WER WENN NICHT WIR
British performance artist Oreet who teaches at Queen Mary College in London along with Dr.Dominic Johnson who hosted my birthday soiree a few weeks ago came by the Cheese Endique Trifecta this afternoon with her lovely English posse. The other evening Oreet,was one of the many international luminaries at the premiera of the BLAB production of Pierrot Lunaire at HAU I.
After having luncheon in Mitte they came by my studio and we drank some ginger tea with honey and ate dainties while constantly giggling and having a girlish hoot of a time.
One of Oreet’s sweet galpals Irene, is in an all-girl noise band called Woolf-as in Virginia Woolfe and she gave me a autographed copy of her latest EP which I can’t wait to add to my playlist when I am behind the Spinderella Wheels of Steel as a DJane. Ms.Oreet’s other bff Stephen Wilson is living in Berlin for a a month on an art residency.
Now that Spring is approaching I expect that we will be visited by a horde of guests wanting to partake in that special madness that only Berlin provides.
***
For those of you visiting Berlin and wanting to experience something cultural. Check out the info below from ArsenalExperimental. Scroll to the bottom for the info in English.

Retrospektive Pere Portabella
11. bis 28. März 2011

zu Gast: Pere Portabella

Der katalanische Filmemacher Pere Portabella (geboren 1929) gehört seit fünf Jahrzehnten zu den wichtigsten Protagonisten des spanischen Films. Zunächst Produzent für Carlos Saura (Los Golfos, 1959) und Luis Buñuel (Viridiana, 1961), drehte er ab Ende der 60er Jahre selbst Filme, die in einem künstlerisch wie politisch radikalen Umfeld entstanden. Künstlerische Avantgarde und Opposition gegen die Franco-Diktatur sind denn auch die Spannungsfelder, zwischen denen er sich bewegt. Die Erweiterung der Möglichkeiten des Mediums Film steht im Mittelpunkt seiner Arbeit: Die Dekonstruktion und das subversive Unterlaufen von ästhetischen und narrativen Konventionen, die Beziehung zwischen Bild und Abgebildetem und die Kritik von Repräsentationen. Ausgangspunkt sind oft Genres (Werbefilme, Horrorfilme), deren Strukturen einer gründlichen Prüfung und Neuinterpreta-tion unterworfen werden. Dazu gehören auch die komplexen Beziehungen zwischen Bild und Ton. Er verwendet dokumentarische wie fiktive Formen gleichberechtigt nebeneinander, wobei die Genregrenzen oft aufgehoben sind oder ineinander übergehen. Seine atmosphärisch dichten Filme zerlegen Bilder und setzen sie wieder neu zusammen und konterkarieren damit beständig Zuschauererwartungen. Portabellas erste Filme beschäftigten sich hauptsächlich mit filmischen Formen und damit verbunden Fragen der politischen Repräsentation. In konkreter Weise mit Politik befasste er sich in dem unter klandestinen Bedingungen entstandenen EL SOPAR (1974), der am Vorabend der Hinrichtung des katalanischen Anarchisten Salvador Puig Antich eine Gruppe von ehemaligen politischen Häftlingen beim Gespräch über ihre Gefängniserfahrungen beobachtet. Der 1976 entstandene INFORME GENERAL war eine filmische Bestandsaufnahme der politischen Situation in der Umbruchphase Spaniens.
Nach dem Tod Francos und der Phase des Übergangs zur Demokratie ging Portabella in die Politik und war über zehn Jahre Abgeordneter im katalanischen Parlament, bevor er sich wieder dem Film zuwandte. Seither findet er seine Themen auch außerhalb Spaniens.
Wir freuen uns, Pere Portabella am 11. und 12. März zu einer Retrospektive all seiner langen Filme im Arsenal begrüßen zu dürfen.

Programm

Fr 11.3., 20h: in Anwesenheit von Pere Portabella & Fr 25.3., 19h
UMBRACLE Pere Portabella Spanien 1972 OmE 85’
Ein Film über Frustration, Repression und Paranoia unter Bezugnahme auf Bild- und Tonstrategien des Horrorfilms. Ein Mann (Christopher Lee) spaziert durch ein unwirklich scheinendes Barcelona, besucht ohne Ziel Geschäfte und Museen, während sich eine verstörende und alptraumhafte Stimmung über die Filmbilder legt. Andere Bilder unterbrechen die fragmentarisch bleibende Handlung: Szenen aus der Filmgeschichte, Christopher Lee, der ein Gedicht rezitiert, drei Filmkritiker, die über die Bedingungen des Filmemachens in Spanien diskutieren. Was bleibt, ist ein Gefühl von Fremdheit und gestörter Wahrnehmung.

Sa 12.3.,19h: in Anwesenheit von Pere Portabella & Di 22.3., 19h
EL SOPAR (1974)
In der Nacht vor der Hinrichtung des militanten Anarchisten Salvador Puig Antich treffen sich fünf ehemalige politische Gefangene zu einem Essen, um über die Bedingungen von Gefangenschaft zu reden. Portabella konzentriert sich ganz auf das Gespräch, das sich darum dreht, ob und wie es möglich ist, im Gefängnis den Kampf weiterzuführen, Widerstand zu leisten, eine Haltung zu finden, den Bezug zu einer wie auch immer gearteten Realität zu behalten.

Sa 12.3., 21h: in Anwesenheit von Pere Portabella & Sa 26.3., 21.15h
VAMPIR – CUADECUC Pere Portabella Spanien 1970 OmE 75’
Der Film enstand während der Dreharbeiten zu Jess Francos El conde Drácula/The Count Dracula und ist eine delirierende Reflexion über die Konventionen des Horror-Films. Zweifach zerlegt Portabella Francos Film: Zum einen eliminiert er die Farbe zugunsten von flackernden Schwarz-Weiß-Bildern, zum anderen ersetzt er die Tonspur mit einer das Bild angreifenden Tonlandschaft von Carles Santos. Eine Analyse der Mechanismen des dominanten narrativen Kinos im Spanien Francos und eine radikale Infragestellung desselben.

So 13.3., 20h & Mo 28.3., 20h
DIE STILLE VOR BACH Pere Portabella Spanien 2007 OmE 102’
Portabellas bislang letzter langer Film, den er 2007 beim Filmfestival in Venedig präsentierte. Eine Reflexion über Bach-Inszenierungen und Bachs Einfluss auf die Welt der Musik. Gewohnt fragmentarisch, oszilliert DIE STILLE VOR BACH zwischen historischen Szenen aus Bachs Leben, seiner Rezeption im 19. Jahrhundert durch die Augen Felix Mendelssohns und der Wirkung, die er heute auf die verschiedensten Menschen hat. Ein Experiment über die Vermittlung von Musik im Film.

So 13.3., 20h & Mo 28.3., 20h
MUDANZA Pere Portabella Spanien 2008 20’
Der Film beobachtet, wie das frühere Wohnhaus des spanischen Dichters Federico García Lorca, 70 Jahre nach seinem Tod, von allen Gegenständen geräumt wird. Während Bilder und Möbel sorgfältig eingepackt und abtransportiert werden, durchmisst die Kamera in fließenden Bewegungen die Räume. Zum Schluss bleibt eine mit Vergangenheit und Erinnerung aufgeladene Stille und Leere.

Di 15.3., 20h & Mo 21.3., 20h
INFORME GENERAL SOBRE ALGUNAS CUESTIONES DE INTERÉS PARA UNA PROYECCIÓN PÚBLICA General Report on Some Questions of Interest for a Public Projection Spanien 1976 OmE 173’
Eine groß angelegte, dreistündige Erkundung der politischen Lage Spaniens zum Ende des Franquismo. Nach dem Tod Francos 1975 begann eine Übergangszeit zur Demokratie, die 1977 in den ersten freien Wahlen mündete. Der Film verwebt die Stimmung auf der Straße und Interviews mit Politikern, Gewerkschaftern und Aktivisten, die alle um eine Frage kreisen: Wie lassen sich in einem Land, das 30 Jahre lang eine Diktatur war, demokratische Strukturen aufbauen?

Do 16.3., 20h & So 27.3., 19h
PONT DE VARSÒVIA Warsaw Bridge Spanien 1989 OmE 85’
Portabella untersucht in diesem Film die neuen gesellschaftlichen Strukturen Europas. Dabei erzählt er von drei Personen, deren Wege sich kreuzen: ein Schriftsteller, der einen Preis für einen Pont de Varsòvia betitelten Roman gewinnt, seine Frau und ein namenlos bleibender Mann, der Barcelona mit einer nostalgischen Sehnsucht nach einer revolutionären Vergangenheit durchstreift. Der Mann kommt schließlich bei einem Tauchunfall ums Leben und seine Leiche wird von einem Löschhubschrauber über einem brennenden Wald abgeworfen. In einer äußerst präzisen Ästhetik, die dem zeitgenössischen kommerziellen Kino nachempfunden ist, wirft Portabella einen Blick auf ein fragmentiertes Europa, das durch die Rückkehr der Geschichte erschüttert wird.

Do 17.3., 19h & Di 22.3., 19h
NO COMPTEU AMB EL DITS Don’t Count With Your Fingers Spanien 1967 OmE 26’
Portabellas erster, knapp halbstündiger Film entstand in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Schriftsteller Joan Brossa, dessen wütende Wortspiele den Tonfall des Films vorgeben. In 27 autonomen Sequenzen versucht er die Strukturen und Diskurse von Werbefilmen zu demontieren.

Do 17.3., 19h & Do 24.3., 19h
NOCTURNO 29 Pere Portabella Spaniel 1968 OmE 83’
Portabellas erster langer Film. Der Titel bezieht sich auf die seit 29 Jahren bestehende Herrschaft Francos in Spanien. Eine Abfolge von Szenen, in den Worten Pere Portabellas „super-realistische Fragmente, die die Irrelevanz des alltäglichen Lebens bloßlegen.“ Mosaikartig, weder narrativ noch psychologisch motiviert, folgt der Film dem Leben einer verheirateten Frau (Lucia Bosé) in ihrem großbürgerlichen Umfeld und porträtiert durch sie eine Klasse in einer speziellen politischen Situation.

Mit Unterstützung durch die Spanische Botschaft in Berlin. Dank an Pere Portabella und Films 59.

Pere Portabella Retrospective

For five decades, the Catalan filmmaker Pere Portabella (born 1929) has ranked among the most important protagonists of Spanish cinema. After first producing films by Carlos Saura (Los Golfos, 1959) and Luis Buñuel (Viridiana, 1961), at the end of the 1960s he began making his own films that originated in a both artistically and politically radical context. Artistic avant-garde movements and resistance against the Franco dictatorship are the poles between which he operates. His work focuses on expanding the possibilities of film as a medium: The deconstruction and subversion of aesthetic and narrative conventions, the relation between image and that which is shown, and the critique of representation. He often starts off with existing genres (advertising films, horror movies), the structures of which are then thoroughly examined and newly interpreted. This also includes the complex relationships between image and sound. He makes use of documentary and fictional forms in an equal way, often crossing or blurring genre borders. His atmospherically dense movies take images apart and assembling them anew, constantly evading the audience's expectations. Portabella's first films predominantly dealt with cinematic forms and the related questions of political representation. He then examined politics in a concrete fashion in the clandestinely produced EL SOPAR (1974), a film observing a discussion between a group of former political prisoners about their experiences in jail, on the evening before the execution of the Catalan anarchist Salvador Puig Antich. INFORME GENERAL from 1976 is a filmic stocktaking of the political situation during the phase of radical change in Spain.

