glamrocktiger

I am starting a new, casual dining group to meet once or twice a month at a restaurant of the group's choice for breakfast, brunch, lunch or dinner. The objective is merely to meet some new people, eat some good food (which I can then recommend to customers at the hotel I work for), and have some stimulating conversation. I've started a Google Groups page for the club. If you're in the Bay Area and may want to join us, let me know! It's a public group, anyone can join.

My food tastes are diverse. I can enjoy everything from a dive-bar to an ultra ritzy place with sommeliers, lengthy wine lists and cloth napkins. I can honestly I've never met a cuisine I didn't like at least a little.

Good Taste will have our first session at Le Central, San Francisco's first French bistro, founded in 1974. Former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown is known to be a big fan and to dine there regularly. Their roast chicken w/ pommes frites is supposed to be To Die For. Check them out here.

Well, I went out and did exactly what I needed to do: enjoyed my day off. And it was lovely out, really just perfectly balanced between sunny and cool, high of 69 or so. I took the bus (first time I’ve been on one – until now BART has taken care of me completely) to Piedmont for a matinee of “Bright Star.” Two luxurious hours of beautiful Ben on the big screen: a real treat. He is a hottie, all right, and that alone was enough to sustain my interest through what otherwise might have been a bit dull. It’s hard to recite ultra-romantic onscreen poetry to a modern audience and keep it from being overly precious. And I can only take a movie this romantic once in a while. I’d have to say, though, it was Abbie Cornish as Fannie Brawn who turned in the most spectacular performance, and I won’t be surprised if she gets an Oscar nom, except because she and the film are British. The film was quite lovely, suffused with golden lighting and poetic images like a curtain billowing out on a gust of air, and with that luminous feeling of reaching for and occasionally touching the most transcendental and moving feelings that human beings are capable of feeling – something I get only from rare art of the highest quality, such as the writing of Virginia Woolf (the end of “The Waves” or “Jacob’s Room”) or the music of the Cocteau Twins (the album Blue Bell Knoll). It’s encouraging in this era of excess and reality-show shock value and gore and splatter and hardcore internet porn and televised tragedy and overkill in every way to see that people still make films like Bright Star (and Paranormal Activity, although I haven’t seen it yet) that dare to err on the side of restraint and slay you with an artful whisper rather than an impossible-to-ignore scream. The movie is pretty sexy without any indication that Brawn and Keats even ever did more than tenderly kiss.

In regards to the human race, my attitude is and always has been – since early Minnesota days, anyhow – that of an outsider. I alternate between, on the one hand, exasperation, mystification and disgust – especially with the guests at work who show no understanding or awareness or empathy and have such a grotesquely inflated sense of entitlement and don’t understand why they can’t check in until their room is clean, etc etc – and, on the other, moments of real admiration for the intricate, elaborate society we’ve built, for the simple kindness of bus drivers that makes my day, and for all the ways, verbal and otherwise, in which we interact and take care of our animal needs like eating (this occurred to me before the film this morning as I ate a gyro in a crowded little deli on Piedmont, and immediately after finishing surrendered my table to two women who’d been standing nearby waiting for an opening). At these times I feel actual affection and compassion for my fellow human beings. People here are mostly nice, really nice, nicer than Portland, where people are supposed to be nice, but, in my experience anyway, were more cool and aloof and too hip for their own good, a lot of the time (although there were certainly exceptions). At these times I feel a part of the human race, and take pleasure in that feeling; but at other times I am appalled by our flaws and failures and antisocial behaviors, and at those times I feel, and have felt for as long as I can remember, that I am an alien, looking at an alien species and not liking what I see: ET yearning for my spaceship to take me back Home At Last.

