C. Cleo Creech

The Blogger Challenge: Story Teller as Social Hero

2009-04-26T08:30:00.000-07:00

I recently saw The Soloist. And though I know some people love it, I found it a little trite and formulaic, a bit movie-of-the-week. It’s certainly a decent enough movie, with noteworthy performances and a good heart, I’d recommend seeing it if you’re interested. The subject matter of how homelessness and mental illness is handled in this country certainly deserves as much attention as it can get.

The real thing that struck me though is the portrayal of journalist as social hero, as the guy that stands up in the public square and rallies everyday folk with a sense of outrage or injustice into some sort of action or social change. In the Soloist the change was both small and personal as well as large. There was some very real betterment in Ayer’s circumstances, as well as the larger benefit to Skid Row in the attention and subsequent funds channeled it’s way.

The movie celebrates this role that journalists have, of using their platform to address social issues. However, the movie makes no bones of also addressing the current state of newspapers today. There’s the talk of layoffs, people being escorted out of their offices by security with their boxes. Over the course of the movie the newsroom goes from a bustling claustrophobic cacophony, to a much more subdued floor with increasingly empty cubicles.

Who’s going to fill this gap? The internet and blogosphere are great at instant communication, at targeting niche markets, at being timely – but can it focus enough, and for long enough, and with a wide enough audience to really make a difference when it’s needed. The blogosphere is full of great sites that no one reads, crackpots, and a lot of preaching to the choir bloggers blogging for bloggers.

I’m trying to think of any current cases and Susan Boyle comes to mind. I know it’s a fluff piece, but it certainly grabbed everyone’s eyeballs for a while, and continues to. She became a new media celebrity overnight. In fact part of the mainstream news coverage, was not just about her, but about the number of YouTube hits, about the power of new media. But also in conjunction with the Susan Boyle web phenom story was a bit of a side story about how we tend to judge people by their looks, how we minimize older, less polished people, and again how we’re a society that values looks, and youth over talent. Did this sink in? Was there enough of a collective shift in the social zeitgeist to make a difference. The next time you’re at the record store, are you going to weigh talent over packaging a bit more? The next time someone asks you to sign a petition or come to a neighborhood meeting, are you going to hold off on those snap superficial judgments we always make on people long enough to give them a hearing?

Perhaps this is the shift though – from an individual such as a journalist championing the call; to this sort of collective blog consciousness? Instead of one journalist doing a series of columns over time, will we just follow link after link from one related entry to the next, each giving a bit more nuance, a bit of a different spin, an added dimension, then we blog on it and add our voice to the linkfest and we become part of the conversation, until we all reach some sort of consensus?

It’s going to be a challenge, but I think we can rise to it. It’s all part and parcel of this huge change in society where the traditional gatekeepers are falling to the wayside. The wonder and challenge of it all though is that we’re not just swapping one gatekeeper for another, but we’re sort of changing all the rules of the game. Those are always heady and frightening times. Bloggers aren’t just asking for the rules of the game to change, we’ve all just taken our collective balls home and decided we’re just not going to play anymore. We’re still just trying to figure out what this new game is though and that may take a while – let’s just hope the Nathaniel Anthony Ayer’s we’ve yet to discover aren’t forgotten in this brave new world.

A Poem for Jaheem Herrara - The Peace of Gentle Waves

2009-04-24T15:16:00.000-07:00

This is our child,
if not by blood
then by heart and spirit.
We hold him close
as we must all children
as we must hold all
innocents who cry alone.
Those sad and lonely ones,
Solitary and surrounded,
by those who care,
by those who listen,
and those who turn away.
We mourn as brothers,
as sisters, as family
he never knew he had;
those who know his pain,
united by kindred spirit.
We tend the signal fires
on safety of sandy beach,
a distant light some never see.
Send out the boats,
for there are other spirits
far from shore, from home,
who know only the
violence of the crashing sea,
and not the peace of gentle waves.

Movies as Ouija Board

2009-04-24T05:54:00.000-07:00

Thanks for all the “Great to see you’re blogging again” comments. It’s much easier to find the time for it once you’ve been laid of. I’m sure something else will come up, and god I hated that commute anyhow. Spending 2-3 hours a day in traffic is absolute madness, it sucks all the life out of you. You quickly start doing the math in your head and realize you’re spending basically a whole extra shift a week just sitting in traffic, if you stretch it out further over a year, that’s almost an entire month out of a year I sat in traffic. Then start realizing too with that much time, all the things you could have been doing, with your family and friends, how you could have probably solved all the worlds problems, or at least written the great American novel. But no, all the while you were wasting your time watching people lip-sync to the radio in their cars. Wow, the crazy stuff we convince ourselves is necessary for our job.

One big thing people like to do in bad times, especially when they’ve been laid of is go to the movies. Now I have a nice DVD player and all, but I’ve never really joined the whole Netflix revolution. I like the full blown big screen experience. Give me a large diet Coke, bag of peanut M&Ms, and a seat where I can put my feet up on the rail just behind the place reserved for wheelchairs and I’m a happy little movie goer. It’s said that the Depression was a boom time for movies, people flocked to theaters to forget their cares for a while. These days too, Movies are bringing in the big crowds and big bucks.

We have a great little Art Cinema here in town, one that brings in all the independent films, foreign films, and documentaries. They get a lot of my business. They show all the “real” movies. I also go to a big chain theater that’s not too far up the interstate. I used to refer to these places generically as the “Hell Mall Octoplex.” At least the one I go to these days isn’t in a mall, not exactly. It’s in a big “new urbanist” development. It also has not just eight theaters, apparently eight screens just isn’t enough to be profitable anymore, this place has 24. I don’t even know the prefix for 24 so wouldn’t even know what to call this place.

They do have have this great little rewards card though, so occasionally when they print my tickets out, I get an extra little coupon. It’s usually a free soda, or popcorn, but occasionally a free movie. I apparently have reached some mythic level of movie goer status though. I’m apparently some Nth degree black belt movie goer. Now they give me this little remote thingy, with buttons for Bad Sound, Picture Quality, Audience Disruption, or Movie Piracy. I’m sure they’re most concerned about the Piracy thing at the bottom, but the power of Audience Disruption that goes to your head. On a couple of occasions now I’ve had to whip it out, stand up and wave it at inconsiderate movie goers carrying on conversations, all I have to do is point to it and say “don’t make me use this.”

So yeah, I see a lot of movies. I used to believe that the Universe sent me to the movies I needed to see. Whether there was some life lesson I needed to learn or fresh perspective I needed to be shown. It’s almost like God was talking to me through the movies. I know that sounds silly, but I’d noticed that whenever I had a big problem, I could find some advice to address it in whatever movie I went to see. That theory didn’t hold up long. Maybe I was just missing it but what was I supposed to learn from movies like “Showgirls” or more recently “Strange Wilderness” or “Meet Dave.”

I realized that what was really going on was more of a Ouija board effect. I was actually pulling out of the movie, the message I needed to hear. Movies work that way, just like a Ouija Board or Tarot Cards. We listen to what we need to hear, and focus on the things that fit and ignore everything else. We often know what we need, what the decisions must be. It just has so much more truthiness to it, when it comes from a mega-million summer block buster or the hottest new acting sensation.

So I’ll continue to go to the movies, and as I continue to do my job hunting and soul searching about my future and purpose in life. Hopefully sometime this Summer I’ll find a new job, get some more writing gigs, get that new book published. I’ll see a new movie where I’ll see myself as the main character, identify with all his trials and tribulations and eventual neat happy ending and walk out of the movie saying something like (with appropriate swelling orchestra movie theme in the back ground) “YES, I am a talented and valued member of society, and yes, this is a great world we live in!” (Crescendo, lights fade, credits).

Please God, just don’t let that character and movie be Will Ferrell in “Land of the Lost.”

In Praise of Bookmobiles from a Kid that Talks Funny

2009-04-23T05:26:00.000-07:00

People never how to react when I tell them about “the accident” – as in, is it really okay to laugh when someone tells you about their brother running over their head with a tractor? Many think I’m joking, then I go on about being in a coma for days and the doctor spending the night because they were afraid they’d have to rush me into the operating room at any minute to crack my skull open. However, this accident would lead me down a long winding path that would one day make me a writer and poet.

The brain’s a wonderful thing but it doesn’t like being thrown around and run over by a tractor. Recovering from brain trauma can be tricky, there’s a thousand little connections and networks running around in that mess and it’s hard to tell just how any individual person will react to any individual trauma. There were a couple of totally quirky little things to get over though. I couldn’t remember phone numbers, strings of randomness like that were beyond me, and I had to remember numbers like dance steps on the key pad. Some people with numbers where digits repeated were like little cha-chas, the more random ones waltzed all over the place.

The big problem though was being able to talk. I can still remember the frustration of “talking” in my head and nothing coming out. Somehow that connection had been fried. Not completely, I could mumble incoherently, but that great thing we know as speech where you think something in your head and it comes out of your mouth, and you communicate a thought – that had escaped me. Thus began the long years of speech therapy – eight long years, long years of having to relearn English as now my second language. How to shape my lips, where to put my tongue, all those gymnastics the mouth does that everyone else took for granted. Every Tuesday and Thursday I’d have to go down to this little room in the basement of our elementary school. There I would mostly recite tongue-twisters and read from flash cards and look at diagrams of how your mouth and tongue were suppose to work.

Now the timing on this accident couldn’t have been worse, I was six, and it happened the summer before first grade. So I began my school career with all three of the holy triumvirate of reasons kids get picked on – I was a little sissy, a redhead, and now – I talked funny. Those eight years at Glendale-Chapel Elementary would be torture.

If there was one thing though that saved me though, it was the Johnston County bookmobile. For those of you that didn’t grow up out in the country, a bookmobile is a large panel truck fitted out like a traveling library. It makes it rounds around to host homes all over the county. My mom who had always loved books and had had this rather mysterious past job in Raleigh as a magazine editor made sure that we were on the route. So once a month, it would pull up in our driveway while the neighbors all turned in their old books and shopped around for a fresh read. I’d spend the entire Saturday afternoon sitting on the steps reading whatever I could get my hands on. I still remember the smell of the thing. It wasn’t air-conditioned so it would show up and be all stuffy and dusty at first. Then they’d crank open the little ventilation window in the roof and open the door and it would be tolerable, but the smell, oh that smell. If you love the smell of a library, a bookmobile has that times ten. It is to the smell of books, what that little room in the back of a tobacco shop is to the smell of cigars – pure and concentrated.

The bookmobile saved me. Soon the librarians were bringing me boxes and boxes of paperbacks. Apparently at the time, the library didn’t shelve paperbacks, so they’d sell them off or give them away. The librarians knew I had developed a love for science fiction. The summer between fifth and sixth grade they presented me with a whole box of science fiction paperbacks from some estate donation. This was a good box: Asimov, Le Guin, Niven, all the classics. I went through the entire box that summer, averaging sometimes a book a day. This would be on top of long days in the tobacco fields and curing barns. It would also be after that summer that the “incident” would happen with Mrs. Lucas, my Sixth Grade teacher. During the first week we wrote that typical “What I did Last Summer” deal – and I wrote about reading books all summer. I remembered how much I loved just writing that piece, how it came so easily and freely. Mrs. Lucas patrolled the aisles supervising the whole time, an intimidating presence. When I turned it in, I was fairly pleased with it, and anxious to see what sort of grade I’d get. A couple of days later I’d find out – a big fat “F”. I was in shock, tears were rolling down my cheeks – how do you get an “F” on a perfectly clean paper with no red marks paper? This was my first experience with an editor’s rejection slip. I went up after class and asked Mrs. Lucas myself, in a shaky voice, “what was the “F” for?”

The answer would haunt me for years. “You couldn’t have written that.” I pressed on, asking for an explanation, “that paper is on a college level.” In other words, there was no way she was buying that a redheaded little sissy boy that talked funny could have written it. I was devastated; she wouldn’t even yield to logic. Just how was I supposed to have a ghost writer when it was an unannounced pop essay written in class under her constant supervision? She countered with semicolon use. Pointing to a sentence she asked, “what is the rule for using semicolons?” I had to admit – I really didn’t know about any rules for semicolons. “Then why did you use one there?” My answer just infuriated her more “It just seemed to be the right thing to do.” The concept of learning grammar and complex sentence structure by reading and osmosis escaped her. Had she not read the piece? the whole point was about who much I’d come to love reading.

Despite Mrs. Lucas, my love of reading continued, mostly escapist fare – I was after all growing up on a tobacco farm in rural NC. I was still a bit shy though. High School would turn out better for me – lots better. I’d be playing sports, get my letter jacket. Date a nice girl, have friends, go on beach trips. I’d have burgers and fries with the gang at the local diner. It was in ways idealic, but in many ways torture. Especially being a gay teen, confused by sexuality, trying to pass for straight, and trying to work things out.

On top of all that though, I’d bitten the apple, my eyes had been opened. I knew there were other worlds out there, other people, other ways of thinking. Deep down I knew I didn’t belong in this place, and never would. But I had also been blessed/cursed with reading about other possibilities. Just the fact that there was other cities, countries, other worlds, other ways of living out there was intoxicating. Believe me, at the time big city life and alternative lifestyles were as alien to me as anything Asimov could have ever written.

