HEMORROIDS OR ASTEROIDS?
For all you Billie Ray Martin fans out there just received this email from the talented singing sensation outlining her current musical projects and how you can become a part of the majick:
it's all happening and getting exciting (it's been ages since a full album release)....so here's another email from us. hope you don't mind. we are now pre-selling four different optional packages of the new album by 'the opiates' entitled: hollywood under the knife. all money we raise with this pre-sale will go towards our promotional campaign worldwide including: press promotion, club promotion, tv promotion and the making of videos, touring etc. we want as many people as possible to find out about us and are running an extensive campaign for the album, singles and remixes. here are the different options available: 1. copy of cd album 12.99 eur 2. copy of cd album signed by brm and with personal dedication 24.99 eur 3. copy of cd album plus copy of the opiates vinyl ep 'anatomy or a plastic girl' 39.99 eur (both signed and with personal dedication ) 4. copy of cd album plus copy of the opiates vinyl ep 'anatomy or a plastic girl' 27.99 eur to pre-order the album please email your choices, amounts, details of the dedication to johanna@billieraymartin.com all orders will be shipped three days before the release date, i.e. the 14th october. if you are interested in making a wider investment in the opiates promotional campaign or the next billie ray martin solo album, in return for a variety of special opportunities and involvement with brm or the opiates, please get in touch with us for details. many thanks the opiates billie ray martin disco activisto records www.billieraymartin.com
***
Received a wonderful emug from my olde punk rock pal and colleguen Alice Bag with the band Cholita the female Menudo whose memoir Violence Girl will be out shortly and I guarantee it will be a sizzling read.
Hello Graciela, It's Sad Girl. How's life in Berlin? I bet you're making your presence felt there. Over here on my side of the pond there's a lot of excitement connected to my upcoming memoir. No joke, I'm really having a book published. To celebrate the release, Artifix Records wants to put together a limited release ep featuring some of the different bands I've been in. I'd love to include a Cholita cut if that's ok with you. How would you feel about that? Xoxo, Alice www.alicebag.com The True Life Adventures of Violence Girl Diary of a Bad Housewife
***
O and the Wieland Speck finissage at Arsenal was a wonderful intimate event that featured a clip show by love sexy Kiki Petersen highlighting the underground and mainstream acting career of Herr Speck including his roles in Ulrike Ottinger’s classic Freak Orlando, and Just a Gigolo Marlene Dietrich's last starring film role with David Bowie. Enjoying the raucus trip down memory lane: art photog Annette Frick, Andreas Bernhardt(former Gaultier make-up designer and Speck film star), actress/director Susanne Sachsse, film historian Marc Siegel, Manuel Schubert radio presenter with Film Highlights Radio Magazine, Elsa of Lisbon, Arsenal Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, legend Zazie De Paris, new sweet Arsenal intern Sandra Schulze,projectionist Anselm and filmmaker Birgit Hein.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
IHR KITZLER WAR SO GROSS WIE EIN KNABENPIMMEL
Nick Ashford, who with Valerie Simpson, his songwriting partner and later wife, wrote some of Motown’s biggest hits, like “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough“ and “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing,” and later recorded their own hits and toured as a duo, died Monday at a hospital in New York City. He was 70.
I use to play Ashford & Simpson’s “Solid” at Club Sucker at the Garage in Silverlake. I saw them perform their cavalcade of songs at the Sunset Junction Street Fair one year and they were very entertaining on stage. Mr. Ashford with his lady locks flowing,long polished fingernails and glitter & sequined Johnny tank tops was quite the R&B dandy. He will be missed.
And speaking of the Sunset Junction I've heard that it might not take place this year. That icky little Michael McKinley of the sad tye dyed t-shirts who runs the festival or better word grifts the festival did some kind of mismanagement thing and the city counsel was not amused. If he uses the money he makes to pay for sucking the hot cocks of young latino gangbangers then its worth it, but if it just goes into his pocket to pay for more horrible t-shirts then screw him.
***
A little art review for you art damaged sissyphiles:
ALLE WORKERS PEARLS
Berghain Aug 18-26th 2011 16-22 uhr
Entering the back rotundra of the Berghain techno dance club you become overwhelmed by the buildings stark industrial beauty. A brief torrential downpour right before I arrived contributed to puddles of water that glistened like an electronic cinema diadem.
This new section of the behemoth which will soon become a live music concert hall is unusually inviting. This group gathering of the united workers of Berghain Unlimited brand Thurn und Taxis felt like I was viewing a gnarly graduate student show, and of course most of the exhibit is uneven,but that only adds to its charms.