So, after the film, back out in the bright sunlight, I walked down Linda Ave (aptly named – “linda” meaning pretty in Spanish) between Piedmont and Grant, a section of the East Bay that reminded me of the residential, landscaped area of Portland that starts on East Burnside at around 30th Ave, from Laurelhurst Park northward. (MY neighborhood, Fruitvale, is more like N. Mississippi BEFORE the all the white kids moved there.) Piedmont is its own town, apparently, since I saw a sign saying “Welcome to Oakland” as I walked down Grant. I walked to Lakeshore Ave and around Lake Merritt which was very lovely (took photo above). Just being surrounded by people who are active and moving and exercising in the sunlight is good for body, mind, and soul. I saw Asian, Latino, black and white people co-existing peaceably; some in flocks and family groups, some on bikes, some solo like me. This is definitely the most culturally diverse metropolis I’ve lived in so far; Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis etc are all pretty white. I went to the Oakland branch of Out of the Closet (still had a GRAND OPENING banner up) and found a warm wool coat to replace the one I left on Maui; got it for only $7! They give you hot pink plastic bags there. Then walked to Lake Merritt BART and now home, to watch Miss Marple (starring that old English bulldog with the train-stopping face, Margaret Rutherford, and based on Agatha Christie mysteries) which Jon loaned me. He is so impressed that a young guy like me has a sense of cinematic history and knows names and films from the golden era. He is from Port Arthur TX and his older brother went to school with Janis Joplin back in the day! Janis painted a portrait of him way back when, but he lost it or got rid of it many years ago. What a shame! Imagine what it would probably be worth, too!

Just saw "Cat Ladies.", part of the SF Doc Fest, at the Roxie Theater in the Mission. It was quite good, although more opinions could've been brought in from psychologists, animal shelter workers, if the filmmakers (who were on hand for a Q&A) wanted to expand it. It did a good job of showing the spectrum of obsessive behavior.

I heard the guys sitting behind me describe the film as "hilariously depressing," which pretty much nails it. I didn't so much laugh at these people though as feel empathy for them, probably because they so obviously carried so much pain - and empathy for other creatures - themselves.

Two women were obviously using their cats to fill a void caused by lack of friends/lovers/family in their lives, yet were functional, and had only 3-8 cats each. But the other two each had over 100 CATS APIECE and were living in squalid conditions not good either for them or for their felines.

I understand the bewitching quality of cats, for sure. Back in PDX I wrote poetry and stories about my Siamese, started a MySpace page for her, adored her as much or more than most human beings. BUT I'M NOT CRAZY!!

One of these "overboard" women showed remorse and wanted to change, while the other was defiant and seemed the most clearly "crazy" of the cat ladies; she had a sort of crusading, martyr mentality that I usually associate with religious insanity. (Not that ALL religious people are insane...most are just slightly delusional!)

RECESSION


So many people going so many places
So many people with purposeful faces
If I just had a job, I'd be one too
Instead of lying here dreaming and inhaling glue

SETTLING UP

And it was raining vigorously as it always used to in Puddletown
as if my former home were humansick for me
(vestigial trace of the subjunctive mood)

No doubt the bleary-eyed beggar who entreated me for a dollar
(not forthcoming) thought me a niggardly prince
as I strode briskly by in my smart suit and dress shoes
little reckoning the desiccation of my recent drought
that only now, at last, approaches its lavish reprieve

Little did he know my shoes were held together with electric tape,
my slacks a lucky thriftstore score,
my blazer a hard-won gift,
my last pair of contact lenses scratching my eyes
like plastic eggshell shards

I asked a man at the supermarket for the time
"I’ve got 4:05,” he said in a tone of conjecture,
as if that was just his watch’s opinion

My errand was replenishing stolen wine
but I couldn’t find the exact bottle I was looking for
and had to settle for a better one



-Tony K. LeTigre, 10/13/09
 

..in the NEAR future, and has room to bring some or all of my boxes of stuff (about 8 produce boxes' worth) to me in Oakland or S.F., let me know! I need to get it down here soon since the friend who is storing it for me is moving into a house with less storage soon. I could conceivably give you some $$ as a transportation fee.

gracias

TONY

Well, more a limerick than a poem, really...I wrote it in my head this morning while laying in bed half asleep still...

