LOHENGRIN

Rising Stars, Falling Stars-We Must Have Music has been breaking box office attendance records lately and the recent screening of the documentary Thelonius Monk-Straight No Chaser proves that Berlin has a whole lot of jazz fans. As not to compete with the dazzling piano playing of Mr. Monk Daniel Hendrickson the Jewish Muslim switched to the Ude in accompanying Ms. Davis as she read her zany text. The stars all came out as this summer evening shone brightly with quite an array of notables beginning with rock god Michael Stipe of REM who moved to Berlin with his hot French lover the art photog Thomas Dozol. In the Stipe entourage was luscious world class DJane extroidinaire Ms. Honey Dijon looking like a teenager without a bit of make-up on, Joel Gibb the Baby Diaper leader of the Canadian folk music collective The Hidden Cameras,Portland Oregon musical duo Daniel Hindman and Sarah Versprille,French tennis sensation Yannick Agnel and A-list Hollywood shtar Ryan Gosling in-cognito. Also seen: Film historians Marc Siegel and Christian Weber with his lovesexy psychoanalyst pal Jan Lindmeyer who is my neighbour in the Rote Insel kiez and their 18 year nubile friend Hans, Arsenal Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus was in animated discussion during the after screening wine reception with gorgeous Bolivian/German theorist Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz, Nanna Heidenreich, Nico Siepen of bbooks who also teaches art in Norway,feminist artist Roswitha Baumeister from the legendary West Berlin PELZE collective of the 1980s with niece, filmscholar Britta Hartmann and filmmaker Christian Petzold. Looking amazing as usual was Trixie Schoenherr aka: Beatrice Cordua with Dr. Tonja van Helden, tech artist Zach Blas and his adoreable beau Andrew Hibbard, young Greek active artist Yorgos Sourmelis the Ottoman Byzantine and a bevy of German actors who must be Monk fans-Pit Bukowski, Juergen Vogel who is a juicy tiny muscular pud with large gaps between his teeth which I adore, Florian David Fitz who looks very dull and patrician like an Evangelische politician,big peniled blondine David Kross, Jochen Schrupp and Marco Kruezpainter.

The other evening was invited to the famous east side table of Susanne Sachsse where she cooked a scrumpdelicious meal of Capricious Beef on carmelized red carrots with a Charles Aznavour toss that consisted of roasted almonds, zucchini and habibi olive oil in honor of Judy Chelsea Manning LaBruce who was in town editing his film version of Pierrot Lunaire before trotting off to the Venice Film Festival with his other movie the granny bopper tale Geritolphelia. A hilarious time was had by all with plenty of hooting and hollering until the wee hours. Earlier I had gone to see Dr. Minx with Marc Siegel. I have high blood pressure still and Dr. Minx told me to eliminate all breads, salt and cheese from my diet and start a rigorous exercise campaign. So if anyone in Berlin who plays tennis wants a sparring partner contact the doll via Glee Brevard my assistant on my web site. After our doctor visit Professor Siegel took me to luncheon at this new Asian fusion place in Kreuzberg called Com A that had the cutest Vietnamese girls on staff and one very lovely gaysian boy.

BRILLIANT CORNERS

Rising Stars Falling Stars - with Vaginal Davis & Thelonious Monk - August 2013 by Filmanzeiger on Mixcloud