An ungainly portrait by Martina Minete Dreier reminded me of what Kurt Cobain would have looked like if he had lived to pot bellied middle age. I enjoyed trying to keep up with the playful ghosting video projection by Yusuf Etiman the patrician Turkish guru of Basso kollective. Gunnar Neumann´s circle one Franko b like blood burn print with accompanying insect horror ring video was zenlike and meditative, but the standout of this show has to be Sarah Schoenfeld´s large scale color double negative prints of heroin and mdma frozen as lovely and serene chrystalline entities. The perfect commentary on modern clubland Deleuze adaise.
***
Ulrich Ziemons the handsomest man in all Europe invited me over for a scrumpteous dinner Plattenspiel where he cooked a wicked lasagna and we did the spinderella behind the mighty wheels of steel. Yowza my dear Uli has some great taste in musica. Can’t wait till we start Djing together along with Olga Damnitz at next year's new Berlinale Underground cineclub called Arzner in homage to the great lesbian Hollywood film director Dorothy Arzner.
Nick Ashford, who with Valerie Simpson, his songwriting partner and later wife, wrote some of Motown’s biggest hits, like “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough“ and “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing,” and later recorded their own hits and toured as a duo, died Monday at a hospital in New York City. He was 70.
I use to play Ashford & Simpson’s “Solid” at Club Sucker at the Garage in Silverlake. I saw them perform their cavalcade of songs at the Sunset Junction Street Fair one year and they were very entertaining on stage. Mr. Ashford with his lady locks flowing,long polished fingernails and glitter & sequined Johnny tank tops was quite the R&B dandy. He will be missed.
And speaking of the Sunset Junction I've heard that it might not take place this year. That icky little Michael McKinley of the sad tye dyed t-shirts who runs the festival or better word grifts the festival did some kind of mismanagement thing and the city counsel was not amused. If he uses the money he makes to pay for sucking the hot cocks of young latino gangbangers then its worth it, but if it just goes into his pocket to pay for more horrible t-shirts then screw him.
***
A little art review for you art damaged sissyphiles:
ALLE WORKERS PEARLS
Berghain Aug 18-26th 2011 16-22 uhr
Entering the back rotundra of the Berghain techno dance club you become overwhelmed by the buildings stark industrial beauty. A brief torrential downpour right before I arrived contributed to puddles of water that glistened like an electronic cinema diadem.
This new section of the behemoth which will soon become a live music concert hall is unusually inviting. This group gathering of the united workers of Berghain Unlimited brand Thurn und Taxis felt like I was viewing a gnarly graduate student show, and of course most of the exhibit is uneven,but that only adds to its charms.
An ungainly portrait by Martina Minete Dreier reminded me of what Kurt Cobain would have looked like if he had lived to pot bellied middle age. I enjoyed trying to keep up with the playful ghosting video projection by Yusuf Etiman the patrician Turkish guru of Basso kollective. Gunnar Neumann´s circle one Franko b like blood burn print with accompanying insect horror ring video was zenlike and meditative, but the standout of this show has to be Sarah Schoenfeld´s large scale color double negative prints of heroin and mdma frozen as lovely and serene chrystalline entities. The perfect commentary on modern clubland Deleuze adaise.
***
Ulrich Ziemons the handsomest man in all Europe invited me over for a scrumpteous dinner Plattenspiel where he cooked a wicked lasagna and we did the spinderella behind the mighty wheels of steel. Yowza my dear Uli has some great taste in musica. Can’t wait till we start Djing together along with Olga Damnitz at next year's new Berlinale Underground cineclub called Arzner in homage to the great lesbian Hollywood film director Dorothy Arzner.
Monday, August 22, 2011
PACK MICH AUS!
Its so funny whenever I write memory pieces of my childhood growing up in LA in the 60s and 70s I always get a flood of response from readers. I purposely don’t have a comments section on my blog as I don’t want to encourage showboating, something that is so prevalent on the internet with people with way too much time on their hands. But thanks a d’mint for all of you who wrote to my student assistant Gleeson Brevard and my webmaster Larry Bob asking for more about the young Vagimule hatched from the primordial ooze of the LaBrea Tar Pits.