UNEMPLOYMENT

So many cars going so many places
So many people with purposeful faces
If I just had a job, I'd be one, too!
Instead of lying here dreaming and inhaling glue

If anyone in the Bay Area (Oakland, S.F., whatever) would be willing to let me stay with them for a short time while I look for a job and room there, please message me privately. Maui has been nice, but all signs point to "time to move on."... I have a plane ticket to S.F. but very little money so I can't get an apartment immediately or anything, hence the plea...xo, tony

Walking in to town just now, it was raining and I was getting soaked, which sucked, ‘cause I was carrying my laptop in its bag, and had a job application in my backpack which I knew would be destroyed. Then a big native islander guy named Art (Arthur) picked me up in his truck, just when the rain was coming down hardest, and drove me to Mama’s Fish House. On the way he told me how he likes to go to Little Beach (the naked beach) with a metal detector on Monday mornings ‘cause all the people who were there for the Sunday night festivities (dancing, fire ring, drum circle, etc) leave all sorts of stuff that he finds, like watches, bunches of change. Once two girls had lost the keys to their rental car and were devastated and he asked “what part of the beach were you on” and they showed him and he found their keys with his metal detector and they were overjoyed and offered him anything – money, sex – and he said “How about a smile.” Seemed like a really nice guy, I got that feeling from him (and other native islanders I’ve met here) that I normally associate with Native Americans, of their spiritual earth magic connection, some of them are positively angelic, although they can also be demonic if crossed. As long as you don’t do anything underhanded or malicious, though, you have nothing to worry about. Anyway, I think every time I’ve been picked up hitch-hiking (or just walking) here it’s been by a native person, never by old mistrustful whitey. There’s an odd dichotomy here. You hear about the resentment the natives have for us usurpers (understandably, when you read about what the missionaries did), you see signs reading “Reinstated Hawaiian Government” which means the natives want to take their land back and secede from the U.S. (fine with me...can you do it while I’m on Maui?), and yet I’ve yet to have an interaction even approaching negative with any native person; they’re the ones who give me free rides and answers questions from strangers in a friendly manner and go out of their way to be nice to me, a tall, bottle-blond (bleached my hair a week or two ago...it looks really cute) white boy. What gives? I guess maybe it’s obvious that I’m not “overly privileged” if I’m walking three miles each way every time I leave the house...

M. is coming to visit...she called to confirm this morning that she’d bought her ticket! She’ll be arriving in a couple weeks, staying a week, probably at the hostel right in town, which will be great. I’m really looking forward to seeing a friend, and a good and old one too. It’s been lonely friend-wise since I’ve been here, beautiful as it is in other ways. I only wish she was staying longer than a week, and that I’d been able to put her up without having to stay in a hostel, but it didn’t work that way, for reasons I shan’t go into right now.

Because I’m on my way to an interview for a server job at the coolest restaurant in town right now. The one that Willie Nelson frequents. (I hear he appeared in a commercial for it, playing a waiter!) It would be a godsend to get this job, I’d go from flat-broke to practically rich in a matter of days. I’ve also applied for seasonal work in Sequoia, King’s Canyon, Yosemite, Evergreen Lodge and other places in California. I may do that before I make it to San Francisco. Things are very up in the air right now, but when are they not?

http://www.tonyletigre.com/2009/06/what-im-reading-right-now.html

Suggestions if you have them: my cousin and I are writing his memoir/autobio. It is very scandalous, quite gay (as in homosexual), immensely amusing, tragicomic, sort of rags to riches (as in, from a Midwest trailer court to Hawaiian luxury), lots of celebrity anecdotes, etc. We're starting to think about publishing. My cousin thinks we should look at gay publishers but I think maybe Print-on-Demand outlets are the way to go these days. Comment or message me if you have any ideas, thanks, love glam aka tony

My editor, Ariel Gore, tells me Just Out has a nice little write-up on the book "Portland Queer," which I contributed to, and which has now been released. If you're in Portland, attend the readings! (Wish I could.) Go here for info, or to order your copy!

Now, Just Out, please take this in the loving spirit in which it's intended...and I know you know this already...but you really need to get a better website and get away from the PDF file versions of the paper. That shit is laborious and antiquated.

kiss meow

glam

I want to pitch an in-depth article (anywhere from 1000 to 5000 words) comparing/contrasting the different versions of "Brideshead Revisited" - novel, miniseries and film - and need ideas of a venue for such a piece.

Something literary, highbrow, intellectual enough. It'll have a gay slant to it, so gay publications seem an obvious choice, but magazines (I'm thinking Out) are usually fluff pieces; they don't go in depth and they aren't overly literary. It's more about clothes, cocktails and other ephemera. Or politics. Book reviews are usually blurbs. I'm part of a dying breed, I suppose....the literary intellectual.

