| (no subject) |
[Jul. 16th, 2009|04:51 pm] |
|
"It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet." |
|
|
| turn around bright eyes |
[Jul. 16th, 2009|12:16 pm] |
my recollections of last year's ATP remind me that many of you are fans of the immense 'total eclipse of the heart' and therefore may be highly amused by this literal version of the music video for it. happy thursday!
|
|
|
| Nursing home semifinals |
[Jul. 15th, 2009|02:19 pm] |
I've narrowed it down to two nursing homes. Three if you count the extravagant place that's like a fogey Fantasy Island and doesn't take MediCal and costs a bare-bones minimum of $6,000 a month, the one that will require some rich person to come along and be my mother's benefactor or cause ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) moroccomole and me to enter into a real life "Wings of The Dove" scenario with the heir to some shipping concern. Or heiress. I'll do what it takes. I'm not kidding.
Nursing Home "A" is the first one I visited. Somewhat old, somewhat worn, but still warm and friendly. Nursing Home "B" is newly renovated, efficient-seeming and a little cold on first impression.
I went back to Nursing Home "A" this afternoon for a follow-up visit with their admissions woman. Somehow, though, she either forgot about our appointment or got called away on an emergency. Or something. I left her a note to call me (and I'd really like there to be a good explanation) and instead I spoke to a kind of flustered assistant nursing director whose English was the kind learned in adult ESL classes at night and whose personality has been shaped by nearly 30 years of employment in this one location, dealing with old not always alert people who don't ask complicated questions one after the other in expectant, no-bullshit-please tones of voice. When I do this at home to the man I love, I am frequently rebuffed with: HOLY BALLS DAVE WHITE, STOP PEPPERING ME WITH QUESTIONS. YOU'RE BEING JUST LIKE MY FATHER. But in this particular scenario I think my insistence is warranted, and I don't care how limited your English. I expect answers.
And since I'm a former ESL teacher this kind of thing doesn't really present a communication challenge to me anyway. I restate, I rephrase, I repeat. Then I wait for the response.
I got almost all my questions answered by the guy, with only a few "I don't know what you mean" answers and I will get the rest of them checked off my list by the lady I was supposed to talk to in the first place. If she doesn't call me by 4:00 pm, I plan to nag her voice mail until I get her on the line. Then it's back to Nursing Home "B" for their turn to be peppered. |
|
|
| The Pop Art Anti-War Nun |
[Jul. 15th, 2009|10:09 am] |
Now that I've expelled the ranting portion of my Sunday night's activities, I can show you more about why I was at Cinefamily.
Like I said, I went to see the three short documentaries about Sister Corita
"Become a Microscope" (2009) by Aaron Rose
"Sister Corita: Mary’s Day" (1964) by Baylis Glascock
"Survival With Style" (1966) by Cal Bernstein, Alex Singer and Haskell Wexler
The first one is a new film that uses bits and pieces of the archival footage in the second two movies and provides a nice contemporary explanation of who she was, what she did, why she was important and just how cool and inspirational she was.
Here's a YouTube clip about her from "Become a Microscope" director Aaron Rose that was on German TV.
More information about her here:
http://www.corita.org/
As for Cinefamily, if you're local you really should go see something here because everything they do is great. This link will tell you all you need to know about why there are no ushers to scold people who text during the movie.
http://www.silentmovietheatre.com/ |
|
|
| My husband, moroccomole, has some stuff to tell you... |
[Jul. 15th, 2009|06:42 am] |
If you're local or around Los Angeles in the upcoming weeks, he's hosting some things and you should know what they are. The following text was written by him. I'm posting it here for him because I stand by my man. Usually.
Hope you're enjoying the summer and avoiding the heat. Here are some upcoming events that promise to be lots of fun as well as FULLY AIR-CONDITIONED:
* I'm moderating a discussion with the gay creators of BIG LOVE on Sunday, July 19, at 5pm at the DGA. Special guests include actors Mary Kay Place, Matt Ross (who plays closeted conniver Alby) and Sandy Martin (who's never anything but riveting as the nefarious Selma Green), among others. It promises to be a lively discussion, with lots of great clips from the addictive HBO series; tickets can still be purchased online from Outfest at http://www.outfest.org/tixSYS/2009/search/big%20love/AL (And if you haven't already, check out all of this week's Outfest schedule -- there are lots of great features, docs and shorts you won't want to miss.)