In keeping with that tome I’d like to tell you about one of my childhood friends from elementary school named David Hayes. David was a hefty mulato boy with coloring like the actor Wentworth Miller. He was in the Mentally Gifted Minors Program with me in the LA Unified School District from 3rd Grade up into high school. We didn’t go to middle school together as at that time he was enrolled in private school. David was way ahead of the times in terms of sexuality. He was a bonafide openly gay child. He was teased mercilessly by all the kids and even the teachers didn’t like him. But he would fearlessly stand his ground and say “so I like boys. So what?” In 4th grade David became a minor celebrity when he was handpicked from our school to star in the KTTV production of Student News which was like a miniature 60 minutes for kids. Being regularly on TV only made things worse for him, and the abuse from students and teachers alike continued with an upped ante. David and I bonded over our love for the L.Frank Baum series of Oz books. I have always rallied for the underdog and was the only person in the entire school who was friends with David and would talk with him. Its so strange that David wasn’t effeminate like I was. He was much more the typical boy in that he was a bit rugged and looked and dressed actually quite sloppy and was always unkept sort of like the Pig-Pen character in the Peanuts cartoon series. If anyone should have been crucified as a giant FIT(Fag-in-Training) it was me, yet I was popular all through school and quite adored. My Fertile La Toyah Jackson collaborator Beulah Love(who has an abrasive personality) would say that she couldn’t believe how I got away with murder, and could say and do the most outlandish things and people just somewhat smiled and were bemused.
Anyway David Hayes formed a bit of a crush on me and asked me after school if he could kiss me. I said ok and offered my cheek to him. He wanted to kiss on the lips, and I told him I thought that was disgusting. To this day I don’t like kissing people on the lips unless they have such amazing pillow lips that I can’t resist. I’m not much of a cock sucker either unless its one of those mega juicy ultra desireable penises with no visible veins or blemishes-beercan thick with a mushroom knob and heavy Birkin bag balls. Well David continued to be enamored of me and was always giving me gifts and presents and asking me to spend the night at his house and what not. His mother was also very light skinned, not as light as David but around maybe a shade or two the coloring of Angela Davis and she had the same educated tone to her voice which I loved. His mother knew David was lonely and was trying to help encourage him to make friends, but other then him calling me on the phone and hanging out at school my mother didn’t allow outside contact with other children as she was a very private person, and was also going through her religious zealiot period and didn’t encourage worldly contacts.
David Hayes continued to court me even offering me money for just one kiss which I would always refuse. I was relieved when he switched his object of affection to a strange white boy in our class named Edward Taylor. This was 1971 so there weren’t so many white children at Hobart Blvd Elementary School in midcity LA. Most of the caucasion families had escaped to the suburbs during white flight, but the Taylor family were unusual in that they were a bit hippy dippy/early new agey white liberals involved in Catholic liberation politics. Edward’s father was tall and strapping with bright warm blue eyes who wore his hair long and straight parted in the center and had a Jesus like blondine beard with a bit of a Dudley DooWright chin. His mother was movie star pretty looking like Carol Lynley from The Poseidon Adventure. Edward was very bright and was a gifted artist and a very happy go lucky kid. He was extremely quirky and sometimes appeared almost catatonic. I admired how aggressive David Hayes was in pursuing Edward. He just literally swooped down on him, and Edward just went along. They would be on the playground just passionately French kissing like adult lovers, so lost in the act that they were unaware they were causing a scandalous scene. The teachers and administrators were so horrified and unnerved by the open romance that they didn’t even know how to handle the situation. I think they just thought the same sex couple would tire of each other and stop the PDA and then they wouldn’t have to address the issue.. But David and Edward became inseperable and would walk around together hand-in-hand and even created their own secret lovers language. The make out sessions continued with newfound flourish. Finally their parents were called in for a serious discussion with Principle Richard Homet a stern authoritarian figure but both Miss Hayes(David’s single mother) and the Taylor’s didn’t see anything wrong with their son’s kissing and mildly petting each and this made the school administration mad with rage. The Vietnam war was still raging so the boys parents thought that the school shouldn’t be so concerned about two children showing each other affection when the world was filled with violence and hatred and that they shouldn’t be making such a big deal out of something so minor.
Even the other kids at school stopped being shocked by their behavior and resigned themselves to saying, “Oh its just that David Hayes and Edward Taylor kissing again.” David Hayes was still bullyed and harrassed, but its strange how no one ever attacked Edward or called him a faggot or sissy. I was the ultimate fag/sissy and no one ever made fun of me or dissed me all through school. Of course I had crazy serial killer eyes, and inherited my mothers ability to give someone a frosty look of disdain that child nor teacher dare challenge.