THE ROAD OF MUSCLE

Had a wonderful time being interviewed byManuel Schubert of FilmHighlights Magazine at the Cheese Endique Trifecta which I decided to rename Brilliant Corners in honor of Thelonius Monk and the film Thelonius Monk:Straight No Chaser that I will screen as part of Rising Stars, Falling Stars-We Must Have Music Sunday Aug 25th 8pm at Kino 2 at Arsenal Inst fur film und Video Kunst. Later Manuel and I went to see the preposterous sci-fi blockbuster Elysium which is the ultimate white flight film with Jodie Foster looking stiff and uncomfortable. She was such a great actress as a child and teenager. What happened? Matt Damon her co-star was serving hunkyness mixed with middle age realness at the same time. Poor Alica Braga and long on the tooth Diego Luna didn’t have much to do in supporting roles. The other day my guilty pleasure movie was The Bling Ring at this cute neighbourhood theatre on he Haupt Strasse called Odeon. This flicker directed by Sofia Coppolla featured already dated teen slang and style but I adored Emma Watson who does a ripe Valley Girl imitation. Not bad for a Brit. The only other actor to do it this well is Tracy Ullman. My new obsession is the chubby male ingénue Israel Broussard who has the most heavenly pillow lips and should have twerked in one scene with him cutting up on the computer. Glad to see in the credits that myold pal Roz Music was the make-up designer. Roz and I go way back b4 the flood. She is Hollywood royalty. Her father played Carleton the doorman on TV’s Rhoda back in the 1970s and they live in a swanky villa near Larchmont Village. With Daniel Hendrickson the Jewish Muslim I went to the Anti-Racism Festival in the Hallesches Tor Park near the American Biblioteka. Cute event that was organized by Senol Senturk, the lovesexy production,stage art and set designer. Saw a book presentation for Wer MACHT Demo_kratie? Kritische Beitraege zu Migration und Machtverhaeltnissen by young upcoming academe and theorist Zuelfukar Cetin. On one of the panels was a youngish olde school Turkish leftist who looked like a dull Evangelische tax accountant or bookkeeper. The other evening was invited to dinner at Defne’ the upscale Turkish boite on the Canal in Kreuzberg by visiting scholar and artist Zach Blas and his cute young beau. A nice time was had by all that included Zach’s vivacious art partner Mischa and her pal Natalie who is my new neighbour. Mischa and Natalie use to work with Ricardo Dominguez of Electronic Distrubance Theatre. My former LA Weekly colleague Joshuah Bearman who is a beady eyed nerd with a pinchant for wearing Jesus style leather sandles I just found out is part of some organization that sells magazine articles to be optioned for film treatments. Joshuah wrote an article that later became the Oscar winning film Argo. See what I mean. Never trust a nerd. Joshuah and I had a longstanding flirtation when we worked with each other at the LA Weekly. Of course he never had the gumption to make a move on me and my hot tranny messyness.

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MENSCHEN AM SONNTAG

Got a bunch of emugs about my memory post about the male model John “Connie” Francis. A lot of folks wanted to know what other male models have I had a connection to. That got me thinking down memory mammary lane and I realized that I had quite a male and female model history stemming from my brief time modelling for Zoli’s Models in NewYork in the early 1980s and just having been alive on this insel Earth for soooo many centuries. The first male model that I swooned over was Jeff Aquilon who was also a water polo player at Pepperdine University where I won a scholarship to that religious university in Malibu after high school. Like everyone in those days Jeff saw me as just a little innocent teenage girl and I didn’t exactly exude any sexual allure or menace and in the late 1970s you had to give off that quality to bag a stud beauty prize like Jeff, but I was just happy to be in his orbit for a blazing minute even if he didn’t desire me. I did a photo shoot with Tom Hintnaus who was the first Calvin Klein underwear model and let me tell you - having his muscular naked Brazilian body draped over me for hours was utter joy. I actually stole a pair of his used underwear that had a skid mark. Shows you that I was perverted even in my youth. I also partied down over the years with such modelling hunkasaurauses as Tim Easton, Mark Vanderloo, Mark Norlun, “Moose” Khan, Hoyt Richards, Hart Bochner who later became an actor appearing as a Fratboy in Breaking Away with mypal Dennis Christopher and Dennis Quaid who was humpy when he was young but had bad skin. Hart also was in George Cukor’s last film Rich and Famous starring Candice Bergen and Jacqueline Bisset. Hart Bochner had the most intoxicating body odor. He didn’t like to wear deodorant so he smelled kind of funky with a musty aftertaste. Lecher smecher! I also had little forays with Nick Kamen, who I met through the Flip of Hollywood Store on Melrose, Nick Scotti, Nick Constantino, Joel West, Brian Buzzini, David Fumero who went on to success on the Daytime drama One Life to Live, Nacho Figueras, Alex Lundquist and Travis Fimmel. The new breed of models I have had bumpings with are: Marlon Texeira, Chad White and Antonio Navas. O and my alltime fav model pas has been Tony Ward who I co-starred with in Judy LaBruce’s Hustler White back in 1996. I first met Tony in mid 1980s through photographer and stylist Beulah Love for a photo shoot with Albert Sanchez that recreated the paintings of Paul Cadmus. I still have the tear sheet from that photographic outing. Tony Ward was a darling boy, super muscular at that time. He had to slim it down for fashion purposes later in his career working with Matthew Rolston and Herb Ritts who of course fell madly in love with him and ripped him off. Tony was best friends with my former neighbour and University buddy Billy Hoye a sweetheart of a man who was also a former model but now works behind the scenes on films and is from a wealthy Hancock Park family.

