Category: From the archives…

With the month of May a couple of hard truths rolled forward concerning the often-difficult task of saying goodbye to friends you’ve known and grown very fond of over the years.  One such farewell was luckily stretched over a series of approximately 5 separate going away parties, which was a blessing because if you are like me, you’re going to miss the ever pleasant, brilliantly subversive, single-handed torch-bearer of the true avant garde in the SF drag scene, Phatima Rude, as she is pulling up stakes and boldly taking herself and all that fire and music and magic to New York City.  Having snagged a job doing make-up and costumes for the NY-based production of Hedwig that has taken up residency at the Victorian Theater for the past few months, Phatima has had a perfect opportunity to shine as the incredible artist she is.  Having done make-up for local television stations and of course to stunning effect on herself night after night for years of innovative looks, Phatima was more than ready to handle her first major theatrical production, and the experience has clearly put a spring in her step and a sense of adventure enough to take her vast talents to the next logical place, New York City.  She confided in me that she doesn’t have a job lined up and isn’t exactly sure what she’ll do but I have a feeling New York is more than ready to embrace the entity we’ve known and loved for so long.

Phatima has been making the scene here in SF for years, excelling in a realm of drag that always busted the proverbial seams of the basic exaggerated emulation of females we are all so used to.  Phatima’s approach to drag often incorporated elements of modern primitivism and body manipulations, like stuffing her ample roundness into an impossibly tight, organ displacing corset or stretching the holes in her notorious earlobes wide enough to accommodate a jar of Carmex lip balm, or wearing those eerie contact lenses that make your eyes look demonic or animal like, all elements that would cause me to wince imagining the pain or just look away because it freaked me out (to date I cant look at anyone wearing those weird contacts).  Phatima’s looks and transformations are seemingly endless and totally innovative.  I’ve seen her completely painted blue as a Hindu goddess, or working the developmental stages in the finest of Freudian flair with a host of toddler and infant wear to spark a certain perverse response in our youth-obsessed culture (once at burning man Phatima’s personal sleeping area was a child’s playpen), she’s strolled by my home dressed as a pink poodle, a scary clown, a dominatrix, a hilariously geriatric version of drag superstar Juanita More for Come-as- your-favorite-Tranny Shack-character-night, and a host of full on white trash influenced looks so authentic I’d do a double-take thinking some poor soul had lost her way to the Ladies of the Moose Lodge meeting.  I believe I’ve seen her do a dead-on perfect Divine before, as well as some variations on shock rockers like Marilyn Manson (whom she loves), and some ghoulish Hell Raiser-esque cenobite creations.  Some of my favorite things she does tend to be more on the simple but cruel side, like when she finds a too-small pair of seven inch heels and jams her feet into them as hard as possible then removes the heel completely and walks around like that all night, or her creative incorporation of prosthetic limbs and back braces and other correctional gear into outfits.  As far as drag goes, she’s got more in common with the late great Leigh Bowery than she does with RuPaul.  Phatima is a walking work of art, it’s difficult to recall each and every inspired stroke of genius she’s donned to head out and greet the night but you can always count on more and more.  I’ve always felt to a certain extent that with the passing of the brilliant artist and freak figure Jerome Caja many years ago, Phatima sort of carried on with his unstoppable spirit as a symbol of a certain punk anarchy freak subculture that used to flourish here about a decade ago.

At any rate, Phatima is leaving San Francisco but she tells me that she anticipates a pretty bi-coastal existence as she has such a distinct sense that San Francisco is her home, and you never want to leave your home forever.  This is very good news for those of us who will miss her always brilliant, outrageous, humorous and loving presence.  Once Phatima told me that when she visits New York for the first time she planned to dress exactly like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast At Tiffany’s the opening scene and go to that very location and re-enact the scene repeatedly.  Well, her arrival to New York this month will be her first visit.  I hope she does go through with her plan, but one way or another Phatima, the genius, the legend, the pagan hoax, will definitely make an entrance.  I wish her the best of luck and warn her to expect visitors.