David Hayes was still starring on local TV by 1972 and in the 5th grade his mother removed him from public school and enrolled him in a private academy geared for children working in the entertainment industry. I would still get the occasional phone call from David Hayes into the 6th grade and even when I started middle school. He and Edward continued to see each other even when Edward left public school for Catholic School in the 7th grade. Edward lived not far from me so I would run into him occasionally on the weekends. His family lived in a huge house in the historic Harvard Heights Section of Mid City. Edward’s affair with David Hayes was most likely just a phase he was going through as I saw him several times during junior high days being quite cozy with a black girl named Simone Williams who I had known since 3rd grade. Simone was quite a personality, very feisty ---my favorite phrase of hers was, “Don’t point your finger at me, my mama’s not dead”. She was also overly developed for her age so that is probably what caught Edward’s pubertic eye.
Edward in his teen years turned into quite a hunk like his father. All traces of the lanky dork evaporated. Edward Taylor really developed into quite a beauty--a mixture of sinewy surfer dude and baseball jock. Unfortunately whenever I would run into him in the neighborhood later during our high school years I could see that he had become a hesher stoner. He was still his friendly gregarious and warm self but also completely out of it on marijuana. The last time I saw Edward Taylor was at a GoGo’s record signing party at Liccorice Pizza on the Sunset Strip. I was helping the GoGo’s then manager Ginger Canzerroni with the event which was packed with people as The GoGo’s debut album Beauty and the Beat became a surprise mainstream crossover hit. At this time Edward was sporting a musclebound rockabilly look, and we chit chatted for a bit. He didn’t seem stoned, so maybe he had given up the MaryJane.
David Hayes’s career in television didn’t last beyond his tween years. But his mother Patty Hayes became an influential casting agent working for Universal Studios. She cast the TV series Battlestar Gallactica. David continued his private school education during the junior high school years but went briefly to my high school Los Angeles High during senior year. He looked exactly the same from elementary school days--tubby and dishelved. And the kids still harassed him. At my high school there was a contingent of openly gay and lesbian students like Kenneth “Kenny” Bowman who I had known since Jr. High and who would later become the preeminent Grace Jones drag queen impersonator of Hollywood. David Hayes started hanging out with Kenny and his clicqa, but I think David was too butch and normative for this group of queens and baby dykes who were all seasoned club kids at the underground discos of the era.
By junior year of high school through my cousin Carla Duplantier who was the drummer of the punk band The Controllers I was already acquainted with the first 100 punks of Hollywood so I felt too sophisticated to be hanging around nelly disco dolly’s like Kenny and his ilk. And David was also too nerdy for me to want to hang with as I enjoyed the company of older kids who were already in college and art school. At that time in the late 1970s there was a lot of crossover between the punk and underground disco scene that centered around the teen disco Ginos II in Hollywood which was ruled over by the legendary butch drag queen DJ Michaelangelo and his cosmetics Drag Queen Review that performed regularly at Ginos II and at Peanuts Disco which at that time was mainly a lesbian hangout.
Kenny Bowman aka: Miss Grace met a muscular ginger boy from the Midwest at Peanuts, he gave up performing and left California to work in the video store that his humpy red headed husband owned with his parents somewhere in the midwest. Kenny died in the mid 1990s of Mrs. AIDS.
The last time I saw David Hayes was in 1982 when I was working at Retail Slut on Melrose Avenue. He hadn’t changed a bit, and hung out with me in the store all day one lazy Saturday afternoon. He seemed really titillated by my punk rock lifestyle and intrigued by my Fertile LaToyah Jackson magazine. If you are out there David Hayes give me a holler.