One of my all time favourite actresses died from complications of Cancer the great Karen Black. She was born the same year 1939 as my oldest sister Gracie Lee who died two years ago of cancer. I got to meet Ms Black when we performed on the same bill for a Lou Reed Halloween salute to Edgar Allan Poe at UCLA’s Royce Hall back in the late 1990s that also featured a young Antony Hegerty when he was still Lou Reed’s protégé, Kembra Pfhaler of the Voluptuous Horrorof Karen Black and Ron Athey were also on the bill. Karen Black did a dramatic resissitation of Fall of the House of Usher that was one of the most spectacular performances I have ever seen. To say she embodied her role didn’t do justice. She became a banshee on stage howling and screaming blood curdlingly in fits and torrents like she was being exorcised while having an epileptic fit. She also introduced Kembra and her band VHofKB at one of their gigs in Venice, California at a loft/warehouse space off the boardwalk a few years earlier and seemed to be quite a good sport and looked always incredibly young and vital. Besides her portrayal in the TV film Trilogyof Terror 1975 which inspired Kembra to name her band after Karen Black. Karen Black was phenomenal in the film The Great Gatsby 1974 directed by Jack Clayton, Alfred Hitchcock’s last film Family Plot, Airport 75, The Pyx 1974 where she plays a call girl involved with devil worshippers, Cisco Kid 1972 set in Venice Beach with a young Kris Kristopherson and the looney 1974 film of Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinocerous with Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel. She should have won an Academy Award for Nashville 1975 where she wrote and sings her own songs and Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean 1983. Another underrated fav is Can She Bake a Cherry Pie 1983 Henry Jaglom. We both had small roles in Tales of the City 1995. Another actress I adore who died at age 80 was Eileen Brennan who made a bunch of films for Peter Bogdanovich in the 1970s like At Long Last Love, The Last Picture Show and Daisy Miller where she plays a hypocritical expat socialite in Rome. Daisy Miller is quite good and Cybil Shepard gave an underrated performance in that film which features the fine work of Mildrid Natwick, Cloris Leachman and Barry Brown who later committed suicide by hanging himself in Silverlake at his lover’s restaurant The Frog Pond on Hyperion Blvd in 1978. Eileen Brennan also was in the original cast of Hello Dolly on Broadway in 1964.

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Our trustworthy young heroine Vlautin has not been short on bobby carnalvale encounters. The other evening she had to flee the overzealous embrace of a kinky couple from Spandau only to majestically bump into a hard bodied Pole with an unfortunate face of butter, followed by a hesitant blondine boy with a bottle rocket and a German 6foot 9 inch giant with sad eyes hungry for stink. In the valley where the evening sun goes down Miss Vlautin shamelessly donned nothing but a thong and cha-cha heels to sow some wild roasted oats in the balmy Laure’. She was immediately tackled by James CoCo and Nestor Almendros dopplegangers who like newborn babes attached themselves to her mighty bosom and wouldn’t let go no matter how much she protested. It was alright because soon Vlautin was enamored by Prince Harming in the form of a dainty Satanist skinhead. Everything was proceeding with romantic bliss until they were interrupted by a handicapped man in an elaborately decorated motorized wheelchair. Miss Vlautin and the Prince had to salute this man for his dedication to the Evangelische cruising work ethic. Bravo hero!