It could be a film magazine.
A literary magazine.
A British publication of some kind.
Just a high-end publication in general that publishes essays, such as The New Yorker. (And I'll send it to them, but they'll send a form rejection letter if they reply at all. I mean, they're THE NEW YORKER, and I'm just...me.)
Does McSweeney's publish this sort of thing? I forget.

Thanks for any ideas you may have

xo

glam aka tony

Last night, after a tasty dinner of corned beef, asparagus and mashed potatoes (You can take the boy out of the Midwest, but you can't take...) we watched a movie I'd just got from Netflix, "Three Dancing Slaves" ("Le Clan" en Francais directed by Gaël Morel, who also made "Wild Reeds"). It falls in the apparently burgeoning subgenre of Intensely Homoerotic French Indie Films. (Damn, I was hoping that would make a nice acronym.) It was a strange, sexy film, about three HOT brothers whose mother dies while they still live at home (although two of them look like they're in their late 20s at least) with their workaholic, distant father. The entire cast is made up of beautiful young men, in fact I swear there wasn't a single female in the entire movie. If that wasn't enough, they worked in a meat-packing plant (!) J. (who speaks from experience) said, "I didn't think there were that many attractive bodies in all of France." The film was very homoerotically charged and at the same time very much about the bond between brothers, which gave it a borderline incestuous quality that was very provocative and un-American (but maybe that's not fair...there are American directors who push the limits of taboo that way too, like Todd Solondz). It reminded me of discussions in a class I took at PSU a year or two ago, "Same-Sex Desire in Renaissance England," in which we discussed an article by Eve Sedgwick on how there is a schizophrenic break in the continuum of homosocial desire with men in American culture, but not so much with women. (Basically means that women are allowed to hold hands and be more affectionate with one another than men; male-bonding is not allowed to have overt erotic elements in our culture.) As with so many French movies I've seen, there were weird moments I still don't understand (what was up in the scene where a couple thugs forced the bald brother to throw his dog over the cliff and kill it?) In the film's last 20 minutes it broke out into full-fledged homoeroticism with an EXTREMELY hot (albeit brief) sex scene between the youngest brother Olivier (Olive) and his sexy man-friend, which included the line "Rape me, but don't hurt me."

A line like that could get you out of a speeding ticket, I'm guessing.

And that line was followed by, "Do you want me to shave your ass?"

Heh heh. Talk about rhetorical questions.

xo

glam aka tony

So, for quite a while now I've been double-posting blogs both here and on my home site, which has become tiresome. So I came up with a nice idea. From now on this will be my JOURNAL, as one would expect, being a record of all the events in my colorful life and my irreverent stream of commentary upon them, while my home blog (www.tonyletigre.com) will be all the fun little tidbits of celebrity gossip, pop culture, politics, academics, art psychobabble and other assorted glossalalia. Kapeesh? So, go here (now!) to read recent items such as

1. Lindsay Lohan buying pearls from my roommate yesterday

2. Website link for the new book "Portland Queer" that is about to be released that I contributed to

3. A hilarious parody of "Sex and the City" featuring the late Bea Arthur

etc etc ad infinitum

xo

glam aka tony

contra mundum

J. said “Maui isn’t a good place for night owls.” I’m getting up at 8 a.m. every day now. It’s 8 a.m. right now and this is my second day in a row. For the first 2-3 weeks I was here it seemed like I always woke up naturally at 10 a.m., but I’m adaptable, and adapting. Yesterday J. and Katia gave me an ovation when I actually emerged from the bedroom at the stroke of 8 after saying I would all week and failing. We had french toast and espresso for breakfast, then I did four hours of landscaping in the brutal sun (the high was only 81 but it felt closer to 100) in the back yard, cutting weeds where Cousin is going to install a pond. Today we’re going to the beach! Then tomorrow I go to Hana for the first time. We’re going to do some work there, and spend the night, then Tuesday I have to go in to Kahului to interview at the new Taco del Mar (don’t laugh...I need an easy, part-time job while I’m here). I watched the new Grey Gardens movie with Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange on HBO last night, and it was really quite good. Melanie called to talk about it. It adds the dimension that was lacking from the original documentary: how they got to be that way, and what they were like before. It also explained why Little Edie was bald (stress made her hair fall out, apparently), showed Jackie O. coming to visit and helping clean up the appalling decrepitude into which the house had fallen, and even showed what happened after the documentary was completed, with Little Edie attending the premiere in Paris. Drew did an amazing job of talking in the same voice and accent as Little Edie – I wondered if she was lip-synching at times, it was so amazing – and Jessica Lange looked so much like Big Edie it was uncanny. It really is a pretty moving story, to see all they had and how totally they lost it, and how one different decision, like if Edie had married that Getty guy, would’ve made things turn out so different, and then the force of the mother-daughter bond, and the powerful fantasy life they both must have had projecting like a movie in their imaginations in order to be able to live in that squalor and tolerate the sadness and desolation of stagnant lives for so long. By the time the Maysles made their film the Beales were like ghosts and their house was like a ghost house – raccoons roaming freely, broken windows with trees growing into the bedroom, piles of empty food cans stacked seven feet high - despite the fact they still lived there.