*
Our special Rising Stars, Falling Stars in honor of Wieland Speck was a smashing sexsess with a screening of the first gay themed movie Anders Als Die Anderen 1919 directed by Richard Oswald starring Conrad Veidt, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld and Anita Berber. The film is only a fragment as the original prints were all destroyed but in the 1970s a partial was recovered in the Ukraine and restored by the Munich State Film Museum. Eunice Martins did a fabulous job accompanying the film on klavier and highlighting the action with just the right touch of whimsy and finesse. In the Rote Foyer after the screening the crowd was able to delight in the Wieland Speck restrospectacle installation and get up and personal with Herr Speck in the fleshy flesh which made everyone very happy. Joining in the festivities: Manuel Schubert of Film Highlights Radio Magazine, Darryl Els the South Afrikan guest film programmer, Elsa Hallelujah, the Portuguese intermedia actress who has made the Arsenal her second home, Arsenal Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus and her lovely childhood friend the Argentine tango dancer Katja Ramharter, Michaela Wuensch of bbbooks kollective, scholar Nicole Wolfe and her Norweigan artist girlfriend Eline McGeorge who has a Scottish surname, Nanna Heidenreich of Arsenal Experimental who is now teaching full-time at a college outside of Berlin, film editor and Laurie Anderson acolyte Ruth Schonegger and her new smoking hot girlfriend, modern dancer Assaf “Gisele” Hochman with his lover Tielemachos Alex of Chocolate Grinder Film Kollective who styled the Vagimule doll’s wardrobe and did her hair & makeup, Daniel Hendrickson the Jewish Muslim, his visiting fagademic friend from Princeton University Zahid Chaudhary who is one fine piece of love sexy manhood. Dr. Chaudhary brought along his pals from Avignon, France the art fag couple Lionel & Laurent. Arsenal kasse girl Grit, the sweetest woman in Germany and kasse boy Garrett looking mighty sexy as he is graduating from a twink into a rather nice looking young man with an awesome bubble butt. Projectionist Anselm, studly Ulrich Ziemons of Forum Expanded and his pretty lady friend Juliane, Living Archive Project Coordinator Marcus Ruff ,rosy cheeked artist Jan Vorisek with Harold Ancort, novelist Wayne Koestenbaum(Humiliation) Romanian actress Luminita Gheorghiu (Death of Mr. Lazarescu), and the delightful Swedish spoken word poet and artist Karl Holmqvist.
Sunday it was the screening of Wieland Speck’s Westler from 1985 at the Arsenal‘s Speck Retrospectacle. Westler is the historic drama of classic proportions of young gay love divided by that little tiny tired Berlin wall. The movie is quite effective and emotional and I was surprised to see it start of in LA. It can’t get any far west then Los Angeles. Talk about setting off strong feelings of nostalgia in seeing my hometown circa 1984 the last great year of my city being truelly faburitic in the post punk era. Imagine my chagrin to see a Griffith Park cruising scene that features a young uncredited Steve Antin during the peak of his youthful hustler white beauty and glory. I think at this period he had David Geffen as a sugar daddy, Jon Harp the “It boy” of the fashion new wave scene as his main lover, and I think he was also diddling with fashion photog Greg Gorman and the young Tom Cruise as Antin and Cruise both were teen sex comedy ingénues. That Steve Antin sure got around. Well he did have one tight, hard and very desireable body. Most recently he directed the Cher/Christina Aguilera bomb Burlesque which was talked about all over Hollywood and not because of the divas but because of Mr. Antin and his former longtime lover a Sony Pictures/Screen Gems Unit Exec Clint Culpepper who were having constant knockout sluggos during production. Mr. Culpepper is king of the schlock buster with films like the Resident Evil franchise under his banner.
Getting back to Westler also in the film is a young Zazie De Paris the legendary French Berlin based chanteuse whose eyes are filmed in such a hypnotic way that when she is on the screen you become completely mesmerized. I also noticed a very young Thomas Kretschmann, the German matinee idol. Westler was his first film, he had been a swimmer and that magnificent manlische bod of his was shown to full benefit in an army male bonding roughouse sequence that is erotically charged.
Also enjoying the film and the post screening discussion between Herr Speck and film historian Marc Siegel who just got back from holiday in the states with his director/writer/curator girlfriend Susanne Sachsse was Warhol superstar Mario Montez and his longtime companion Dave, Arsenal Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, Manuel Schubert of Film Highlights Radio Magazine, and Jurgen Brunning of Wurst Films,
After the discussion and Q&A with the publicum I accompanied Wieland to the Hafen bar in Nollendorky Platz for a birthday party for one of his personality plus lesben friends. Since it was a nice warm summer evening, something that has been very rare this season with all the rain showers, the sidewalk in front of the bar was packed with locals and touristas. It was a hoot hanging with Wieland and his longtime Berlin clicqa of boisterous fags and dykes that included his housemate Frauelein Mabel.
Its so funny whenever I write memory pieces of my childhood growing up in LA in the 60s and 70s I always get a flood of response from readers. I purposely don’t have a comments section on my blog as I don’t want to encourage showboating, something that is so prevalent on the internet with people with way too much time on their hands. But thanks a d’mint for all of you who wrote to my student assistant Gleeson Brevard and my webmaster Larry Bob asking for more about the young Vagimule hatched from the primordial ooze of the LaBrea Tar Pits.