Years later, I’d become a writer and a poet. Get published have people read my stuff. I’d get the nerve and overcome my shyness to get on stage and read in front of crowds. Then have to face the revelation that it’s not enough to be able to write, be able to get out in front of people and make yourself heard, that’s just the first bit – you also have to have something worth saying.

When it all comes down to it though, I have two things to thank for that: that inappropriately funny story about my brother running over my head with a tractor, and the Johnston County bookmobile.

Beating Up Little Sissies

2009-04-23T02:48:00.000-07:00

Okay it’s happened once again, a young preteen boy has hanged himself rather than face the schoolyard taunts of bullies. The papers and social networking pages have been ablaze with sympathy for the family and outrage at this recent tragedy in Georgia, but sorry folks the deed is done. No matter the excuses about knowing he was being teased, but not knowing just how bad. No matter the pleas about why couldn’t he have come to his mother – a boy can always talk to his mother. It just didn’t happen. The blame seems to be falling on the school system for not enforcing bullying restrictions, but there’s lots of blame to pass around.

Why is it that even today, it’s still perfectly acceptable, even condoned in many parts of our society to beat up sissies? This doesn’t happen in a vacuum. I’m sure the families of these bullies are going to plead ignorance as to where their little hoodlums picked up this behavior, learned these vile words. Those parents just need to look in the mirror.

We incite young boys every day to be men, to buckle up, to not cry, not be a sissy, anything but a sissy. And then what is the best way to prove you’re not one – point the finger elsewhere and prove your being a true man by brutal enforcement, by joining the no sissies allowed club. Then we express surprise when it ends in relentless bullying and a kid killing himself. Face it – this is one of the earliest and most profound lessons every boy gets when growing up.

I really feel for the family, I don’t know them, but if I can use my own experiences and those of countless others as an example, here’s my guess. The boy probably wanted to talk to his mother but feared rejection or just outright condemnation, children know just what they can talk to their parents about and what they can’t, believe it or not, parents telegraph this to their children every day in ways subtle and sometimes not so subtle. I remember as a young teen asking my Mom if I could see a doctor or psychiatrist cause I thought “something was wrong” and I’ve never seen anyone change the subject faster in my life. Parents don’t want to talk about this stuff. The stepfather, who seems genuinely distraught probably would have reprimanded him, and tried to come up with ways to “man him up”. It’s fine to play the distraught family after the fact, but in many ways it’s easier to play the grieving parents, the victim of a school gone wild, than to face up to their role in this. No where have I read anything about the parents talking to school officials. The claim that they didn’t know just how bad the bullying was, is a smoke screen. Everyone knows that once your kid becomes a punching bag and target of taunts and bullying and no one says anything, it’s open season. How do you not make the first whiff of school bullying a cause to call up the school? It was probably written off as “boys being boys.”

There’s some larger responsibilities here on the school as well as our society as a whole. Why – is it still okay to beat up sissies? Is it that everyone realizes they’re likely to grow up to be gay, to be fags? That was probably the word the bullies used the most – the “f” word. About as brutal a thing you can call an eleven year old boy. Especially one with no gay role models, no counseling, and with a family that is benign at best and surely not supportive. Families of gay teenagers have this remarkable ability to go into denial and somehow claim that they love their children but at the same time condemning them. I’ve been there, but most people can only imagine, the world of a “different” preteen has to be one of the loneliest most self-incriminating, self-hating lives you can lead. I’ve often told my black friends, to imagine growing up in a white household and actually being white, then sometime around adolescent, you find the white skin starting to rub off, to discover to your surprise you’re actually black. The very thing you’ve always heard referred to in denigrating, brutal, loutish terms, something you’ve been taught to hate. You’d be putting on makeup, wearing long sleeve shirts, you’d be doing anything at all to not be discovered – you just wouldn’t know any better – how could you?

I’d implore parents before they started ranting to the TV during the evening news, ranting about all the damn homos trying to get married, about how it was so unnatural, disgusting -- that they take a good look around in their own living room. Even passing jokes, the casual use of “that’s so gay” it’s all like a dagger through a young gay or lesbian teenager. And it’s not just the “sissies” it’s often the football jock, the cheerleader, the debate team captain – believe me if a young gay or lesbian can pass, they probably will do so at all costs, and at great cost to their own self-esteem and self-worth.

But just think what this says about our society, what barbarians we are that we as a society are somehow “okay” with the bullying and name calling that drives young teenagers to kill themselves. That they just weren’t tough enough, not emotionally stable enough to handle it, were just too weak, too fragile. That they just couldn’t muster or man up to the challenge.

This is an outrage, and the rabid leadership of the religious right should be looking long and hard at hateful attacks on the “day of silence” to bring attention to this very topic in schools. They should be looking long and hard at their actions and what they’re teaching their children. They need to look long and hard at the demonizing and vilification of gays and lesbians. That they’re not destroying their own children. That religious groups can sit idly by and help promote this atmosphere, can help build the hostile environment in which this takes place – is beyond the pale.

Please parents, if you think your kid may be dealing with these issues, dealing with these problems at school – get help – all of you.

The Myth of White Male Privilege

2009-04-22T05:32:00.000-07:00

When the universe keeps repeatedly hitting me on top of the head with a topic from several sources along the lines of “White Male Privilege – The Problem with the World Today” I finally have to take the hint and realize it’s something I need to write about. That also means it’s something I have to give thought to, mull over, weigh, and form a real opinion on. First a bit of disclosure – yes, I am a white male. Secondly, a bit of qualification – I am a white gay male. Did you feel the shift in your thinking there between those statements? I am at once part of the problem, I’m a conspirator in this evil white male oligarchy and in the next breath I’m an outcast, a pariah, another victim – we live in a complicated society. I will freely admit though that in the hierarchy of who gets the raw deal, I’m better off than most. I absolutely concur that if someone sees me standing next to an equally intelligent, thoughtful, personable, black feminist lesbian with an accent – yeah I’m going to get the job, they’re going to trust me more, they’re going to value my opinion more. I get that.

First let me put out a thought and let’s use politics as a metaphor – regime change is not the solution, it wasn’t in Iraq, it’s not true in most cases, it’s not the case here for changing society. That’s not to say that the people running things aren’t total assholes, haven’t totally messed things up, don’t deserve to get their butts kicked, but changing one group’s rule for another just invites a changing of faces with no real change in the business model. If you could wave a magic wand and suddenly women, or blacks, or Latinos would suddenly be running things and making the rules, you’d quickly have the same problems, the same abuses, the same outcries, just the faces would be different. This is as far though as many people have seen this problem through though. They’d be perfectly happy seeing different faces in the same system. There are plenty of countries where other groups run their society and all they tend to prove, is that the world gives us all an equal opportunity to screw things up. Let’s think bigger than that.

Nation building is the way to go, building an inclusive, solid society that looks beyond tribalism and privilege. We need to look hard at the institutions that maintain these, but actually we need to look hardest at ourselves. We’re all, ALL, part of the problem. We are all hardwired from an early age to buy into certain concepts, certain ways of thinking, based solely on what we are. In some ways subtle, sometimes not, the world is full of lessons for all of us, full of indoctrinations and programming. As human beings we inherently always seek to learn how things work, what the system is, what the rules are, we’re constantly, judging, evaluating, weighing – it’s just how things work. Here I must remind everyone of my unique status, as a white male I’ve been sold this same package of goods and hardwired to believe it in a thousand different ways, as a gay white male, I’ve had to question, evaluate, and rewrite all the rules I had once bought wholesale and with little doubt of their validity. Sometimes living in two worlds has its advantages, here it’s being able to see a bit of both worlds and trying to reconcile the differences.

One common theme that keeps coming up that raises my hackles every time – is this concept that somehow white males need to relinquish their power, as if the power we each hold in our society is something physical, like a scepter that we hold in our hands, that we can literally hand-off to someone. It’s not that simple. Believe me most white males today if you walked up to them and told them that well you know all this massive power they hold as a white male, just won’t do, that they’re too powerful, too strong, too privileged, that they need to spread the wealth around a bit – they’d be clueless, they’d be asking “excuse me? Just what power and tell me where I can get some of this stuff.” Remember power is relative, most white guys feel they’re doing all they can to make it, put food on their table for their family, struggling to be heard, and make a place for themselves – stuff we all worry about. So let’s be specific about who the bad guys are here, not every white male is the enemy, in fact most aren’t, I will grant you though most are part of the problem as unwitting pawns.

Let’s not underestimate the power of those with real power and influence to get huge chunks of society to do their dirty work for them and even get the average working Joe to work against even his own best interests. That’s what all the labeling has been about lately with “socialists,” and “True Americans”, it’s what’s been driving so much of this recent action with the tea parties. You have all these middle class people fighting to keep taxes from being raised on the wealthy. You have outrage that our black president may have bowed to a foreigner, that he’s all about turning us into a bunch of whiney Europeans. Average Joes are terrified that they’re going to lose their American dream, when, I hate to break it to them, they never had a shot at. Okay – right there, that last sentence – I know I just lost most of my white male audience, for I’ve dared to speak a truth they don’t want to face. Their power to improve and change their lives is limited and mostly out of their control. The American dream they’ve been sold on, is for them, mostly unattainable with the current system. The crap about working hard, being a good citizen – basically translates into please work for as little as possible, buy everything you can, and keep your mouth shut. I’d ask most of my other readers to give them a bit of a break for the truth is – they’ve been played.

So then who are the bad guys in this battle. Is it one of these mythic shadow groups, that secretly pull the strings and truly run everything – mmmm, probably not. Is it an oligarchy of big business and privileged families that have an inherent interest in status quo – more likely. Most are probably convinced they’re working for stability, a greater common good, and the American Way. Well, that’s easy for them to say. Oh, and I’ll whole heartedly agree that they’re predominately (99.9%) white, and that part of the status quo and their greater common good involves keeping it that way. However, that’s not any great master plan other than keeping their own asses in power.

So what to do? First I’d ask the long list of power-deprived lesbians, blacks, latinos, gays, etc., etc., etc., Please to just give these guys a break. Have some pity. They’re not your enemy but they are a big part of the problem. They could be your greatest ally. The average Joe (even Joe the Plumber) has much more in common with any of you, than they do the power elite that’s pulling the strings. Win over even a small fraction of these guys and you’d have the votes in our democratic society to make some serous societal change. We all benefit for a better society. We need to remind these guys that they’re losing in a game that’s been fixed. That sometimes the solution, contrary to everything they’ve been told, is to take their ball home and stop playing. If you keep coming up on the short end of the stick, don’t just change the rules of the game, change the damn game. Mainly, just to think, think hard, be open, really examine all the things they’ve taken for granted. Also, to remind them that a good starting point is to start a conversation with all these people they’ve been told they’re not supposed to like, cause they’re not supposed to be like them. This is their great potential for strength as well.

We need to build a nation that can get beyond this intense tribalism that our system here in the United States has fostered, has built between sexes, races, genders. We have to make valuing diversity non-threatening, make it a true American value, not just give it lip service. We have to win over hearts one at a time, do a lot of work in the trenches. We all have to listen and we all have to talk – all of us. We have to risk sounding ignorant, and stupid and bigoted, and shallow, and extreme. We have to let go of egos and preconceptions, suspend the rules. Every white guy isn’t a redneck. We all have to acknowledge and feel our inner bigots, and racists, and classists, and sexists and work though it – on all sides. Let’s not pretend that any of us are pure or untainted in this fight.

In conclusion though, the myth of white male privilege is that it’s somehow a product of exclusion, involving smoky rooms and side deals. That all the white guys in the world get together in secret meetings and decide how they’re going to stay in power – they don’t. Most white guys are as clueless as the rest of us. If anything they just need to wake up, realize that change is a win-win proposition, and to not believe the hype they’re fed. Remember that in the grand scheme of history this whole business of wide-spread immigration, mass communication, all sorts of people living altogether everywhere is relatively new. Look how just in the past decades we’ve gone from warring nations, to nations so intertwined we can’t really afford to go to war. It’s increasingly that way with societies too, and it should be, societies and cultural groups fighting with each other and vying for power becoming societies and cultural groups so intertwined so sharing in common interests – that we can no longer afford a culture war.

Tokyo - Movie Review

2009-04-11T20:11:00.000-07:00

Tokyo

A group of three shorts that explore the city of Tokyo and ask the question – Do we shape cities or they shape us? Like a lot of these types of projects though it’s just a loose structure to examine larger issues.

“Interior Design” – Directed by Michael Gondry
“Merde” – Directed by Leos Carax
“Shaking Tokyo” – Dir. Bong Joon-ho

First I’ve talked before about my love for Gondry’s work, innovative films, stunning commercials, and even some of my all time favorite videos. I’d hate to explain too much for fear of giving too many spoilers, but noticed in the clip, they already do that.