After Franco's death and the transition phase to democracy, Portabella went into politics and was a member of the Catalan parliament for more than ten years, before returning to filmmaking. Since then, he has come upon his themes outside of Spain as well.

We are delighted to be able to greet Pere Portabella at Arsenal on the occasion of the retrospective of all his full-length films.

UMBRACLE (1972, March 11, in the presence of Pere Portabella & March 25) is a film about frustration, repression and paranoia, drawing from image and sound strategies of horror movies. A man (Christopher Lee) walks through an unreal Barcelona, aimlessly visiting shops and museums, while a disturbing and nightmarish mood descends upon the filmic images. Other pictures interrupt the fragmentary plot: scenes from the history of film, Christopher Lee reciting a poem, three film critics discussing the conditions of filmmaking in Spain. What remains is a feeling of foreignness and disturbed perception.

VAMPIR – CUADECUC (1970, March 12, in the presence of Pere Portabella & March 26) was made during the shooting of Jess Franco's El conde Drácula / The Count Dracula and is a delirious reflection on the conventions of horror movies. Portabella dismantles Franco's film in two ways: One the one hand, he eliminates the color in favor of flickering black-and-white images, on the other, he replaces the audio track with a soundscape by Carles Santos that attacks the images. An analysis of the mechanisms of dominating narrative cinema in Franco's Spain and a radical questioning of it.

EL SOPAR (1974, March 12, in the presence of Pere Portabella & March 22) In the night before the execution of the militant anarchist Salvador Puig Antich, five former political prisoners meet for dinner to talk about the conditions of captivity. Portabella is entirely concentrated on the discussion revolving around whether and how it is possible to continue the struggle in prison, to offer resistance, to take on a position and maintain a relation to reality, no matter what it is like.

Portabella's first, almost half-hour film, NO COMPTEU AMB EL DITS (Don't Count With Your Fingers, 1967, March 17 & 22), was created in collaboration with the writer Joan Brossa, whose angry word games determine the tone of the film. In 27 autonomous sequences, he attempts to dismantle the structures and discourses of advertising films.

The title of NOCTURNO 29 (1968, March 17 & 24), Portabella's first full-length movie, refers to Franco's rule of Spain that spanned 20 years. A sequence of scenes, in the words of Pere Portabella, "super-realistic fragments that expose the irrelevance of daily life." Like pieces of a mosaic, motivated neither in a narrative nor psychological way, the film follows the life of a married woman (Lucia Bosé) in her upper middle-class environment and portraits a social class in a specific political situation through her eyes.

INFORME GENERAL SOBRE ALGUNAS CUESTIONES DE INTERÉS PARA UNA PROYECCIÓN PÚBLICA (General Report on Some Questions of Interest for a Public Projection, 1976, March 15 & 21) is a large-scale, three-hour investigation of Spain's political situation after the end of Franquismo. Following Franco's death in 1975, a phase of transition to democracy commenced, leading to the first free elections in 1977.
The film interweaves the atmosphere in the streets with interviews with politicians, labor unionists and activists, all revolving around the question: How can democratic structures be established in a country that was under a dictatorship for 30 years?

In PONT DE VARSÒVIA (Warsaw Bridge, March 16 & 27) from 1989, Portabella examines the new social structures in Europe. He tells the story of three persons whose paths cross: a writer who wins a prize for a novel titled Pont de Varsòvia, his wife and a nameless man roaming Barcelona and nostalgically longing for a revolutionary past. The man dies in a diving accident and his corpse is thrown into a burning forest by a firefighting helicopter. With an extremely precise aesthetic, modeled on contemporary commercial cinema, Portabella casts a view to a fragmented Europe that is shaken by the return of history.

Portabella's latest full-length film, which was presented at the film festival in Venice in 2007, is DIE STILLE VOR BACH (The Silence Before Bach, March 13 & 28), a reflection on Bach stagings and Bach's influence on the world of music. Fragmented, as usual, DIE STILLE VOR BACH vacillates between historical scenes from Bach's life, his reception in the 19th century through the eyes of Felix Mendelssohn and the effect Bach has on the most various people today. An experiment in conveying music in film.

MUDANZA (2008) observes how the former house of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca is emptied of everything inside 70 years after his death. While paintings and furniture are carefully packed up and transported away, the camera gauges the rooms in flowing motions. What remains in the end is a silence and emptiness charged with the past and with memories.

With the support of the Spanish Embassy in Berlin. Thanks to Pere Portabella and Films 59.

Für weitere Informationen:

Nanna Heidenreich & Angelika Ramlow I arsenal distribution

030 269 55 -110 / -250 oder ars-exp@arsenal-berlin.de

Kino Arsenal 1 & 2 | Potsdamer Straße 2 | 10785 Berlin | www.arsenal-berlin.de

Das Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst wird gefördert dur

UEBER UNS DAS ALL
The skies above Berlin have been lovely,clear and blue.Its just very cold at night with temperatures dipping into the early 20s. I am not going to complain as it could be steal grey, dank and depressing.
Last night was a granada evening for the premiera of the most talked about new piece of the season Pierrot Lunaire starring the sensational Frau Susanne Sachsse in the role she was created for. The intoxicating music of Arnold Schoenberg was conducted to perfection by the great Premil Petrovic who looked so wonderful on stage wearing a trackybottom tuxedo outfit designed by Zaldy of Mathu & Zaldy fame. Zaldy's clever costumes evoke the Cabaret Voltaire and early silent cinema with utter panache.
The chamber ensemble of gifted musicians included Chloe L’Abbe on Flute and Piccolo, Miguel Perez Inesta on Clarinette, Emmanuelle Barnard on Geige-auch Bratsche,Andreas Voss on Violin/Cello, Adrian Pavlov on Klavier.
Judy LaBruce has directed her most sustained and elegiac stage production so far with all the elements coming together very nicely. See what can happen when you lay off of the booze and the pills. Opera won’t put up with drugs and alcohol.
The piece opens with a genius and very long makeout session with La Sachsse as the butch dandylion and her femme paramour played by the intriguing Maria Ivanenko.I’ve always known that Frau Sachsse has the perfect voice--deep resonant and beguiling, and in Pierrot Lunaire that voice gets to shine and soar acoustically which was clearly the right choice for this exciting work. As I was watching I kept harking back to how thrilling it must have been to be at the premiere of The Three Penny Opera here in Berlin in the 1920s.
Judy LaBruce found the perfect contrast to Susanne Sachsse in the knotted muscular form of Luizo Vega who plays her shadow and ideal masculine self. Many times I thought the entire scaffolding set was going to collapse from the vigor of his manly ardour.
The gymnast Mr. Vega who LaBruce found via Facebook had suffered an injury during rehearsals and arrangements had been made to replace him with dancer/choreographer Jeremy Wade and a female Balyrus pole dancer named Natallia Baturova, but I am so happy that didn’t happen.
I’ve never seen a Jeremy Wade dance piece, but I am told he has a certain interestingly spastic speed freak quality in his movement work. Just on body type alone Wade’s dimunitive childlike pigeon chested frame would seem wrong for this role.
Senor Vega’s musculature has its own persona, and in the roid rage scene he and La Sachsse’s male bonding and roughhousing was not only humorous but erotically charged. Susanne is not only a great beauty but she also possesses a boyish masculinity that this piece exploits quite nicely and to charming affect.
Cyril Duval of item idem’s set was Caligarianly off kilter especially with the fractured tile video screen. Also complementing the overall effectiveness of the production the crack cocaine lighting of the brilliant Hans Leser, Tan Binh Nguyen’s Sleeze Sister makeup design, the ill hair styling of Michael Forrey, video animation by Marius Roth and the fertive soundscapes by Felix Knoke.
At the after party at the WAU café all of Berlin art society was present: The Blue Bros Tim & kJohnny, Mad Kate, Salome Gersh, Anne Kohl,Nanna Heidenreich, Stefanie Schulte Strathaus,Joel Gibb, Enrico Dallman, Richard Gersh and Miss Vicki, Constantine Berger, Hannah Hurtzig, Nadja Talmi, Ulrich Ziemons, DJane Olga Damnitz, Evie Europa, Travis Jeppeson, Juliane Rebentisch, Assaf Hochman, Little Alex of Chocolate Grinder Film Kollective, Alessio, Theodora of bbooks, Trixi Cordua, Vassily Bourakas,Diedrich Diederichsen,Daniel Hendrickson, Hans Scheirl, Jakob Lena Knebl, Felix&Johanna, Oreet,Javier Peres of Peres Projects,Fagademic Sean,Anna Muelter&Stefanie Wenner.

IL NOSTRO E'UN AMORE MOLTO . . .DISTRATTO
Had a wonderful brunch with Daniel Hendrickson the Jewish Muslim who is on his way to Damascus, Syria for a two week Arab language emersion holiday. Joining us were his celebrity houseguests the gifted artists Hans Scheirl and Jakob Lena Knebl from Austria who were in a group exhibition that opened in Berlin on Thursday. We ate at the gorgeous Rix Cafe on Karl Marx Srassse in Neu Koelln and had an amazing time. The two dapper artists told me about their run in with a pair of disruptive art provacateur's one from Russia and his companion who is Austrian who i actually met at the Steiriecsher Herbst Festival in Graz in 2006. This pair go to art openings and events and cause a rukus. The man usually has a pocketful of excrement on hand that he winds up smearing and throwing all over the place in the style of GG Allin, and the woman acts as his cheerleader. They have been staging these disruptive interventions in Berlin, Vienna, London and New York for the past 10 years,and have published books about these actions.
Later novelist/poet and Art Forum writer Travis Jeppeson came by the Cheese Endique Trifecta for drinks and snacks and brought with him the sweet German artist Christian Schoeler. We had a nice time chewing the fat and catching up on each others adventures.
I forgot to tell my guests the gossip about Dolce & Gabbana owing back taxes in the staggering amount of 900 million euros and that the homo fashion icons will be walking down a new catwalk in the form of prison. Whats is happening in the fashion world? Fugly John Galliano loses it bigtime, and the latest is that Balmain's Christophe Decamin just had a nervous breakdown and is in a mental hospital. What's next Anna Wintour bludgening all her senior editors? Actually that is not too far fetched.

