to this bar on Thursdays as it gets too crowded and way too cigerette smokey, but it was early in the evening around 8pm so I was able to handle it. One of the bartenders named Dennis a cute little pud of a man is opening up his own restaurant and pub nearby which I think is called Flachbau Sued am Kotti at Admiralstrasse 1-2. Baby Diaper Joel Gibb and this performer from Canada who is Russian called China Woman who just moved to Berlin will innauggurate the place with a short performance on Dec 4th.
***
Tuesday I went to dinner with my CHEAP collegue Daniel Hendrickson, the Scandanavian Muslim and his longtime beau the handsome Piero Bellomo of the Italian/German design house LaColleczione to the cute Thai Restaurant on the Hauptstasse called Papaya.The food is simply fabulous at this place. Sitting near us was the British/Sri Lankan pop star M.I.A. and her husband the Seagram bootlegger heir Ben Brofman. Years ago I had a flirtation with the young Mr. Brofman, but of course he didn’t recognize me out of drag. Piero and Danny are going down to Stuttgard on the weekend for a lovers getaway, and to see some visiting Cubano friend who is a concert virtuoso on the violin.
***
Received another cute little emug from Ron Athey in London who wants to join forces with my performance persona of St. Salicia Tate with his Holy Eunich character. The last time these two entities collaborated was in our epic techno rock opera Epiphany back in the mid 90s. This is Ron’s new proposal:

The Most High Right Reverend St. Salicia Tate and The Holy Eunich present The Largest Spectacle of Charisma To Grace Planet Earth featuring 24 Magical Elders of Zion,
144 Candlestick Christians (burning live on the stake),23 Automatic Writers,
Glossalalia Choir and Tambourine Arkestra,Special Guest Star: Rotonda, The Fattest Woman on the Planet to ever Receive the Gift of Stigmata,Prophecy & Discernment,
Psychic Surgery Tent with 100 Surgeons live and direct from the Filipines,
Special Late-Night Annointing in the Smega of an Albino Intersexed Wonder (just like in the Fellini movie Satyricon)Hazmat Baptisms in a Pool of Fire plus Ecstatic Ann Miller Tap-Dancing
Rattle-snake bites and strychnine cocktails and lots of quasi- ye olde gospel songs updated for relevance, not to mention St. Salicia sweat-staining some of the most gorgeous couture gowns ever assembled in the finest silk and blood diamonds ever mined in South Africa.
St. Salicia's hair and make-up designed as a courtesy by Hump the Grinders Hair Wars winner from 2003/4

If that's not enough, and it isn’t Oversexed trapeze wearing nothing but decontructed Mormon sacred underwear with embroidered talismans will fly through the air delivering healing oil/thin wafers/booze and pigment shells.

Let the cult begin sweet Evangelina Jolie St. Croix!
***
Next week is going to be a very busy period for the doll. I have a ton of meetings with people who want to work on projects with me.
A British TV presenter named Simon Amstell--don’t know anything about him, but he has been writing me lovely, affectionate notes of devotion, and is coming to Berlin to see me for something or other, and he wants to take me to dinner so at least I will get a nice meal off of him. You all know how the doll likes to eat. Hope he is at least tall and good looking.
***
I can’t wait to find out how the pictures that Margarita Broich took of me will come out. Margarita is a popular German stage and film actress who also has become quite a well known portraiturist photographer. Margarita was in the Kate Winslet movie Der Vorleser which I think was called The Reader in English. Her exhibit will be March 17, 2010 at the Martin Gropius Bau here in Berlin.
***
I was sent a screener copy of the new Cher, Christina Aguilera film Burlesque directed by Steve Antin. Haven’t watched it because I am way too busy, but from my Hollywood sources I heard that the real brouhaha on the set didn’t come from the diva stars but from the queen divas --- the director Antin and his boyfriend Clint Culpepper who is president of Screen Gems, and producer of the film. In the Spring I ran into Michael Kaplan the costume designer of Burlesque at a Rick Owens party in New York, and he was pretty mum about the whole affair, but I am sure working on the film was quite a hoot with all the male pattern lesbianic drama.
Mr. Antin use to be lovers with this evil but beautiful gay boy from the 1980s named John Harp. I think he even had a stint with David Geffen around the late 1980s. In his youthfull heydey Steve Antin was never a beauty, but did have one of those tight speed freak muscular bodies that some men can’t resist. His face was a little too San Bernadino for me, but I can certainly understand his appeal. He must be at least my age now or just a wee bit older. Talk about being able to work it! Being at the helm of a multi million dollar mainstream Hollywood studio film with the financial climate that is at the moment in Missy Hollywoodland. WoW! How did he pull that one off. O and someone emailed me that a veteran publicist named Ronnie Chasen somehow connected with the film was shot leaving the premiere party at the W Hotel in Hollywood in of all places BeverlyHills. I wonder if this is a similar case to when the old geezer who ran the Silent Movie Theatre on Fairfax Avenue got killed by his hustler boyfriend who tried to make it look like a robbery back in the early 1990s. In Los Ang anything is possible.