Another short film by director Alnoor Dewshi, starring Ben Whishaw as a dancing Hare Krishna!

Picture quality is pretty bad, but you get the idea.

A great short film by Alnoor Dewshi starring Ben Whishaw.



"You're the most naked priest I've ever been in bed with, father."

Yesterday was Auntie April’s birthday. I wished a Happy Birthday to her urn, which rests on the fireplace downstairs. J. got in yesterday, so I finally got to meet him. I was a little nervous beforehand, but not as soon as I met him. He’s very down-to-earth and has a Continental charm and we were all laughing within minutes of meeting. I had really good sashimi for lunch, because we went to Costco for grocery shopping in the morning before J. got in. It came to $1100, including a $540 case of Veuve Clicquot champagne, cousin’s preferred brand. (He says he likes Cristal too, but Dom Perignon is gross. He’s like me in this respect: it doesn’t matter how much something costs or how high it ranks as a status symbol, if it doesn’t taste good, that’s all we base our opinion on.) So we should be set with food for a while, especially since I’ve whittled down my eating to one big meal and a couple snacks per day. (Staying slim!) Nice and sunny yesterday at last, too. My Ben Whishaw portrait number one (“Her Beautiful Son” is the title) has become quite nice indeed since I started over on it. I’m almost to the point of adding text, which is the last thing. Alex Grey says somewhere that a work of art made with love and spiritual intentions will radiate love and warmth to those who view it, so that’s what I’m going for with this painting. I want to see if people will sense that from it, even if they’re not crazy for the subject like I am. I’ve started on the second BW portrait as well. J. said if he had to guess my nationality and didn't know me he would say I was English, otherwise possibly Dutch (because I'm so tall and, formerly, blond). This meshes well with my increasing anglophile sentiment. J. also said there will be lots of opportunity for me in San Francisco (jobs, love, creative outlets, etc). I spoke with Mother yesterday, and broke the news gently that she will probably have to get her own urn, since Auntie April isn’t going to be giving hers up any time soon. Cousin says we'll go on a drive and visit various abandoned places, which there are a lot of here. I love old houses and buildings that used to belong to people and have now been reclaimed by nature. They are ghostly in a good way. I'll take photos.

Last summer a friend gave me a copy of Alex Grey's book "The Mission of Art" before I left to work in Glacier Park. I finally started reading it on the flight to Maui, since it had been preordained in my mind that leaving Portland would be the turning-point when I would return to visual art, which I'd largely neglected for the past couple years in favor of writing and film work (not to mention being consumed with other problems). I am working my way through it in my slow way, reading a little bit each night before bed. My reaction is mixed. I love his clear, concise sections and easy-to-read style of writing, his obvious command of art history, the fact that he uses lesser known names as examples more often than the ones we all know, and the way he takes art-making seriously as a spiritual calling in the service of leading humankind to the next rung on its evolutionary ladder. Most of what he says rings true, and I've highlighted many passages, like this one.

"Any work of art or body of work that successfully runs the gauntlet has the potential to influence the worldview of many individuals, thereby subtly transforming the entire culture. So take care, artist, you shoulder responsbility for affecting the collective mind. Even a tiny drop of a powerful tincture can change the color of an entire glass of water."