TIGER BLOOD AND ADONIS DNA
I may not be roaming Berlin with a briefcase full of cocaine like the dearly misunderstood Carlos Estevez Sheen, but I have other distractions besides gold, toupees and bingo.
When i knew Charlie Sheen in the late 80s he was quite a goodlooking young tight bodied lad. I will never forget him in Penelope Spheeris's film The Boys Next Door where he and Maxwell Caulfield play gorgeous murdering hustlers.
***
Feeling very sad and contemplative over the death of my nephew Mark Taylor. We were only 9 months apart in age so his recent passing has hit me hard. Poor Marky never got a break as his father Willy Ray Taylor was a bookie and numbers runner, having never worked an honest job in his life. Willy died last year, and Mark’s mother my oldest sister Gracie Lee Taylor is still battling stage four cancer. Things really took a dive for Mark when his second wife inherited over half a million dollars in cash and property from her mother in Vallejo, California. They got nigger riche and spent all of the money and or lost the properties with very bad decisions. As is the case with lottery winners, the poor rarely are able to handle receiving large amounts of money all at once. Of course their financial turmoil left Mark having several heart attacks and strokes until the final heart attack sealed the hoery nails into his coffin. We were quite close as children, but after his first marriage at 20 and then him becoming a normal breeder popping out a bunch of kids and what not we naturally drifted apart. But I am saddened at his death and find myself suddenly bursting into uncontrollable tears for fears. My nephew was really a very sweet child and I would like to remember him from that period of our lives together.
The Kingdom of Death also claimed Betty Garrett the ex MGM cutup from the late 1940s and early 1950s who starred in such films as Take Me Out To the Ball Game with Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra where she sings “Its Fate Baby, Its Fate” On the Town with Kelly, Sinatra, Jules Munschin, Ann Miller and Vera-Ellen.
Neptune’s Daughter starring Esther Williams, Ricardo Montalban & Red Skelton where she sings “Baby Its Cold Outside” and My Sister Eileen with Janet Leigh and Jack Lemmon. Betty Garrett was a regular on the later version of the TV series All in the Family and LaVerne and Shirley.
Also buxom star Jane Russell died age 89. Best known as the ingénue of Howard Hughes and for co-starring with Marilyn in Gentleman Prefer Blondes. My favorite moment from that film is when she is in the luxury liner gym trying to entice a platoon of muscular gay men for sex by singing, “Isn’t Anyone Here For Love?” The answer is yes, but not with you dearie.
O and I was told by Daniel Hendrickson about a German scandal involving that icky Thilo Serrazin who wrote a vile book about immigrants that became a best seller. Well the uber wealthy Herr Serrazin was exposed for having a 30 year old son collecting welfare benefits which are called Hartz4 in Deutschland.
Saturday was my first evening not feeling flu-ish so I went to see the rare screening of Bob Mizer’s films at Exile Gallery as part of Billy Miller’s Bob Mizer Exhibition. My escorts for the evening: Daniel Hendrickson the Jewish Muslim and his hot ItaloGerman lover Piero Bellomo. The new Exile Gallery is fantastic located in an offstrip of Mitte near Heine Heinrich Str. The Mizer photographs are all in color and feature examples of his work that is quite unexpected including photos of women and his travels abroad in the late 40s and 1950s. My favorite is a pick from the 1970s of governator Arnold Shwarzenegger and his young, underage male lover who resembles his teenage son Patrick. The exhibit is a huge hit and is almost sold out. The films screened were hilarious, and brought back many memories I have of the famous AMG compound that was on 11th Street in the Pico Union District of LA. My best friend from Junior High School lived just a few blocks away from Bob Mizer across the street from a hippy commune. The LA performance artist Luis Alfaro also lived in the neighborhood on Toberman Avenue. The Mizer compound was known in the hood as the Homo House for all the men that were seen going in and out, but it didn’t cause any scandals and people seemed to live and let live being that the residents were mostly poor Latinos and blacks. My junior high school Berendo was about half a mile west of AMG Studios. And in the 1970s I lived near Pico and Western with my mother and sisters. A black faggot friend of my oldest sister named Jimmy Morrison was a friend and ex lover of Bob Mizer. Jimmy lived on Mariposa and helped Bob procure models. I never liked Jimmy and he never liked me. He looked like James Baldwin with thyroid eyes and big flapping liver lips. He would pick up trade at the Pike in Long Beach. Jimmy knew how to manipulate young goodlooking blokes because growing up I remember him having some of the hottest hustlery boyfriends, black,white and latinos with huge muscles.Jimmy also use to eat raw hamburger meat.
At the screening I ran into Baby Diaper Joel Gibb of the Hidden Cameras and his boyfriend Enrico Dallman, Ginger T. who use to be in the New York band Men who is in Berlin filming a new Pauline Beaudry/Renate Lorenz film, DJ Snax, writer Travis Jeppeson and film historian Marc Siegel who will be curating a new festival at HAU next year called Camp/Anti-Camp. After the screening we grabbed some grub as I was starving. Monday I got to have some intimate time with Billy Miller at my Cheese Endique Trifecta which was a lot of fun just hanging out and shooting the proverbial breeze with sexy Mr. Miller who told me about his big peniled Arab fuck buddy who he has been seeing for over 15 years in New York. They just get together ever so often at the train station and retire to one of their flats for serious excrement stabbing as this Arab man is packing the pudd. In fact Billy has several such arrangements with men scattered in the tri-state area, and because of health reasons he has given up drugs he still has one hell of a libido and is one of the most beautiful men I have ever met, and he will turn 54 years old this year. Now that’s longevity. A lot of these artsy kids these days will never stay a desired beauty for that long and still also be an interesting person. Billy Miller I adore you!
Yesterday I did my taxes at Frau Mansfield’s, who has been my preparer for the last 5 years of living in Berlin. She is nice though at first I thought she was a bit of a Brunehilde and was scared of her. A lot of German’s can appear gruff and authoritarian at first, but then they warm up and are quite nice and helpful. After getting my taxes done I grabbed a bite to eat with film historian Marc Siegel and then he took me to the American independent bookstore St. George on Woerther Str in Prenzlauer Berg. This bookstore has both new and used books and you can sell them your books and get either cash or credit. Love it!
Please mark in your calendars these upcoming events in Berlin: March 17th 7pm actress and photographer Margarita Broich has a solo show called Wenn Dervohang Faellt at Martin Gropius Bau Niederkirchnerstrasse 7. I first Margarita back in 1999 when she was in the Berliner Ensemble when they performed at UCLA. I also met Susanne Sachsse,and Margarita’s famous husband Martin Wuettke who was in the Quentin Tarrentino film Unglorious Bastards. Margarita was in the Kate Winslet film The Reader and her poetic portrait of Kate will most likely be in this photo show as well as a giant pic she took of me after one of my Rising Star, Falling Stars evenings. Can’t wait.
And also the Bruce La Bruce/Susanne Sachsse collaboration of Pierrot Lunaire that premieres Sunday at HAU I. The piece features the costumes of Zaldy who made outfits for Rupaul and Michael Jackson’s illfated last performances that never happened. Read the CHEAP mailing list entry below by Marc Siegel for more info.


Liebe CHEAP Freunde,

Endlich kommt Pierrot Lunaire, eine sexy melodramatische männlich-weibliche

atonale Innovation von Arnold Schönberg! Ein Traum Musik Stück für alle

Liebenden von Gotteslästerung, Perversion, Drogenabhängigkeit und Dandytum,

d.h. perfekt für die CHEAP Gegenöffentlichkeit! Erlebt Susanne Sachsse als

Pierrot in einer Inszinierung von Bruce LaBruce. Hör die verrückte Musik des

kleinen Orchester unter der Leitung des verführerischen bessessenen

Dirigents Premil Petrovic. Premierenkarten gehen schon schnell! Kommt aber

auch zu einer der anderen drei Berliner Vorstellungen! Ein not-to-be missed

Event! (siehe unten für Auflistung aller glamorösen Beteiligten)



Premiere: Sonntag, 6. März, 19:30 Uhr, HAU 1, Stresemannstr. 29

Premierenparty: danach im WAU, Hallesches Ufer 32



Weitere Vorstellungen:



Dienstag, 8.März, 19:30 Uhr

Mittowch, 9. März, 19:30 Uhr

Donnerstag, 10. März 19:30 Uhr



Karteninformation

TÄGLICH 12.00 ¬ 19.00 UHR

TELEFON 030 259004 27

HAU 2

HALLESCHES UFER 32

10963 BERLIN



ODER

Online karten:



http://www.reservix.de/off/login_check.php?id=c6ec16e8cf3cd5077514ebef590a1f

763d4616b372ef8900411779bf6bedf213&vID=4387



Für mehr Information:

www.hebbel-am-ufer.de/de/kuenstler/kuenstler_20260.html?HAU=1



See you there!

Herzlichst

Marc





(ENGLISH)



Dear CHEAP Friends,



PIERROT LUNAIRE has finally arrived! A sexy, melodramatic,

masculine-feminine atonal innovation from Arnold Schoenberg! A dream music

piece for all lovers of blasphemy, perversion, drug addiction and dandyness!

That spells pleasure for the CHEAP counterpublic! Experience Susanne Sachsse

as Pierrot in Bruce LaBruce's staging! Listen to the crazy music played by

the small orchestra lead by the seductive and obsessive conductor Premil

Petrovic! Tickets for the premiere are already going quickly. Think about

trying out one of the three other Berlin performances in the glorious old

theater, HAU 1! Definitely, a not to be missed event! (See below for a list

of all the glamorous participants!)



Premiere: Sunday, March 6, 7:30 pm, HAU 1, Stresemannstr. 29

Premiere Party: afterwards in WAU, Hallesches Ufer 32



Other Perfs:



Tuesday, March 8, 7:30 pm

Mittowch, March 9, 7:30 pm

Donnerstag, March 10, 7:30 pm



Tickets:

Daily 12.00 ¬ 19.00 UHR

TELEFON 030 259004 27

HAU 2

HALLESCHES UFER 32

10963 BERLIN



Or

Online Tickets:



http://www.reservix.de/off/login_check.php?id=c6ec16e8cf3cd5077514ebef590a1f

763d4616b372ef8900411779bf6bedf213&vID=4387



For more Information:

www.hebbel-am-ufer.de/en/kuenstler/kuenstler_20260.html?HAU=1



See you there!

warmly

Marc





PIERROT LUNAIRE von Arnold Schönberg

Texte von Albert Giraud

(1912)



Musikalische Leitung: Premil Petrovic

Inszenierung: Bruce LaBruce

Art Director: item idem

Kostüm: Zaldy

Video Animation: Marius Roth

Licht: Hans Leser

Dramaturgie: Laura Berman

Make Up Design: Tan Binh Nguyen

Hair Stylist: Michael Forrey

Produktionsleitung: Anna Mülter

Regieassistent: Rogier Hardeman


Mit Susanne Sachsse und Luizo Vega,

sowie Maria Ivanenko, Boris Lisowski und Krishna Kumar Krishnan.


Und: Adrian Pavlov (Klavier), Emmanuelle Bernard (Violine), Miguel Pérez

Iñesta (Klarinette), Chloé L'Abbé (Flöte), Andreas Voss (Violoncello)

SO LANG MAN TRAUEME NOCH LEBEN KANN. . .
Very sorry I haven’t been writing anything new in this very blogina, but I caught a bit of a cold while in London for my birthday and have been stuck in bed with occasional forays to the loo to projectile excrete.
Thank goodness for Italian/Slovenian artist JanezJansa aka: Davide Grassi and his beautiful and serene wife and art partner/producer Marcela of the Aksioma Institute for Contemporary Art and their cute crew who came by my Cheese Endique Trifecta studio to film me for a new project and brought me soup, crackers and fresh fruit.I didn’t have much of an appetite but managed to get some fruit and soup down. Marcela is a mother of two gorgeous children and was lovely in nursing me back to health and vigor.
The other day film historian Marc Siegel and Daniel Hendrickson the Jewish Muslim took me to luncheon for my birthday at Café Azul, where that nice Jamaican waitress works. Marc & Daniel completely shocked and surprised me by presenting a card with the names of old and new friends from the fatherland and motherland who joined forces to buy me a birth gift of a brand new bed. I have never owned a new bed in my life having always slept on hand-me-downs that were somewhat falling apart at the seams. What I've been sleeping on for the last few years is a divan that was used in the CHEAP Gossip studio back in 2006 when I first moved to Berlin. Its from the 1950s and is quite comfy but its old and worn, plus it would be great to have a real bed to sleep on that actually fits a gigantic woman. Its so nice to know that so many people wanted to contribute to my comfort in getting me a present that I really,really need. Here is a list of the people who contributed, some from the states and some who I met here in Europe.

