Stardate 12232002
Ho Ho Ho. The Christmas shopping season, as newscasters keep desperately reminding us, was shortened by an entire week. So you’ll have to buy twice as much stuff nobody needs or wake up on Christmas morn’ with a big ol’ “asshole” sign on your forehead. So if you are one of the lucky ones who are not swept up in the commercialism of Christmas and instead are allowing this dark time of the year to unlock your visions of peace and hope which our world is always in need of, Bless You.
Bless you anyway. Bless, and never curse. Unless they really really deserve it. But you better make sure that you understand the concept of justice before you curse.
Because you never know how it might come back to you.
Anyway.
Before I get to the festive Holiday content … here’s a little trailer for the main event.
Cinespace finally opened in Hollywood. I got wind of this restaurant/bar/yet another place for chic industry photo-ops at Sundance 2002. It was supposed to open in the summer but it didn’t. It opened in Autumn. Cinespace threw a big sneak preview opening party last week and being the celebrity hound that I am, showed up only to find the place packed with normal people sucking down the free booze and energy drinks with wild abandon. Cinespace opens its doors again for “the public” in January.
Wilde abandon. I think Oscar Wilde would approve of the appropriation of his name used in this manner. Oscar would probably have loved the tastefully decadent holiday season I’ve been witness to thus far.
Peter Jennings got cocky at a lecture at UC Berkeley. He’s currently on a promotional tour for his new book IN SEARCH OF AMERICA. Jennings dissed the local newspaper, the SF CHRONICLE, and the audience cheered. Oops! An audience member asked him if he was just a talking head. I got a little thrill listening to college students still taking the kinds of risks they stop taking once they try to assimilate into the corporate world. Jennings replied that, in fact, he has a lot of control over the stories he reports on. So you can blame him directly for not exposing the military/industrial complex propaganda machine and the corrupt business and politics involved with current world affairs.
Janeane Garofolo (I know I promised never to write about her again, but like a moth to a bright flame, I am drawn again and again to flit about the hurts-so-good burning fire) was on the Connie Chung show on CNN after she, and 100 other celebrities wrote a letter to alleged president George W. Bush urging him not to “pursue a course of action that will lead my people to war” (10 points to anyone who knows where that quote came from). I’m sure it was worded a little different, but you know, it’s saying basically the same thing. Matt Damon is apparently a closet radical, as he signed the letter.
The really smart thing they did was not sending the letter to the alleged president but sending the press release to the media. All ideological battles are fought in the public, not at crunch sessions for ideologues. Although, could you imagine? Secret meetings of opposing world leaders discussing their ideas and the fate of the world. Or a checker tournament to determine the course of nations. That would make a good comic book. The Checker Tournament That Determined the Fate of The World. Or perhaps a children’s book. The headline will read, CONFLICT RESOLUTION AN UNEXPECTED BOON FOR HASBRO – 1ST QUARTER EARNINGS TO SPIKE.
It’s not as spectacular as breakdancing, but it’s better than THERMONUCLEAR WAR!
AAAARRRRGGHHH!!!!!
AAAAARRRRGGHH!!!!
Sorry. Exploiting fear and paranoia is just good theatre.
Where are the Jedi now?
Hoy Va Con Dios! What am I even talking about?
Oh yeah. Janeane Garofolo was on CNN, fulfilling her lifelong dream of sticking it to the man. She went on and on about the mainstream media … while being featured by the mainstream media! That was quite a coup and it makes me think the lines between mainstream and underground are blurring … finally. Since most of what is “underground” in the U.S.A. is matter of fact in many other industrialized, first-world, nations. Our news is accused of being myopic and being unduly influenced by government and corporate interests. That may be shifting. Michael Moore is just a symbol for that popular upswelling – a signpost leading to Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky as the architects of a public conversation about the and acquisition and use of power in our society. (Nietzsche and Foucault are important here as well for their ideas of the master/slave power relationship most noticeable in our work lives.)
It gets much deeper at this point … so visit your local library to clue in.
The meek shall not inherit the earth. The young shall. If the old don’t fuck it all up first.
I’m very excited about where we are in history. Never before has it been possible for this unprecedented global cooperation to create a peaceful world. The post world war two consciousness is still embodied in millions of people but over the next decade, the boomers will be retiring, the WW2 generation will (to be completely distasteful) be pushing up daisies and the Gen-X’ers will be at the helm.
Political campaigns will be run from raves and skateboard parks and ideology disseminated through video games and cartoons. The ability to bust a move or a rhyme will be of utmost important in choosing our leaders. Or choosing not to have leaders.
See what I’m getting at? We rule the roost and we are just sitting around picking our butts. Viva Democracy! We can do anything we want. Nah nah nah nah nah. My suggestion: Don’t follow in the footsteps of our forebears, who I see as the last gasp of a dying, irrelevant culture that continues to recapitulate historical conflicts and promote the destruction of the natural world, threatening not only all the species on Planet Earth but US!!. We are killing US!! That totally sucks.
It’s time, folks, to take responsibility and live from our inspiration, not from history. I’m giddy over the idea that I can break the cycle of dysfunction and try to create a different kind of society, one that is built out of what humans actually are and what they actually need, not the “official” stories of what humans are supposed to be, that force so many kinds of pegs into one kind of hole.
I don’t buy into that whole “Life in a state of nature is nasty, brutish and short.” I think we can take the best wisdom from the ages and learn from thousands of years of human history to collaborate for our survival and happiness, rather than compete over ideological or racial lines.
