SEX FLEXIBLE

Trudged all the way to spiessig Mitte in the rain by bicycle to the Dittrich &Schlechtreim Gallery to see the legendaire art figurine Don Bachardy who is celebrating the publication of a new book of his classic signature portraiture called Hollywood. The glorious Mr. Bachardy did a portrait of the Vagimule Doll back in Los Angeles a few years before I moved to Berlin in 2006. I first met Don Bachardy and his late great writer husband Christopher Isherwood in the 1980s through one of my Afro Sisters’ fans Michael Reynolds and his lover Walter who lived next door to the famous pair in Santa Monica Canyon. Michael Reynolds and Walter were also a May/December pairing with Michael being literaly snatched from the cradle at 16. Mr. Bachardy sadly related to me at his book signing that Michael bit the mortal coil. I will miss Michael and his zaniness and gift for barb wire gossip.
It was wonderous seeing Mr. Bachardy after so many years. He looks younger then young, dressed dapper with his trim, muscled physique and gorgeous cherries in the snow hair and goatee--- a true silver fox surrounded by oodles of youthful admires all wrapped up in the supreme talents of the House of Bachardy. Don’t hesisitate in making a pitstop to your local bookseller to purchase your copy of Bachardy’s Hollywood as its a guaranteed best seller. Special thanks to Mr. Barchardy’s publicist Joe Rodota, Ben&Risa my New York gallerists from Invisible Exports for making my reunion with Don Bachardy possible.
UPDATA:
Wonderful blog post! Can you make one minor change I am not Don's publicist. A good way to describe me is organiZer of the weeks events. See you soon I hope ! Best Joe Rodota
***
I just remembered that at the bottom of Santa Monica Canyon near the gay bar The SS Friendship my old boyfriend John Sullivan of the art band The Dispossessed use to live in a rickety old one room shack. I met John when I was in The Afro Sisters and we were a couple for like a minute. Actually more like six months. John’s band The Dispossessed included his sister who seemed to be always pregnant. After John and I became romantically intertwined our bands joined forces and usually performed on the same bill with his group opening up for my band The Afro Sisters who were more popular with fans and critics alike at the time in the early and mid 1980s. John grew up in a small town near Sacramento called Marieville I think, and when I met him he was the manager of a print shop in Marina Del Rey. John use to design and print all of the Afro Sister posters and fliers which gave our advertising and promotional campaigns a much needed professional kick. Later when my Fertile La Toyah Jackson Magazine started to get distributed internationally through Tower Records John Sullivan handled the printing for me as it became way too difficult to Xerox so many copies on the sly at my dayjob at UCLA’s Placement & Career Planning Center. In the late 1980s John got married to a much older, wealthy woman who lived in insepid Venice California. I remember at the time asking him how much his wife knew of his transexual chasing past (he also had a fling with the late Tired Danielle aka: The Cosmic Danielle and Danielle of the Epiphany, and after me a short romp with actor/performer John "NEA Four" Fleck) and he said, "She knew what she needed to know."
Had a lovely work luncheon at the gorgeoue compound of actress/director Susanne Sachsse in East Berlin. To be invited to the table of La Frau Sachsse is to experience nirvana. She is an amazing cook and her presentation is always filled with style and panache. Susi Su as I love to call her is the fearless leader of Kollectiv CHEAP and the two of us are busy working on a performative installation of Mozart’s The Magic Flute for Fall, 2015 that will premiere in New York City. Susi has so many incredible ideas of how to mount this production where we will be collaborating with Jonathan Berger, Jean Kim, and Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu.
Had a lovely belated birthday luncheon the other day at Café Lind with Nanna Heidenreich of Forum Expanded. It was sweet catching up on everything girlish with Ms. Heidenreich who is one of my favourite Berlin personalities. I will be participating in a congress at the University of Braunsweig where Nanna teaches soon and I can’t wait.
Been going to the Passolini tribute at Kino Arsenal watching films I haven’t seen on the big screen in over 30 years. It was fab seeing The Canturbury Tales, The Decameron, Oedipus Rex, Arabian Nights and Salo again.  Passolini was truly ahead of his time and his predictions abouts Italy and the world in general quite prophetic. Also went to the big Passolini exhibition at the Martin Gropius Bau. Was a bit disappointed in it as its mounted in a cheesy fashion like Disneyland or some other theme park. I guess that’s what the big museums are turning into these days just a regular middle-of-road klutzy tourist attraction. As I was in the Martin Gropius Bau who should I see but that tired Gay Dutch artist Dries Verhoevan who caused such a stir with his lame art project at the HAU. He’s very much a pencil neck, but I was surprised that he’s much taller then I thought he would be as he looks dimunitive in photos.

CALLOOH,CALLAY&FRAPTUOUS

One of the most intriguing young artists based in Berlin is the lovely Elly Clark, a gorgeous, talented British English Rose. Miss Elly sent me this missive about her new project that will be exhibited in Berlin:

Dear Friends, family, colleagues in Berlin or with connections to it -

I have the pleasure of inviting you to an exhibition in which I am showing some of the new material I have gathered over the past year for my ever-ongoing George Richmond Portrait Project.inheritance / act_out opens next Friday 17th October at GSL Projekt, in Mitte, Berlin. My photos & audio will be shown alongside two other photo-based projects by Lisa Jugert and Kerstin Honeit: two artists whose work I massively admire and with whom I have worked quite often in the past. The show is the second to take place in Suvi Leitinen's newly reopened project room. The exhibition has been developed by myself and Kerstin, in consultation with Suvi. It would be fabulous to see you there! Opening times etc follow - FB invite here. Artist talk on 30th.