The other goodbye many of us had to face recently isn’t as happy a departure as someone just relocating unfortunately.  On April 19th a dear friend to many, devoted wife and mother and a vivacious, beautiful and funny girl, Nonnie Heath died unexpectedly.  I’ve known Nonnie for many years, having first met at club Chaos and Club Uranus.  Nonnie was often the pretty and tough looking girl who could definitely keep up and hold her own with the boys, seeming to generally surround herself with mostly hedonistic creative art-fag types.  It seemed that meeting Nonnie and hanging out for awhile was all it really took to be forever linked to her, like she was a part of you and vice versa, a devoted friend who would always be there with you and sympathize and call you on your shit if necessary.  As time went on I was really thrilled when Nonnie became involved in the Sick and Twisted Players.  She would often help out behind the scenes and then started taking on roles onstage.  I just recalled that, like Phatima, Nonnie also painted herself completely blue once to play the role of Smurfette in an all star one night only performance of Snow White and The Seven Dwarves in My Bloody Valentine—an amalgamation of the coal mining horror movie cast with a multitude of cartoon characters.  My favorite show with Nonnie was The Poseidon Adventure.  There was a noted chemistry present between her and I in the casting meeting so we were cast as brother and sister, Robin and Susan Shelby.  Our big scene called for Nonnie’s character to slap me and every single performance she really did slap me, none of that stage-slap trickery.  At her recent memorial we actually watched videotapes of her shows and I was amazed by how great she was on stage, a natural with great comic timing and turn it on turn it off sex appeal.  She played a lot of other roles in various shows but she curtailed working with the S&T Players at a certain point to prepare for her finest role ever, motherhood.  Her beautiful son Tristan was clearly her best work to date and motherhood was a role she took to unlike any other.  Nonnie and her husband Ben and Tristan were a perfect nuclear family, something many of us would have never expected or anticipated coming from the likes of us and our friends but Nonnie and Ben rose to the occasion.

She was a great mother and Tristan turned out to be a delightful and extra bright child and he truly seemed to adore and dote on his mother.  She delighted in the fact that she had produced such an innocent and loving creature, someone who smiled and said sweet things for no other reason than to do just that.  Her many jaded gay friends were frequently amazed by this wonder child, so warm and well behaved.  He refreshed in our minds something we’d forgotten about, something like unconditional love.

Tristan is now seven years old and faces a life without his mother but not without his and our shared memories of Nonnie, which I only hope we’ll be able to share with him for many years to come because Nonnie Heath was an unforgettable person who touched so many lives with her firey toughness her grace and beauty and her unwavering devotion to Ben, Tristan and the many others she held dear.  She’ll always be a part of us, a great friend and a person I’m lucky and proud to have known.

I wont go into the long story of it all but for many months I have been being stalked and harassed by a homeless individual who mistook my generosity for the odd notion that I owed him a living.  The harassment reached a point of physical danger and when I moved he found my new home and it continued.  I was finally forced to take action by getting a restraining order.  This is the saga of that process, in case you readers ever find yourself in a similar situation, because it wasn’t easy and ultimately it’s hard to say if it was even slightly worth it.

It was late January and at the behest of a police officer responding to a call about a disturbance created by the stalker in front of the building where I live, I was advised to get a restraining order.  This process begins at the Hall of Justice.  I was directed to a room where I was told I could pick up all necessary forms for a temporary restraining order.  The room was long and full of people waiting in line to talk to a clerk behind glass.  Against the outer wall were several wooden structures with many form-sized compartments, each filled with a form for every imaginable court ordered process in existence.  There wasn’t much of any guide or indication as far as where which forms were stored so one literally had to comb each of 200 plus slots to try to find the ones needed. The clerks were behind glass and only approachable by waiting in line and being called to the glass one at a time.  I spent about two hours looking for the forms I thought I needed, then I waited in line, got to the clerk and stated my purpose in being there.  That’s when the clerk gave me an entire prepared package of all the forms necessary, printed instructional pages, in short everything I needed for a restraining order.  Just a simple sign on the wall would have saved me hours of searching, but I learned from this point on, there will be no help from anyone who works here, they will admonish you for the smallest of mistakes like a hole-punched in the wrong spot, and if they do direct you to the next step, the directions will be wrong.  I took home the forms and properly filled them out.  I was told these forms could be turned in up until 4:30 pm so I returned the next day at 4:00 and was told by security that those offices closed at 4:00.

