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Friday, August 12, 2011

WAR IN EINE DRAG QUEEN VERLIEBT!

Been making a secret film with a big shtar and I had to sign a confidentiality agreement that I won’t disclose details of working with this A-lister. Hi di hi ho-hum. Also will be doing a film for art shtar Wu which should be fun, but its all keeping me very busy and acting like a chicken with its head cut off as I don’t have much time for myself what with preproduction duties on The Communist Bigamist and also working on my commission piece for the states. The last fun thing I was able to do was go and see Wieland Speck’s queer double feature at the Arsenal with a screening of Rosa von Praunheim’s It is Not the Homosexual Who is Perverse (1970) and William Friedkin’s Boys in The Band (1970) which stars a bunch of queens and one straight in the form of Lawrence Luckinbill who is married to Lucille Ball’s daughter Lucie Arnaz. Enjoying the gayosity of it all baby diaper Joel Gibb of the Hidden Cameras with Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys, Manuel Schubert of Film Highlights Radio Magazine, Daniel Hendrickson the Jewish Muslim for little Christ Jesus in the manger, prima ballerina Trixie Cordua, Arsenal Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, and hunky Tim Schenkl of Chocolate Grinder Film Kollective.

Before running off to Brandenburg and Rostock to film Ali Jenka of the famous Vienna Austrian art kollective Gelitin invited me to his lover Gunther Gerdes aka: Baby Papi for a delightful dinner of Wilde Salmon, green chupa mi verga beans, a karoten & Inger Stevens Ginger soup & tunte salad. For desert was yellow melon chunky with nilla ice cream. Yumsickle. Joining us for supper was the personable Swedish poet and artist Karl Holmquist who has lived in Berlin for over 15 years. What a lovely evening of merriment was spent as we watched a slide show of a Gelitin performance installation in Venice, Italy. Ali had spent part of his summer holiday in New York on Fire Island with AA Bronson and went to an artist retreat in the upstate New York town of Warwick with faith healing oracle Paul Selick and James Carmen the director of photography for Judy LaBruce’s films.

I am always forgetting that I get invited to press screenings of Hollywood films months before they come out, and as usual I forget to write about them until a publicist starts badgering me. So here is my take on the JJ Abrahms film Super 8: I am all wrapped up in the house of Elle Fanning, baby sister of Dakota Fanning. Nymphette Elle is already way too self-possessed for a child of her age. She is fast becoming this generations Jodie Foster circa The Little Girl Who Lived Down the Lane. But unlike Jodie she isn’t romantically involved with her mother. Jodie overcame her incest damage and seems pretty adjusted these days in saaphic domesticity. Jodie’s mom like most stage mother’s also tried to pimp her daughter out to film executives back in the sordid 1970s. O don’t get all shocked its not like I am sprouting some revelation. All child stars are abused it’s the nature of the showbiz beasty. Some stars like Shirley Temple wise up and make it work for them. Diane Lane was another child star who didn’t let the mistreatment get the better of her and has prospered. Ditto for Shia LeBeuf, The Jonas Bros, Justin Timberlake and Ryan Gosling who were all passed around Patty at a tender age. But getting back to the flicker Super 8---- the first 25 minutes is fantastic then it evaporates into Steven Spielberg shmaltz liquor Ville. Keep the procoscious tweens ditch the CGI monster!