In “Interior Design” a young woman is questioning her life, goals, ambition, relationship. All in the context of her and her rather flaky film director boyfriend trying to move and set up shop in Tokyo. They live in a cramped studio with an old friend, where they soon outlive their welcome. They spend all day looking at one horrifying tiny and dismal apartment after another. As the young woman becomes increasingly dismayed by their situation – the film takes a dramatic surreal turn. She is taken for granted and disappearing into the woodwork to the point where she literally becomes a piece of furniture. The transformation scene if riveting, as well as the sequence where she’s passed haplessly from one prospective owner to another. Finally she is taken home by a kindly young musician, who takes care of her gives her purpose – though this short provides hours worth of discussion on these points. There’s talk in the movie about how the big buildings in Tokyo often don’t touch, but have gaps of only a few inches in between them. They muse on how a whole legion of thin lost souls who’ve literally “fallen between the cracks” and live in these voids, and how they come out at night and roam the city. This is the fate of our young main character, but we’re left to figure out for ourselves – is this actually a happy ending? Is it better to be a useless human treated like furniture, or a piece of useful furniture treated with humanity?

In “Merde” a leprechaun-like creature emerges from the sewers to wreck havoc on Japan – complete with Godzilla music in the background. A wild disheveled creature, is he just a crazy homeless guy, some sort of misplaced mythical creature, an alien? He’s harmless enough though until he finds a crate of old grenades in the sewer and goes on a killing rampage. He’s brought in, tried, and alternatively reviled and given the pop icon treatment. Then out of the blue comes a French attorney who bears a striking resemblance to the creature. The same cloudy eye, the same crazy twisted red beard, the same long dirty claw-like fingernails. This new character can also speak the creature’s language. Oddly though no one ever questions this? There’s some social commentary going on here, that I can only suppose comes down to “playing the game” the “creature” is outcast, antisocial, dirty, callous, vile – while the lawyer, who is every bit the same “creature” is refined, effete, cultured and no one thinks twice about how it is he speaks this strange guttural language with it’s growls, barks and face slaps. Even during the execution (which takes an odd turn) no one seems to question that the prisoner is praying in some bizarre way to his god for deliverance – as does the attorney. So in the end is being an upright citizen or a monster all perception? Does it amount to just how well you can “pass” in society?

“Shaking Tokyo” was a delightful surprise. It explores the life of a shut in who has lived alone without going outside for ten years. His house a tribute to his obsessive compulsiveness with it’s meticulously stacked magazines and empty Pizza Boxes. His only contact the delivery people that deliver food. The young girl that delivers pizza on Saturday though attempts to make contact and he’s intrigued by her tattoos, a series of “buttons” for different emotions and actions. They bond over an earthquake where she faints and he tries to revive her, finally finding her “reset” button and bringing her back to life. He finds that just their brief interaction has rocked his world. He’s dismayed to find that the next day when he orders pizza, she’s no longer working for the pizza place, the new driver explaining that she “won’t come out”. Summoning great strength he decides to go find her. He’s shown running through the abandoned streets of Tokyo, occupied only by robot delivery men. Over the past ten years, the entire city has become shutins, totally isolated and alone. Other people are only seen through glimpses in windows or as vague shapes behind milky glass. He begs people to come out, especially as the city is increasingly shaken by earthquakes, but they won’t even leave their homes as their buildings crumble around them. He finally finds the girl and implores her to come outside, not to become another ghost. He pushes the “love” button – fade to black.

If you like Director’s movies, ones that plunge into the surreal and explore complex issues, check this collection out.

Doubt

2009-01-01T21:19:00.001-08:00

Just returning from seeing Doubt. A movie I have to admit, I was not all that keen on seeing, from the trailers it seemed pretty standard fare, a star-driven medodrama written to capitalize on current events and with an eye toward award season.

But in the end, the movie is about nothing you think it is. I don’t want to spoil anything, but it has nothing to do with events and intrigue,It’s about what we’re willing to do to validate our own world-views, experiences, and decisions.

This movie is full of big scenes that never happen. Again and again, there’s glimpses of characters on verge of revelation, on the verge of truthfulness, but no one can never quite make it. Hearts soften and you see a crack, then they turn cold, minds are churning away but no minds are never changed.

In the end the “Doubt” of the title, isn’t so much about any one character doubting the actions or motivations of another – it’s about the everyday doubts we all face when we look in the mirror as ask ourselves who we are.

Gunther - Christmas Song (uncensored)

2008-12-19T19:34:00.001-08:00

The true meaning of Xmas, Swedish heart-throb Gunther with his porn star sunglasses and mullet, partying with busty blonds and naked xmas elves.

Fickle Lover Sleep

2008-12-07T14:48:00.000-08:00

What fickle lover sleep;
For when he comes to bed unbid,
He deigns that I do take his comforts
All too easily and for granted.

Yet when I most seduce, beseach
Beg for his light blessed touch
He deems me all too needy,
Leaving me tossing on the couch.

A Whispering Key

2008-12-05T16:26:00.000-08:00

I finally grew tired
Of Jingly keys,
How many does one
Really need?

Car, the front door
Office and desk;
Others perhaps
Could live in a box.

Storage shed,
Chain on the mower
All labeled now
With neat round tags.

But when it was
All said and sorted,
One dull one remained
Haunting, whispering.

Perhaps feeding
A friends cat?
Perhaps from love
That faded away.

It once had power
To open a door,
Now the door
Is lost.

Repo Man: the Genetic Opera - Review

2008-11-30T15:32:00.000-08:00

Okay I like quirky stylish movies as much as anyone else, but found the style over substance of Repo Man diverting but… This had got to be the most self-indulgent, “fuck you” movies ever made. Repo Man is quite visually stunning, a bit of goth rock opera drenched in blood, drugs, and lots and lots of beating, pulsating body parts and steaming intestines. In fact the plot is fairly traditional, family betrayal, innocence vs. evil, lies and cover-ups, diverging and converging plotlines. It’s probably one of the darkest movies you’ll ever see (I mean literally) the whole movie is dingy shadows and back alleys, sordid nightclubs and darkened secret rooms.

There is some plot, kind of, most of the main characters have been trapped in this spiral of revenge and betrayal, very operatic, out of it all came a child though, Shilo, and now that she’s pretty much all grown up and everything about to come full circle. There are incidentally some redeeming themes a send up of consumerism, vanity, and the price we’re willing to pay for looking good. Paris Hilton has a part as the King/CEO’s daughter, a drug and plastic surgery addict. Actually Paris is fairly harmless in the part, her vapid self-centeredness, and shallowness a nice bit of type casting.

The company (Genco) has come to power after the world faces an epidemic of organ failures (never really explained) and Genco is more than happy to provide new ones at a price, but fall behind on a payment and the Repo Man is liable to track you down and hack out your defaulted organs. But not stopping at replacement organs, Genco has created a world where people can get plastic surgery at the drop of a hat, new addictive and expensive drugs allow you to slip on a new face, as easily as putting on makeup.

I kept wondering though how did they get this cast? Sarah Brightman as Blind Mag, Paul Sorvino as the corrupt King/CEO, did these people really know what they were signing up for? One blessing for Sarah Brightman is that under her heavy makeup and trippy contact lenses you don’t even recognize her. Paul Sorvino doesn’t get off so easy, he’s definitely playing a typical mobster and indulging his flair for opera – I hope he got a good paycheck. Having such a good cast though for this film just gives it a sense of being even more a vanity production than it probably is, but it makes you wonder.

The person who carries the move though is Anthony Head, who most would remember from Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Rupert Giles the Watcher/Librarian. He’s the title character and father of Shilo, he used to be friends with the King/CEO who was about to get married until his wife met his friend then she dumped him for the new guy. There’s another wedding, but it soon goes tragic when the ex slips some poison into the brides medicine so that the new husband/ex friend believes he’s killed her. He has to slice open his wife, sacrificing her life to save the baby. The King/CEO then guilt trips him into working as his Repo Man. So the Repo Man lives this double life killing people and ripping out innards by night and being an overprotective smothering father by day. He seems torn, but gets off on it all a bit too much. To top it all off there’s blind Mag, ex-best friend of the bride, who was given new eyes by Genco, who now owns her soul. She never knew about Shilo, and feels bad since she was supposed to look after her and be her god mother. When Blind Mag decides to retire, the CEO/King decides to execute the fine print and call out his Repo Man to take back the eyes. Blind Mag rips them out herself on stage during the nightly “Genetic Opera” and is still killed.

I won’t give away the ending here -- but it’s unsatisfying.

This movie owes a LOT to Rocky Horror picture show, the sense of sexually charged high style, the bawdy rock music driving the action. Even though it’s supposed to be dealing with events that affect the globe, it feels claustrophobic (it was a play first). Even the final climatic scenes in the Genetic Opera are borrowed heavily from the final theater scenes in Rocky. This movie really wants to be this generations Rocky Horror. But the problem with cult movies is that they’re not made, but just happen. But to delve too much into the movie is to give it substance that isn’t really there.

The real star of this movie is death, blood and guts. People are often casually dispatched just to give the actors some blood and guts to role around in. There’s a fondness for sticky gooey organs, and removing them while people are still alive. It’s so desensitizing though and so over the top you soon get used to it. When you get to the final daughter/father scene at the end, you almost don’t even realize they’re covered in blood and guts in a sea of gore. As an attempt at some sort of street cred, it uses several graphic novel devices, especially in flashbacks to tell back stories. It’s almost as if they’re trying to convince you that it was actually based on something. There was a play first, and perhaps the obvious artifice of the stage gave it some balance, but the movie is unrelenting in being gritty and real – but totally unbelievable.

There is some talent behind the camera, the Director is Darren Bousman from the Saw series, but where this sort of thing works as hyperrealism, it gets a bit much as musical goth dinner theater.

Overall though worth seeing just as a cultural event, and the yuck factor, a big bonus though too is getting to see Paris Hilton embarrass herself as a singer on stage, when her face falls off in the middle of her song.

Actually this musical number by Sarah Brightman is a highlight:

Here’s a feel for the whole movie:

... and yes that is Joan Jet, she does a cameo on one of the numbers.

Cultural Icons and Phone Sex

2008-11-23T20:07:00.000-08:00

It was one of those evenings,
Socialites with lap dogs,
All red wine and crackers.
A noted cultural icon,
Against a museum timeline.
A modern clear plexi podium
Professional lighting and sound
It was ultimate intown urban chic.
Cameras recording for prosperity
The usual suspects on the scene.
Then book signings and niceties.
A new signed book for my
“When I can get to” it pile.
But I was Achilles dipped in
A river of cultured civility
And now my heel itches.
Once in my car I was tempted.
Bookstore or bathhouse?
Needing some antidote,
Some sleaziness some sin,
To balance it all out.
All this refinement and culture
Too rich, needing something
To dirty my palate.
I settled for phone sex,
Felt much better. All in all;
It had been a very good evening.

Good Sex

2008-11-23T19:54:00.000-08:00

I was all set for rough sex
Sweaty bodies and poppers
“Yeah baby” and “Yes Sir.”
Then you flashed that smile,
Those sparks lit your eyes, and
Suddenly I was all school boy,
All caresses and wet kisses,
Sex became suddenly
All about your face
Watching your reactions
Getting you to smile again.
Swimming into each others eyes
A long slow summer swim
In warm deep waters.

I-95, Kenly NC

2008-11-18T00:01:00.000-08:00

A new poem from my "Goldleaf" series, growing up in the tobacco belt in NC.

+++++

I-95 Kenly, NC

Even as a boy without a license
Barely seeing over the dashboard,
I knew my mother never understood
How to properly use the interstate.

She’d pull down the long ramp,
Then obeying some invisible sign,
Come to a full dead stop, look both ways
Then pull out when the coast was clear.

Maybe I could tell it was all wrong
By her agitation and anxiety,
Or maybe the tell was in horns blowing,
Or the Screeching tires behind us.

The interstate was new back then,
We’d gone from rural dirt roads
To gooey asphalt, pavement and concrete;
To these highways known only by numbers.

My Mom was intimidated by the speeds
The sheer size and scope of it all,
The feeling these roads somehow belonged
Only to vacationers and rough truck drivers.

I remember getting my hands on a map:
DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, to New York;
Raleigh, Charlotte, Atlanta, to New Orleans;
Nashville, Memphis all the way to L.A.

While other boys traced fingers over
Daddy’s forbidden busty centerfolds
I traced my escape route, having faith in the
String of unseen cities like rosary beads.

When I could drive, despite mother’s cautions
I accelerated to merge, itchy for speed
Threw myself onto the interstate, cause
These things, these things can take you places.

Hope Lost and Found

2008-11-16T17:17:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed that for someone so political my blog has been quiet since the election of Barack Obama. It's something I've had to really wrap my head around and work through.

Here's why...

+++

President Elect Obama –

It’s been some time now since the election, soon November will have come and gone. I’m a writer and poet from Atlanta Georgia, so had often written about everything working up to the election. I’m very much a son of the South and have often written on race relations and growing up in a conservative, rural, southern Baptist family in North Carolina. A family where casual racism and bigotry were so ingrained in our history and upbringing as to be invisible in plain sight. No one saw or realized its impact, realized the lessening of humanity it inflicted on both sides.

In past months, I’d written a lot on hope and change. I wrote about standing in line for early voting for hours to make sure my vote counted, how everyone in line regardless of race, sex, or sexual orientation had bonded in this hopefulness of a new day in the United States. I still pray now that that day is upon us.

However, after the election, I found that I could not bring myself to write about this hope, this new day. For with the news of your win, also came the news of the passing of Proposition Eight in California and the passage of other anti-gay laws across the country. So while election day delivered so poignantly on your promise of hope and change it also delivered a cold hard slap in the face to members of the LGBT community. In California a persecuted group won the civil right to marry, then had it taken away. They celebrated the wins, the vows, celebrated with family and friends, only to have their happiness come crashing down around them.