In keeping with that tome I’d like to tell you about one of my childhood friends from elementary school named David Hayes. David was a hefty mulato boy with coloring like the actor Wentworth Miller. He was in the Mentally Gifted Minors Program with me in the LA Unified School District from 3rd Grade up into high school. We didn’t go to middle school together as at that time he was enrolled in private school. David was way ahead of the times in terms of sexuality. He was a bonafide openly gay child. He was teased mercilessly by all the kids and even the teachers didn’t like him. But he would fearlessly stand his ground and say “so I like boys. So what?” In 4th grade David became a minor celebrity when he was handpicked from our school to star in the KTTV production of Student News which was like a miniature 60 minutes for kids. Being regularly on TV only made things worse for him, and the abuse from students and teachers alike continued with an upped ante. David and I bonded over our love for the L.Frank Baum series of Oz books. I have always rallied for the underdog and was the only person in the entire school who was friends with David and would talk with him. Its so strange that David wasn’t effeminate like I was. He was much more the typical boy in that he was a bit rugged and looked and dressed actually quite sloppy and was always unkept sort of like the Pig-Pen character in the Peanuts cartoon series. If anyone should have been crucified as a giant FIT(Fag-in-Training) it was me, yet I was popular all through school and quite adored. My Fertile La Toyah Jackson collaborator Beulah Love(who has an abrasive personality) would say that she couldn’t believe how I got away with murder, and could say and do the most outlandish things and people just somewhat smiled and were bemused.
Anyway David Hayes formed a bit of a crush on me and asked me after school if he could kiss me. I said ok and offered my cheek to him. He wanted to kiss on the lips, and I told him I thought that was disgusting. To this day I don’t like kissing people on the lips unless they have such amazing pillow lips that I can’t resist. I’m not much of a cock sucker either unless its one of those mega juicy ultra desireable penises with no visible veins or blemishes-beercan thick with a mushroom knob and heavy Birkin bag balls. Well David continued to be enamored of me and was always giving me gifts and presents and asking me to spend the night at his house and what not. His mother was also very light skinned, not as light as David but around maybe a shade or two the coloring of Angela Davis and she had the same educated tone to her voice which I loved. His mother knew David was lonely and was trying to help encourage him to make friends, but other then him calling me on the phone and hanging out at school my mother didn’t allow outside contact with other children as she was a very private person, and was also going through her religious zealiot period and didn’t encourage worldly contacts.
David Hayes continued to court me even offering me money for just one kiss which I would always refuse. I was relieved when he switched his object of affection to a strange white boy in our class named Edward Taylor. This was 1971 so there weren’t so many white children at Hobart Blvd Elementary School in midcity LA. Most of the caucasion families had escaped to the suburbs during white flight, but the Taylor family were unusual in that they were a bit hippy dippy/early new agey white liberals involved in Catholic liberation politics. Edward’s father was tall and strapping with bright warm blue eyes who wore his hair long and straight parted in the center and had a Jesus like blondine beard with a bit of a Dudley DooWright chin. His mother was movie star pretty looking like Carol Lynley from The Poseidon Adventure. Edward was very bright and was a gifted artist and a very happy go lucky kid. He was extremely quirky and sometimes appeared almost catatonic. I admired how aggressive David Hayes was in pursuing Edward. He just literally swooped down on him, and Edward just went along. They would be on the playground just passionately French kissing like adult lovers, so lost in the act that they were unaware they were causing a scandalous scene. The teachers and administrators were so horrified and unnerved by the open romance that they didn’t even know how to handle the situation. I think they just thought the same sex couple would tire of each other and stop the PDA and then they wouldn’t have to address the issue.. But David and Edward became inseperable and would walk around together hand-in-hand and even created their own secret lovers language. The make out sessions continued with newfound flourish. Finally their parents were called in for a serious discussion with Principle Richard Homet a stern authoritarian figure but both Miss Hayes(David’s single mother) and the Taylor’s didn’t see anything wrong with their son’s kissing and mildly petting each and this made the school administration mad with rage. The Vietnam war was still raging so the boys parents thought that the school shouldn’t be so concerned about two children showing each other affection when the world was filled with violence and hatred and that they shouldn’t be making such a big deal out of something so minor.