I returned yet again, this time early in the day.  I waited in line, had my completed forms signed by the clerk and was directed to a room number upstairs where I was to turn them in for review and signature by a judge and then a court date would be assigned.  I went to the numbered room and it was a courtroom full of official looking people.  It really created a certain type of frustration and nervousness as I stood there not knowing what to do and not having anyone available to ask and not getting anything but vague directions at every step of the way.  I finally walked in and sat down in the room, surrounded by men in suits who stared at me like I was in the wrong place.  Court wasn’t actually in session and a woman sat at a desk busy with paperwork, looking up occasionally at me with that same “what are you doing here?” look.  The men in suits were talking about ski trips to Vale Colorado.  Finally the woman at the desk asked if anyone was submitting any pre-court date papers.  I went up and gave mine to her and she looked them over quickly and rolled her eyes, and said “There has to be actual dates listed in here…. oh I guess there are, let me see if they’ll accept this,” and she left in a huff, returned and told me to come get the order the following day after 1:30 pm.

I returned for the papers the next day and was told to come back in an hour twice and finally another clerk emerged with the papers and explained the next part of the process, serving the defendant.  They said I could have anyone over the age of 18 serve the papers for me as I could not do it myself, or I could turn them over to the sheriffs department and have them do it.  I told her that the person I was serving was homeless and she assured me that the police had lots of experience serving papers to even the homeless.  I suspected I’d have better luck.  After that I set about having someone serve him, and of course he was suddenly nowhere to be found.  This eventually forced me to file for an extension and a new court date and this time I decided to hand the matter over to the sheriff as was urged by the county clerk as the best possible way of handling it.

I went to city hall the next day and filled out the papers necessary and the person behind the counter said, “We cant serve this without an address,” and I said the defendant was homeless and she laughed and told me they didn’t have the man-power to serve a person without an address.  I told her that the county clerks office had assured me repeatedly that they could and she insisted that wasn’t the case.  I suggested someone send a memo or something so as to stop wasting people’s time.  I was back to the task of figuring a way to serve him myself but by this point I was seriously ready to say fuck it and forget the whole thing.  I casually left copies of the papers needing to be served with a friend who was likely to see the defendant and luckily he did and served them and filled out the proof of service form and returned it to me.  I was set for the court date.

By the time that date rolled around I’d received a few threatening phone calls from him but hadn’t seen him.  He failed to appear in court and the judge granted the restraining order, returning it to me to have served upon him again.  It was my understanding that the order was official, and that if he were to bother me again I was to call the police and the order would show up on the computers and the authorities called could serve him if I hadn’t yet had the opportunity, which I hadn’t when the stalker started calling me as many as 25 times a day, threatening me with physical violence and screaming outside of the building where I live so I phoned the police.  They asked me for the names on the restraining order and told me that nothing came up on the computer for it but they would send officers over soon.  They called me when the officers were outside of the building and I went out front with my copies of the order and the officers took it from me and immediately tried to sift through its contents to find anything that would make it invalid.  They questioned me about the original date of the order being so long ago, accusing me of using the order and their services at my convenience.  They gingerly commanded me to sit down on the front steps with a slight shove and proceeded to badger me like I was lying about the whole thing, not like a person who has been stalked and harassed by someone for months. Then one of the cops very loudly started asking me if I had been having sex with the defendant, saying “Answer me yes or no, yes or no,” and telling me that a restraining order had to be served by, get this, a sheriff!  I tried to explain that the sheriff’s office told me otherwise but was told to shut up while they radioed in another cop to ascertain if the order was indeed valid while telling me they should arrest me too.  The defendant denied ever being served and was telling all sorts of lies, which they seemed more interested in than anything I said.  They asked me if I had proof of service form, which I did and they asked me to get it.  I returned with the form and they verified that the order must be honored.  They begrudgingly, and apologetically to him, placed the defendant under arrest assuring him that it would only be a misdemeanor charge and that he’d be released that night then turned back to me with nothing but attitude like I’d fucked up their whole day.  I felt like from beginning to end of this whole restraining order process I was treated like someone the system was trying to deter from getting what they wanted.  The way the officers responded to the situation in front of the defendant pretty much negated the order.  This isn’t protection.  I was treated like a criminal, given the sidelong glance of suspicion, and blamed for putting the officers out too close to quitting time or something.   It’s a good thing I wasn’t carrying any take out food at the moment.  It was all one big lesson, and what did I learn from it?  Oh maybe to never rely on or trust the American Judicial System or the Police for a single thing ever again.  They aren’t here to help.  At least not someone who couldn’t just hire a lawyer to take care of it for them, especially not a gay male trying to protect himself and his home from a threatening individual.  Not in these days of the American Patriot.

