PUBERTAET RELOADED

Received several emugs from people asking me what i though of the remake of The Great Gatsby starring Leo DiCaprio.  Mr. DiCaprio before he became a matinee idol was my teenage neighbour in the Los Feliz Village section of Los Angeles over 20 years ago.  Also living in this neighbourhood was writer Dennis Cooper and punk/metal star Glenn Danzig who owned a spooky looking house on Franklin Avenue between Hillhurst and Vermont.  Little Leo as I use to call him back then would be one of the skateboarding teens hanging out on Vermont at the old Amok Bookstore where Mrs. Michael Glass held court.  Next door was the Beastie Boys and Kim Gordon boutiques.  The director Spike Jonze who is the heir to the  Spiegel Catalogue fortune also spent a lot of time in the area with his then hunky boyfriend who was an aspiring singer/songwriter.  Yes you heard it here Spike Jonze before he married Sophia Coppolla was a trendy queer boy on the scene going to underground parties like Fuck,SissyClub USA, Sin-a-matic, Sit n Spin,Trade and Hai Karate.  But getting back to my thoughts on The Great Gatsby.  I was surprised that I actually liked the first hour of the film.  Toby McGuire made a good Nick Carraway, and was definitely better then Sam Waterston who played the role in the 1974 Paramount film starring Mia Farrow and Robert Redford.  Leo was certainly better then Redford and now that Mr. DiCaprio is in early middle age he is much handsomer then when he was a pretty youth.  His age lines give him texture.  Mia Farrow was a  much better Daisy Buchanan then the blondine actress who plays her in this version whose name I can’t recall . . .oh and Bruce Dern as Tom Buchanan still can’t be beat as well as Karen Black in the role of the doomed Myrtle.  I hate modern day 3-D movies-they turn every flick into a cheese corn animated film. 

As a movie buff I am embarrassed to admit that I have never seen the silent film version of Gatsby or the 1949 Paramount remake starring Alan Ladd with Shelly Winters as Myrtle.

Had a nice interview at the Cheese Endique Trifecta with a sweet young American writer and artist Ali Fitzgerald for a US arts publication.  She also wants to do a graphic novel presentation with me for Bitch Magazine.  The next morning I had a power photo shoot with a German based arts and culture magazine called Manipulate, Monogomy or something with an M. The stylist was only able to find caftans and dashikis for me to wear and the gay overblown hair queen make-up artist was a bit clueless with his plucked eyebrows so I had to just tell him to do me simple glamour. His first attempt I wound up looking like one of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. 

Been feeling a little under the weather but was cheered up by being invited to breakfast by a handsome visiting curator who shall remain un-named as he doesn't want anyone stealing his ideas for an upcoming project.  Floating on a cloud on my way back home I saw a sight that you can only see in Berlin, namely a  German new age looking man the kind that you would see leading a drum circle walking a rangy mutt of a medium sized dog with dreadlocks.  I kid you not.

Was thinking about the LA Creole Mafia the other day. I started to wonder what ever happened to Michael Duet? Michael was a blue eyed blondine haired Creole boy who I went to school with from elementary to high school.  Michael’s family and my Creole mother’s clan The Duplantier’s are related.  I think all of the Louisiana Creole’s who moved to Southern California during the great migration are all related in some way. The Duet Family all looked very white with decidedly caucasion features, and hair you could run a fine tooth comb through. What gave them away is when they opened their mouth and nothing but the ghetto came clanging out, sort of like Beyonce Knowles.  Michael Duet was born hunky and got more manly as he got older.  We were never friends growing up, but were friendly with each other.  He was a smart boy but choose to act like he was dumb, and by middle school he was a complete stoner, so although I found him quite attractive I never liked hanging around people who smoked weed. Another Creole family of note was the Guinvere’s. Roger Guinvere Smith became a somewhat well known character actor with a feature role on the HBO series OZ.  Roger also hung out a bit in the punk and underground LA scene and was pals with Lawrence Fishbourne when he use to be the doorguy at Contemporary Artist Space in Hollywood, which was a tiny art space on North Cahuenga in Hollywood in the early 1980s run by Janet Cunningham who was a white Louisiana transplant who later became a casting agent for punk rockers and other weird bohemian types in TV and movies.  Janet cast all the punkers in the famous Quincy TV episode starring Jack Klugman.  The Aubrey’s were the most famous LA Creole family with all its members being either journalists or city politicians.  Erin Aubrey was one of my wonderful colleages at the LA Weekly and received a lot of attention for a cover story she wrote about the politics of having a voluptuous rear end.