Even the other kids at school stopped being shocked by their behavior and resigned themselves to saying, “Oh its just that David Hayes and Edward Taylor kissing again.” David Hayes was still bullyed and harrassed, but its strange how no one ever attacked Edward or called him a faggot or sissy. I was the ultimate fag/sissy and no one ever made fun of me or dissed me all through school. Of course I had crazy serial killer eyes, and inherited my mothers ability to give someone a frosty look of disdain that child nor teacher dare challenge.
David Hayes was still starring on local TV by 1972 and in the 5th grade his mother removed him from public school and enrolled him in a private academy geared for children working in the entertainment industry. I would still get the occasional phone call from David Hayes into the 6th grade and even when I started middle school. He and Edward continued to see each other even when Edward left public school for Catholic School in the 7th grade. Edward lived not far from me so I would run into him occasionally on the weekends. His family lived in a huge house in the historic Harvard Heights Section of Mid City. Edward’s affair with David Hayes was most likely just a phase he was going through as I saw him several times during junior high days being quite cozy with a black girl named Simone Williams who I had known since 3rd grade. Simone was quite a personality, very feisty ---my favorite phrase of hers was, “Don’t point your finger at me, my mama’s not dead”. She was also overly developed for her age so that is probably what caught Edward’s pubertic eye.
Edward in his teen years turned into quite a hunk like his father. All traces of the lanky dork evaporated. Edward Taylor really developed into quite a beauty--a mixture of sinewy surfer dude and baseball jock. Unfortunately whenever I would run into him in the neighborhood later during our high school years I could see that he had become a hesher stoner. He was still his friendly gregarious and warm self but also completely out of it on marijuana. The last time I saw Edward Taylor was at a GoGo’s record signing party at Liccorice Pizza on the Sunset Strip. I was helping the GoGo’s then manager Ginger Canzerroni with the event which was packed with people as The GoGo’s debut album Beauty and the Beat became a surprise mainstream crossover hit. At this time Edward was sporting a musclebound rockabilly look, and we chit chatted for a bit. He didn’t seem stoned, so maybe he had given up the MaryJane.
David Hayes’s career in television didn’t last beyond his tween years. But his mother Patty Hayes became an influential casting agent working for Universal Studios. She cast the TV series Battlestar Gallactica. David continued his private school education during the junior high school years but went briefly to my high school Los Angeles High during senior year. He looked exactly the same from elementary school days--tubby and dishelved. And the kids still harassed him. At my high school there was a contingent of openly gay and lesbian students like Kenneth “Kenny” Bowman who I had known since Jr. High and who would later become the preeminent Grace Jones drag queen impersonator of Hollywood. David Hayes started hanging out with Kenny and his clicqa, but I think David was too butch and normative for this group of queens and baby dykes who were all seasoned club kids at the underground discos of the era.
By junior year of high school through my cousin Carla Duplantier who was the drummer of the punk band The Controllers I was already acquainted with the first 100 punks of Hollywood so I felt too sophisticated to be hanging around nelly disco dolly’s like Kenny and his ilk. And David was also too nerdy for me to want to hang with as I enjoyed the company of older kids who were already in college and art school. At that time in the late 1970s there was a lot of crossover between the punk and underground disco scene that centered around the teen disco Ginos II in Hollywood which was ruled over by the legendary butch drag queen DJ Michaelangelo and his cosmetics Drag Queen Review that performed regularly at Ginos II and at Peanuts Disco which at that time was mainly a lesbian hangout.
Kenny Bowman aka: Miss Grace met a muscular ginger boy from the Midwest at Peanuts, he gave up performing and left California to work in the video store that his humpy red headed husband owned with his parents somewhere in the midwest. Kenny died in the mid 1990s of Mrs. AIDS.
The last time I saw David Hayes was in 1982 when I was working at Retail Slut on Melrose Avenue. He hadn’t changed a bit, and hung out with me in the store all day one lazy Saturday afternoon. He seemed really titillated by my punk rock lifestyle and intrigued by my Fertile LaToyah Jackson magazine. If you are out there David Hayes give me a holler.