Sophia New/Dan Belasco Rogers of the performance collective Plan B
Sabine Friesz and Ali Janka of Gelitin
Mickey One and Ibadette of Super 700
Nanna Heidenreich of Arsenal Experimental
Toby Raucher and his large penis Dagmar
Berlin legend Zazie de Paris
Achmed Constantine Berger the hot, well endowed Arab/German actor
Stefanie Wenner the fun loving HAU curator
Alessio, Nico Siepen and Michaela Wuensch from bbooks kollective
Writer and poet Travis Jeppeson
Anna Muelter of HAU
Malte Goebel, New York Underground legendina John Edward Heys, Gunther Baby Papi,the hot lover of Ali of Gelitin
Damon Young the young Berkeley fagademic
Elly Clarke the British art fotog
Juliane Rebentisch the pretty Teutonic art scholar
Dedrich Diederichsen the famous German writer
Vassily Bourakas of the Experimental Section of the Athens Film Festival
Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, the Empress of the Arsenal Institute for Film und Video Kunst
Marc Siegel,Daniel Hendrickson, Susanne Sachsse and her kids Salome & Richard Gersh
Nadja Talmi the pretty junior art and film curator
Uli Ziemons the handsomest man in all of Europa
My dear friend and protector of her doll The Love Camel aka: Andrea Novarin
Evie Ruessler the fabulous feminist German filmmaker
Clemens Stoltzenberg the sweet beautiful young student at the Frie Universitat who worked at the CHEAP Gossip Studio,
Filmmaker Marie Losier who won a Teddy Award and another cash prize this year at the Berlinale for her documentary on Genesis Breyer P-Orridge
Anne Kohl and Katja Helldorf two wonderful and talented young artists.
Piero Bellomo of la kollezione
My academic saviors starting with the always coming to my rescue in all my hours of needy need---Dr. Jennifer Doyle, followed by Dr. Jose Munoz and Dr. Tavia Nyongo and my very generous sister of the clothe Bruce “Judy”LaBruce.
Thank you so much I can’t express fully my appreciation. I have to get everyones mailing address so I can send a proper thank you individually via post.
My birthday in London was lovely. I stayed at the gorgeous Hackney compound of Dr. Dominic Johnson a lecturer in the School of Lesbian Drama at Queen Mary University. His flat is like a little bit of Miami or LA was magically transported to the East End. Dominic cooked an amazing vegetarian feast for me an invited some London pals over for a small intimate soiree that included Ron Athey, charming Israeli artist Oreet Ashery, Lee Adams of Club Kaos and his sweet boyfriend, dashingly dapper Martin Hargreaves and his stylish collegue from the Dance Theatre Journal Thom Shaw,and Tara Perkins aka:Annie Oakley of the Sex Workers Art Show and manager of the band Gossip with her pretty boyfriend.
After Berlinale everyone gets sick in Berlin, but a lot of people were ailing in London as well. Love Camel, Franko B and Nando all came down with the flu and couldn’t attend my birthday party.
That dear sweet Camel besides staying with me in Berlin during the Berlinale Film Festival got me my ticket to London, wined and dined me and also bought me some delicious books that I have been wanting including Dear Stinkpot-Letters From Louise Brooks to Jan Wahl, a box set of the incredible British TV series Shameless that is being remade in the US which doesn’t seem like it will transfer well, and an assortment of other rare film and TV box sets. Love Camel really knows what his Doll loves. Mr. Hargreaves of Dance Theatre Journal bought me a hardback copy of the hilarious new John Water’s tome Role Models which I am reading very slowly to savor every delicious page.
Mr. Johnson besides just making my short stay in England so dreamy and grande, gave me a copy of the Cult Film Reader edited by Ernest Mathijs& Xavier Mendik.
The night before my b’day gathering I was invited to the birthday shindig of Beth Ditto of Gossip at the rooftop pavilion of The Shore Ditch House. I had heard of these private members only clubs. Berlin has one called SoHo House where I have never been. To get to where Ms. Ditto’s party was you had to go through these other fetes which looked dull with people in the financial or banking service industries all gussied up. My entourage that included Love Camel, Dom Johnson and Martin Hargreaves enjoyed the snax and open bar. The heated outdoor pool was also a nice touch. We almost shared an elevator ride with Boy George of Culture Club fame but he had to step off as he was overloading the freight compartment. Ms. Ditto was completely surprised when she entered the room and not acting surprised as usually is the case with these situations. The diva looked glam and was crying as her mascara was running in many directions. I didn’t stay very long and was told that many of the other guests were people in the fashion industry. The rumour of the evening was that pop star Usher was going to drop by with his new boyfriend.
I am going to end here,I am still feeling under the weather but I am going to try and attend the Bob Mizer film screenings that are a part of the Billy Miller Bob Mizer exhibit at Exile Gallery.

DIE HEIMKEHR DES VERBANNTEN
My beautiful novelist friend Ms. Lisa Teasley(Heat Signature) told me back in Los Angeles last week that I would meet a man when I got back to Germany. Not only have I met a young good looking man in the form of Kai Fabian, but yesterday a new man made himself known to me, one who is very wealthy, handsome and powerful. His name is Marco Schroeter and is a finanzchef with Nokia Siemens Network. With all this good luck lately, something bad is going to happen I know it.Fortune never smiles but in my case it just laughts right in my face. If I looked for a horseshoe I suppose it would bop me right on the nose. . .
***
This morning Love Camel and I went to the Forum screening of the cute tiny gay Argentine director Marco Berger’s atmospheric feature film Ausente. I loved the sophisticated poetic sound design and music on this film and its melancholic flair. The director must be a shrimper because the film starts off with a nice large extreme close-up of a well formed young male foot.
The actor playing the juvenile lead Javier de Pietro is beyond gorgeous with a sensual lisp when he speaks. From some of the showboating questions from tired LGBT people in the audience during the Q&A it seems like if a movie isn’t a simple minded sensitive coming out story they just can’t seem to allow themselves to grasp it.What fools.
It seems like I won’t be the only one celebrating a birthday in London. Ms. Beth Ditto of the Gossip is also in London and will have a huge soiree on Feb 19th. My party is the 20th so I am looking forward to the Ditto shindig and seeing the lovely singing superstar lady and her sexy manager Annie Oakley of Sex Workers Art Show.
***
Just read that a Nazi cache of uncovered prewar 3D footage has been unearthed. At the Berlinale this year there was a rash of 3D movies, and it seems like we are in for another bombardment of 3D flicks that hasn’t been seen since the early 1950s. Well hidden in the Berlin Federal Archives were two 30 minute black and white propaganda films made in 1936 that were found by Australian director Phillippe Mora who is prepping a feature length docu on how the Nazis used images to manipulate reality. Mora made a film called Swastika in 1973 that featured previously unseen color reels from Hitler’s home movies shot on 16mm by Eva Braun.
With this new Nazi discovery we see that the National Socialists were way ahead of Miss Hollywood by over a decade in devoping the 3D medium, which is now enjoying an international renaissance. See what you learn from reading this blog.
***
Urgent! Mark in your calendar the premiere date of March 6, 2011 for Pierrot Lunaire by Arnold Schoenberg directed by Tante Judy LaBruce featuring music conducted by Prmil Petrovic, production design by Cyril Duval of Item Idem, costumes by Zaldy, and starring the luminous Ms. Susanne Sachsse. This will be the event of the year so don’t miss it.

EINFACH KOMPLIZIERT
Love Camel and I went to Potsdamer 88 the Forum Expanded site to see the new film installation Blind by Swedish artist Annika Larsson that explores the facility around vision and sightlessness that shows a group of blind footballers on the pitch. This is a challenging piece for me in that blindness is something that i dred.
Later caught up with Baby Diaper Joel Gibb of the Hidden Cameras and grabbed a quick bite to eat at this little Asian fusion place at Potsdamer Platz next door to pasta chain Vapianos. Besides being a talented musician and young man possessing great beauty, the Baby Diaperr can really spin a great yarn and was very compelling in telling us about how a certain cinematographer whose film is in the Panorama Section of the Berlinale had a major freakout or quasi nervous breakdown, became disruptive in the Berlinale offices and his director basically had to get him to thee nunnery fast----as on a quick flight back home. Such is the pressures associated with modern filmmaking. Both Joel Gibb and Lovel Camel seemed to think that the film Bullhead written and directed by Flemish director Michael R. Roskam was compelling, but not as much as its handsome lead actor Mattias Schoenaerts an easy breezy piece of humpy eye candy supreme. I didn’t see this film, but wanted to just because of a picture of its central character with his shirt open displaying an impressive rack and a very large, strong shnozola.
On a side note now that digital filmmaking is the norm can all these technology whizes do something about the numerous gaffes and glitches adherent to the screening of digi helmers? Sorry, vier haben keiner zimmer fur auslander---I was only asking.
Mr. Gibb also enjoyed Miranda July’s sophomore film effort The Future.I was surprised that I liked her debut feature Me and You and Everyone We Know. Ms. July had performed at my 90s club/performance space Sucker at the Garage-the punk rock Sunday afternooon beer bust and t-dance. I'm sorry to relate that a pic featuring a talking kitty cat didn’t really peak my Lesbianic interest so I had to pass on her latest quirkster offering.Tomorrow is a Forum screening of the Argentine film Ausente by Marco Berger whose last feature Plan B was very well received. I’ve heard Mr. Berger’s latest flicker has some nubile young men in it, so of course its going to register well with the Vagimule doll.
But what really had me gushing tears was Marie Losier’s feature film collaboration with Genesis P. Orridge and Lady Jaye called the Ballad of Genesis & Lady Jaye. Only someone with such a playful approach to film and video as Ms. Losier could have produced such thrilling and captivating results. The Pandrogynous couple Genesis and Lady J. Breyer’s very existence was one of whimsy and unshackled exploration. Seeing footage from House of Domination at Jackie 60 of Lady Jaye echoed to me how deep is the loss of such a beguilingly gracious, charming and multifaceted young woman, someone of my generation who made New York such a thrilling place in the 1980s and 90s, and who was part of a scene of fascinating powerful women artists. I’ll never forget how much fun we all had being a part of the Womanizer exhibition at Deitch Projects in Jan, 2007 that was curated by another powerhouse goddess Kembra of the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black.
I had moved to Berlin In the fall of 2006, and Lady Jaye’s sad passing was Autumnal 2007.
I see a new renaissance for Genesis and Lady J. with this film project.There was such a pre buzz about the film before the Berlinale and now that its been screened I can see a majesty of events unfolding and swirling around those complex and wonderous super beings that are Genesis and Lady Jaye.
All the underground royals were present at the screening with a SRO crowd too numerous and varied to elaborate upon here. Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus of Forum Expanded did an amazing job as moderator of a Q&A after the the screening and in the Arsenal Foyer was a sophisticated champagne reception that not only celebrated Genesis and Lady Jaye but Marie Losier and Irish filmmaking studkin Paul Rowley’s birthday. It was so nice to have some quiet moments with Genesis Breyer P., Miss Stefanie,Trixie Cordua, Nanna Heidenreich, Tim &kJohnny Blue,Uli Ziemons, Daniel”The Muslim” Hendrickson,Morrison Edley of Psychic TV(who was going to be DJing later in the evening at CCCP Club on Rosenthaler Str. Last time I saw Mr. Edley was when he was with Miss Guy and Toilet Boys when they played my ClubSucker at the Garage in Silverlake back in 1997) and film historian Marc Siegel who was the facilitator of a discussion with Genesis after the screening of Ghosts#9 which features footage shot in and around the Beat Hotel in Paris and other Beat Films of Burroughs and Bryan Gysin that film director Derek Jarman helped Gen to identify and Catalogue back in 1980. Later in the festival Gen Breyer P.Orridge, Morrison Edley and Tony Conrad do a concert at the Hebbel Theatre as part of Forum Expanded Stage Saturday Feb 19th at 10pm