GAZUNK UND GAZINK

I hate going to the KW in speissig Mitte. For some reason I always have trouble finding this museum and the general ickyness of the area doesn’t help matters, but I had to support my Arsenal Inst fur film und Video Kunst and Forum Expanded colleague Uli Ziemons who is also known as the most handsomest young man in all Europa. He curated a special one nite program called NATURE ALL OVER THE DAMN PLACE George Kuchar's Video Diaries. The program included these delicious titles 500 MILLIBARS TO ECSTASY (1989), BIG ONES HURT (1992), ROCKY INTERLUDE (1990), GASTRONOMIC GETAWAY (1991) and OASIS OF THE PHARAOHS (1997).
For those of you not familiar with Gorgeous George Kuchar here is a little bio info: George Kuchar, one of the most prolific exponents of the American Underground Cinema, produced an œuvre of more than 250 videos from 1985 until his untimely death in 2011. Kuchar became known alongside his brother Mike as the Avant-garde class clown and pioneer of Camp Cinema in the 60's, shooting shrill 8mm adaptations of Hollywood B-movies with his schoolmates in his parent's apartment. In the 80's he started working in video and began a series of diary videos documenting his life in San Francisco, artist and filmmaker friends, his pets, family gatherings and, above all, his travels and vacations. Especially his annual trips to Oklahoma and the WEATHER DIARIES, which he produced there, earned him a faithful audience. These diaries, which were exhibited as part of the Berlin Biennial in 2010, deal with Kuchar's fascination for violent weather and try to hotwire the turbulent phenomena in the sky with the physical and psychological tribulations of their protagonist.

Taking 500 MILLIBARS TO ECSTASY, an addendum to the WEATHER DIARY series, as its starting point, this program of lesser known titles shows examples of Kuchar's engagement with the American nature and landscape as well as with the home movie format. Again, the interrelation between the sublime beauty of nature and the banalities of everyday life are examined. By virtue of Kuchar's Hollywood-infested gaze, his holiday and family videos become humorous disaster movies of epic proportions. Earthquakes, eating disorders, electrical mice, Egyptian gods, mummies, the majestic vistas of the Rocky Mountains, dead snakes, and phallic tornadoes are the stuff these low-budget dreams are made of.
The VIPs in attendance at the event: Ellen Blumenstein (head curator KW), Adela Yawitz (also KW), Anja Lückenkemper (curator, formerly of KW, 16mm filmmaker couple Juan David Gonzales Monroy and Anja Dornieden, Tobi Ashraf, Todd Sekuler, Katharina Fichtner of the Canadian Embassy, Manuel Schubert of FilmHighlights, Daniel Hendrickson, little Alex from Macedonia, Ruben Donsbach of Fräulein magazine and his girlfriend filmmaker Laura Laabs, Florian Zeyfang, Mia Sellmann, Angela Melitopoulos,DJane Olga Damnitz with Angie Anderson, documentary filmmaker Henrieke Meyer, and my brilliant Chicago Art Institute student Natalia just in from Paris.
Uli is off to Locarno Film Festival and then holiday in Greece. I’ve been mesmerized by the Arsenal’s summer salute to Japanese filmmaker Seijun Suzuki. Saw his 1967 classic Branded to Kill starring Jo Shishido with the surgically enhanced Mitzi Gaynor apple chipmunk cheeks as a perverse contract killer vying for the number one spot. Mr. Shishido can look equally handsome and revolting in his Saville Row suits. His muscular body got the full leer treatment in Gate of Flesh 1964 where he is nursed back to health by a girl gang of tough street walkers. Suzuki’s 1960s Cinemascope features are my favorites with such titles as Comfort Women, Detective Bureau 23-Go To Hell Bastards, Tokyo Drifter and Youth of Beast. His surreal 1980s films are spellbinding but a little hard to sit through at times.