I’m sure you’ve seen the protests around the country, the anger, the commitment, the renewed resolve of our community. Forgive us if in your moment of glory and celebration, of needing to concentrate on so many dire crises and issues that plague our country, forgive us if you have a large constituency that is really, really pissed off. For some of us the honeymoon from this election was much too short lived, we were somehow left outside of the big reception.

Many in the LGBT community would like to blame the African-American community for voting in large numbers against our civil rights. We thought we would have more sympathy. It is more disappointment than anger that we feel, a disappointment that there is such a lack of understanding. I like to write letters to the editors here at our local Atlanta Journal and Constitution, and years ago when the great Hosea Williams had made some unfortunate off-handed casual comments about the gay rights movement, I wrote a letter to the AJC basically saying that he just “didn’t get it”. To his credit he actually called me at work the day after my letter appeared, called me at my office, I was as shocked as anyone when the president of our company who had just happened to have answered the phone handed it to me and said that “Hosea Williams wants to talk to you”. I think his intention was to call me to the carpet, he went right into his stock speech on his years in the service of civil rights, and how he’d worked tirelessly for civil rights, and done this and that. That some of his best friends were gay, but there was also a measure of condemnation. I think to him I was some privileged young white boy with a good job that had dared to question his credentials. I finally stopped him and had to ask him a simple question. “Mr. Williams, do you know where I’m having to talk to you from? I’ve had to pull the phone into our supply closet, I’m having to talk to you in whispers, my boss is going to ask me just what Hosea Williams was calling me for – and I’m going to have to lie to his face, so I don’t face losing my job.” That seemed to make an impression, and we actually had a serious and meaningful conversation after that, I’ll always remember that phone call.

There are differences between our communities. Blacks literally wear their minority status on their sleeves, there’s no way to hide from it, no way to escape it. LGBT people are often an invisible minority it’s easy for us to blend in, to disappear, to dance around the details – aren’t we lucky. That’s something we have to struggle with and work on within our own community. But though our minority statuses are based largely (but not totally) on how we look vs. who we love, we still share many of the same stigmas, the same discrimination, the same violence, the same dehumanization by the majority. Senator Obama, you’ve shared so much about your family and upbringing, what positive reinforcements you received, what encouragements, God bless you and your family. Now I ask you to imagine that you weren’t so lucky, that you were born white, in a “typical” American household. That there was always that tone and hint of disdain whenever your family talked about the black family down the street. That at school, it was much less subtle, friends beating up black kids, calling them names. You may have even thrown a punch just to show you were one of the guys. That you saw the stereotypes and prejudices even on TV and in the movies with no filters or explanations. Then imagine that you’d always felt different, always apart. Imagine that one day you’re careless and fall and scrape your knee to find a darker pigment underneath, that you were showering and found the white rubbing off. You’d be ashamed, wear long sleeves, because all you’ve ever been taught is that being black was wrong and shameful. Welcome Senator Obama to every gay and lesbian teen’s nightmare. We are taught by our own families to hate ourselves, and turned away for who we are. We are despised second class citizens even among our own families and communities. Thank god we have been able to form our own families in exile, our own communities for support, our own loves and commitments – This Senator Obama is why marriage is so important to us.

In thinking about why it’s taken so long for me to write about this past election. I finally realized after the Proposition 8 protests and vigils here in Atlanta, I had become afraid to hope. Hope is a wonderful, marvelous thing, but can be a sharp double-edged sword. It’s like love, when we give it freely and get burned we get gun shy, we become afraid to hope. So forgive us as you take on the daunting duties of the Presidency, if one of your key support groups seems a little reserved, a little less than forthcoming, with it’s dreams and hopes shining not so bright. You see we’ve been neglected, we’ve been ignored, and we had even gotten used to that. But then California laid this dazzling jewel of a dream in the palms of our hands and we held it all too briefly before it was snatched away. We have lived with dreams deferred and dreams denied so long we’re used to it. But we had dared to hope, dared to dream of change, held it in our hands and gotten slapped across the face. Nothing wounds so deep the heart as a soaring moment of fragile hope snuffed out as easy as a candle, where once there was light, now only darkness.

Senator Obama, we still hold hope in our hearts, if maybe a little closer more cautiously than before. We still hope that whatever slight ember is left will be awakened and blaze anew. That this jewel of marriage and commitment we so desire will be placed in our hand and shine even more brightly and sweetly for the struggle. That is a promise.

Cleo Creech
Atlanta, GA

All This Waiting in Line

2008-10-30T20:18:00.001-07:00

It’s been a while since I’ve been here in the main Fulton County Government Center, the only thing left of the infamous Taj Mahal palm trees are a few wrought iron tree grates still sprinkled around the floor. Now the only landscaping is a few big bamboos and grouping of decidedly everyday looking houseplants. That's all water under the birdge though, today this building is seeing another bit of history, it’s full of prospective voters.

The line starts well outside, goes into the building and then wraps once around inside, then around the edge in a second loop. I have no ideal where the line ends up, for all I know there’s hours more line that I just can't see. Everyone asks “how longs the wait?’ it’s a common topic. The latest estimate anyone has heard is 2-2.5 hours. Occasionally someone that’s voted will stop at a certain spot on their way out and look around to announce something like “I spent two and a half hours from right here.”

No one is really complaining though, we’ve all chosen to be here. Everyone seems upbeat, even chatty. There’s a feeling of waiting for a purpose. Everyone is using their cell phones a lot, just to let their friends and families know they’ve been in line now and will be for hours. Though it’s not so much to complaint as a brag. A volunteer tells us we’re lucky, that we’re in one of the fastest moving voting centers in the county. Since we’re in the main downtown Fulton County Government Center, I guess they’re just more set up for this sort of thing, have more volunteers and staff to work with.

There’s an easy camaraderie that builds among my immediate neighbors, a friendliness you don’t usually associate with waiting in long lines. People introduce themselves, smile a lot, there’s comments floated around like “it’s a long wait – but worth it. The girl right in front of me is particularly bubbly, her name’s Melinda. Her excitement is contagious. There is this palpable sense in this long, long line - this one line, in one polling station, in one county, in one state – a sense that still a vote counts. That it’s worth standing in line for hours to make sure you get to vote early. There’s this feeling that on the day of the general election, there’s just too much uncertainty about crushing turnouts, overwhelmed poll workers – and if you miss voting on election day, then – the moment’s passed.

There’s often easy laughter from groups of friends that are voting together. It’s a diverse crowd, a middle aged white lady reading from a big book with lots of small print, she looks to be a school teacher. There seems to be an awful lot of young African-American women, often traveling in packs. It seems if you were a young single guy you should be lining up for early voting every day just to talk up the ladies. I hear some of the young women talking about midterms and the woman right behind me has a text book she’s studying, so I guess they’re mostly students. Up a bit there’s a gay couple, behind a few people a nice young professional couple, there’s even a one-armed woman that’s texting furiously with her one good hand. There’s a couple of different guys wearing their ipods and listening to music. There’s even a guy who seems a bit down on his luck, I can’t help notice though that he keeps reading out of this little brochure. It’s some sort of study guide for a trade test or certification. There’s sample questions about scaffolding and what’s the proper ladder for different situations. Maybe he’s trying to get a job in construction. I'm hopding maybe he’s just gotten one. Then there’s me the middle-aged intown poet/writer thrown into the mix. I end up spending hours with these people, so you get to pick up on little things, get to know them a bit.

I’m reminded that for decades you often heard the refrain around election time about the sheer laziness of the American voter, how we took democracy for granted, were more than willing to let others vote. Why should we? Our one vote – what difference does it make? It all feels so different now, I look around and I’m not exaggerating to say I get a bit choked up. This is an historic election if for no other reason than the record setting engagement by the American voter. This is no small accomplishment. There’s a palpable sense that all these people are working, putting in their hours, whatever it takes to place their vote. The long wait even validates them, allows them to show just how important they hold this right. Over and over again you hear this same refrain “hours still to wait – but it’s worth it.”

The election staff and volunteers are beautiful to watch, I’ve seen these very same people in past elections, haggard, tired. These people today are positively glowing, walking around with such a sense of purposefulness, of energy. They too feel the history in the room.

The election staff periodically makes rounds to ask people to turn off their cell phones, they apparently interfere with the machines. Some people will just hide them for a bit, then pull them back out to keep bragging to people about how long the line is they’re sitting in. There’s also a regular round by staff, reminding people that if they’re voting here in the Fulton County Government Center, that they do need to make sure that they’re actually registered in Fulton County. Occasionally if someone’s not sure a volunteer takes them aside to check. I get the impression that this comes up a lot, when they make the announcements, it always feels that they’ve just had to turn someone away. Earlier a lady had left when she learned she still wouldn’t be able to still register, that the registration deadline had passed. She shuffled away dejected, we all felt her pain -- she’d missed it, this chance to participate in a bit of history.

Just as our group winds it way out of the atrium and into a side hallway we can see through the glass wall of the council chamber below, and our goal, the voting machines. I recognize the room immediately though I’ve only seen it on late night public access programs. Even from here, within sight, there’s still a long wait, it’s democracy as a theme park ride, long winding paths, and then a tight maze of twists at the end. They have people winding through the seats of the auditorium, back and forth. There’s still a wait, but we’re all just happy that we can at least sit down soon. It’s a bit like musical chairs, almost as soon as you sit down, the line moves and you have to get up and shuffle down, but row by row we’re getting closer. For a while we get to sit a bit longer, seems the system has gone down, they announce that IT has been called, and they’re back up before too long. Then even here, you hear the same theme again and again, “3 hours but it’s worth it.”

Finally at the end there’s a flurry of paper processing, getting your voting card for the machine and then you find yourself standing shoulder to shoulder with your fellow voters. It seems symbolic that the machines are set up where the county commissioners usually sit to vote and do county business. So finally with touch screen up, you get to make all those decisions, this person, that person, anyone but him, more money for this, less for that, who are all these people running for judges? In 10-15 mins it’s over. As I was voting though Melinda passed behind me, and gently touched my shoulder, whispering “nice to meet you, have a good evening.” Over the past 3 hours we’d managed to bond. Me, Melinda, the school teacher, the chatty college students. We’d formed this band of committed voters supporting each other, holding places in line for parking meter refills and bathroom breaks. I realized though that we’d never really once discussed politics, or talked about who we were going to vote for. It wasn’t about that though, it was about the voting, getting out there, doing what it takes, being heard.

The last lady takes your voting machine card and hands out the little Peach “I Voted” stickers. Never had those little paper stickers felt like such a badge of honor.

vlad and friend boris presents 'Song for Sarah' for mrs. Palin

2008-10-26T16:22:00.001-07:00

Great Palin Spoof from these Russian dudes.

Rachel Getting Married

2008-10-25T17:59:00.000-07:00

I was interesting in seeing just what the Anne Hathaway buzz was about, after The Princess Diaries you could imagine her getting stuck in the Disney Family movie genre, but I have to admit there was some inkling of a darker side every since that phone call scene in Brokeback Mountain, where the whole thing is shown with just her lower face closeup , talking on the phone, working that cigarette. It’s probably helped her street cred too that her real life beau went from being a prince charming to serving time – so much for happily-ever-after.

This movie could have very easily been soo movie-of-the-week, but it struck a nice modern balance. Major cudos to Jonathon Demi, he should get recognition for the handling of such delicate waters. Also, Debra Winger is phenomenal, I actually didn’t recognize her in the first couple of scenes, but she is superb in what can only be called a tour-de-force of suppressed emotion, denial, and WASP coldness. Even the cinemaphotography walks a fine line between being gritty home movie footage, but not so much so it's obnoxious or in the way.

This movie makes you fill in a lot of blanks, but in a good way, it doesn’t insult you with the standard obligatory scenes and neatly defined conflicts and resolutions. The family history unfolds over the movie, the tragedy of the family and what went into it. The father’s divorce, the mother’s distance, the role of music, laughter, and family, there’s all these story lines that are developed and brought together reinforcing the movie in nice subtle ways.

For instance at the end of the movie (spoiler alert) I’m totally convinced Debra Winger was herself either a drug addict or alcoholic, that she has this twisted belief about the role of children, and not so great as a mom – though there’s really no concrete proof, no neat confrontation, no begging for forgiveness or personal revelations. So much of this all happens in Anne Hathaway’s head, you can see her putting the pieces together, wanting to find answers, but realizing that there’s seldom nice tight little solutions to big problems. She wants to come to some resolution with her mom, but you realize it's probably just never going to happen. You see Kym finally ask her Mom, just why did she allow a known out-of-control actively using, constantly high drug addict to be babysitter for her young brother? The step mom has one of the best lines in the movie, during one of the numerous family conferences with hastily closed doors, she tells Kym basically everyone is responsible for how they perceive the world, how they choose to see things, and in the end responsible for their own happiness.