So I propose, that this holiday season, adopt a bigot. Find your friendly neighborhood closed-minded person and take them on a friendly tour of reality. Smile at the angry people, hug the frustrated. Stop judging and just support people to try their best.
Okay, back to the show!
Sean Penn went to Baghdad on a self-imposed diplomacy tour. He obviously feels very strongly about this issue. That’s participatory democracy at its best. Simply taking action without waiting for official approval. Needless to say, if American soldiers arrive in Iraq (They have been in Iraq bombing for the past ten years .. so I guess I should say if the war in Iraq moves from underground status to officially acknowledged world event) they will be greeted not with flowers, but with bullets said Iraqi deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz. However, Aziz welcomed Penn's "opposition to all wars and all forms of aggression" and urged other peace activists to follow his lead. Looks we are all stuck beholden to the aggressive will of a few. I mean, what is this war even about?
"I needed to come here, a very simple thing, and see a smile, a street, smell the smells, talk to the people and take that home with me,” Penn said while touring the suburbs outside of Baghdad.
Geez, without politically motivated celebrities, I’d have nothing to write about!
John Waters had an X-mas party. Mark Huestis’ Outsider Enterprises put on the John Waters X-mas to benefit POSITIVE RESOURCE: A non-profit AIDS service agency-which provides benefit counseling and job placements to over 2,500 HIV+ San Francisco residents per year.
Waters manned the Santa Station. Instead of telling him what I wanted, I made a felt penis and decorated it with plastic gems and presented it to him on behalf of MoviePoopShoot.com. What goes better with a poop shoot than a penis?
The party included drag-king Santas, strip-tease elves and a drag cha-cha heels contest which was won by Precious Moments who jumped rope, naked, with his dick tucked between his legs, wearing high heels and singing JINGLE BELLS. It was more like JINGLE BALLS. Precious Moments is also some porn movie, if you want to see the goods in action.
One particularly over-worked crowd wrangler was overheard saying, “I’ve just about had it with those Perrier guys.” The Perrier company sent a couple of scantily clad cuties (in fact, I saw them at the Los Angeles Outfest Gala opening party this summer) who were generally being obnoxious and making out with the guests and blocking rug traffic and thinking they had carte blanche to cut in lines and cross velvet ropes. Honey, its fizzy water, not a Golden Globe.
And as if that wasn’t enough fun for the whole entire year, the Castro Theatre and Frameline (who organizes the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival) kicked off their CLOSE-UP series with Gus Van Sant.
Van Sant was interviewed by NEW YORK TIMES film critic Elvis Mitchell in front of a packed house. While the audience gathered, a white Wurlitzer rose up to the stage. Organ music is a rare treat in the old single-screen Deco movie palaces from the Thirties. The Castro neighborhood, long held as the gay Mecca (even though, when get there, Mecca is just a big rock) is lucky to have this gorgeous building. The Castro now shows mostly repertory films and hosts film festivals like the San Francisco International Film Festival. The organist played ANYTHING GOES by Cole Porter, a fitting song for the hedonistic (and I mean in that in the most glowing way possible) Castro.
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San Francisco resident Robin Williams, made a surprise appearance. Williams starred in Van Sant’s GOOD WILL HUNTING, the film which garnered Ben Affleck and Matt Damon a shared Oscar. As you’d expect, Williams and Van Sant were swamped with people and as much as I wanted to introduce myself, I didn’t want to be thuggish about it. So I enlisted the aid of Sister There’s No Place Like Rome, of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (who take actual vows of community service) to muscle the crowd so I could at least get a clean photo. All I really wanted to know was what Van Sant was doing later.
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Carol Lynley, the star of THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, read the classic ‘TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS at the John Waters X-Mas bash. She managed to make the innocent fantasy sound naughty as she suggestively lingered over the line, “The stockings were hung …” and raising her eyebrows at the audience. I’m such a little slut. I was trying to figure out a way to ask Waters out for some post-festivities nuzzling. Nothing serious, you know. Just another notch in my starfucking belt. I did get a little pervy having him hold the penis ornament I made, imagining, of course, that it was my own.
Here’s a bit of Christmas news. Seems we are always updating our version of what’s true. The classic Christmas poem that gave us the modern popular conception of Santa Claus as a red-clothed jolly elf, 'TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS was once ascribed to Clement Clarke Moore but recent scholarship points to Major Henry Livingston Jr. (1748-1828) as the probable author. The poem was first published anonymously in the Troy, NEW YORK SENTINEL on December 23, 1823, thus making it as American as Rock and Roll and Comic Books. Regardless of where the poem came from, the last stanza still sums up the feeling of anxious anticipation upon going to bed on Christmas Eve. I still get that fluttery feeling even though I now usually wake up on Christmas day alone, with my coffee and the all-important cinammon roll. I don’t celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, but I heartily celebrate the season and I think its an ideal time to meditate on what really matters and the importance of human communion.
My reference point for the holiday season is a small cottage in a snow covered village in the woods, a blend between victorian aesthetics and medieval society, where babies routinely died, the fire was kept lit with twigs, the family huddled together and by the end of winter, most people were starved down to nothing. No wonder most end-of-autumn food is filled with fat and sugar. We don’t need to fatten up anymore, but somewhere, that memory is in our cells. Spring must have really felt like a miracle. The solstice is on Saturday, the longest night of the year and then the light, as well as hope for the future, is born as the days get longer. I would celebrate too if I had just come out of another hard winter when the first crocuses poked their head through the melting snow.
So, in keeping with a long and venerable tradition of dancing sugar-plums, sparkling lights and holiday cheer …
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
"HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD-NIGHT!"
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