Was on my bike and glanced at what must be the most hideous creature in the world. This thing was wearing a pastel colored leather jacket with matching leather speedo. He was shirtless with an orange ruffy tan and melting skin, bleach blonde hair in a faux hawk /mullet hairstyle. To top this off he had on brown boots with a Cuban heel, and a rainbow colored fannypack and visor cap. The poor thing was working every ill look in the book simultaneously plus a trendy thick beard that was braided in sections like a Radical Fairy.

DIE UNFASSBAREN

Was digging through a pile of stuff in my flat and came across an old model card for John Francis, the former 90s Hugo Boss Model who I met through the late fashion maven and New York style guru George “Mommy” Byron. John Francis was an exquisite hunk of manhood and was given the nickname in the modelling world of “Connie Francis”. He was a very sweet, beyond gorgeous creature who when I was doing performances in Manhattan in the early 90s I would hang out with and once got to have a fun make-out session with. His body was rock hard- pecs, gluts, stomach,peni--- even his tongue was asphalt hard, and he adored over the top femininity.   We drifted apart when he caught me making out with John-John Kennedy Jr. one night at the famout nitespot Jackie 60. I’ll never forget him on the cover of Arena Magazine as a butt naked Adonis. I wonder what happened to him? He’s probably married, fat and living somewhere in Ohio.
 During the recent Berlin heat wave where the temp topped 100 Fahrenheit I saw a mega hot young black boy with a medium sized ‘fro but with several dreaded tendrils hanging out from the back of his head. He had a perfect surfer/skater boy body and was topless with broad shoulders, mega rack, tiny waiste, bubble butt-the works wearing board shorts. He was with a similarly attired scruffy white kid who also had a regular hair cut short with several dreaded tendrils. Later the same day I saw a group of clearisil looking teens and the handsomest in the group had short curly hair with dreaded tendrils. This is such a Berlin look that I usually see on local jugglers, acrobats and drum circle afficiados. Only in Berlin Kiddos Only in Berlin. Also during the heat wave I popped into the Arsenal to see the last of the Real Eighties-Neo Noir series with a screening of Ridley Scott’s Someone To Watch Over Me 1987 starring studly Tom Berenger and his pillow lipped perfection. Tom didn’t disappoint as there were a few quick glimpses of his muscled frame. If you can find a copy of Looking For Mr. GoodBar 1977 where he plays a gay panic hustler or In Praise of Older Women 1978 you get to see a lot more of him and its worth it let me tell you. Someone to Watch Over Me was very suspencefull and featured the ex Mrs. Tom Cruise Mimi Rogers before she got into a lesbian catfight with Kelly McGillis, Jodie Foster and Whitney Huston. The surprise of the film is seeing a young Lorraine Bracco looking like Brittany Murphy before she died.

I forgot to write about a screening of the Hollywood monster movie Pacific Rim I attended weeks ago. The film was forgettable but the the title appropriate in that I kept thinking that the film’s male leads the Jubas Jubilee British black actor Idris Elba and younger white Brit Charlie Hunnam would engage in some serious salt n pepper rimming and joyous 69ing at any moment during their scenes together. Mr. Hunnam’s body has been sculpted by so many steroids and human growth hormones that at times I felt he was going to burst. I remember how adoreable he was as a jungen in the original Queer is Folk series from Channel 4. Seeing him thudded into goeyness with the Anima eyed Rinko Kikuchi was disheartening, but I can only blame Mexican bougie director Guillermo Del Toro who is the resident troll under the bridge.

Had to see the Filmmaker’s Choice-Self Portraits series at the Arsenal to catch a peek at the brave and uncompromising Baby I Will Make You Sweat 1994 by Birgit Hein. I had heard about this very famous film and was delighted to finally be able to see it. It’s a tone poem and simply beautiful though several strands of the diaristic entries got lost in the pixelating glitches of this DVD copy. Digital is very unreliable as a medium. It was a marvel to see Frau Hein getting her Stella groove back in sex holidaize Jamaica, and all I could say was squirrel you climb that tree and get your proverbial gnut girl! And she got it in spades (pardon the pun)from two braided black gentlemen, muscles gleaming and bodies glistened by the Carribean sun. I was a bit shocked to see that her lotharios looked like negro dreadlocked versions of her ex husband Wilhelm Hein.