One thing I was very struck by though in this movie, is it’s depiction of America. Also, the contrast of the old American Dream vs. hopefully the new and hopeful one. You can put together what this family’s life was like before the son died. The professional distant Mom, the perfect New England Home, the rules and regulations, the denial of unhappiness, and drug abuse. It was the American Dream as unreachable ideal, as a hollow meaningless shell. Then look at what happens to the father after the divorce. It's telling that he ends up raising the children. His life is music, he surrounds himself by talented musicians and celebration, he remarries a loving accepting emotionally available black woman. The wedding itself is this sort of utopian multi-cultural version of America. A mixed marriage with two very different families, a celebration of cultures (of all sorts), music, and lifestyles. There's something very hopeful about a white female doctor and her talented black musican husband cutting into bright blue hindu elephant god wedding cake (with the whole cast ceremoniously taking part).

A large part of Kym’s conflict is this transition, from emotional denial and shut-down to embracing one’s emotions and learning to live within this big messy world. For a big part of the movie you can see her future as a toss-up, she could go either way. The main conflict isn’t whether she confronts her mom, or patches things up with her sister, it’s how she handles her own past and history, and decides to move forward.

Having Lunch with and Almost Getting to Meet Mark Doty

2008-10-20T17:58:00.000-07:00

Now that AQLF is over and done, I can get some writing done. I have ton’s of new books to read and lots of inspiration. It’s interesting though that through the whole festival the biggest slice of life event that stuck with me was something that happened after an event.

Getting to Have Lunch with and Almost Meeting Mark Doty

It didn’t start well, I was late getting out of the office and traffic sucked. Emory Unversity is currently undergoing what seems a complete rebuilding of itself and it took a while to find parking and wind my way through the construction sites. In an effort not to be too terribly late, I walked so quickly up the hill towards the quad my shin splints kicked in painfully, and I had to stop at the top of the hill, legs throbbing in revolt, and huffing and puffing, feeling my age. Once I found the student center, there were no signs pointing to the event, and I wandered around trying to find the room number by process of elimination but every hall that looked promising ended in a dead-end just a number or two off what I needed it to. Finally I found it.

The talk/lecture/workshop went well. It even resulted in a new piece I’d like to work up about the big chest freezer my parents kept in our back utility room. This was the big freezer chest that each fall my parents would mysteriously fill with meat in the middle of the night. They’d wait until I’d gone to sleep, so as not to have to explain that all those steaks, ribs, and hamburger, were all that were left of Buttercup, or Betsy or whatever my pet cow had been that year. They never did explain how little Betsy didn’t really go to live with “all the other cows” in a nice big pasture (except if you take it metaphorically). Instead she’d gone to the butcher and gotten a nail gun through the head and ended up being snuck into our ice chest at 2 a.m. a few days later. It’s a story all about the treachery of parents and the loss of childhood innocence -- But… that’s another story, for another time.

The workshop was well attended, standing room only. There were earnest students, fellow writers, faculty and administrators, and an assortment of other various and sundry characters (myself included). One shared that they’d suddenly realized how all the apartments they’d every lived in had never felt like home, one broke down in tears as he'd been reminded of his father. I tried not to be judgmental, but it was hard. Reminding myself just how much I and others can be so cruely judgmental, I chose to keep the whole Betsy being nail gunned and snuck into the freezer in the middle of the night... well I decided to keep that to myself. Fearing I might get those sad sympathetic eyes for someone who’s parents were obviously sadistic tyrants and had no concern for the deep scars they were inflicting on their sensitive son and the years of therapy they were driving him into. Though in the end it wasn’t so much that, as just the fear that talk of having a pet cow named buttercup on a tobacco farm, would just make me sound like such a damn redneck.

I thought I had to leave right after the event, I pardoned myself, so I could check back at the office, half expecting to be needed to go back. I was not all that keen on the big after event lunch though, not wanting to seem too desperate or too much like a hanger-onner. When I didn’t have to go back to the office though, it struck me – “why not go?”. I knew a good number of the people and would like to know some of the festival guests better, I’d actually been invited, so technically wasn't barging. I’d been at several events so far and had at least briefly met everyone but Mark Doty, and I figured we’d might get a chance to speak, but que sera, sera.

We made this long trek through the Emory campus, student center to the grassy quad over to the Emory Village area and Everybody’s pizza. I was put off a bit though, I always am by Emory. It reminds me so much of Wake Forest, another southern private school. The one I attended until the whole coming out, fight with the mom and step-dad, running away from home, being disinherited, having to leave school thing kicked in. I’m just reminded at Emory of that old Pre-Med, Organic Chemisty Major, taking Honors English student I used to be. Not that I’m complaining, but it just makes me confront all those alternative universes. The one here was the what if I had stayed at Wake, changed my major from Organic Chemistry to English, then I could have actually become one of these writers that teaches at one of these schools and attended all these festivals, but again que sera sera (thank you Doris For the mental soundtrack)

The walk was awkward, as are most walks with a group of friends, acquaintances, but mostly strangers can be. As we went along the group got stretched out, forcing you to choose a sub group. I tried miserably to carry on a conversation with Daphne Gottlieb, but it never got much past the “how do you like Atlanta? must be a big change from San Francisco” crap. Plus, I couldn’t stop staring at her breasts, I just couldn’t help it. Even as a gay man, I have to admire women who’s breasts seem to defy gravity. I couldn’t see a bra, but there had to have been some great feat of engineering at work there. Add the peek-a-boo tattoos, the plunging neckline, the cleavage it’s all pretty intimidating. I started feeling like a real sexist pig, though honest I wasn’t staring in any sort of lurid way, more just in admiration, like you’d stare at the great pyramids.

We finally made it to the restaurant “The big poets” all sort of clumped down at the end of the long table, all professorial and oblivious to the rest of us at the other end (coordinators, administrators, lesser poets). If it had actually been two tables, they’d have been at the “adult” table. The chosen few around Doty though did include though a young boy from Tennessee who was following Mark Doty around a bit like a puppy. He had admitted to us earlier how he’d come here just to meet Mark and found it hard to even talk in his presence, being so in awe of his poetic greatness. It was sweet. I was reminded how I really don’t work that hard to meet any of my heros and role models anymore. They always disappoint, never matching up to what you’ve inflated them to be in your mind, so it’s often just best to let them exist in this nebulous cloud of sublime godliness and enlightenment, than to find out that they’re for the most just mere mortals with a book award or two. This kid was not there yet though. He’d obviously read Mark’s works and somewhere along the lines felt it spoke to him (and I mean directly and only to him) that somehow they were soulmates, there was some inner connection, etc., etc. – like I said – Sweet.

I’m reminded in some biographies of Charles Bukowski, how after a few of his books had become successful that it wasn’t uncommon to find young girls camping out on the front porch. Girls who’d often driven across the country, all because they knew they’d found their soulmate, someone who truly understood them. He apparently found it amusing, and a great way to score some prime ass – now he was a real pig.

The lunch lasted a long time and the conversation was great, there were some really interesting people there, even at the child’s table. Someone even picked up the tab for everyone (always a plus). Then we were all on our own heading back to our respective vehicles.

I had one last chance to meet Mark Doty as we were leaving, but let it pass. Not that I was planning on being rude or anything, it just happened that way. I’d always remember it though, that lunch I had with Mark Doty and almost got to meet him.

Another Gay Saint - Vatican Goes Against Final Wishes

2008-10-19T05:25:00.000-07:00

John Henry Newman http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10794a.htm. One of those gay heroes from our past. Men of quiet dignity that live their lives honestly and with conviction, doing good deeds and great things. Playing the cards they were dealt and making an example of their lives.

The vatican though a bit uneasy about making a saint from someone who's dying wish was to be buried with his lifelong friend and "roommate".

The last line is actually borrowed from their shared tomb. It's as if they are whispering to us from the past.

John Loves Ambrose

I hope at least you carved it on a tree,
That god would not begrudge some bark
For love to proclaim it’s name,
Though lips and deeds could not.

I hope at least fingers touched,
That closeness counted;
There had to have been a kiss
If only briefly on a cheek.

What blessed Seraphim it was
To bring you heaven’s dreams, of flesh,
Of consummation, of love’s embrace
That light of day would never know.

It would only be in death’s keep
That your bodies would share a bed,
For god to decide what lover’s fate
Waited beyond the gate.

Though here on common earth
Those who call themselves his servants
Would seek to rip inconvenient love
From it’s final resting place.

But who can argue with God’s hand
When his love rules even dead flesh
Ashes to ashes dust to dust
Two lovers together as one forever.

---

Out of shadows and phantasms into the Truth.

Gayploitation Movies - Where's the Gay Spike Lee?

2008-10-06T02:41:00.001-07:00

Got to the Midtown Art Cinema and had to decide, hmmmm, a) "Blindness" some of my favorite actors working with a great director, in a engaging and challenging piece of social/science fiction that asks important questions about human nature; or b) "Another Gay Sequel - Gays Gone Wild" four gay chums go to spring break in Key West enter a contest to see who can fuck the most, and along the way find love, lust, and giant pubic crabs.

I told myself that i would refuse to go see "Gays Gone Wild" that it was another one of these Mindless Gayploitaiton romps created purely to separate me from my $10 bucks and take advantage of the fact that gays will pretty much go see any "gay" movie that comes out - we're that starved for acceptance and seeing our lives portrayed on the big (or small) screen.

It was pure drivel, poorly acted by your typical WeHo eye candy, full of stereotypes, relying way too much on cheap gags, projectile vomit, and tasteless cheap humor - I haven't laughed so much in ages.

At the end of the day there really is something about seeing your "people" depicted up on the big screen. People/situations you can identify with, being able to sit in a theater with queens yelling at the screen in sort of a big communal group hug.

Don't even try to find any deep meanings; if you had to look for any life lessons here, it would have to be a) a committed monogamous relationships is great - unless the pizza boy is really, really hot, b) mean people suck, some suck really really well, c) if you can't find true love, you just haven't been playing it kinky enough, and d) when it all comes down to it, it's friends and family that count (just don't sleep with your dad, or try to jerk you buddies off when they have monster crabs).

Perez Hilton "stars" in a rather annoying way by continuously popping up at odd moments. The product placements get rather tired but I suppose necessary. Ru Paul and Scott Thompson I guess now are standard stock actors for any real gay movie.

But it all begs the question, where's the gay Spike Lee, the gay Tyler Perry? To drive that point home this weekend, Tyler Perry had his big studio opening party in Atlanta recently. Anyone in the black movie community that was anyone showed up, and why shouldn't they. Tyler Perry has been giving neglected black actor's and actresses some good roles, plus he's just been able to give them some steady work.

Where is the Gay studio? Not that there's not gay talent out there. Maybe that's the problem it's all "out there" but under wraps. I'm hopeful for the Harvey Milk story coming out soon by Gus Van Sant, but it reminds me, that much like "Brokeback Mountain" for a gay movie to be taken serious, it has to now be cast with serious straight actors, that somehow gay actors in a gay movie suddenly becomes not so serious.

Why not Ian McKellan and Jack Harkness in a story about May/December relationships. Neil Patrick Harris as a widowed gay single dad?

"Breakfast with Scot" can't get here fast enough!

The Core Contradiction of Today's Republicans

2008-10-05T06:48:00.000-07:00

I've always had a soft spot for Republicans, and not just the preppy athletic ones with the polo shirts and topsiders. The old fashioned kind -- the live-and-let-live, why fix what's not broken, fiscally responsible, common sense kind. What happened?

Since the Gingrich "Contract with Armerica" era, I've often wondered just why Republicans ran for office anymore. Their new promise to America was basically "Vote for me and I'll go to DC and do absolutely nothing, spend no money, make no laws. I'll make sure that Government becomes a dried up, husk of it's former self, with no real strength or power." And that seems to be what people wanted.

My biggest problem with that though was the presumption that government itself was inherently evil, corrupt, bloated. It certainly leans that way without needed controls, but Republicans basically gave up on the fight. They ceeded that government was an untameable, uncontrolleable, mythical beast that at best could only be caged, banished to a dark dungeon where it could do no harm. The best tactic of all was just to starve it to death, cut off it's food supply.

The argument was framed in terms of big government, little government, when all along the real question should be good government vs. bad government, responsible government vs. irrisponsible, responsive vs. aloof. Republicans successfully linked these concepts of big government being inheriently evil and the smallest possible government obviously the best option. If you took their thinking to it's logical conclusion the best U.S.A. would have no taxes, no government, only a mega-military/industrial complex providing meager jobs to a population having to pay for it's own unregulated healthcare, schools, roads, everything. Staunch Republicans would call that heaven on Earth - most would call it anarchy.

So now we have bridges and infrasstructure crumbling, an unregulated free market system out of conrol, a healthcare system designed by the heathcare lobbyist spiraling out of control, banks lining up for bailouts, starts starting to que up for help, the auto industry starting to make their case - do we see the problem yet?

The Gospel of the Free Market Economy

2008-10-05T06:03:00.000-07:00

I've been really struck by the zealotry involved with the free market economy talk as of late. Especially with the economic woes. It really does start sounding like a cult. These Republican's that rode in the on Reagan revolution, have abandoned all reason and logic and just keep chanting the mantra "free markets are good, free markets with correct themselves, the free market will save us."

They chant this as the temples of greed, trickle down economics, and deregulation crumble around them. It's almost as if they've so bought into this cult, this religion, now that it's seen for what it is, they just can't face it. Where's the kool-aid?

It's Darwinian ecnomics at it's best. This belief that only the strongest, smartest, most well funded, shall survive - deserve to survive. This is jungle economics.