Does anyone recall during the gulf war how the fighter pilots responsible for carpeting the designated target with so many bombs had actually chosen a particular theme song that they all favored and apparently would transmit to the cockpit of the bombers at some point during their mission for the pilots listening pleasure?  I was kind of shocked by this little human interest segment on the news when I saw it because I thought the business of launching airborne death from above was a very precise and technically complex affair, one calling for a clear and heightened awareness of so many details like radio communication, reading gauges, maps, hitting the right targets, etc.  You’d hardly think there was any time to spare for ones listening enjoyment, and if so maybe it would be the national anthem or The Ballad of The Green Berets or some similar patriotic morale builder or battle cry.  Well, I cant remember what the particular song title was, my guess would be “High Enough,” but I can very distinctly recall the band who performed it and it was Damn Yankees, the, ahem, “supergroup” made up of Ted Nugent (the animal hunting bigot and rocker most likely to become Charlton Heston), Tommy Shaw formerly of Styx (think slow dances at your high school prom), Jack Blades of Nightranger and some drummer who currently tours with Lynrd Skynrd.  I’d likely fly off course or even drop bombs on myself listening to that crap—in fact I’d rather hear bombs.  I had to wonder what the pick hit of the Top Gun-ners is for this new war.  Perhaps something by John Mayer or Norah Jones would be lovely, or perhaps a selection from “Chicago” for all those show-tune loving soldiers.  Then again, Eminem might really fire them up too; his Oscar-winning song is pretty powerful anthemic stuff.

Here on the home front I’d like to point out a few new musical selections that have absolutely nothing to do with providing any soundtrack or theme song for dropping bombs, death by friendly fire or other spoils of war.  Quite to the contrary, these bands and their recent releases are fine examples of everything about rock and roll music that is transformative and brilliant, music worthy of celebration, with enough modern angst-ridden swagger, indelible respect for tradition and skill, and a spirit

that reaches forward and grabs at the future like they know it belongs to them. The proof is in the product and these three releases breathe much life into the ever-changing terrain of Rock and Roll.

I went to the Eagle Tavern last Thursday to catch San Francisco’s very own rock and roll wunderkind, Dirty Power who were celebrating the release of their eponymous debut CD out on Dead Teenager records. Since I work with vocalist/guitarist Patrick Goodwin, I’ve been privileged with having a copy of this disc for several months now and it’s great to finally be able to tell you readers that it is indeed a kick-ass mother-fuckin’ heavy metal rock and roll celebration, and it’s actually available in a store near you.  The same goes for the inquiring head-banging minds that ask me, “Who is this?” whenever I play them while deejay-ing, and there are many because what we’ve got here is one pretty extraordinarily powerful, well-constructed and fresh sounding group of songs that shamelessly nod to each and every influence that ever prompted anyone to thrust the their fist in the air, pinky and forefinger extended.  That’s what is so cool about Dirty Power; you know beyond any doubt that these guys have a great knowledge of rock music and a distinct love for some of the more classic eras and icons of hard rock and screaming metal.  Somehow this fact comes through in their music but not in a way that seems derivative, and they don’t really emulate any particular era in Rock history like many bands seem to be doing these days.  The influences are there, the time references are too but these songs are as fresh and new and tough as all get out, complex arrangements that almost approach the noodle-y guitar wizardry of prog-rock but just in time make a quick return to the word assault, never letting you forget that guitars can sting, burn, rip, shred, crunch, blast, spray, explode and shatter, just like weapons.  Now there’s a firing squad I’d gladly face anytime, one that makes you feel more alive!  “His head wont stop moving, fire again!”  Dirty Power evokes major head banging, both live and when I listen at home.  There’s a little of everything on this record, the anthemic muscle of “Hey Superman,” the epic Sabbath meets Thin Lizzy arrangement of “Asthma Pimp,” and the full force manic intensity of  “Drag You Down,” my favorite cut on the disc in which all band members seem to play so fast you fear meltdown, Patrick’s high pitch metal scream repeats “I’ll drag you down with me,” as it ascends towards the level of white noise and the band shuts it down with a sudden stop-on-the-dime close.  It’s a scary, dark and awesome moment, and I thought twice before asking Patrick what inspired that song.  End to end I cant spot a weak cut on this disc.  This band is set and ready to rule.  That night at the eagle they encored with my favorite Motorhead song, “I’ll Be Your Sister.”  So bitchen.