* As a longtime fan of the American Cinematheque, I was thrilled when they asked me and Stephen Rebello—whom I consider to be one of my literary mentors—to curate a bad-movie series for them. (Stephen is, of course, the co-author of the landmark BAD MOVIES WE LOVE, and I've seen THE APPLE more times than is considered healthy, so we both bring a lot of experience to the table.) I hope you'll join us for some or all of these delectably awful cinematic stinkers in a series we call SO BAD THEY'RE BRILLIANT:
Thursday, August 13, 7:30pm: KITTEN WITH A WHIP & THE LONELY LADY
Friday, August 14, 7:30pm: XANADU & STAYING ALIVE
Saturday, August 15, 7:30pm: MAHOGANY & A NEW KIND OF LOVE
(Dig out your wildest frocks for our "More is More" fashion show and competition at 7pm!)
Sunday, August 16, 7:30pm: LOST HORIZON
Wednesday, August 19, 7:30pm: GLITTER & FROM JUSTIN TO KELLY
All screenings will take place at the historic Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Blvd.; as guests and other details get confirmed closer to showtime, I'll send out some follow-up info.
Wishing you all Otter Pops and frosty mugs,
Alonso
P.S. My friend Dennis Hensley is hosting another hilarious round of The Mismatch Game on the weekend of July 24; for tickets and more information, visit http://www.lagaycenter.org/site/PageServer?pagename=TE_ON_OUR_STAGES or http://www.dennishensley.com
Okay, now it's me, Dave, again, with my personal plug for this stuff. You may have avoided "Glitter" and "From Justin to Kelly" because of sanity or good taste or because it all just seemed too faggy.
And if you avoided them then what you missed was two brain-scrambling buckets of awful awesomeness. For example:
|
|
|
| Food lines are for Russia in 1975. Thanks for finding me that food line, Phone. |
[Jul. 14th, 2009|08:02 am] |
I hate your phone.
I also hate my own phone but that's because I can't figure out how to text. I also hate my own phone because I lose it a lot. Or maybe I lose it a lot because I hate it. I also hate my own phone because I never wanted a phone to begin with; moroccomole forced me to get one so that he could contact me in case of emergency. The world conspired with him by eliminating pay phones. I never used pay phones anyway because of gnarly germs waiting on them to give me ear diseases, but they existed in case I was ever that crazy desperate. Now they don't. Except for that red booth one outside of that fake British pub on the west side over near Santa Monica. So MM forced a phone on me. Then he bought an iPhone and forced a new Motorola Razor on me. I hate all these phones.
But mostly I hate the phone of the rude fucking woman who sat next to me at Cinefamily the other night. I went to see the three short Sister Corita documentaries ("Become a Microscope" (2009) by Aaron Rose, "Sister Corita: Mary’s Day" (1964) by Baylis Glascock, and "Survival With Style" (1966) by Cal Bernstein, Alex Singer and Haskell Wexler, and I'll post more about those later because they were RAD) and during the last of the films, the rude fucking woman breezed up to the couch where I was sitting, (they have fancy leather couches in the front at Cinefamily. Why haven't you been there yet? I'll explain more about that place later too.) sat down and...
...IMMEDIATELY BEGAN TEXTING through the entire 30 minute-long short. Shining her texts like a little blue flashlight all over the place. And because it seemed inappropriate and is sort of not awesome to harsh on people in the live-and-let-live-everybody-hang-loose environment of the Cinefamily where they allow you to bring your own beer to the movie if you feel like it, and because I was so stunned by her nasty antics, I remained silent and thought about these questions:
1. Why are you doing this?
2. Why are you even here?
3. Why aren't you down the block at the nasty Grove multiplex watching something as ridiculous as you are?
4. How did you even find this place? Did you simply stumble in? Did your gigantic purse act as a navigational system? Is your gigantic purse smarter than you?
5. Can I not get away from the creepy assholes of Los Angeles for even 90 minutes at a weird little repertory cinema where they show short documentaries about art-nuns from the mid-1960s? Are you people like a ubiquitous poison gas that just seeps into every single fucking corner of life now?
6. When will you die?
I thought about getting up and moving. Then I turned around to look for an empty seat. Turns out that Sister Corita was so popular that it was a nearly full house. So I stayed put and seethed. I know some of you would have bitched at her and done some kind of verbal assault. And on a short-temper day I would have, too. But I'm trying to be a different person with that shit. I have been told, by MM and others, that I do, on occasion, terrify. That I bark loudly and angrily and it makes people scared. And because I'm currently sort of on the fence about whether or not scolding strangers in public is even a good idea in the first place, first because it's Los Angeles and they could be a superloco and have a gun and also because philosophically it may make more sense to be the manners you wish to see in the world instead of the person screaming about those manners, I just sat there, annoyed.