The thing that makes man great though is his ability to create societies, to create a society where certain values and beliefs override the baser tendencies in man. Freedom trumps tyranny, compassion is held above callousness, fairness and justice is preferred over schoolyard bullying, harrassment, and rule of the mob.

Georgia's Queer History - Pasaquan

2008-09-22T02:48:00.000-07:00

Pasaquan the colorful built environment by one of Georgia's earliest and certainly most colorful queer characters has been designed as a National Historic Site. The place is just magical, and the story of Eddie Martin or Saint EOM is one that has to be turned into a movie one day. It's just such a great story. A fourteen year old boy driven from his poor sharecroppers home in South Georgia for being "different" ends up in New York City in the midst of the Counter Cultural scene. A street hustler, turning tricks and telling fortunes, creating this extravagant persona. Constantly soaking in the art of the NY museums and cultural institutions.

When he comes back to South Georgia (The voices told him to) he started the Pasaquan compound built from common building materials but inspired by a kaleidoscope of culture blended into a mishmash of utopian fantasy.

I used to go down there quite a bit years ago, back when you could just wander around and still peak in the windows. There have been efforts to restore it and get it reopened, hopefully the new historic designation will help. A nice bit of Georgia history well deserving of preservation.

This is also a very important bit of queer history that we should all appreciate. The queer experience of building one's own world and colorful environment (including costumes) as a way of dealing with a harsh sometimes cruel world.

The High did a show on him years ago, there's a coffee table book and a film as well (the video below may be part of it - not sure).

I love in the video the local businessman referring to St. EOM as "not the marrying kind."

HISTORY OF A SIGN

2008-09-21T18:07:00.001-07:00

This is a beautiful Mexican short that came out of the Cannes Film Festival this year. I found it on Eric Himan's blog. You should check out his website www.erichiman.com he's an out gay rocker, that's putting out some great music.
Here's the short.

Is it okay not to believe in heaven?

2008-09-21T13:45:00.000-07:00

Just generally musing on religion, etc. Feeling very existentialist these days. I keep coming back to one of my main problems with orangized religion, with this whole ideal of heaven. That there is this great reward that makes all the suffering and righteous living worth the trouble. Shouldn't righteous living (and I mean living compassionately, lovingly, aware) be it's own reward? In some religions the most holy figures are the ones that on the cusp of enlightenment, at the very gates of paradise, refuse to go in and, decide instead to help others become enlightened. Why is it with Christianity getting in the pearly gates seems to be the be all/end all?

The Problem with Heaven

Ultimate carrot and stick
Either golden gates,
Or fire and brimstone.
Either paradise
Or the fiery pit.

We hold the seeds of
The divine within us
Why then wait
Until after death
To bloom?

We hold within us
Compassion, Love
Everything to
Make a paradise
On earth.

Why then so stingy
Holding blessings
So close
Is that not
Sin?

Palin - What Republican Really Think

2008-09-03T16:52:00.000-07:00

I have to admit to something that's probably not exactly PC, one of my favorite bloggers is Andrew Sullivan Conversative Gay Boy. He does have great content and I always read his stuff. He does harken back to the "old school" conservatives which are all rolling in their graves today with where the Republican party has been led by the religous right wing and their cronies.

Following some of his links to various stories I ran across a pair of Republicans after having just tried to spin the Palin VP choice as best they can, don't realize their Microphones are still on after the segment - take a listen to what even the Republican Analyst are saying when they're not spinning for the camera.

Michel Gondry Tribute

2008-09-01T18:14:00.000-07:00

In one of those "A-Ha" moments, I ran across much of Michel Gondry's work on U-tube. Have you ever found an unexpected common thread that tied up some of your favorite things? Without realizing the connection, turns out I've been a big fan of Michel Gondry and his work for years. What's amazing as well is that they were some of my favorite things from such dramatically different creative arenas. I was amazed to find that this one man tied them all together.

First one of my favorite movies, it was an engaging and challenging movie, and a visual and creative stunner (plus it didn't help that it starred sexy Gael García Bernal. Plus for extra pop culture kick it also starred Charlotte Gainsbourg, daughter of the lengendary French crooner Serge Gainsbourg.

Some of my favorite commercials and videos have also come from Michel Gondry, the list is too long to post, but this Smirnof ad is pretty representational. I've always loved this sort of surreal, fast cut, morphing approach. He's done work for Levi's, HP, and several European companies.

And how's this for a pop culture overdose, a piece by Michel Gondry, featuring Bjork playing a piano that drives a 70s spin art machine (I LOVED Spin Art!).

Then to top it all off, I find that he did my all-time favorite music video. It's a bit a classic from the Chemical Brothers. That at first glance just seems to be a camera pointed out a train window, then you realize that the light poles and various buildings are whizzing in time to the music. They apparently took hundreds of hours of footage from this train, then went through and picked the best ones, then did some major video editing to make this seamless video. Everytime you watch it you realize that almost every little thing in the video picks up some musical motif in the music.

Well enjoy!

A Very Atlanta Moment - Zesto's at Little Five Points

2008-02-11T18:36:00.001-08:00

My new cell phone will have a camera, this little throw away slice of life piece really needs to be illustrated with the empty wrappers from a Zesto's foot long basket.

Clear Night at Zesto’s

Scarfing a foot long
At the window counter,
I spy high in the clear night
A slightly crescent moon
Smiling down on little 5 points.
It's all Cheshire cat grin,
Perhaps coveting my
Basket of tater tots
Or just amused at the
Chocolate Nut Brown Crown
Running down my chin.

Entropy

2008-02-11T16:51:00.000-08:00

Entropy is an interesting scientific concept.

Here's an excerpt from www.entropylaw.com.

"the world is inherently active, and that whenever an energy distribution is out of equilibrium a potential or thermodynamic "force" (the gradient of a potential) exists that the world acts spontaneously to dissipate or minimize."

Or if you took this to a metaphysical level basically the world is set up to minimize or dissipate any state of high energy or potential. The universe likes things averaged out, it doesn't like a lot of waves, preferring smooth calm waters.

Entropicarious

The universe always
Walks downhill,
Being lazy,
Winding down,
In decline, decay.

Entropy seeking,
The dead calm,
Peace and quiet,
The easy path,
Of least resistance.

But to be human
Is to fight the fall
Aspire to higher states
Reverse the equations
Spit in fates eye.

To deny we are marbles
God drops into a
Rube Goldberg cosmos
Slaves of gravity
Until death.

Holding Poetry too Close

2008-02-09T16:58:00.000-08:00

There's that romantic notion of poets and artists consumed with passion, producing masterpieces in some sort of crazed delirium of creative energy. Oddly enough though I keep finding myself, as much as I believe totally in the power of creativity and human interaction... I keep finding myself not turning to it, somehow doubting it. However, we wouldn't be poets, playwrights, painters, directors, if we didn't somehow at our core believe that we can make a differnce -- and not only that, but taht other people and their work, if we are open to it, can make a differene in our lives.

Crisis of Faith

Like all things held tight,
Passions close to heart,
Like priests in wartime
That lose their religion.
We can lose our poet’s heart
To tightness of grip, fists
That squeeze the blood out
Right between our fingers.

Is Creative Energy Finite? or a Bottomless Well?

2008-02-08T01:45:00.000-08:00

I've been crazy busy lately with our company's move and some major projects at work. Then there's ongoing renovations at the old crack house I live in, and never enough time or energy it seems.

I'm guilty of trying to compartimentalize everything, and keep work, home, personal life, poetry, creativity in nice neat little manageable areas of my life. I also fall in the trap of thinking I'm constantly low, always starving for this sort of mythical mana of personal creative energy. Thinking that for some reason I only have enough to just focus on work, or just writing, or just personal life, etc.

However, it seems that the more I go down that path the less energy there is, the unhappier I am, the more unfufilled I am.

So there's this constant effort to remind myself that creativity and life energy is one of those rare items that the more you use the more you have.

Conservation of Energy

Divvied up, horded
In some inner fortress,
Behind locked doors,
Under heavy guard.
Energy razored out in neat
Cocaine lines,
On giant mirrors --
I dare not look into.

So precious as to be
Rendered useless,
So often counted
The edges worn.
One stack for work,
One to feed the meters,
A small dusty cache
For dreams delayed.

What once seemed so
Boundless in my youth,
Now seeming so finite
Demanding stingy parcels.
Denying the truth of
The creative universe
The one true
Perpetual Motion Machine.

Ghost Rider Burn Out

2007-03-03T23:37:00.000-08:00

Well I actually was wanting to see “Puccini for Beginners” this weekend, but got to the Midtown theaters and the place was swamped, no parking, huge lines. So decided to hop over to Atlantic Station. I decided to go with “Ghost Rider” the latest Marvel Comics adaptation starring Nicolas Cage.

As far as comic book heroes go, he’s supposed to be one of the hippest and more relevant. Basically, as a young man, the main character (played as a young man by a completely different actor) is a promising motorcycle dare devil following in the footsteps of his father. He makes a deal with the devil to sell his soul to cure his Dad of cancer. Years later the devil comes to call on him, enlisting him as the newest “Ghost Rider” whose job it is to track down escaped souls from hell.

At night, when evil is near, Ghost Rider, burst into flame. His flesh burning off until he’s just this skeletal figure covered in sterno gel. (Though somehow his clothes never burn).

This movie reportedly cost 120 M to make. The comic book had the Ghost Rider as a very haunted, troubled, hard drinking, lost soul seeking redemption. Apparently, part of the Nicolas Cage deal was that he would get to “tweak” the script. So the cursed boozing loner becomes a goofy, jelly bean popping, Karen Carpenter listening loner. Someone should remind Hollywood that just being “weird” does not translate into a character being interesting, deep, or sympathetic.

It’s a diverting enough movie, I did catch myself getting caught up in it from time to time, in that sort of very male high school way. Whenever in the presence of evil, Nicolas Cage catches on fire and becomes the Ghost Rider. Even his bike is transformed from a pretty cool custom bike, to this Bike from Hell. Also, it is worth seeing Peter Fonda as a very menacing and effective devil.

Okay, then there’s the flowers, as in hundreds of fake silk flowers. It’s set in Texas, so I’m guess they’re supposed to be Texas Blue Bonnets (which they’re not). There’s a recurring bit of set, a big oak tree on a hill surrounded by blue flowers, it’s used in several key scenes in the move. However, if you’re going to spend 120 MILLION on a movie, PLEASE don’t go out and have someone just buy 300 very fake looking blue silk flowers and stick them in the ground. That person should be shot.

Workshopping with Ava Leavell Haymon

2007-02-27T04:42:00.000-08:00

Above: Workshop participants and staff with Ava Leavell Haymon (2nd from Left).

Had a really nice evening with Ava Leavell Haymon’s poetry workshop. It was a small crowd so we got to do quite a few exercises, and have lots of nice little conversations on the process, what inspires us, and we also got to read some of our own works.

She’s also reading this Tuesday night at Charis books (7pm), I’d highly recommend anyone catch her reading that can. She’s currently doing readings from her new book “Kitchen Heat”.

Unconcious/Inconscientes

2007-02-24T21:12:00.000-08:00

I was first attracted to this movie for its setting, in one of my favorite cities - Barcelona. Probably one of the most unique cities in the world, and on the top of my list if I ever decided to go expatriate.

On that account it certainly doesnt disappoint, especially since it's a 1913 period piece, when Barcelona was in the midst of a cultural, architectural, philosophical golden age.

The costumes and sets are just incredible, if you're a big fan of Art Nouveau and Modernisme, you have to see this movie just for the apartments and fabulous dresses and hats.

That said, it's also a cute little entertaining movie - what some people would call a modern "romp". The main characters, two sisters and two brothers who are both psychiatrists, are each married to the wrong person (for reasons that unfold throughout the movie). The movie losely revolves around a trip by Sigmund Freud to the city and a plot to asssassinate him. Along the way theres, bordelos, Maury Povich "who's the daddy" drama, lots of talk about large penises, incest, secret transvestite clubs, victorian porn studios, royal intrique, etc., etc. the twists just keep coming eventually it all gets to be a bit much.

I have to give it credit though for being sort of a "modern" period piece, and one of the main themes is how society deals with self expression, identity, and uniqueness. Some people are liberated, and others, well...

What do you do when self-examinating and discovery, let maybe one too many genies out of the bottle - that can't be put back in?

Vernon Robinson Ad

2007-02-23T15:47:00.001-08:00

I saw this on Andrew Sullivan's blog and thought I'd post it as well.

It's absolutely hilarious. Probably one of the most condescening, pandering, fear-mongering ads I've ever seen.

When People Die and No One Notices

2007-02-22T04:17:00.000-08:00

This story kept sticking with me. So I thought I’d comment. Recently, a man was found mummified in front of a blaring TV set. They estimate he’d been dead for about a year. His neighbors didn’t really notice, thinking he’d been shipped off to a home. Apparently, no family checked in, or there was no family. There were no friends or anyone else to check in either.

How does this happen? There’s lots of issues here, like how we dismiss the elderly and tend to warehouse them and how we can be so isolated in a modern society that is all about communication and interaction.