Dirty Power was produced by Jack Endino of Sub Pop Records fame, a very gifted producer whose credits include Nirvana, Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Zen Guerrilla and about a million other great bands.  He really did an amazing job, guitars all sharp and shiny and clean and discernable, hard throbbing rhythm section and the vocals are very up-front and unburied in the mix which is very smart because when Patrick Goodwin stepped out of Pansy Division and started this project I don’t think anyone had a clue that he possesses a tremendous screaming rock and roll voice to be reckoned with. It’s true, his voice stands up to and evokes a number great rock vocalists like Bon Scott, Rob Halford, Mudhoney’s Mark Arm and more.   Endino was the ideal producer for Dirty Power really, and to quote him from his website, “A San Francisco band called Dirty Power came up and we made my favorite record of the year. Every time I play it for people in the studio they go “Wow… Who is that?” Three months later and I’m still humming their songs… They just slayed me. “Watch for ’em” is all I can say.”  Go buy this record immediately, is all I can say, and look for more merch at shows or on their website http://www.dirtypower.net/.   They have the coolest rock and roll t-shirt I’ve seen in ages.

The next great disc you need to rush out and buy is the fourth full-length release from The White Stripes, entitled Elephant.  After just one listen I can tell that it’s a shoe in for the upper reaches of every best of 2003 list worldwide and easily could be the record of the year.  They were such a simple and brilliant idea when they came onto the scene in 1999, you’d think that three albums later after achieving massive international popularity, touring with hardly any breaks save for a few months for Jack White to make his acting debut in a major motion picture about the civil war alongside Nicole Kidman and Jude Law, that success and fame and their rapid ascent to superstardom might have some adverse effect on their music.  Not a chance.  Elephant is amazing.  The Detroit-based duo of Jack and Meg White have managed to keep their wide-eyed awe and respect for seminal American Blues music, and presenting it in an unusually passionate yet natural way, a way that if some of those legendary blues men like Leadbelly or Blind Willie Mctell were alive and the white stripes played for them they would probably find their musical legacy had fallen into the right hands, unusual that these hands would be so young and white but nonetheless, they’re doing the blues an uncanny justice.  It kind of reminds me of the way that Led Zeppelin, four guys from various spots in the UK suddenly took the blues influence and ran with it and it seemed like they mastered the style like it was second nature or like they were channeling spirits or like Jimmy Page really did have some kind of pact with the devil because they didn’t just play it

With each passing day it seems the harsh and almost inevitable possibility of war with Iraq is the big fat reality that we all must face, and all of it’s expected and obvious repercussions as well as the unforeseen and unknown horrors it may hold that could forever change life as we know it.  It’s odd to find yourself, an individual with distinct beliefs regarding right and wrong, a person of reasonable intellectual capacity, someone generally enlightened enough to know that in this day and age to declare a war against another country is not a good solution to any problem, that there has to be a better way to handle a conflict of apparent global concern than through the violent militaristic force that stands to eradicate hundreds of thousands of human lives and perhaps human life completely as we know it.  When we have enough implements of war and destruction to definitely wipe the planet clean of human life, the sudden mad rush to project any one particular nation as winner of the first great war of the 21st century isn’t going to really be like a great victory to enjoy or rally towards.  Our President has already used that very phrase as incentive for gaining the peoples support as he vies for acceptance of his plan to invade Iraq and make all that he says is evil and wrong in this world right again.  This is the will of one man, one diabolical dick-less psycho babbling retard whom we didn’t elect to office, who used a national tragedy as a springboard to achieve a sudden and heroic fearless leader status, preying on the stunned and frightened collective consciousness of a nation under terrorist attack for the first time, knowing the potential of fear as a tool for persuasion, the little man leapfrogged right up to a new and absurd position of Police Chief of the World.  In fact, he’s so badass he doesn’t even have to listen to a word from The United Nations, and has intimated that he’ll do what he wants to Iraq with or without their blessing.  That kind of erases decades of progress in keeping the peace and displays a complete lack of respect for the leaders of all the other nations opposing this military action.  Bush is a power-mad dick-wagging second generation dictator-with-a-secret who probably doesn’t really know the meaning of fascism but wakes up every morning liking the way things are going more and more.  I really dislike some of the other things he fancies himself lately like Comedian (we could all do without a president who makes so many white house in-jokes at every speech regardless of the grave situation he’s leading us towards) or Sensitive Male  (cries at the drop of a space shuttle) or Saviour of the War Torn (did you get a load of the promises he made to the people of Iraq?  This invasion would break the chains of oppression, freeing the tortured people living under Hussein’s dictatorship of terror.  Last I saw the people of Iraq weren’t storming the palace and emerging with Hussein’s head on a stick, they might prefer their current situation over their homeland turned into a battlefield and soaked with the blood of hundreds of thousands of dead soldiers and oil fields burning another huge hole in the ozone layer, but I guess Bush knows better), and finally, one of his old favorite incarnations, the Compassionate Conservative, a real blast from the past.  This nation’s leader reads like a case of multiple personality disorder, and is that any wonder considering the home he came from?  And which personality did we vote for?  None of them.  How compassionate is it to fill mass graves with dead soldiers?  How conservative is it to boast of the impending attack as the most advanced and powerful militaristic show of force in modern warfare?  How conservative is it to project your nation as winning this war and how can a nation wage war in an effort to keep global peace?  Haven’t we progressed beyond this?   It sickens me to think that one man and his quest for a military show of force unmatched by anything we’ve yet seen before is changing how all Americans are to be viewed on an international level.  I just hope other nations recognize the great numbers of Americans who are vehemently opposed to this invasion, who think George Bush is a fucking retard with a hidden agenda that most obviously has to do with oil initially but holds something even more telling and sinister than most of us can imagine, something dating back to his fathers administration and even before that when George Bush was the head of the C.I.A.  There is something very creepy lurking beneath the surface of it all, some unspeakable wrong that is actively being covered up by more and more military actions, the type of which take the world a good decade or more before we really begin to understand    what was going on, like the gulf war and like the impending one.  It’s strange enough that members of the same family have led us into both of these major military conflicts.