Best wishes, inheritance/act_out
Elly Clarke / Kerstin Honeit / Lisa Jugert
Vernissage: 17.10.2014, 19h - 22h Exhibition runs: 18.10. - 01.11.2014Opening hours: Wednesday - Saturday 12h - 18h Artist talk: 30.10. 19h
Elly Clarke, The George Richmond Portrait Project (2008-ongoing)
Elly has been tracing portraits by her great-great-great grandfather George Richmond RA (1809-1896) to private homes across the UK (and occasionally beyond) for more than five years, photographing the portraits and the living descendants of those her ancestor portrayed in situ, and conducting audio interviews about what they know both of their ancestors and the portraits. http://www.ellyclarke.com/ | http://www.georgerichmondproject.com/

Kerstin Honeit, Becoming 10, (2007-10)
In the photo installation 'Becoming 10' Kerstin Honeit performs her ‘un-met’ 9 half siblings from the former East and West of Berlin. Based only on the information of age, name, address Honeit stages herself in their real environments and apartment blocks in imagined poses, using the gesture of drag. http://www.kerstinhoneit.com/

Lisa Jugert, History Vision Machines, (2010)
History Vision Machines turns the machine that records everything back on itself. Various camera models are presented both as subject and recording device. Matched with a mirror and a location fitting to each model, the series encourages a consideration of the manner in which our personal and political, individual and collective histories have been presented, and the influence of technology upon this. http://www.l--j.net/

STEP UP YOUR PUSSY

Went to dinner in Wedding near the Auslander Behoerder at Anthropology scholar Shaka McGlotten’s sublet with his cute Israeli beau who teaches at Cornel. Delighted in a vegan style fantasy feasty of pumpkin, ochre, risotto and tahini sahn that pushed all my baby dyke culinary senses to the limit plus a Welch Rather Crumble for desert----yumsis! Professor McGlotten is working on a book concerning gender issues of some kind, so that’s why he wanted to interview me, and explained in detail, but I am so retarded with only half a brain cell left that it all went in one ear and swiftly out the other. Mr. McG is a young tenured professor at CUNY so he is fortunate to have a job for life. But with most academics these days the academy doesn’t supply them with enough attention other then their captive audiences in the classroom so they all seem to be venturing out into the performative realm. The late Dr. Jose Munoz and I would always have long chittle chats on this subject. Jose appreciated my ghettolosophy about how academia was just a grift like everything else in this world and that he and other academics were seasoned grifters ala the characters in the film that starred Anjelika Huston and Annette Benning. Lordy I miss that sweet precocious Doctora Jose---New York really isn’t New York without him and his mischievous spirit.

I hope I’ll be able to go see Professor McGlotten’s talk at the ICI October 15th at 7:30pm, somehow I got it stuck in my thick skull that his lecture was in the afternoon so I am going to try and re-schedule my recording session with this hot young Berlin music producer. I’ve never been to the ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry which is an independent centre for research and culture located on Schonhauser Allee in Prenzlauber. Miss ICI is a private foundation owned by a wealthy youngish German man who is actually a nice curious person and not just a diletante asshole with lots of money and time on his tiny fisting top hands. Its quite the trend that the monied and privileged are all starting their own institutions outside of the tedious oompa pa of University politics.
***
Since I don’t have internet connection at my flat I take my ancient lap top to the American Bibliotek to use the free wifi where I return emails and do business stuff about twice a week. I’m not one of those people glued to technology and the great thing about Berlin is that things operate here on a much slower pace then in The States. Its rare for me to do web surfing and I’m proud of the fact that I am backwoods when it comes to up-to-the-minute pop culture references and the like. The other day at a colleagues apartment he was showing me on his giant MacIntosh screen some web serials that I believe originate from Los Angeles, my former hometown. One program is in a talk show format called Hey! Qween that quiries drag and gay world celebutantes. My friend showed me a little sampling of Hey! Qween with drag comic Jackie Beat. I’ve known Jackie since she first popped up in the LA underground club scene back in the late 1980s. Jackie isn’t the zaaftig diva she once was, and at first I didn’t recognize her. She is still quite hilarious and quick witted and has staked a claim for herself in the more mainstream comedy world via superstar comedienne Roseanne Barr. Hey!Qween has a nice low budget feel to it with production values that look slightly higher then my old Fertile LaToyah Jackson Video Magazine from the early 1990s. I really was enamored of co-hostess Lady Red Couture who has quite the invigorating screen presence and should really be the star of her own TV show. Miss Lady Red and the show’s shrill host must be part of a new breed of gays who have moved to LA seeking fame since I left for Berlin in 2006. Another episode of the program that I glanced at featured French blue movie director via the Twin Cities- Chi Chi LaRue who is also quite swelte having had a stomach stapling procedure. The last excerpt of the Hey! Qween series that I watched was an interview with transsexual entrepreneur and sexpert T.S. Madison. I was familiar with Ms. Madison who is fascinating,as she has been mentioned many times on the blog of Lady Bunny who always sends me an email to check out the latest happenings on her website www.LadyBunny.net. It was lovely seeing Ms. Madison in a more subdued setting talking about her outrageous life as the ‘big dick bitch’ and expressing her many and varied views as an internet phenom. I was also shown a program involving a young acerbic Lesbian woman who hosts a bratty cooking show which I found simply hilarious. The slightly butch and grouchy lady and a sweet femme pal also duet in a program called Pillow Talk where the two make sly commentary on issues pertaining to women of their generation. Both girls are engaging and serenely lovesexxy.