But what I keep coming back to is probably a universal fear we all share. What if we die and no one notices? This is a case of it happening quite literally, but doesn’t it happen every day? I guess we all like to think we make a difference, have caring friends and family. However, under the right string of circumstances this could probably happen to any of us.

I guess I’m particular sensitive to this issue, since I have a personal experience along these lines. Years ago, when I lived in Woodland Hills, a nice intown little neighborhood, I had an elderly next door neighbor. She was nice enough, not the friendliest person, but a retired professional, educated, having a nice little home. I remember she smoked a lot of pot, mostly with her maintenance man who seemed to be his main visitor.

We had pretty typical small ranch houses, close together, and the windows on the side were high on the walls, so you could see into the next house if the curtains were open, but only the top part of the room. I’d often put my tie on in the living room on the way out the door by a big mirror there. The way the mirror sat I also got a view of my neighbors back room. I noticed one day there was a note stuck to the wall. Just like a piece of notebook or legal paper taped right to the wall. I remember at the time wondering that it was, and deciding it was probably a note to her handy man, Something like instructions on painting the wall or something.

A week passed, then another, in the third week I came home after work one day to find all this activity in my neighbors yard. There was an ambulance, the police, other cars. Turns out my neighbor had quietly killed herself, and the note I was seeing everyday as I put on my tie, was not some instructions for the handyman, but actually her suicide note. A note that hung on the wall, right over the couch on which she lay dead. A body that just because of the way the windows were laid out, I just barely couldn’t see.

So how does this happen?

How does someone pass away in front of their TV set and not be discovered until a year later?

David Lynch - THE GRANDMOTHER

2007-02-20T10:55:00.001-08:00

The David Lynch Experience

2007-02-20T10:51:00.001-08:00

I recently saw David Lynch's newest Movie "Inland Empire" a 3 hour tour de force, of talking rabbits, time warps, stories-within-stories, emotional instability, and lots of tight gritty close-ups. A lots been said on that movie, and I actually wanted to talk more about the experience of David Lynch movies rather than any particular movie itself.

For me it started at Wake Forest, I was pretty much just off the turnip truck from rural Eastern North Carolina. However, I was all set for something new and different, challenging. The little student theater there, run by the film department was a small basement affair in the student center. A small cinder block room, painted black with maybe 20-30 chairs, and a projector on a AV stand in the back. There was probably never more than 10-15 people there for any movie that I can remember.

It's an experience I'm not sure people get today (what with Netflix, downloads and DVDs). There's something exciting about going down long hallways and stairs to some small basement black box to see some arthouse movie - there's that feeling of discovery, of being introduced to something unusual, something "arty". There's this joining of a small club of film buffs who "get it" when most people don't even try.

Well David Lynch was part of all that. I remember seeing Eraserhead and his earlier movies here, being riveted to the screen by the sheer perverseness and creativity of it all.

He later went a bit more mainstream with Blue Velvet, and Dune. Then veered off the tracks a bit to a more personal style with Mulholland Drive and now especially Inland Empire.

I read a recent article asking -- "Just how do you keep your reputation as a renegade avant garde film maker when you hit 50?"

I also remember seeing Andy Warhol movies there (see previous post on Factory Girl) actually sitting through all five hours of "Sleep" (which you can't even find today) - Who in the MTV generation would do that today?

How do people today discover art cinema? That there's something outside of the the local mall octoplex?

DVDs are a mixed blessing, I know they're cited as the main culprit in the death of the Art Cinema. Atlanta used to have quite a few. Places like Rhodes Hall, that showed old B&W classics, and hard to find foreign movies. It's nice that it's all (mostly) available for home consumption, but I guess I miss the magic of seeing those classics on the big screen with an audience.

Or in the case of David Lynch, seeing a a movie in a student center basement.

I've attached what I think is probably the ultimate early Lynch movie "The Grandmother" not as famous as Eraserhead, but probably more disturbing and memorable.

Coconut Creme Hazelnut Coffee - Am I Really a Coffee Drinker?

2007-02-20T09:28:00.000-08:00

I like to think of myself as a bit of a purist.

However, I think most died-in-the-wool coffee lovers would cringe if they saw me drinking my morning cup of java.

For years (The Miami days) I was partial to cuban coffees and straight up expressos. Though cafe con leche was my coffee drink of choice.

So, it's with mixed emotions I introduce what is one of my favorite products lately. Coffee-Mate Coconut Creme creamer - yummm. Then to add insult to injury, I add this to my Hazelnut flavored coffee.

So the question is - am I really a coffee drinker, or am I just jonesing for a caffeine buzz and candy coating in exotic tropical flavors just to get it down?

I came late in life to coffee, not really drinking it until my late 30s, though my parents were heavy coffee drinkers. I can still picture my mom at the dining room table with her lipstick stained cigarettes and coffee mugs. My caffeine fix of choice was always (and still is) diet Coke.

There's just something about the ceremony, the procedure of getting the water, filter, measuring out the coffee, the machine dripping away, the aromas - nothing seems to say "okay I'm awake" more than that second cup.

So apparently this is a "limited edition" creamer (gee, don't I feel special just having it in my fridge). So try it while you can.

Factory Girl

2007-02-19T19:25:00.000-08:00

I’ll have to admit a certain fascination with all things Warhol. Especially the whole mystique of the Factory. I’ve always thought of it as the Left Bank of the 60s. Sort of a perfect storm of inspiration, creativity and chaos. It apparently, had a bit of everything 70s -- Lots of drugs, tons of sex, and rock ‘n roll ala the Velvet Underground. It is also famous for taking people and chewing them up and spitting them out, while a detached remote Andy reigned benignly over it all.

There’s some fascinating characters that came out of there. There was hunky bad boy drug addict Joe D'Alessandro. Viking songstress Nico and then also Lou Reed with the Velvet Underground. Then just a whole slew of various wannabees, drug addicts and hanger ons.

But probably the most famous of the Factory celebrities was Edie Sedgewick. Who supposedly gave us the term so often used now “superstar”. She was a bit of a poor little rich girl, from a totally nonfunctional family. An old money socialite who depending on who you walk to was either a beautiful flawed total nutcase carrying on the family tradition of nervous breakdowns and self destruction or she was a fragile beauty that Andy Warhol used up and discarded like yesterday’s empty tomato soup can.

Sienna Miller is in the title role, and manages to show Edie’s early brashness and charm that pulled so many people in, then the just utter lost soul who is strung out in the Chelsea while her friends shoot her up, make porno movies, and steal her silver and furs.

Guy Pierce is almost unrecognizable as the pasty, blotchy faced and emotionally distant Warhol. Warhol does not fair well in the movie. He comes across as vapid, and petty. He seems to be fascinated with Edie, but at the same time, two faced and an unreliable friend.

A Bob Dylan-esque character is central. Apparently in real life Edie was seeing him for sometime. He seems to be her savior for a while, but then abandons her to the factory and the drugs, going off to get secretly married. Bob Dylan apparently tried to block the release of the movie. Though I don’t think he comes across as the big bad guy, he just walked away from a bad situation, when he was probably Edie’s last hope.

Also, I have to mention one of my favorite actresses, Illeana Douglas, who plays Vogue Editor, Diana Vreeland.

All in all, I know this is one interpretation of the whole Warhol Factory scene and the tragedies that surrounded it. Warhol definitely loses a bit of his luster in this movie. However, you feel sorry for him in a way, being such a tragic lonely figure, that can’t reach out or make any real connections.

In the end, I think this says a lot about current pop culture. That whole 70s Studio 54/Factory scene may even have started a lot of it. Everyone’s fascination with their 15 minutes of fame, and superstar status continuing even today with Britney and Paris.

And where Andy Warhol elevated common cultural items like soup cans and advertising images to art status. It seems he did just the opposite with Edie, taking a real beauty and helping transform her into a bruised common heroin addict in a seedy hotel.

WOW! No Gay Discos Allowed

2007-01-05T05:03:00.000-08:00

I gave myself two presents for Xmas this year. First, a new ipod mini, the little clip on one (I LOVE it!) I’ve been listening to new Bjork ever since.

Second though, I finally broke down and brought WOW – which most people know as World of Warcraft. It’s the largest massively multiplayer game online and was recently parodied in an episode of South Park. Now I like video games as much as anyone, and especially the more quest/problem solving ones (like the Sims). I’ve enjoyed it, but never realized it would be tainted by discrimination.

WOW allows you to go on quests through an almost endless number of realms in the WOW world. Some of them are problem solving, hide and seeks, delivering messages. They range from delivery secret messages to the capital, to wiping out pesky murlocks and trogs. And as you play you loot each vanquished foe for booty that you can swap or trade for cash and other useful items.

It also promotes multi-player use. You can play as a single player, but it’s much harder. You can form groups as you come and go and coordinate strikes and swap goods. This gets to be fun, but you never really know who you might be playing with. I once tagged along and an attack of a trog mining operation with a group of Marines stationed in Iraq.

You also get to join “Guilds” which are large groups that get together and form gaming parties to carry out quests. So I did some research on any GLBT guilds and found several. I also stumbled into a rather interesting case of discrimination.

WOW has banned the use of “GLBT” in any sort of guild associations, on the basis of harassment.

Not that GLBT players are actually doing any harassment. However, the company feels that by identifying themselves as GLBT it’s just inviting harassment from other players. With probably a lot of their player base being teenage boys, you can see where it might be a problem.

However – can you actually ban “GLBT” as a term, just because it brings out homophobia and harassment – in other people? WOW’s apparently rethinking their stand after a threatened lawsuit.

Above, CLEOMAN, 20-Level Human Rogue, does a little disco stepping on the docks on scenic Lake Everstill, in disputed Alliance territory.

Don’t you love the fur Sonny and Cher boots? I saw those on sale in the Western Garrison on the way to Westfall and just had to get them. Not only are fashionable, but kick ass with armory points. You actually get to buy different accessories, not only weapons, but the boots, tunics, gloves, etc. You buy them mostly for armor points and other benefits, but sometimes they just look FABULOUS!

Holiday OCD

2006-12-28T20:28:00.000-08:00

Well I can tell the holidays are now over - my OCD has calmed down.

The Holidays are generally pretty stressful for me, esp since I got laid off and have just been doing freelance. I can slip into these bizarre habits without even realizing it.

Like I went to Cliterati to hear the reading and had to stop by the grocery store to pick up a few things. I realized while shopping that my favorite yogurt was marked down to .39, which generally means I can get 6 (3-9=6). Not that that formula makes any sense at all, but it's just that there has to be some formula or reason for every little decision.

I also, got to the .99 frozen pizzas and usually means I get 3 (cause 3 goes into 9), but I actually only got 2.

I know we measure things in small victories sometimes, but I actually got a big thrill out of living dangerously and breaking the rules.

I finally have the gas pump thing licked. I used to have to always find the gas pump number that matched how much gas I wanted to get. For instance if I wanted $10 in gas, I'd have to go to pump #10. If that one was busy, I could go to pump #9 or $11, but I'd then have to get $9 or $11 worth of gas. I realized that had gotten out of hand though when I actually would find myself leaving a gas station and going down the street if a) only low # pumps were available (cause it didn't make sense to just get $1 of gas - duh) or b) only high # pumps were available (cause I couldn't get $18 dollars in my tank).

Funny how the mind works.

I even used to be that way with my poetry, I was a hopeless counter. Squeezing each piece into some bizzare meter like: 5-5-5-5, or 2-3-4-5, not that it had anything to do with the work, it's just that if I didn't make all the meter work, it drove me crazy.

A lot of people would probably find this strange, especially considering I'm such a laid back and relaxed person generally. I'm certainly not up in the leagues with the chronic house keepers (I wish) or the hand washers.

But if you ever open up my fridge and find some bizzare number of things, like 9 bottles of pancake syrup, or 12 jars of mustard -- you'll know I must have been having a bad day.

Merry Xmas!

2006-12-24T11:56:00.000-08:00

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas. It's going to be pretty quite here, just visiting with friends around town. Hope everyone has a great holiday with friends and family.

Outide the Green Zone - Review in The Pedestal

2006-12-21T19:24:00.000-08:00

The new Pedestal Magazine has a review of "Outside the Green Zone".

http://www.thepedestalmagazine.com/Secure/Content/cb.asp?cbid=5049

I'll have to do a more extensive blog on this. After it's all said and done, now that I've been working on this project for so long now, it might be time for a recap/lessons learned post on that project. So look for that.

2006-12-20T20:19:00.000-08:00

Pretty Amazing video, especially the first half, you keep thinking it just has to be special effects. What makes this particularly amazing too though is that it's done by 21 members of the China Disabled People's Performing Art Troupe, doing what's call the Thousand-hand Bodhisattva dance. They're all deaf which makes it even more amazing since there's no music ques they can follow.

Ode to the Silver Grill

2006-12-20T12:35:00.000-08:00

This is a piece I wrote on an Atlanta Insitution and one of my old favorites:

+++++

Country Fried Steak at The Silver Grill

Atlanta is full of contradictions. To start with, it’s a large cosmopolitan southern town. Cosmopolitan and Southern are words most people just don’t usually put together. Yet the great strength of the city is that it not only attracts people from around the country, but it’s in particular a regional hub for the best, brightest and most ambitious of the South’s sons and daughters. I myself came here over twenty-five years ago looking for opportunity and community and now consider it home, and wouldn’t consider living anywhere else.