Local elections are happening in Berlin and so the giant campaign posters are cropping up all over the city. My favorite posters are the ones for Christian Zander of CDU and Lars Oberg for SDU. Gay burgermeister Klaus Wolwereit is running again for mayor. I was recently told that Canadian video artist Benny Nemerofsky when he was a tad younger had a short lived sex affair with the mayor. Fraulein Mayor is big on self promotion and goes to the opening of a bag of potato chips. These citywide elections here in Berlin for some reason brought to mind the Los Angeles mayoral race of 1973 where Tom Bradley became the first negro to hold the top office in a major US city. I was in grade school at the time and the campaign was contentious. My 6th grade teacher Dorothy Gichtin confided in us that she voted against Bradley and supported his opponent Sam Yorty who had held the office for centuries. I’ll never forget Mrs. Gichtin going on about how Bradley tried to make whites who didn’t support him feel as if they were racists. She then asked the class to share their opinions on the mayoral race. I was quite the politized 11 year old because of my pen pals in Paris who unlike children in the US would go marching in demonstrations. I raised my hand and she called on me, and I calmly told her that I felt that was a racist. She turned bright red and screamed and yelled at me with such vehemence that the other children in the class were visibly shaken. I had a habit as a child of being able to push adults buttons. Her white liberal guilt must really have eaten at her because she called for a parent/teacher conference. I don’t think she was expecting my mother a middle aged status quo looking colored lady wearing a hat, matching purse, and fake pearls to be so militant in her views, so when my mother backed up what I said with such quiet intensity and Southern iron fist in velvet glove my teacher was knocked to the curb, and called in sick the rest of the week, and wound up not returning to Hobart Blvd Elementary School for the remainder of the school year.
DIE GROSSE JUBELNUMMER

Well Hector Martinez and Ericla Pierce are now most likely back in their tiny house in the Silverlake foothills overlooking Bellview Park. It was nice having them here in Berlin. They seemed to have a nice time despite the weather in Berlina not exactly cooperating with them. Jeffreyland Hilbert of Kustom Creative (formerly with Sony Pictures) and his baby brother Kurt will be my next set of visitors. Can’t wait to see my adopted hometown through their eyes have hills.

Over in the queen mumdom of the UK social unrest has exploded and the streets are on fire. The British press seem to be thrilled to have something exciting to cover and be shrill about. The commentators and TV presenters are literally foaming at the mouth. So much for objective news reporting. Its all something that I have been predicting for some time and without wearing my Whoracle et Delphi costume. England and its austerity measures. What started in London has spread to Blimy Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool and Manchester. Arab Spring has now morphed into the Jubas Summer into Fall. O and Missy America will not escape the shards. Thus spake Madame DeFarge in her vinoshop knitting a designy pattern.

I asked some of my art friends living in London to give a commentary and this from Dom Johnson:

Hi Vag
I just couldn't help myself. The streets were on fire so I snuck into the Body Shop and got a Raspberry Ripple Body Lotion, a face scrub made of kelp, some soaps shaped like fruits, and a Hello Kitty foot pumice. Now I feel terrible, because a lady on the news called me a "feral rat".

Things in London have settled down I think. Monday was intense, with riots all across London but the epicentre just round the corner on the street where Hackney Baths is. There were riot police, burning cars, helicopters, running fights between gangs and cops. All very surreal and scary. I saw a bit of it for a while on my way home from work but scurried home to my Art Deco oasis of middle-class luxury and hid from it all. I watched it develop on the rolling news, and could hear sirens and smell burning rubber and metal.

Now the violence has subsided in London mostly, but has spread to Manchester and other parts of the country. The youths are taking over, but in a pretty cack-handed way. At first I thought it was political, but if it is a form of activism, it is in a new way that I don't understand -- no leadership, no messages, no ambition or objectives, no style, and completely self-destructive.

X

That’s the middleclass perspective from the son of a banker and now what my sister of the clothe Ron Athey who moved to London just two years ago:

I miss you hyaena,

how's the berlin life treating you? hurry the fuck up and come over here.
i organized the riots, but i was trying to get them to wait until the olympics came to town, but you know that mob mentality, it just spun out of control.

they take a while to round up police support here, and everyone wants to jump in. last night on my street in twee Islington, there were a pack of 5 fat middleclass weenagers with hoodies on running around rolling dice and when they heard the sirens, 'you think they're onto us?' and running down the street.

most locals are happy some spirit has been shown, but of course its a pain in the ass when the ugly goons get involved and the govt will probably use this an excuse to go to more of a police state since obviously no one gives a fuck if they're on cctv or not.

child we're from LA, and we had two riots----1965 and 1992, even with a the burning buildings this will die down. the only danger is that london will turn into LA. The police patrol here is still so benny hill its hard to imagine, but they do pull out the riot squad and i've been seeing more armed pigs that its getting closer to the tired lucrative Olympics.