Monday, November 15, 2010

PAEDAGOGISCHEN SALON
Just read online that Marie Osmond of Donny&Marie fame was on the Oprah Winfrey TV chat show talking about her late 18 year old son who committed suicide. Marie stated that his death had nothing to do with gay rumours. I’ve known a lot of gay Mormens over the years and they have an incredibly hard time adapting to life outside of their religion, so when they do come out they do it like a rocket ship and literally can OD on homosexuality itself with the insuing drug and alcohol abuse that can follow. I also came from a fundamentalist religion, but I embraced my background using it as material for my art practice. Alas not everyone is able to do that.
Marie Osmond says her son was not gay, but he was a student at the Fashion Institute for Design and Merchandise in Downtown Los Angeles, which is one of the gayest schools in the world. Still I won't assume anythinig about his sexuality.
My Afro Sister Fertile La Toyah Jackson went to that school right after high school and Fertile felt the school was a bit of a rip off feeling that what she learned their she could have also taken at Trade Tech for less money and with out taking out so many student loans. The only good thing about the school is the fashion library which has videotapes of all the fashion collections in Paris, New York and Milan. But basically the 2 year institution is a vanity junior college that’s all gussied up to look like its important. If you’re a student interested in fashion in Los Angeles you’d be better served going to Otis. Now how in the hell did I get on this subject?
***
Last night that naughty sweetie Felix Knoke who I love dearly and is in my new art band Tenderloin came by the Cheese Endique Trifecta with his Vienna Austria bud Martin who is one of the DJ’s and founders of the popular FM Queer dance parties which I haved Djaned at. Martin was with his long dark haired Repunzel lover Patrick who was in Berlin to perform at HAU2 with his art music project called Crazy Bitch in a Cave. Patrick sings in what he calls a Beyonce falsetto, and was delighted that Peaches is a fan of his music and bought a copy of his vinyl EP called On Top. We had a lovely time chatting, drinking tea and eating dainties that Felix brought from a Turkish bakery. We also did a bit of gossiping about Heiko Pfost who runs the Brut Theatre in Vienna and who is trying to the job of Artistic director of the Hebbel Am Ufer in Berlin now that Matias Lienthal is leaving in 2012. It looks like everyone is after that covetted job.
When the kids left I boogied around the corner to the Xenon Theatre to see Tazi Zum Klo. I hadn’t seen this film since it first played in Los Angeles in the early1980s as part of the legendary FilmX International Cinema Festival. Its quite a groundbreaking film written, directed and starring Frank Ripploh a skinny, bearded dark haired German man with pretty eyes and a big penis, but not anything to write home to Grandma about. He has a typical German male body type of pigeon chest and no shoulders. The man who plays his long suffering lover in the film reminded me of my CHEAP collegue Daniel Hendrickson, the Scandanavian Muslim. The autobiographical story is diaristic in form as we see Herr Ripploh cruising the public toilets of the city in his relentless quest for peni. Even when he comes down with hepatitis it doesn’t stop him one bit. He leaves the hospital and takes a taxi to the Tiergarten. It was great seeing scenes of Berlin in the early 1980s, and a cameo appearance by Ulrike Ottinger’s gorgeous new wave girlfriend who was the star of her films from the same period.