It’s been said Atlanta often favors the latest and greatest, the newest and shiniest over its history and more homespun institutions. Even on a personal level we often try to distance ourselves from our small town roots and lose the thick southern accents.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this Atlanta’s “Southerness” lately, mainly because I’ve been visiting the Silver Grill on Monroe drive. I’m trying to get in all the fried chicken and country fried steak I can before they soon close their doors. They’re soon to be the latest in a long line of Atlanta institutions to make way for redevelopment.

I find myself really torn on this, I’m all for the cities redevelopment and renewal. I’m excited about all the new condo towers in downtown and midtown, the expanded museum, the new aquarium. I realize that it’s good for the city I love so much. However, I do miss some of the little things that are getting lost. I miss not only the historic buildings like the Pershing Point Hotel and most recently 615 Peachtree, but even the little things, the institutions like the Silver Grill.

In a city that aspires to build the “Midtown Mile” a long overdue retail district in midtown, I sometimes feel words like upscale, high-end, and “the next Rodeo Drive” get tossed around a bit too much. I’m reminded that if we aspire to build the next ____ (fill in the blank) then it will never be more than an imitation, a cheap copy of whatever we’re trying to emulate. True institutions are built as unique entities with their own personalities and charm.

That brings me back to The Silver Grill. The restaurant was built decades ago so that country folks coming to work construction in the big city could find a little piece of home, a nice plate of comfort food, a meat and two veggies, and a good cobbler. Over the decades, it’s been pretty much the same story. The workers changed a bit, construction workers and day laborers giving way to office workers, and lawyers and now even web designers. It’s always been for the same reason though, to get a little piece of home in the big city. To eat in the Silver Grill is to feel a little bit closer to home for a while, to feel a little more comfortable with ones southern roots. To have Peggy give you a big smile and “hey hon” is like getting a big hug from a favorite aunt.

Not that I really have a solution. It’s a problem that some people can’t even get their heads around, but it’s just something we need to keep in mind. With growth comes choices, but progress isn’t always measured by biggest and newest, much like our lives aren’t always measured in the size of our paychecks and having a corner office.

If I had a few million bucks lying around, I’d buy the property to save it. The sad thing is there will more than likely be a chain restaurant there in the end, but it will probably serve burritos or sushi. If I had my way I’d make sure everybody got a nice vacation and have them come back to a nice new (but not too shiny) Silver Grill on the corner of a new condo building.

But all I can do for now is call up friends I haven’t talked to in a while, and meet them for dinner and enjoy the country fried steak and the company. We sit around in the booths and catch up, maybe talk about family and where we grew up and whatever happed to so-and-so. We find that we talk a bit slower and relax after a long busy day, and though we all try to watch our weights there’s always room for cobbler.

GO WEST

2006-10-19T23:15:00.000-07:00

Well, I've been pretty negligent lately about keeping up with my blog.

As some of you know I'm in the middle of changing jobs.

I do have a lot to catch up on, and it's funny how with blogging, you have all this stuff to put down, but then you put it off, then you get backed up, then it's all just too much to deal with. So, voila, you just dump all the baggage and start fresh.

+++++

I did go to see the PET SHOP BOYS at the Tabernacle. Made for a nice evening, I even drove over to the station and took the train into town. It was a nice night for walking around.

Now First let me explain a special connection I have with a special connection with the PSBs and their music. I think most any gay boy around my age probably did. It's music we all kinda grew up and came out with.

But above and beyond that, I have a special connection with "GO WEST". Some years ago my partner David passed away, from a very long lingering fight with AIDS. It was one of those particularly dramatic movie-of-the-week deals. Drama with the family (Jehovah's Witnesses), home care (IVs and inhome nursing), etc.

Now this was very early on in the crisis, before anyone even knew what it was exactly or how to deal with it. We found out he had it when he kept getting sick and no one could figure out what it was. He got test and yeah, he was pretty far along. He got sick pretty quickly, and then was sick for a long time. Now I was also positive, but not as far along as he was. Naturally, most of the early focus was on his immediate need.

When he did pass away, suddenly I'm finding myself also with HIV, and now alone, having lost my partner of 10 years. It was a lot to handle, and things didn't look very promising.

So when I got his insurance money in hand, I was also charting my t-cell count and projecting to hit below 200 before too long. (That was sort of the magic number back then when you started getting sick.) Okay, now looking back the smart thing to have done would have been to invest the money or pay down on house. However, at the time, the standard speech for people diagnosed with HIV was "Well go ahead and write your will and get things in order." I really thought maybe realistically I only had a year or two to live, and probably 6 months of good health - if I was lucky.

Being from a small town in NC, and with my parents have died when I was young. I had never really traveled much. So when people suggested "well maybe you should do something you always wanted to do" (implying - while you can). The thing that came to mind was some travel. Particularly this romantic notion of the "Grand Tour" through all the European capitals. I got a three-month leave of absence from Coca-Cola, got me a Eurail pass, a plane ticket, and some travel guides and with only a rough notion of how and where to go, took off to Europe.

I could go on and on about that, It's a whole book in itself. In short though - it's probably been one of the best things I've ever done. It was a life-changing event, and I couldn't think of a better way to "go out in style."

But back to topic - GO WEST.

You could imagine I was in quite a mental state. Having just lost my partner after a long illness, and facing a dire future myself, everything took on larger-than-life meaning. I had to see every museum, go to ever city, every church. After two weeks I almost collapsed before I settled into a more reasonable routine of leisurely travel, with a day off here and there.

There were two big cultural touchstones for me that Summer. First, the movie "Philadelphia" it had already been in the states but was now being shown across Europe. Before the end of the trip I would see it SEVEN times, in various languages, sometimes in English with foreign subtitles, sometimes just dubbed in whatever language was local. I came to know that movie by heart. In many respects, it represented to me my recent past and what presumably would be my future; wasting syndrome, KS sores, a long lingering sickness that would surely end in a slow painful death. (How Cheery!)

But there was something else that was big that summer. "GO WEST" not just the song but the video (Video Bars were all the rage in Europe at the time). You couldn't go into a gay bar without hearing it. It was the anthem for that summer.

I'd started my journey in Manchester been there a couple of days, then moved on to the little resort of Blackpool. Interesting city Blackpool, it is to London, what Coney Island is to New York. Historically, the place the working class Brits would go to spend a family vacation, go to the amusement parks, the piers, and block after block of carnival attractions. The centerpiece is a 1/2 scale replica of the Eiffel Tower that sits on top of the worlds largest ballroom. (You see it on TV sometimes in competitions.) Another cool thing about Blackpool is that they don't allow hotels, the whole town for block after block is solid B&Bs. I stayed at this place called the "Crooked House" which was full of these 20-something secretaries (think big-haired Melanie Griffin in "Working Girl" but with a thick street British accent.)

Blackpool also has a very thriving gay scene. Where people come out for the weekend from London on the train. There was this one bar everyone said I HAD to go to. I forget the name, but just remember it was HUGE. Think Backstreet, but with a bigger dancefloor and more bars all around it, then stack three of those on top of each other, each with a different theme. It was on par with anything in NYC. But I got there WAY too early, and ended up sitting by myself at one of the bars watching the videos and making small talk with the bartender in the mostly empty cavernous disco.

Well so "GO WEST" comes on the screen. It was the first of MANY times I'd see it on this long trip. Now put in context all the previous stuff; lover dying from aids, doctors saying I probably only had a year or two tops, the "Philadelphia" mindset, etc.

Well then here's this video. That's all about looking forward, coming together, moving on, belonging to a community. I was overwhelmed. Something clicked. After YEARS of bad news, surpressed anger and grief, general frustration, I just lost it. I started just crying at the bar, and I don't mean just a few tears, I was howling, sobbing uncontrollably, the bartender just kinda stood by with his mouth open but was afraid to even say anything. I probably cried for a good 20 minutes (then the bartender bought me a drink after I explained - then he shed a couple of tears as well).

But what triggered all this?

Somehow in watching this song/video, something clicked. I allowed myself a chance of hope, a chance that there could be a brighter future. Mind you, I'm just talking about allowing or daring a "Chance of Hope". That in itself was a big breakthrough for me. I was allowing myself something other than this movie-of-the-week scenario, that was still fresh in my mind from David's death.

Now I know all that was knocking around inside my head to begin with, but seeing that song just brought it all into focus. Everytime I saw the video after that I would get a tear or two, but it was much more because of an optimism and hope that continued to come to the forefront throughout the trip.

So needless to say - when THE PET SHOP boys closed with GO WEST as their final song, there were again, a couple of tears.

"Outside the Green Zone" at the Portfolio Center

2006-09-05T14:43:00.000-07:00

Atlanta contributors to “Outside the Green Zone: Poets Respond to the GLBT Cleansing of Iraq” held their first reading September 1st at the Portfolio Center in Buckhead, as part of “Poetry at the Portfolio Center” hosted by local poet Collin Kelley.

Some of Atlanta's leading poets contributed to this book, including: nationally-ranked slam poet Theresa Davis, poet and actress Lisa Allender, C. Cleo Creech (editor), poet, author and playwright Collin Kelley, and poet and activist Franklin Abbott.

A second reading is schedule for September the 12th at 8 p.m. to be held at Outwrite bookstore at 10th and Piedmont.

The collection of works is designed to bring awareness to the plight of the GLBT community in Iraq. Since the issuing of a Fatwa or religious edict calling for Gays and Lesbians to be killed in the “worse manner possible” by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, executions have become commonplace. Under the new Iraqi constitution which is based on Shira law these executions are now legal and constitutional. Increasingly being conducted by Iraqi security forces and police and boys as young as 14 have been executed in front of their families.

For more information see myspace at http://www.myspace.com/outsidegreenzone or email outsidegreenzone@comcast.net

Religious Fascist of the Day Award - Katherine Harris

2006-08-28T13:53:00.000-07:00

Katherine Harris, our lady of the hanging chads, has come out and said what many Republicans would probably like everyone to believe - but are afraid to say so. Only days after President Bush has reclassified the war on terrorism as the war against Islamic fascism, it seems we have a few religious fascists of out own.

According to Katherine Harris:

1. Church-State seperation is a “lie”

2. The Founding fathers never intended this U.S. to be a country of “secular” laws (this is a popular talking point for the religious right.)

3. Seperating Church and States is wrong because GOD chooses our rulers (feeding into the notion often attributed to Bush, that he was “chosen” to be president).

4. "If you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin," and end up with abortion and gay weddings and probably dogs sleeping with cats.

Though she's running for the Florida senate seat, Republicans continue to distance themselves from her. Not so much for her views, but because of other problems of “elect-ability”.

She's been tied to dealings with a corrupt defense contractor. So apparently God thinks it's okay to deal with corrupt warmongers??? Another great paradox in Republican convenient and politically-expedient selective value-bashing.

Green Zone at the Portfolio Center

2006-08-22T07:14:00.000-07:00

Collin Kelley was nice enough to set up a reading for the Green Zone project at the monthly Portfolio Center readings. So this event will be Sept. 1st. 7:30, the Portfolio Center is on Bennett Street, Which is just off Peachtree North of Piedmont Hospital, Bennett Street is the Antique/Gallery Row that runs behind Mick’s. The Portfolio Center is all the way at the back.

Green Zone at Java Monkey

2006-08-14T11:03:00.000-07:00

First reading from the Book last night at Java Monkey. Was a bit of an off night, but got good a response and sold a handful of books. The press kits have been trickling out, but just dropped a huge box of them off that I'd put together over the weekend. One response I keep getting from people is that “yeah, I remember kinda hearing something about that a while back.” So it's seems like this issue is something that is hovering around just on the edge of most people's consciousness, so hopefully this project will bring this into focus for people.

White Crane Journal Publication and Interview

2006-08-12T05:36:00.000-07:00

I've been getting to know the guys at White Crane Journal lately. First, at the big GLBT reading at the main library downtown, someone picked up my chapbook "Flying Monkeys in Riot Gear" and sent White Crane copies of some of the pieces. White Crane will be publishing "June 22, 1969 - June 27, 1969" my piece on the connection of Judy Garland's death and the Stonewall riots.

I also happened to mention the "Outside the Green Zone" project. They've been very supportive. They will be dropping in a blurb in this coming issue on that as well as posting an interview with me on their online journal.

Outside the Green Zone - Getting it Out There

2006-08-09T22:30:00.000-07:00

Well, after weeks (months) of pulling this together. Including hand-printing the art covers and assembly. The chapbook is now available.

I have to give a special thanks to my fellow contributing poets, Franklin Abbott, Lisa Allender, Theresa Davis, Collin Kelley and Steven Reigns. Everone brought heir own unique perspectives and styles and the result is a very powerful collection.

I'll be sending out lots and lots of press releases, guest columns, op-eds, etc. for while. I have a huge stack of contact and will be knocking out info/press releases every night.

Initial early reaction seems good.

Hopefully this will prove to be a vehicle to get the word out, and create some grass roots activism, as well as maybe raise a little money for the Uk exile group.

I'll keep you posted as events unfold.

Outside the Green Zone

2006-08-06T14:32:00.000-07:00

Just finishing up this chapbook project, should be interesting to see how it works out. Have spent the weekend with all the handprinted covers hanging from clotheslines all through the house (an attractive decorating look.)