But I hate your phone. And I'm not so fond of you, either.
Last night the phones helped us find Diddy Riese, the cookie store where you stand in a half-mile line to enjoy the cookies. This was after seeing "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" over in Westwood. I ate one cookie that was admittedly delicious even if the line for it was like Pinks without the promise of a chili-cheese dog and grape soda at the end of it. But MM and xtreem_aaron and Our Tom Ford were down for the line. So again, phones suck a moose. I was standing in a line for a cookie at 10 o'clock at night.
Just as we reached the front of the line, two cute young women of UCLA walked up to us and asked if we'd buy them cookies so that they didn't have to wait in the superline. Under normal circumstances, if someone was in an actual hurry and needed me to help them and there was a line that was going to prevent them from getting to the really urgent thing they needed to do and I was in a spot in that line that would allow me to give them the kind of assistance they truly required, I would help.
But.
Here's another list:
1. These were cookies.
2. They just wanted to make their movie on time. (There are several theaters in the area.)
3. They had an air about them, a confidence in their own adorability, that said, louder than their request, "We're so hot that if we ask these big doofussy looking guys to do something for us that they're going to jump at the chance because sexy girls like us never talk to them. They'll feel honored and connected to us in some small way just for the privilege of helping."
4. But being a bunch of gays, this shit was not going to work. I said nothing. Our Tom Ford said, "No."
5. They looked shocked and walked away.
"HP + TH-BP" is good. |
|
|
| Time to begin plugging this until you're all sick of hearing about it. |
[Jul. 13th, 2009|10:07 am] |
A couple of weeks ago, someone here on LJ asked very innocently, "You wrote a book?"
I was stunned, of course, because I think I talk about it way too much here and assumed I had already annoyed most of you with it. My close friends goof on me with some frequency about my need to move copies and willingness to self-promote.
And now, IT'S TIME TO START THAT SHIT UP ALL OVER AGAIN!
This month an anthology called "Love is a Four-Letter Word" comes out from Plume. It's a collection of first-person true unlove stories. The editor contacted me about two years ago to be a part of it and at first I thought he was lying when he told me the other names of actual famous writers who would also be taking part. Accomplished people with writing awards like Pulitzers and PEN/Faulker awards and other fancy recognitions. But he wasn't kidding and now I get to be one of the nobodies in a book full of somebodies, which is pretty rad and continues to feel shocking to me.
If you live in the New York City area there will be a reading with Dan Kennedy, Jennifer Finney Boylan, and Josh Kilmer-Purcell on July 30, 7:00pm at Barnes & Noble on 82nd & Bway. I will be there--in fact, I will be there that entire last week of July--even though I will not be reading. But you should come out and say hey to me because I never go to New York and it would be great to meet you. At least I think it would be great to meet you. Maybe after I meet you I'll think differently. But won't it be nice to find out? Oh and if you need your copy signed I can do that too.
Here's the website for the book. If you click on "Excerpts" you can read a tiny chunk of my piece. It's called "This Guy Who Was My Boyfriend For Like Three Weeks."
http://www.loveisa4letterword.com/ |
|
|
| Curse you, Studio Ghibli! |
[Jul. 14th, 2009|12:00 am] |
I cannot get the music from Ponyo on the Cliffs by the Sea out of my head.
Dammit! It's worse than Funkytown. It's worse than Groove Is In The Heart, even.
DAMMIT. |
|
|
| A belated birthday gift from my best pal, Michel Gondry |
[Jul. 12th, 2009|02:33 pm] |
moroccomole knew about this thing that I didn't. And what he knew was that if you send Michel Gondry some money and a jpeg he will paint a little watercolor version of that picture.
So MM sent Michel Gondry a picture of us from the day we got married last summer.
The wedding happened at the La Brea Tar Pits and the reception at the Farmer's Market in front of Bob's Coffee & Doughnuts. This is a picture that was snapped of us then, turned into a bizarre little painting by Mr. Gondry.