Earlier in the day photographer Tanja Schnitzler of the Siegessaeule came by the Trifecta to take pictures of me for a Q&A I did with the gay rag via email. She shot me in almost every nook and cranny of my studio.
***
Saturday was Rising Stars, Falling Stars and our special salute to lesbian Hollywood studio director Dorothy Arzner with a rare screening of the 1940 sound film Dance, Girl Dance. Usually I only screen silent films, but felt it was more then appropriate to show this legendary flick by my old teacher from UCLA. Since it was a talkie I did my introduction silent using only pantomine and unter title cards designed by Daniel Hendrickson who also accompanied me on piano playing quite beautifully I might add. The audience loved our performance and also the movie which is a feminist classic starring a young Maureen O’Hara and Lucille Ball years before her I Love Lucy TV fame. The male lead was ganymede South African Louis Hayward who at one time was married to Ida Lupino the other lesbian woman and Hollywood film director influenced by Dorothy Arzner who was her sometime lover. In fact Hayward had a long standing gay romance with Noel Coward that many people to this day don’t know about. The film Dance, Girl Dance has some good supporting players including Ralph Bellamy, Walter Abel, Virginia Field, Mary Carlisle and Maria Ouspenskaya the Stanislovsky accolyte who Anne Baxter of All About Eve fame studied under. The story for the film came from Vicki Baum who wrote Grand Hotel.
After the screening a lot of frivolity was experienced in the Rote Foyer with Nanna Heidenreich of Arsenal Experimental, with her gal pal Djane Olga Damnitz, handsome junior programmerr Uli Ziemons with pretty Nadja Talmi, Manuel Schubert the sweet and sexually advanced internet radio presenter with the distinguished program Film Highlights on MultiKult FM,the divine Tobias Raucher of Sissy Magazine with visiting San Francisco filmmaker Travis Matthews, young French artist Christophe DeRohan Chabot with the beautiful Fernando Eimbcke,Piero Bellhomme of La Collezione, vivacious curator Dorothee Wenner with perky boyfriend Micki and posse, the lovely actress who is turning into quite the celebrated photographer Margarita Broich was snapping photos of “The Doll” for her latest exhibit in March, lovesexy Arsenal projectionist Alexander Boldt, juicy Spaniard Rafael Ariast Careon,dancer Assaf Hochman with beau Little Tilemachos Alexiou of Chocolate Grinder Film Kollective who designed Ms. Davis’ hair & make-up and styled her sophisticated collar and tie lesben look for the evening,The Bros Strauss-Greg & Colin directors of the new American film Skyline,faggy stylist Panos Yiapanis with Riccardo Tisci of Givenchy, art stars Joshua Ben Longo with Anselm Kiefer and French mega star and Berlin legendary treasure Ms. Zazie De Paris who is in the new Belgian black comedy Kill Me Please directed by Olias Barco that just won the top honor of a Marcus Aurelius award in Rome, Italy at the Rome Film Festival. Congragulations to the charming Ms. De Paris on your recent success, and I am sure there will be many more great film roles to follow.
***
One of my favorite exPats is the British artist and curator Elly Clark. She has two forthcoming events taking place in Berlin and New York. The first is the group show Glass Crash Feeling which she and all the artists from the April Clarke GalleryExhibition Carte Blanche(Recipients of the Goldraush Kuenstlerinnen Stipendium 2010) are in. This exhibit opens on Nov 19th at Galerrie September and Schaulager Galerie and runs until December 19th The second event is Wunderammer in New York which is being presented at Franklin Furnace’s Holiday party on Dec 3rd in Brooklyn.
***
This little enote from big Daddy Ron Athey who is now living in London:

Love it! i wanted to send you some pics from the performance i just finished the last two nights, me and another reader were high up in two opera boxes so we're not visible in these pics, but the 16 automatic writers are. the cast was 27 in total counting editors and 4 typists. it was very process oriented, pre-hypnosis, i'd read taglines from gifts of the spirit and let the collective unconscious continue for 5 minutes, runners would cut the text off the floor and bring it to typists, then to editors, then upstairs to the reads, so in the second part we mixed the structured text of my memoir with their cut-up and pasted together automatic writing. was a real exercise in restraint for me, the whole thing was so ambiant and the audience ended up hypnotized and didn't know what to do afterwards. and soundwise it was total silence with me and Barnaby (the other reader’s) voice, then typewriters when the text was prepared, then before the second round of readings Othon came out and played the most articulated piano with boxing gloves on. lordy. lady, i'm tired of working now,but this is a jab at some other way of making work for me. love and missing you,your grizzled up salt-beef father.
***
One of my nice and talented Weissensee students Annette Knol is in a group show that opens Thursday Nov 18 7pm at West Germany called Love Speech. http://printeretto.net/.
Below is the formal info on the exhibit.

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren, liebe Freunde!

Hiermit möchten wir herzlich zur
Ausstellungseröffnung einladen.
love speech

WestGermany • Skalitzer Straße 133 • 10999 Berlin

Eröffnung
Donnerstag, 18. 11. 2010 um 19 Uhr
DJ Gesticulador

geöffnet
Freitag, 19.11.2010 • 15 – 21 Uhr
Samstag, 20.11.2010 • 15 – 23 Uhr
21 Uhr Konzert mit Samanta
Dr. Gomes & The Mississippi Karaoke Massacre
DJs: Annetto & Aventura

mit Beiträgen von
Michael Baute & Volker Pantenburg / Oliver Sturm, Stefanie Busch
Meike Dölp, Peter Jap Lim, Annette Knol, Marion Kreißler & Martin Conrath
Niina Lehtonen-Braun, Christine Lemke, Christine Lohr, Cesare Pietroiusti
Diego del Pozo Barriuso, Susan Schmidt, Francisca Villela, Matthias Weidmann

kuratiert von
David Buob & Christine Lohr

love speech

Sprache ist nicht verlässlich. Sie kann sich versprechen.
Unvermeidlich produziert sie Missverständnisse und sprachliche
Fehlhandlungen. Dennoch kommen wir nicht umhin, täglich mit Sprache
zu handeln und das in mehrfacher Hinsicht. Sprache ist zunächst einfach das,
was wir tun: Wir sprechen oder schreiben. Während wir sprechen und schreiben
jedoch, geben wir Dingen einen Namen, machen wir unwillkürlich Zuschreibungen,
stellen Realitäten her und unhintergehbare Verbindlichkeiten. Denn auch ein
gebrochenes Versprechen bleibt ein Versprechen. Neben dem, was gesagt oder
geschrieben wird, ist auch die Art und Weise von Bedeutung, wie und wo das geschieht.
Sprache steht nicht für sich. Sie ist immer auch von ihrem Kontext abhängig.

Es liegt nahe, diese Gradwanderungen der Sprechakte genauer zu betrachten:
Bei allen bei „love speech“ gezeigten Beiträgen spielt Sprache eine große Rolle, als ob
die Komplexität des Visuellen nicht schon genug wäre. So reagieren einige Arbeiten
auf unerträgliche politische Aussagen oder versuchen erzählerisch, eine bessere Welt zu
schaffen. Manche zeigen die Leere, die durch die Abwesenheit von Sprache entsteht.
Andere versuchen, im Bewusstsein ihres möglichen Scheiterns ein Anliegen zu erklären.
Viele kombinieren Text und Bild und spielen mit den Bezügen der beiden Ebenen,
die sich ergänzen können, sich widersprechen oder haarscharf nicht zueinander passen.
Im Wissen um die Fragilität, die Fehlerquellen und die Lügenhaftigkeit alles Sprechen und
Schreibens versuchen die gezeigten Arbeiten, genau dies produktiv zu wenden.