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Our special Rising Stars, Falling Stars in honor of Wieland Speck was a smashing sexsess with a screening of the first gay themed movie Anders Als Die Anderen 1919 directed by Richard Oswald starring Conrad Veidt, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld and Anita Berber. The film is only a fragment as the original prints were all destroyed but in the 1970s a partial was recovered in the Ukraine and restored by the Munich State Film Museum. Eunice Martins did a fabulous job accompanying the film on klavier and highlighting the action with just the right touch of whimsy and finesse. In the Rote Foyer after the screening the crowd was able to delight in the Wieland Speck restrospectacle installation and get up and personal with Herr Speck in the fleshy flesh which made everyone very happy. Joining in the festivities: Manuel Schubert of Film Highlights Radio Magazine, Darryl Els the South Afrikan guest film programmer, Elsa Hallelujah, the Portuguese intermedia actress who has made the Arsenal her second home, Arsenal Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus and her lovely childhood friend the Argentine tango dancer Katja Ramharter, Michaela Wuensch of bbbooks kollective, scholar Nicole Wolfe and her Norweigan artist girlfriend Eline McGeorge who has a Scottish surname, Nanna Heidenreich of Arsenal Experimental who is now teaching full-time at a college outside of Berlin, film editor and Laurie Anderson acolyte Ruth Schonegger and her new smoking hot girlfriend, modern dancer Assaf “Gisele” Hochman with his lover Tielemachos Alex of Chocolate Grinder Film Kollective who styled the Vagimule doll’s wardrobe and did her hair & makeup, Daniel Hendrickson the Jewish Muslim, his visiting fagademic friend from Princeton University Zahid Chaudhary who is one fine piece of love sexy manhood. Dr. Chaudhary brought along his pals from Avignon, France the art fag couple Lionel & Laurent. Arsenal kasse girl Grit, the sweetest woman in Germany and kasse boy Garrett looking mighty sexy as he is graduating from a twink into a rather nice looking young man with an awesome bubble butt. Projectionist Anselm, studly Ulrich Ziemons of Forum Expanded and his pretty lady friend Juliane, Living Archive Project Coordinator Marcus Ruff ,rosy cheeked artist Jan Vorisek with Harold Ancort, novelist Wayne Koestenbaum(Humiliation) Romanian actress Luminita Gheorghiu (Death of Mr. Lazarescu), and the delightful Swedish spoken word poet and artist Karl Holmqvist.
Sunday it was the screening of Wieland Speck’s Westler from 1985 at the Arsenal‘s Speck Retrospectacle. Westler is the historic drama of classic proportions of young gay love divided by that little tiny tired Berlin wall. The movie is quite effective and emotional and I was surprised to see it start of in LA. It can’t get any far west then Los Angeles. Talk about setting off strong feelings of nostalgia in seeing my hometown circa 1984 the last great year of my city being truelly faburitic in the post punk era. Imagine my chagrin to see a Griffith Park cruising scene that features a young uncredited Steve Antin during the peak of his youthful hustler white beauty and glory. I think at this period he had David Geffen as a sugar daddy, Jon Harp the “It boy” of the fashion new wave scene as his main lover, and I think he was also diddling with fashion photog Greg Gorman and the young Tom Cruise as Antin and Cruise both were teen sex comedy ingénues. That Steve Antin sure got around. Well he did have one tight, hard and very desireable body. Most recently he directed the Cher/Christina Aguilera bomb Burlesque which was talked about all over Hollywood and not because of the divas but because of Mr. Antin and his former longtime lover a Sony Pictures/Screen Gems Unit Exec Clint Culpepper who were having constant knockout sluggos during production. Mr. Culpepper is king of the schlock buster with films like the Resident Evil franchise under his banner.
Getting back to Westler also in the film is a young Zazie De Paris the legendary French Berlin based chanteuse whose eyes are filmed in such a hypnotic way that when she is on the screen you become completely mesmerized. I also noticed a very young Thomas Kretschmann, the German matinee idol. Westler was his first film, he had been a swimmer and that magnificent manlische bod of his was shown to full benefit in an army male bonding roughouse sequence that is erotically charged.
Also enjoying the film and the post screening discussion between Herr Speck and film historian Marc Siegel who just got back from holiday in the states with his director/writer/curator girlfriend Susanne Sachsse was Warhol superstar Mario Montez and his longtime companion Dave, Arsenal Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, Manuel Schubert of Film Highlights Radio Magazine, and Jurgen Brunning of Wurst Films,
After the discussion and Q&A with the publicum I accompanied Wieland to the Hafen bar in Nollendorky Platz for a birthday party for one of his personality plus lesben friends. Since it was a nice warm summer evening, something that has been very rare this season with all the rain showers, the sidewalk in front of the bar was packed with locals and touristas. It was a hoot hanging with Wieland and his longtime Berlin clicqa of boisterous fags and dykes that included his housemate Frauelein Mabel.
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