Passages like these are making me think more carefully about the "energy" I want to put out into the world by way of the art I create. So, I'm enjoying the book, even if my distaste for organized religion occasionally raises a red flag. My ambivalence comes from my reaction to his art, as reproduced (mostly in black and white) in the book. My first reaction to it, and part of the reason I laid it aside for so long, is that I thought it was really bad. (Example above.) The style reminded me, and still reminds me to some degree, of the sort of bad new age/hippie fractal art that Deadhead types had on the walls of their dorm rooms during the summers when I worked in Yellowstone. I still don't really like it much. It's clear that he's drawn a lot of inspiration from LSD, DMT and similar naturally occurring drugs, and my psychedelic phase ended more than a decade ago. But I do find his work slightly more palatable after reading about how he arrived at the style and what he's trying to communicate with it. I'm also ambivalent about the seeming megalomania with which he presents his work alongside that of established masters like Van Gogh, William Blake and Michelangelo. But then I'm acquainted with the merits of audacity, so I have to go easy condemning it in someone else. Overall, though, I'd say Grey is a combination art critic/philosopher and practioner whose art criticism and philosophy I prefer to his own personal work. As with everything else, I will take what I like and leave the rest.

We are having dog drama out here right now. The people next door have two full-blooded pitbulls that have a history of causing problems in the neighborhood. Not long before I came out, they got into a tangle with our dogs (both pitbull/ridgeback mix) resulting in injuries on both sides. But their dogs are the aggressors and have caused trouble with many other peoples' dogs resulting in calls to Animal Control before. (Walking up the driveway yesterday evening, they were so menacing as they barked at me over the fence I almost walked back to the main road and called Cousin to come pick me up in the truck, because if they'd gotten over the fence I have no doubt they would've attacked me.) Elio's ear was ripped during the previous altercation, and that wound is still plain to see. From what I hear, the neighbor's dogs were in OUR yard when this happened, and they never came over to talk to us about it or take responsibility. Enter this morning. Cousin came charging out of his room in a rage and ran outside: they were at it again. Later the woman who owns the house finally drove over and talked with Cousin. He said they need to get a kennel, but she was uncooperative and let drop that she'd called animal control, because this time Nikita and Elio were on THEIR property. After hearing this Cousin was not happy and the conversation ended abruptly.

It was certainly rotten of them to call animal control, before talking with us, when their dogs have a history of violent behavior (the kind of dogs that give pitbulls a bad name), and Cousin says they only did it to forestall Animal Control coming to take their dogs away, since that's what will happen if they get one more complaint. Ugh. Just when I was starting to warm up to dogs, this shit has to happen and remind me why I hate them. I hate the feeling of being threatened by someone else's pet. If your animal is dangerous, you'd best keep it tied the fuck up, because if it attacks me, I will prosecute you for first-degree assault with a deadly weapon, and it will be YOUR fault if that dog is put down.

My solution: get rid of all the dogs and give everyone cats.

Allergies schmallergies.

My new friend Lawrence (who lives in Pittsburgh where the Andy Warhol museum is) turned me on to a couple cool little short films starring Ben Whishaw (by director Alnoor Dewshi) that are up on YouTube: "77 Beds" and "Spiritual Rampage." In the latter he is a dancing Hare Krishna in the orange garb and punkish shaved hair the HKs wear. He abstains from sex as part of the religion, and of course that only makes me desire him more, the way I used to get so hot and bothered by Mr. Spock on the classic Star Trek when I was a teenager. (Judging by the amount of "slash" fan fiction available on the internet, I'm not the only one. There are lots of perverted Trekkies out there.) I have this weird feeling that IF I was ever to undergo some sort of religious conversion/180-degree lifestyle change purification, I could see myself becoming a Hare Krishna. I like their discipline, and let's face it, lots of them are pretty attractive. (Well, I speak of the ones I used to run into selling books in downtown Portland...don't know how authentic Hindu they are.) All that dancing and chanting and getting up at 5 a.m. Discipline makes you hot (and off-limits, in the case of the HKs).

Speaking of Ben...I wish I hadn't put up that photo of my portrait-in-progress of him the other day, because I decided it didn't look enough like him and basically started over last night. I'm so glad I did, because it already looks a lot better, and now it's going to be really good. But no more pix until it's done.