SCHAFKRANKHEIT
Running around the Berlinale with Love Camel is riotous. I didn’t know that Camel aka Andrea Novarin has written three books on cinema. Its because of these books that he got hired to work at the British Film Institute. His Dictionary of Italian Cinema 1970-79 in two volumes A-L and M-Z is a must have as well as his other tome Russ Meyers Un Erotomane Incallito, and also a small press edition of a series of essays on Gay Cinema that he edited.
We went to the Delphi to see a color and wide screen offering from Japanese Director Shibuya Minoru-- The Days of Bad Women 1958 which is just hilarious with its Kento appropriation of Hollywood Regency décor. The actor playing the teenage nephew of the male lead is like a Japanese version of John Gavin---- he is just that handsome and hunky. Let me tell you I wanted to rip his clothes off when he makes his appearance halfway through the film.
E-Love is an uber French film directed by Anne Villaceque that benefits from a sterling starring role by lovely Anne Consigny, the sexiest 50 year old ever to grace the screen. Her dalliance with a handsome African man is smoldering, but the love scenes with the Arab Muslim came off as a tad racist and disturbing. Being a woman of a certain age myself I can certainly relate to the main character’s journey of desire and longing.
I had almost forgotten that I am in a documentary about Bruce La Bruce in the Panorama section of the Berlinale called An Advocate for Fagdom by the beautiful French woman Ange’lique Bosio.I share screen time with Susanne Sachsse, Gus Van Sant, John Waters, Harmony Korine, Bruce Benderson, Glenn Belverio, Richard Kern,LA film critic Ernest Hardy and a host of others in this talking heads PBS style documentary film. The After Party at Schwuz was also for Mario Losier who has a documentary that debuts tomorrow called The Ballad of Genesis and Lady J.
Tante Judy LaBruce was DJing at the soiree and I saw a rash of folks having a wonderous time like German experimental film god Wilhelm Hein and his art photog girlfriend Annette Frick, Matt Johnstone who is now a movie publicist, Little Matt changes occupations every quarter, Gian Paolo Marzi of the Milan Gay & Lesbian Festival who has aged so much I didn’t even recognize him, Michael Bryntrup, longtime LaBruce producer Jurgen Brunning, Claudia of the Milan Festival, ‘Fucking Different’ Kiki Peterson, Art Forum writer Travis Jeppeson, Cyril Duval of Idem,Idem, Anna Muelter of HAU, and big peniled Jay Crisfar the star of Otto-Up With Dead People. Sorry if I forgot anyones names but i am writing this at 4:30am and I’m about to pass out on my laptop computer.
Before heading out to the party I saw my favorite Spanish actress Carmen Maura in the French film Service Entrance, the title in the press kit but on screen it was called The Women of the 6th Floor directed by Philippe Le Guay that is set in 1962 and features a nice ensemble cast headed by La Maura who was present at the screening and looked enchanting.
No major gossip this time out at Berlinale, just the same old talk about festival head Deiter Koslick being an out of touch socialite who knows nothing about cinema but got the job because it was thought that he would bring more corporate sponsorships, but actually with him on board the festival has lost sponsors. I am also quite amazed how the various sections of the festival hate each other and don’t cooperate with the Competition area thinking that the festival is all about them and the clout of big name stars they bring to the table, and that the other parts of the Berlinale Festival are just coasting on the Competitions shiny coattails. Pray tell me your opinions on the subject.

LE SACRE DU PRINTEMPS
The Vagimule Davis doll just may be in love. Yes can you imagine it? The boy is named Kai Fabian, and he is just the cutest little German thing born in 1984. I don’t want to jinx it so I won’t say anything more, but yesterday after seeing the press screening of Wm Wender’s Pina I spent most of the day and evening with him canoodling. I got so carried away with this young boy who I met through Martin Kaymer that I almost forgot about poor Love Camel coming to stay with me during the Berlinale Film Festival. Kai Fabian drove me back home to the Cheese Endique Trifecta just in time as Camel was arriving.
Now back to Pina. As most of you know, Ms. Bausch in the late 1990s approached me in LA when she was doing a new piece at UCLA Live! And we spent quite some time together with her filming me performing at Club Sucker and just observing my way of moving and gesture. She was a very sweet woman and very calming to be around. I took her to a bunch of latino drag clubs which she delighted in. I never saw the finished product as I was in Europe when it premiered at UCLA but I am sure it was divine in seeing this film. Ms. Bausch died in 2009 and she and Wm Wenders who were pals had always wanted to make a dance film together, so he did it with the cooperation of her company Wuppertal Dance Theatre. The film is in Digital 3D and is as epic as her work is profound. The film musical and dance is the perfect conduit for 3D. The only 3D musical was the 1953 MGM hit Kiss Me Kate, and it’s a wonder that no one else has explored that territory till now.

SEHENSWUERDIGKEITEN
Today at the Berlinale I saw Ingmar Berman’s film version of The Magic Flute (Trollflojten)from 1975 which features the Swedish pepperpot opera star Haekan Hagegard as Papageno and a handsome Josef Koestlinger as Tamino. Of course I couldn't wait for the appearance of the Queen of the Night and she doesn’t disappoint. I first saw Mozart’s The Magic Flute on stage while still in primary school in the 4th grade at the gorgeous Shrine Auditorium across from USC. It was through the MGM(Mentally Gifted Minors Program)of the LA Unified School District that I was able to attend free matinee performances of all the classic operas. Its what influenced my already blossoming theatricality. I wouldn’t say I was a hardcore opera queen in the Klaus Nomi mode, but I sure come close with my fetish for the perfected opera surface in singers like Grace Moore, Katharine Greyson,Jeannete McDonald, Jane Powell and Deanna Durbin. In the audience sitting near at the Cinemaxx Theatre was actors Hamish Linkletter who stars in Miranda July’s new film The Future and German male ingénue Alexander Fehling. Are they lovers? After that screening I had to rush across town on the Ubahn to see the second film in the daily Forum tribute to the great Japanese director Shibuya Minoru at the Delphi with 1953s Modern People about a government official involved in a collegues corrupt activities which leads to a maelstrom of violence and crime. I ended the days movie going pleasures by seeing young humpy Aussie studkin Ryan Kwanten from the hit cable show True Blood playing totally against type as a nebbish masquerading as a vigilante superhero. Was hoping to catch a glimpse of Mr. Kwanten during the Q&A with ganymede director Ryan Ford and the female lead the pretty Maeve Dermody but Ryan had to whisk back to Hollywood.Sitting next to me was one of my Weimar/UDk expat students Miss Darce with her cute posse---all fans of True Blood.Earlier in the day I ran into kJohnny Blue of the world famous Blue Brothers. Caught a glimpse of his big dick older brother Tim yesterday in the Arsenal foyer.
Received a few emugs from my old friend from the 1980s Jean Pierre Boccara who use to run the old Lhasa Club performance space on Hudson & Santa Monica Blvd in Hollywood which also shared space with the late homo celebrity photog Herb Ritts whose studio was above them. Jean Pierre and Anna also ran a large space at the Musicians Union Hall on Vine Street & Melrose called LhasaLand that I performed at with the Afro Sisters and Devo as well as the Café Largo on Fairfax Avenue and a performance venue in the old Studio One/RoseTatoo Backlot space on Robertson Blvd. Jean Pierre doesn’t live full time in LA anymore content to traveling the known and unknown world making art in a relaxed atmosphere. He promises to look me up next time he is in Berlin, and I can’t wait to see him.

A SCENSIEUR POUR L’ECHAFAUD
My first day of the 61st Berlinale Film Festival begins with a nice brunch at the Schwartzer Kafe with Jewish Muslim Daniel Hendrickson and his lover Piero Bellomo. It felt great to fortify oneself with food. Then we were off an running to the beautiful Delphi Theatre in the Old West to see Doctor’s Day Off the first film in a Forum tribute to director Shibuya Minoru of the famed Shochiku Studios, the Paramount Pictures of Japan. Joining us was Canadian baby diaper Joel Gibb of the Hidden Cameras. What a way to start the cine day, with this exquisite film from the early 1950’s. Being the grifter of attractive men that I am it was natural for me to swoon over hunky Mikuni Rentaro playing a mentally handicapped war veteran. Grabbing another bite to eat in Potsdamer Platz Joel and I visited Assaf Hochman who is working in the Berlinale Press Suite at the Hyatt Hotel to see what gossip and intrigues were afloat. To early for that,but I did share a brief flirtation with young blondine teutonic actor August Diehl and later at the opening of Forum Expandeds Guy Maddin Hauntings I(Fragments) at the Embassy of Canada’s Marshall McLuhan Salon I really dug my trenches into the lovesexy MGM president of their motion picture group Jonathan Glickman while watching lovely images of my old LA pal Udo Kier on the video monitor. During this time I wanted to see if Mr. Glickman had the big hoved feet of Satan worthy of shrimping like in Satanas Part 3: Revolution. Chittle chatted with lovely Ela of bbooks collective who will be working in sunny California at USC very soon I am sure, as well as hanging with New York legendina Jon Heys whose 6 minute short in Panarama Section Why Madame Why? Stars the illustrious award winning sexxtress Zazi De Paris. Couldn’t stay to see Mr. Maddin and Isabella Rosselini who were coming to the exhibition later but at the Arsenal foyer which this year is designed by Canadian artist Kika Thorne with the Princess Garden and features stalwarts bbooks kollective. I also ran into the divine grande dame of queer experimental cinema Barbara Hammer and her young collaborator Gina Carducci who are in Forum Expanded with Generations. The lovely Ms. Hammer also has her new film Maya Deren’s Sink showing. Ms Hammer’s posse included the MIX Festival gang. Bumped into Germany’s experimental film guru Wilhelm Hein whose significant other the art photog Annette Frick has a her documentary on Herbert Tobias in the Panorama Section.
In the big Arsenal 1 screening room I saw the incredible Quebecois film En terrains connus by Stephane LaFleur who also is in an indie rock band and looks the part with his scruffy charms. The sound in this film was the driving force for all the action and visuals which were quietly stunning, with the performances of Francis LaHaye and Fanny Mallette as a brother & sister transporting.
By 10:30pm when I went into the screening of Zbigniew Bzymek’s Utopians I was completely knackered, but stayed for almost an hour though I was not enamored of the performance by the films lead Jim Fletcher.