I am on a Sylvester roll trying to shake the blues away. You can understand that being a historian of showbiz LA



*
One of my favorite golden era stars Esther Williams just turned 90 years old. I love Miss Williams. She is one of the last great MGM stars still alive. Her movies were always so entertaining, and she could handle herself above water too in the singing and dancing department and never fully got credit for her acting chops which were always effective. I lover her in Neptune’s Daughter, Easy to Love, Jupiter’s Darling, Pagan Love Song, Take Me Out To The Ballgame and Bathing Beauty.

My second official date with my scientist from Saarbrucken was very sweet. He took me to this delicious Indian restaurant called Aapka located at Maybacher Ufer 23 that is also a cocktail bar. I had a delightful walnut and ginger soup that was creamy and intoxicating plus a lemon chicken with a sauce that enveloped me. Going on a date with someone age appropriate is nice. The scientist is very nice, soft spoken and gentile. The city of Saarbrucken was a military fort during the Roman era and during the middle ages it was ruled over by a homosexual Prince who lived in a pimped out pansy palace.

Tuesday, August 09, 2011

JETZT GEBEN WIR GAS
Hector and Ericla are back from their sojourn of Prague, Vienna and Budapest. They had a good time but missed their plane back to Berlin from Vienna because of some imaginary orgy at a naked sex club they thought they were invited to, so had to pay and exorbitant amount of money for another flight. God damn tired sex tourists. At least they didn’t get rolled by tricks. Last night they wanted to eat again at Hasir in Nollendorkyplatz so we went back to the Turkish chain and ran into Piero Bellomo who was with his Westside posse of esquilitas.

Saturday evening I had Tavia Nyongo over at the Cheese Endique Trifecta. Tavia is the Black Kenyan/American who is a NYU Performance Studies professor. We gossiped and klatched as its his last few days in Berlin before having to return to his teaching responsibilities in Man!hattan. Sunday I had my date with a scientist from Saarbrucken the upscale city on the border of Germany and France. I won’t go into details on the blogina as doing that ruined the last two romances with the Swedish journalist and the young blondine venture capitalist. Well with the Swedish journalist I made the mistake of taking him to Bruce La Bruce’s Gang of Four Skins during the Arsenal BLAB retro spectacle last year. Word to the wise: never take a date to a Judy LaBruce film.

My date with the scientist included a nice dinner at the atmospheric Kreuzberg Turkish boite Def’ne on the canal. The food is scrumptious and so i highly recommend the place, and their Turkish wine is out of this world.
One of my sweet talented Weissensee students Annette Knol has a show in Linz, Austria. If any of my readers are in that area please go and check it out. Here are the details that she sent me:

Dear friends,

"Into Onto" by Amelia and I opens this Friday, 12. August at the bb15 in Linz.
If you find yourself in Austria or nearby Linz, it be great to see you there!

Performance will be on the opening night only.
Opening times: 13. - 15. August / 16 - 18:00

Bests, Annette Knol

O and please check out the blog of Israeli artist Uzi Parnes:
http://uziny.blogspot.com/

Also juicy beauty boy Gunnar Neumann who works at the Lab Sex Club that is connected to the famous Berlin dance palace Berghain is part of a giant group art show of all the employees of the techno disco called Alle Workers Pearls - Kunstausstellung der Berghain arbeiter 18-26 Auh 2011 taglich Geoff net 16-22 urh. I am filming a movie that day and it may go way into the evening so I might not be able to attend so please go and tell me all about it so I can write about it in this very blogette.