PRINZIP DER LUST

My performative lecture at Ballhaus Naunynstrasse as part of the academic conference DECOLONIZING THE “COLD” WAR / BE.BOP 2013. BLACK EUROPE BODY POLITICS went over smashingly well with an SRO crowd that included bootacious scholar Nanna Heidenreich, Skandinavian Muslim Warrior Daniel Hendrickson, set designer Senol Senturk, Kurdish art ingenueNazli Kalerci, intermedia sensation Susanna Sachsse, the gorgeous young Columbian/German director Simon Jaikiriuma Paetau who has two films in the Xposed Film Festival with his pal the modern dancer boy beaut from Cartagena Columbia Jair Luna, film scholar Maja Figge with her filmmaker/artist girlfriend Bettina, tanzer Juliana Piquero, Walter “Post Coloniality is his middle name” Mignolo,Cecilia Tripp(cineaste/artshtar), Karim Ainouz, Mario Brandao,Wagner Carvalho, Raul Moarquech Ferrera-Balanquet and the delightful Dannys Montes De Oca Moreda of Centro De Arte Contemporaneo who puts on the Cuban Biennale and informally invited me to participate. Would love to chow down on the large pingas of those Island men of Havana. Speaking of chowing. I spent a lot of time in my dressing room after the event with my beautiful German tech boy Gustave who is extremely love sexxxxy with a capital T. Special shout outs to Brazilian lovely Silvia of Ballhaus, Jens, Tessa and curator Alanna Lochwood. The last week has been especially sad because of the suicide of one of the smartest,most talented people to grace the principality of Berlin Mr. Tim Stüttgen. I hadn´t known Tim for a very long time, but I appreciated his commitment and enthusiasm to queer adventurism in all its many facets and explorations. I will always cherish his complete spontaneity when he appeared on my talkshow/installation Vaginal Davis is Speaking From the Diaphragm as part of Camp/Anti-Camp last year where he geniusly impersonated a Bel Ami blue movie starlet with hilarious results. There will not be a day that will pass where I won´t be thinking of the beautiful Tim Stüttgen. I love you and miss you. 
Rising Stars, Falling Stars- We Must Have Music! Sunday evening was very bittersweat because it was also the evening of Tim Stüttgen´s memorial at bbooks. Our salute to the feminist tap dancing sensation Eleanor Powell and her 1940 film Broadway Melody was packed to the utter rafters with Hollywood musical enthusiasts that included Oscar Isaacs (straight from the Cannes Film Festival)the star of The Coen Bros Inside Llewyn Davies with prima ballerina Trixie “Beatrice Cordua” Schonherr,Daniel Hendrickson, Arsenal Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, Uli Ziemons, Markus Ruff all gearing up for the monthlong Living Archive Festival,actor Jim Parrack(As I Lay Dying)femcee Iggy Azalia with Bond girl Gemma Arterton, the glamorous Manuela Monk, Frankfurt legend and writer of the spiritual tome Eine Echte Diva-Mock –Up. Miss Monk was my co-host when CHEAP brought Camp/Anti-Camp to Frankfurt at the end of last year with VD is Speaking from the Diaphragm. So great seeing Manuela who was accompanied by the sweet Martin Waßmann of Berlin´s Wintergarten Variete Theatre and their young friend David. Manuela regaled with more stories of her time spent with the legendary Eartha Kitt in the 1980s here in Berlin. I was rolling on the floor when she told me that one time she and Eartha wound up in the wrong hotel room and had to make a quick skadaddle before the room´s real occupant emerged. The Living Archive Festival ends on June 30th with a RSFS-WMHM presentation of Vicente Minnelli´s 1970 film On A Clear Day You Can See Forever starring Barbra Streisand and Yves Montand so mark it on your calenderia.