ASCENSIEUR POUR L’ECHAFAUD
Went to a pre-Berlinale Forum Expanded opening last night called Parallel Worlds at Salon Populaire’s Kunstaele at Buwlowstr 90 just down the street from me in Shoneberg. My companion was Daniel Hendrickson, the Jewish Muslim translator to the academic shtars. As we were arriving Eunice Martin the gifted musician and composer who plays klavier regularly at Rising Stars,Falling Stars was leaving. Chatted with Arsenal Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus who has proclaimed that my area of town town is becoming the new hot happening place in Berlin. It does seem that a lot of new art activity is taking place off of the Hauptstr, on my street in Rote Insel and on Postsdamer Str. Of course in the late 70s and 80s this neck of the woods was teaming with jetset shenanigans. David Bowie,IggyPop, Lou Reed, Romy Haag, and Nick Cave all lived here. Blixa Bargeld still keeps a residence nearby as does Hamburg born & bred singer Billy Ray Martin,who lived in my building for a short spell after returning to Berlin from years in London.
I think Miss Stefanie is correct and things are returning to Schoneberg, as KreuzKoelln is getting way too expensive and trendy. Also seen the Hebbel am Ufer triumvirant of perky Anna Muelter, the beautiful and lovesexy Katrin Dodd and HAU big boss Mattias Lienthal, Arsenal Experimentals Nanna Heidenreich looking luscious along with sexy gal pal Djane Olga Damnitz, junior curator Uli Ziemons with his bromantic partner in hetero love Guillaume, Chocolate Grinder Film Kollective boys Little Alex, Tasty Tim and recently married Julian Radelmeier, and rangy filmmaking Frenchman Michel Belague. The crowd seemed mesmerized by James Benning’s 2 channel video installation and Iraeli art star Yael Bartana’s 16milimeter black&white loop. My fav piece was The Story of Milk and Honey by Lebanese video artist Basma Alsharif. Hadn’t eaten since breakfast so I had to cut our early to find some grubb and settled on the late night pizza joint in Nollendorf area that has the most delectable blondine boy tossing the dough. Since there was no flirting going on at the opening, I had to get my eye candy elsewhere.
Oh and tonight at Potsdamer 88 is the first official Forum Expanded Berlinale exhibition opening Blind. from 6pm-9pm.
***
Billy Miller is coming back to Berlin, and I personally can’t wait to see the impish dreamcake. His Bob Mizer exhibit at the new Exile Gallery is going to be the talk of the town. Here is the info that he sent me so you can mark it on your calendaria:

BOB MIZER
Select Private Works 1942—1992
February 19 through March 19, 2011
Exile Gallery
Köpenicker Str 39, Berlin
Curated by Christian Siekmeier and Billy Miller
Opening Reception February 19, 7-10 pm
Music by the Pet Shop Bears
For opening times and info on specific artworks, please
contact Exile Gallery at info@thisisexile.com
http://www.thisisexile.com/project_bobmizer.html
http://www.BobMizer.org

AMOUREUSE-LIEBE ZU DRITT
Last night baby diaper Joel Gibb of the Hidden Cameras came by the Cheese Endique Trifecta and we drank some sect and played catchup.He was back in Canada for ages and also took a spirited holiday to the rainforests of Costa Rica with his juicy East German beau Enrico Dallman.
Monday Damon Young the lanky queer Aussie Phd student from UC Berkley who is in Berlina for two years took the Vagimule doll to Santa Maria on Oranianstr for some Mexy food and Margaritas.We got nicely tipsy and were joined by Jewish Muslim Daniel Hendrickson and his handsome ItaloGerman lover Piero Bellomo.
The gorgeous ZacKary Drucker my young LA based gender daughterina is going to be part of what looks like a hot event in New York this Friday along with her mentor Mother Flawless Sabrina of the legendary drag documentary The Queen.Here are the details for all of you Man!hattanites:

The Queen: Then & Now
February 11, 2011
TIME?
Admission: FREE!
LGBT Center
208 West 13th Street

The Queen: Then & Now unreels a full range of perspective surrounding the landmark 1968 documentary The Queen for an evening of screenings, memories, and reflections on the current state of gender subversion in art and culture. Long before Paris is Burning, The Queen is a remarkable pre-Stonewall documentary that captured a raucous drag pageant at New York City’s Town Hall in 1967. Rarely seen The Queen will be screened along with Zackary Drucker’s At least you know you exist and Joe E. Jeffreys’ The Queen: After Party Outtakes.

The screenings will be followed by a public conversation among The Queen’s star Flawless Sabrina (aka Jack Doroshow) and Drucker moderated by Jeffreys along with an audience q&a.
Presented as a part of the exhibition, Living Live, curated by David Fierman and RJ Supa.


About the films:

The Queen (1968, 68 minutes, directed by Frank Simon) was one of the first documentaries to present a mainstream audience with a non-pathologized view of drag and homosexuality. Director Frank Simon’s impressionistic verite film was widely praised by the press, set box office records and screened internationally. The New York Times praised the film as “funny—an inspired—extraordinary” and the East Village Other dubbed The Queen “a stone gas!”

At least you know you exist (2011,15 minutes, Zackary Drucker with Flawless Sabrina) Created inside an archeology of the Uptown apartment that legendary queen Mother Flawless Sabrina has inhabited since 1967, At least you know you exist is a site-specific exploration of a fixed space where everything is in a state of change. In this 16mm film, totemic mystical objects act as a collection of mysterious sculptures in different states of mutation, and rich layers of feverish history interface with a new vision of transgender performativity. Young artist Zackary Drucker weaves a fluid, parallel text of these two divergent lives, exploring a legacy being passed from a lost generation towards the future.

The Queen: After Party Outtakes (2010, 7 minutes) reveals recently discovered outtake footage from The Queen documenting the pageant’s star studded after party with cameos from pageant participants Harlow and International Chrysis as well as Edie Sedgwick, Larry Rivers and Terry Southern among others. Jack Doroshow provides commentary. Created by Joe E. Jeffreys for Drag Show Video Verite 2010 and made possible in part with funding from the Jerome Foundation.

About the people:

Jack Doroshow a.k.a. Flawless Sabrina, is a performer, muse, gender pioneer, tarot reader, and oracle. From 1959 to 1968 Sabrina organized and emceed 46 drag contests a year across the United States. Ms. Flawless' balls recruited the likes of Judy Garland, Truman Capote, Gloria Swanson, Eartha Kitt, and Andy Warhol, as celebrity judges; and legendary ladies, Monique, Dorian Corey, Crystal LaBeija, Mario Montez, Rachel Harlow and International Chrysis as contestants. Repressive masquerade laws, which stipulated that queens wear three pieces of male clothing, landed Sabrina and her girls in jails and escorted to many a state border. Doroshow has worked as a special advisor on such films as Myra Breckenridge, Midnight Cowboy, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Flawless has also worked on both the Hillary Clinton and Al Gore campaigns, and has established various children's programs in the five boroughs, pairing kids with artists.

Zackary Drucker is a misnomer, the birth-name alias of an artist who is actually a fishy bitch. Interested in obliterating language obstacles, pulverizing identity disorders and revealing dark subconscious layers of outsider agency, Drucker disarms audiences using live performance, voice, video installation, and photography. Keeping normative culture on the periphery, Drucker focuses instead on "reading"-- a sub-cultural dialect of resistance, online sexual exploitation vernacular, and uses her body to illicit desire, judgment, and voyeuristic shame from her viewer. Drucker's critical indecision to live above the radar, below definition, and beyond static representation, ultimately aims to teach you about yourself.

Joe E. Jeffreys is a drag historian. He teaches theatre studies at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts Department of Drama and produces Drag Show Video Verite. Jeffreys’ video shorts have screened internationally and his work on The Queen was awarded funding by the Jerome Foundation.

*This performance/variable media art work was made possible, in part, by the Franklin Furnace Fund supported by stimulus funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency and the Lambent Fund of Tides Foundation

LEBEN UND STERBEN IN LA
My body is back in Berlin,but my pussy is still in Lost Angeles.Had a great time in my old city of birth. Wonderous seeing so many old friends and collaborating with new comrades on the piece dejecta/protecta which was a huge hit at the museum of contemporary art in Los Angeles (MoCa). Now I am gearing up for the Berlinale and London to celebrate my womanly birthday with Dominic Johnson, Ron Athey, Love Camel and the rest of my British rocksteady crew.Just found out that actress Maria Schneider, who was so lovely in Last Tango in Paris and The Passenger with Jack Nicholson died age 58.Hung out with her in the late 70s in LA and she was very feisty. She told me a bunch of great gossip of how Marlon Brando was always cruising young guys and how much he loved to digest gobs of semen.
Also the legendary Tura Satana of Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill, Kill also passed. Will never forget being on the same bill with her in a Velvet Hammer Burlesque show in LA at the old Mayan Theatre in downtown Los Angeles.She was still able to wow a decidedly jaded crowd.
Piero Bellomo of the Piero Kolleczione cooked a scrumptious return home meal for the doll at her Lutzoplatz compound. We were joined by Daniel Hendrickson the Jewish Muslim, and Piero gifted Ms. Davis a beautiful winter white blouse and also la Kolleczione’s new line of giant caucasion dildos that go under the name of Very Viking. I am now the proud owner of Gerth and Derth and these monster appendages will be greatly prized.

DREAMLESS POTASIUM GIRLS
My favorite neighborhood in Los Angeles is this tiny area of Hollywood close to Little Armenia called Melrose Hill. Its just about a block and a half radius of modest single family homes built around 1909-1926 off of Western and Melrose Avenues that are just radiant. Every time I get a chance I have someone drive by this area so I can revel in its beauty. Jason El Norte, the lanky South Dakotan who use to be one of my spastic Bricktop’s at the Parlour Club taxi dancers not only drove me to Melrose Hill but we actually got out of the car and took a leisure stroll of the Hill as he took pictures of some of the houses with his mobile phone. If I could get a sugar daddy to buy me a house in this tiny enclave I might consider living in the southland again. Jason who grew up in subfreezing winterlandia is quite enamored of Los Angeles. He has been making quite a career for himself as a philanthropist of the courtesanic kind, which is not an easy profession as Los Ang can be a bitter hard knock town. He lives frugally and is not ostentatious in the least, but I fear that he is registering a bit of concu fatigue, strain and burnout that is only a natural part of the intimate service industry.
Tuesday night Meesh Mills took me out for a scrumptious feast and Margarita’s at Casita Del Campo in Silverlake. It was great catching up with this beautiful lady who is so kind, smart and generous. We closed the joint down with our gab fest and then Meesh drove me around Hollywood as we reminisced about all our old haunts. Earlier in the day the major Ms. Gorgeous artist Karen Lofgren with her new beau and ex husband Cyril Kuhn came to take me to lunch at the Fisherman’s Market on Central and 6th. This is one of my alltime fav old timey LA eateries. Of course I ordered the giant shrimp on the grill and woofed it down in less then a minute. Karen & Cyril are in new relationships but remain very close and their art practise has gone through a lot of amazing and very exciting changes. Cyril is doing large scale paintings that are very heroic, and Karen has expanded on her sculptural installation work and is engulfed in creating a new feminine cosmos.
I forgot to mention that the other day I got together with art historian Robert Summers and his lovesexy Otis students--- hairy, hot & humpy Argentinian Jonathan, bubble butt Iranian beauty Rashad who were in my MoCa piece dejecta/protecta and sweatie pie Ethan. We drank weiss wine shorle at the Doyle Compound and later zipped around the corner to Deltas Tacos for cheap homemade Mexican food. As you can tell I can’t get enough of Mexican food on this trip, and have been eating it almost every day.
Hector Martinez's mom Mrs. Silvia Martinez cooked me an incredible Mexican feast of tamales and enchilades at their comfy home in South Gate. Mrs. Martinez is a very lovely woman with sparkling mischieveous eyes and a smile that can light a room. She speaks softly but carries a great amount of authority and confidence. Both Hector’s parents are the kind of Angelinos who you don’t see that much of anymore and who really make the city special. All of the Martinez children are successful and prosperous, the baby of the family Danny Martinez is married with a pretty wife who is getting her masters degree at Loyola Marymount while Danny is in the PhD program at UCLA but teaches disadvantaged kids at Jourdan Down High School in Watts which is just a train track away from his parents home in South Gate. Hector and his lover Ericla surprised me with an early birthday cake baked by his gay cholo cousin Victor aka: Chewy, the Enforcer. Being that I grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness I realized that this is my first ever birthday cake. My actual birthday is coming up Feb 20th – Piecien for all you hippy dippy astrological types---so here is your subtle reminder to bestow the doll with plenty of gifts, lunches, breakfasts and din dins. My official age is now 29 ½ having been 24 for several decades.