I appear to be the hulk-bodied, peanut-headed, red lady-lipped outcome of the time when the guy from "The Hills Have Eyes" put a baby into Sloth from "The Goonies." MM has had his head squeezed in a vise, stolen the cat-eyes glasses from Lynda Barry's cartoon mother and traded in his teeth for four white fangs.
In other words, I LOVE IT A LOT. LIKE A LOT A LOT. Thanks, Michel Gondry.
 |
|
|
| ..head out on the highway... |
[Jul. 11th, 2009|02:31 pm] |
Finally got around to taking some pictures of my new ride.
These were taken in a very low light garage, using my iphone and its tiny-ass lens. It didn't do a bad job compensating for the darkness, but still, my apologies in advance for the grainyness of the images - it couldn't be helped. |
|
|
| me = arm candy, me = will die |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|10:23 am] |
*moroccomole has this thing where he wants me to actually accompany him out to events. This conflicts with my own disinterest in going to these events. So occasionally we compromise and I go with him. Last night we went to the opening night of Outfest, which is the Los Angeles queer film festival. He was one of the film programmers this year so his job is to go to the opening night and closing night and the parties and to introduce screenings and whatnot.
So I went. But it was noisy and I couldn't ever really hear what anyone was saying to me because big crowd sounds are sufficient enough to make me deaf. Normal voice decibels are just drowned out. So I nod and go "Oh, hey, it is so good to see you again" and then I just look around and notice things like how insane the light sconces and giant chandeliers are at the Orpheum Theater. And complain about the seats in the balcony, which were designed when people were not so large. And I'm not even talking about fatness. I mean they had shorter legs. And smaller thighs and butts. Those seats must have fit someone back then. Just not me, not now.
One good thing about giant crowds: If you have to fart you can do it and nobody will know it was you. You can just make a face like, "Eww, who did that?" and walk away. Not that I did that. I'm too polite.
Other topic: I had my first appointment with the new therapist to help me get over my fear of flying. If you're new to reading this journal, I am terrified to fly. I do it but I freak out hard and need drugs to get through it. I went to a therapist for this in 2002, then to a horrible phobia group that didn't help me. Then I decided to tough it out for the next seven years. But MM made me promise I'd go back to try to deal with it again.
I found a good guy. His office is in my neighborhood so I can just walk there. He's all quiet and gentle like therapists are. You sit on the couch and bark out your anxieties and they just nod and then softly tell you shit you don't want to hear. Shit like, "You have to decide that you're going to be a different person regarding your fear of flying. No one can take that step for you. You have to be the one to start this in your own mind. You could very well die in a plane crash. Or in a car accident. Or by falling down the stairs. Or by having a heart attack. Short of taking your own life or learning that you have exactly five months to live from a brain tumor, you don't get to control when you're going to die. But you will die. And part of getting over this fear is coming to accept that fact. See you next Wednesday."
So I'll see him next Wednesday. |
|
|
| Gone! |
[Jul. 9th, 2009|02:45 pm] |
|
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jul. 8th, 2009|11:06 pm] |
|
"Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you." |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jul. 8th, 2009|03:31 am] |
|
"To hold a pen is to be at war." |
|
|
| Nursing home inspection # 4 |
[Jul. 7th, 2009|07:17 am] |
There may already be a winner in the nursing home competition now called "Which Los Angeles Facility Gets to Enjoy My Mother?"
The one I went to yesterday afternoon has just undergone a fancy renovation. Everything looks fresh and new. It's the largest place I've seen so far, about 140 beds. Lots of activities, people were up and out of bed, I was greeted by smiling staff several times, greeted by smiling residents too. I know that sounds silly, but I've learned that it really matters. If both the staff and the residents feel like they're in some kind of prison it shows on their faces.
No crazy smells, two large activity/dining rooms, two patio areas. A large physical/occupational/speech therapy room with full time therapists. Some group brings in animals for people to pet every week. The admissions lady told me that sometimes they bring pigs. I think that's kind of rad.
The only drawbacks I could see are:
1. It's not walking distance from our house like the first place I went to. To see her would always be a drive.
2. The neighborhood, while nice and mostly residential, has nothing to do once you leave the front door. Every trip out would involve a car instead of just a roll around the neighborhood. The first place has a great neighborhood with a lot of stuff for her to see and do.
3. The atmosphere is somewhat less "warm" than the first place.
4. Almost all the rooms are three beds. She can get on a waiting list for their limited number of 2-bed rooms. She will absolutely want a 2-bed room. She likes her space.
Anyone with any experience or expertise or opinions? |
|
|