EVIL DEAD CAULIFLOWERS
Jason Bryne the cute blondine boy who attended Cal Arts and lived next door to Dr. Doyle came by and visited me and we drank some weiss wine shorle. Jason is leaving Silverlake for good to return to Africa where he has been working for the last three years as an audio visual archivist for the United Nations Criminal Tribunal for Rawanda located in Arusha, Tanzania. It’s a good paying gig and I can understand the allure of being in some exotic location when you are also a filmmaker, but Africa is one problematic continent. With all their colonial baggage that will never go away and political corruption and strife, that is the last place on earth I would ever want to go. Jason was telling me about the icky Dutch Flower Farmers, the EAC which is like the African version of the EU, and the South African Boer big game hunters. Also there is always a very real threat of constant violence and upheaval. I worry about Jason. He is just a little cute dorky boy with a big penis, and something tells me he is getting into something way beyond his control that can easily spell trouble. Just this woman’s opinion.
Picked up my sister Teresa Ray from her job at the County Housing Authority over near Westlake/MacArthur Park. The weather was breathtaking as the short rainstorm on Sunday made everything crystalline clear. My poor family and their woes. I took my sister to eat lunch at Mama’s Hot Tamales on 7th Street and Alvarado and we tried to hash out what can be done to help my older sister who is dying of cancer but the cancer seems to be progressing slower then was previously thought. This is mainly due I believe to mind over matter as my older sister Gracie Lee is able to just via sheer will keep it somewhat at bay and from entering her vital organs. Its in her bones, so she is in a lot of pain and discomfort but like my mother she has a high tolerance for pain, and now she is distracted by the illness of her son and daughter. Gracie Lee looks horrible when you see her with the skin just falling off her bones and no piece of clothing in the world seems to fit her, but perhaps she can delay the inevitable by her complete deluse adaise.
Jeffrey Hilbert came by to fetch me and bring the doll to dinner at my old Club Sucker partner Frank Rodriguez’s new house in Glassel Park that he shares with his hot fiery ginger lover, the extremely gifted artist and photographer Patrick Lee. Their home in the foothills was built in 1960 and use to be owned by a famous songwriter who wrote pop hits for Frank Sinatra and others in the 1950s and 1960s. The place is simply gorgeous with a large deck and a 1970s style hot tub that the pair uses for seduction purposes and retro photoshoots. The din din was delicious middle eastern style grilling that made my belly inflate to epic proportions. Frank Rodriguez and Jeffrey are business partners with Kustom Creative in Silverlake at the Junction, and the pair use to work together at Sony Pictures. It was so sweet attending a masculine dinner party with three of LA’s most humpiest sex gods. One of these days I will have to write in this very blog about all the sex that Frank had during the five years we did Club Sucker together at the Garage on Santa Monica Blvd at Virgil in Virgil Village. Frank has this masculine edge about him that all the alt fag and indie rock boys just could not resist.

CHARLOTTING THE CAVITICUS
Friday night I visited Stella of Stray Pop, KXLU’s longest running radio program. Andrew Gould my partner with Bricktops drove me to the Loyola Marymount Campus in Westchester through the fog that was frightening me because of the low visibility. Hanging out with Miss Stella was kinky humpy dork Ethan Port of the band Savage Republic. Ethan actually looked good, and hadn’t aged badly. He’s married with a teenage daughter who is a lesbiana. I adore Stella who is a true LA treasure and radiant oddball. On the drive back to the eastside Andrew treated his doll to some tacos from an amazing taco truck parked in Echo Park that wasn't surrounded with bearded Silverlake hipsters. The beard look has now replaced the goatee with the twentysomething male set.
Earlier in the day I ran around with my old pal Craig Roose aka: Billy Wisdom of Billy Wisdom and the HeShees, aka: Jacqueline Essex of Britpop band Stupor and cable access TV hostessa Summer Caprice who can do a mean Billy Holiday impersonation. Craig is one of LA’s most underrated performer/personalities and a true genius of the subversive. I really love him and we go back over 30 years of punk rock foolery. He took me to a bunch of thrift stores in the Valley, and it was just marvelous hanging with him in a part of Los Angeles I know very little about.Craig grew up in the valley.
Early in the morn I had breaky at Astro Family off of Fletcher Drive in Silverlake with young art star and beauty goddess Ms. ZacKary Drucker. I love the new generation of gender children like ZacKary and Wu Ingrid Tsang who are doing really interesting work and taking the place of us elder spokeswomen.
Met with Jeffrey Hilbert at his advertising agency Kustom Creative and we went to visit the ailing yet still brilliant Mrs. Michael Glass who suffered from two strokes in the last few years leaving him bed ridden in a rest home off of Temple Street near Historic Filipino Town. Mrs. Glass is the one responsible for the success in the 90s of Amok Books and its famed Dispatch series. Jeffrey Hilbert and Gary Stella are complete angels for coming to help a friend in need when others in Silverlake were only fair weather companions to the troubled Mrs. Glass. Both Mrs. Glass and I come from the same poor background of Watts and South Central Los Angeles, and we escaped to become celebrated artists. Mrs Glass has a MFA from Cal Arts and her work was a highlight of the celebrated queer exhibition from the late 80s Against Nature that was curated by Dennis Cooper at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions(LACE).
On Thursday Jeffrey Hilbert and Miss Morgan Rhodes of Sony Pictures took me to Aleggria in Silverlake for a wonderful Mexican dinner. The food at this little bistro is incredible, and they give you great service and are really nice and friendly.
Cesar Vega who works in commercial TV and film production also took me to Allegria on Saturday evening for din din. There was an eastside hipster couple eating across from us and the man was drop dead gorgeous. I couldnt keep my eyes off of him, and Cesar who is straight was macking on the handsome dudes female companion.
After supper Cesar to me for a visit to his luxury Hollywood office and post production facility. The financial meltdown isn't affecting Cesar's business. He is doing better then ever. Later we wound up having drinks at The Spotlight with my favorite bartender Jerry making me the stiffest vodka gimlets imagineable. There were a few lumpy gogo boys on parade which Cesar wasn’t featuring so we left and he took me to Goldiggers on Santa Monica Blvd at Wilton Place, which is the 20 cent strip joint which is owned and run by Vietnamese sex workers ruled over by a no nonsense dragon lady of a madame. The place was fun and sleazy, but I was glad we didn’t spend that much time there. In the late 80s the club featured Latina pepperpot strippers.
Sunday morning was taken to Hollywood Farmers Market on Ivar by the beautiful black novelist Lisa Teasley. Lisa has remarried to a handsome naturalist health professional and is teaching at UC Riverside creative writing and a poetry course. Her gorgeous daughter is now 14 years old and in her first relationship. Ms. Teasley is the most positive woman in the world, and knows how to get her needs met. I have to learn to pattern my life after her. While at the marketa we ran in to Jason Byrne who lives in the courtyard apartment complex where Dr. Doyle use to reside on Edgecliffe. He has been working in Africa and making experimental documentary films. I didn’t recognize him at first with his short cropped hair, but he looks beautiful with those blondine locks and full pillow lips of vermillion. I bet he is a white boy packing some major USDA grade.
Also bumped into silver foxx Joseph Louise Brooks, the birdwatcher and former Hollywood trendy club kingpin, and his riche lover. Mr. Brooks married well, and he and his partner live in a fabulous compound that is Hancock Park adjacent. God love the discrete charm of the bougieousie. Pardon me for not spelling the word correctly. Exiting the market we dropped by the Hollywood World News Stand to holler at Diz McNally the official Countess of the Cahuenga Corridor. I love me my Diz! who use to be known as the most fired waitress in Hollywood.
Later in the evening my oldest friend in the world Marlou de Luna who I have known since 3rd grage and her husband Hal Marinas took me to dinner at the little boite Reservoir which use to be Netty’s that sits across from Spaceland at Dreams. The food was great, but I wasn’t featuring the staff. They were trying to be nice, but I could tell they weren’t having us. Silverlake has really changed and restaurants like this are a sad reminder of that fact.
Monday morning one of my lovesexy dejecta/protecta Rock Hudson boy beauties---Robbie Acklen the juicy ginger with the beard and constant erection came by to visit me and cooked the lady a delicious vegan amulet omeleta. How sweet of him to drive all the way from the Claremont Colleges to spend time with the lady. I really adore my hot children of high art. Robbie gave me a lift to the subway so I could meet with my older sister Teresa Ray so we could deal with all the issues facing my oldest sister Gracie Lee who is dying of breast cancer, and my nephew who is now in the hospital because of two strokes. Things are just escalating for my poor relatives. My sister Teresa Ray is also a hoarder whose dingbat apartment in Hollywood is filled to the roof with so much junk that no one can even enter it.

HAPPINESS IN RICH PROTEINS
Went to din din at Tender Greens last night with two of my oldest girlfriends Glen Meadmore and Dora from Ventura. I go way back with these tall drink of water ladies. Dora has owned a punky store up in Ventura for the last 24 years, and travels the globe to exotic locations looking for giant cock-a-doodle-do. When I first met Miss Dora she was a shy undergrad at Loyola Marymount and looked like a boy straight out of an early 60s film like Bye Bye Birdie. She and Bouffant St. Marie ruled a clique of young queens and admirers in Ventura’s small gay community. Dora would frequent LA and became a part of The Amoeba Records & Filmworks kollective that was headed by Gomorrah Wednesday and Quasi O’Shea out of Hollywood. She had her own club on Hollywood Blvd called Sissy USA. It was a blast catching up with her misadventures that included a stop at the old Flex Sauna where she shared a shag with James Frankenstone of Club F*ck and Sinamatic fame. Dora knew who he was, but he didn’t recognize Dora in a her masculine persona. I go way back with Frankenstone, and remember when he was a simple but trendy suburban lad from Arcadia who was straight with a girlfriend,but the minute he took his first whiff of Hollywood underground nitelife he was transformed. Seems like his penis is also going through some major transformations of the pumped kind. I’m not one to gossip so you know you didn’t hear it from me. I wonder what ever became of James’s black lover who was going to law school that we all referred to as Huggy Bear? James also had at one point a humpy negro beau who was a professional ice skater with Icecapades. One time James modeled for me in a fashion show I did at the old Lhasa Club on Hudson and Santa Monica Blvd in Hollywood. He has always had a great physique but he was so stiff and uncomfortable on the catwalk-it was hilarious.
Met with Emi Fontana Tuesday of West of Rome. She took me to the Coffee Table for luncheon and we talked about her Pacific Standard project that’s in conjunction with the Getty next year at this time. Emi and I are born on the same day in the same year so its like we are twin sisters from different mothers. Her last West of Rome project featured Marnie Webber. So I guess I will be making a return engagement to Los Angeles sometime this year for research and development.
Wednesday Emi came over and we did more brainstorming for our project. It was really wonderful going over ideas and suggesting site specific locations that we might use for this piece. I am really interested in perhaps doing something at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library in the West Adams District or the former house of Mary Pickford on the private gated street Fremont Place between Olympic and Wilshire Blvd. This mansion was built in 1916 and in the 1970s Muhammed Ali lived there and I was invited to a reception given for top graduates from Los Angeles High School, which is my alma mata. The food was amazing and there was a chamber music quartet playing. I also think that the One Institute would be an interesting location as well, and using their archive like I did in Platinum Oasis would add to the gravita of the project.
Emi surprised me with a visit by artist Marnie Webber who I haven’t seen in many years. The last time I saw her was at a party of Tommy Gear’s for his ex lover Lyle Ashton Harris. Marnie is a big art star now. She gave me a copy of her catalogue Magasin. Emi gave me a copy of the book Insurgent Muse-Life and Art at the Woman’s Building by Terry Wolverton. The Woman’s building will feature heavily in the new piece I create for West of Rome. I’d also like to involve Phranc, The Jewish Lesbian Folk Singer who was one of the founding mack mamas of the Woman’s Building. The famous portrait that Cathie Opie took of me with the green hair was taken at the Woman’s Building. Later in the evening the massage therapist and performer Rage who lives in the duplex next door to Ron Athey’s heard my loud voice and came by to visit as Emi & I were brainstorming together. Rage is a hoot, and I’ve missed her.
Later Emi took me to dinner at Café Stella where there were lots of trendoids and celebutants like Eva Longoria with this dark haired man that the waitress told me was Penelope Cruz’s brother, also Hayden Christiansen the Canadian Star Wars star was looking chunky but funky with some funny looking but well dressed young woman, and a way too skinny and brittle looking Halle Berry with handsome French hotskin Olivier Martinez. There was some uncomfy scrambling when Halle’s ex Gabriel Aubry also showed up with a date.
Andre Balazs the boutique hotel god said hi to me as I was leaving. Mr. Balazs is quite a stud, and was with some stringy haired fugly blondine haired lady when he should have been asking me out on a date. The food at Café Stella’s is sumptuous. I ordered the lentil soup and Emi and I tore open our yummy pork chops and mash potatoes.
***
Received a lot of emugs from people who saw dejecta wanting a copy of the text read by Dr. Robert Summers. So here it is in all its glory:

Judy Garland Modalities and the Everlasting Lanconian Beauty of ‘Faghagotry’

It’s a well-known fact—it almost goes without saying—that Ms. Judy Garland was and still is (if only in a spectral form and force) the Grande Dame of the modern-day fag hag. Now, there were proto-fag hags: Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, the Virgin Mary, and the Non-Virgin Mary Magdalene, Marie Antoinette, which is to name only a few of the dozens of famous women in history. But, it must be noted that these aforementioned women were more “beards” (think females as ‘camouflage’ for gay men) than fag hags—proper. But, Ms. Garland, on the other hand, with a little help from narcotics, benzos and vodka, slowly re-configured and re-imagined the “beard”—which some people, nevertheless, still participate in today; however, it must be stated, at the beginning Ms. Garland also participated in the act of “breading;” for example, Vincente Minnelli and Mark Herron, who both were caught using a double headed dildo. And, at the sight of that, well, something transformed in Ms. Garland. The transformation of the beard to the fag hag was a slow process for Ms. Garland, as it would be for others. As another example of a beard, as it variously lives on, the woman Tom Cruise was or is married to, and artificialiality impregnating – if by ‘artificial’ we mean Collin Ferrall banging them raw – all the while Cruise was being barebacked by who knows how many hustlers – who couldn’t spell their own name even if you paid them more (or gave them a hit) – in Cruise’s Starwagon™. So, these women were breads (e.g., Mimi Rodgers, Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz, and Katie Holms), but they were also slowly being transformed—consciously or unconsciously—into a fag hag—as if touched by the specter of Ms. Garland, which you can always smell her presence from the aroma of Vicodine, benzos, and vodka—the ingredients of her new perfume that comes out in late November 2011, and exclusively at Barney’s.
Now to be honest, and I am not one to gossip and fabricate stories, but some women refused the role of the beard—and even the fag hag—to Mr. Cruise (e.g., Ms. Kidman), but it has been noted in numerous reputable texts that she can only have anal sex, as the National Enquirer has extensively researched; and her doctor told me over cocktails that “her anal cavity is a hole back to Australia.” He offered me a tour during her next visit. I said, “That is absolutely disgusting. Australia is hot, and I don’t eat shrimp.” Now on the other hand, Cruise’s other wives and girlfriends became fag hags.
To be more specific on the history of “faghagism,” and this will be on the midterm, in more ways than one, the fag’s (m)other—which is to say the hag—was transformed from an act and into a “being,” an identity category—which seems to have a relationship to the invention of homosexuality as an act transformed into an identity category in late 1700s, as the drug-using, barebacking, hustler-loving French historian / philosopher Michel Foucault has eloquently argued. On a similar point, more research must be done on the topic of the fag hag, using Ms. Garland’s inventions and transformations, as an identity category. Now, but going back to the beard, it needs to be clearly stated that the fag does have to come out of the closet—or the restroom stall or the bushes or People Magazine—in order to have the beard’s other become a fag so that the beard can become—but never cum—a hag of a fag.
Through my research, being a fag hag is a reciprocal relationship and highlights the polyvalence of power. I mean, all us fag hags—yes, I am a fag hag; nowhere does it state that one has to be a “woman” to be a fag hag; for historical figures look at Andy Warhol and Brigid Berlin (fag hags to each other) and before him Thomas Eakins and his younglins (meme chose). Truth be told, I am always taking care of my not-so-straight boys and the all-out gay ones too: all those early morning phone calls by the “straight” ones wondering it they are gay because they swallowed (who hasn’t), or the gay ones having me drive them back and forth to a Lesbian/Gay Center for a screening—they all have a punch card: “10th free with semen flavored lollipop”—all these boys’ hysterical and distraught need a (m)other (fuck the biologism of gender). Like any fag hag, I don’t really mind, but Jesus Christ of Nazareth, fuck me at least once, Ethan! Oh, Jesus Christ … we will get to that fag soon enough.
Moving forward on this train-wreck of a theory, a re-thinking of identity all us fag hags had to, at one point or another, give our fags, whether they admit it or not (like Zac Effron) all-out comfort, love, pills, and a lot of attention (as they leave at the bar to find, and we have to find our way back home). Oh yeah, “straight boys”—show me one—and I’ll show you a bottle of whisky—which, listen to me now, doesn’t necessarily guarantee you’ll get banged, but you will have your hands full. Oh “straight boys,” all of them only as straight as their erect cocks (otherwise known as a fag hag teasers). Yes, those endearing boys, what we have had to do, what we have done, what we continue to do is give them: courage to come out. And, I would call this one of the enactments, technologies of a “Garland Modality” or, a “Garland Faghagotry”—smell the pharmaceuticals and liquor? She is here, Judy?
Now, a “Garland Faghagotry” is based on certain procedures, technologies—for example, in Ms. Garland’s case—and even lovely daughter Liza’s case (indeed, like mother like daughter!)—to help and heal a “boyfriend” or “husband” “to come out, come out, wherever you are, and see the cock-sucker you really are,” which, in the case of Garland’s husbands she would sing into the bushes were hubby and gardener were—and, according to dear, lovely hubby, he was “just helping out.” (And, as we know the same wasn’t all that different from lovely Liza.) So, Ms. Garland dated and married gay men and loved her fans, which also all happened to be gay.
Now, what many do not know about Ms. Garland is that she was the top (in more ways than one) in her marriages. She had the best stap-ons in the world. And, YSL, her dear friend, made her the most precious strap-on that money and love could buy—and, by the way, Halson made Liza’s. It is not a well know fact that Demi Moore bought Ms. Garland’s strap-on at an auction at Sotheby’s for 3.5 million—Ashton Kutcher is thrilled, I’ve literally heard him screaming in utter jouissance. Backtracking, eventually every one of Ms. Garland’s husbands would “come out,” in one way or another, and, indeed, some didn’t—it would be redundant—and join the circle of fags that would surround her—and, no doubt the same will happen to Demi and Ashton and his fuck-buddy Ryan Seacrest (no secret there). To be sure, us fag hags are always helping our boys realize their full potential, as well as take their part in so-called “gay life and culture”—oh, so marvelous for them, no? I’m usually still finding my way back home from the bar my fag-friend left me at for a horse-hung stud, donning Diesel jeans, V-neck t-shirt, and some name brand tennis shoes. These latter boys are called fag-hag stealers.
Recently, I had tea with my good friend Liza at the Beverly Hills Hotel, we discussed her faghagetry that was inherited by her dear Mother, and which Liza fully accepts and promotes and her dearly departed friend, Andy Warhol’s, “hag-fagism”: which is kind-of like “faghagism” but without the weight problem. Anyway, Liza told me that Judy always topped her (gay) husbands, and she experienced more than one mudslide. So, I asked Liza how Ms. Garland handled this—I mean we all know she hated messes! And to my surprise I found out that Liza was a medium. So there, at the hotel, we contacted Ms. Garland: I asked her (via Liza) how she dealt with shit shooting out of her hubbies butts like a proverbial “Old Faithful.” She said in her crusty, vodka and Vicodine induced voice, “if you can’t feel your body, then you can’t feel the shit, or smell it either! In a sense I am always ‘over the rainbow’.” Yes, she was, she was.
Liza, whom I didn’t know was so gifted with contacting the spirit world, also helped me channel back in time, to the night of July 22, 1969, just weeks after her 47th birthday, and which may have been the catalyst for the gay riots at Stonewall Inn, which welcomed in the lesbian, gay, and trans movement. In this moment of channeling to the past, I saw Ms. Garland on the floor of her bedroom with a bottle of vodka in one hand and a ruby slipper in the other, which I think had some shit on the heel. She looked up, as if into the sky streaked by a rainbow, and she cried aloud, “Why hast thou forsaken me … I don’t know if I am gonna make it over the rainbow, but hopefully these pretty, little pills will get me over it.” Then her spirit slumped out of her body; she died. Yes, like Jesus Christ, but with a drug and alcohol problem (so like Jesus Christ), a gay husband, a baby fag hag daughter, and a ruby shoe with shit on it. The scene was like a beautifully tragic death scene painted by the sodomite Caravaggio—like so many images of his oil paintings of Jesus Christ suffering and dead. Like Jesus Christ the Superstar, Ms. Garland not only went out singing, but she died for all of our sins, and especially for all the fag hags, whose right is the Kingdom of Heaven—or at least Nieman Marcus—because we have given our lives to gay men who wont ever return the love; we have been there day and night for our fags—all those men who use and abuse us but whom we love, and will continue to love as long as there are narcotics, liquor, and, yes, chocolate. So there is an everlasting lanconian beauty of faghagotry, which I have only touched upon—but alas this is all the time I have today. See you next class.
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Theoni V. Aldredge the Greek born film costume designer died the other day. I loved her work in The Great Gatsby and Eyes of Laura Mars. She got her big break from actress Geraldine Page who was in Tennessee Williams film version of Sweet Bird of Youth with Paul Newman. Page persuaded director Elia Kazan to hire Aldredge. She was 78 years old.
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Today one of my Rock Hudson boy beauties from my MoCa piece dejecta came by and visited me in Silverlake. We had a wonderful time shooting the breeze at the flat I am staying at, and he took me for a drive in his cute convertible car. The weather was perfect so I decided to give the young man a Vaginal Davis style tour of Los Angeles and took him to some of my favourite haunts in the city which included Barnsdale Park, Melrose Hill, Harvard Heights and Koreatown. Since this 20 year old child is Greek from London attending USC he really enjoyed my take on the city. He told me something very disturbing about one of his tenured professors at USC named Walter Williams who teaches Cultural Anthropology and who he filed a sexual harassment complaint against that was ignored by University officials. When you have tenure in the fagademic world even if you kill a student you can't be fired.