It is so offensive that George W. Bush is so diligently trying to link this situation with Iraq to the touchstone event of the September 11 terrorist attack in an effort to win the support of the American people.  We’re being led to believe that a blow against Iraq is a blow against the terrorist group responsible for the World Trade Center attack.  Americans find comfort in a clear and defined picture of knowing whom the enemy is, and polls are showing just how much a plain-talking grinning megalomaniac is willing to imply that war against Iraq is dealing a major blow against terrorism and all that is evil and dark and poses a dangerous threat to the free world.  The majority of Americans support a military invasion of Iraq and I believe this is because they want to believe the U.S. is at last kicking someone’s ass for the WTC attack.  If they could watch it on TV like wrestling it would be even better.  This idea or notion of war being the right response truly comes from the least intelligent knee-jerk reactionary, wife-beating, gun owning eye-for-an-eye, type of American.  That’s the America that George W. Bush speaks to, the easiest to lead, the American who felt compelled to cheer when Bush projected that The U.S. will win the first great war of the 21st century.  America loves a winner, but what is it we’re fighting for?  Only with his 48-hour warning speech did he finally clearly show what this war is really about when he appealed to the Iraqi people, “Do not destroy oil wells, a source of wealth that belongs to the Iraqi people.”  Well not for long—I think the prize his eyes have always been on has been revealed and I don’t know why no one in all the media wants to talk about it on these simple terms.  America wants the oil, the whole world wants the oil and they probably have it all divided up already. This battle isn’t about insuring global safety from weapons of mass destruction and failed diplomatic attempts to reach agreements on how many missiles Iraq has tucked away, it’s really truly about oil.  Tell me that it’s merely an additional gain after the Hussein regime is toppled, an afterthought in a situation where humanitarian issues are the reason America will spend more military billions than ever before, drive Hussein out of power and then “rebuild an Iraq that is prosperous and free” and then say, “Our work is done here, but wait, there’s all this oil…” The mission will be proclaimed a victory; the US will be oil-rich, and maybe America will not really elect George W. Bush again for a second term.

As he said in his speech tonight, “The tyrant will soon be gone.”  I fear another leader placed in power in an unconstitutional fashion might actually be elected for the first time if things go his way with this war in Iraq. Bush stated in his address tonight that Iraq “has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of Al Qaeda.”   Unless I’m mistaken, hasn’t the U.S. aided and trained a few of the very same terrorists and even provided in that roundabout Iran/Contra affair sort of way some of their weapons or the knowledge to build them?   There are so many blurred lines in this business of battling our enemies, but if this war commences I truly fear we will have many more opportunities to identify people responsible for acts of terror because I think they shall become far more commonplace here in America.  It’s hard for me to believe that this military invasion will ultimately keep us safe from acts of terrorism.  But Bush stated in his speech, “We are now acting because the risks of inaction would be far greater.”  Sometimes I really start to wonder what it is he knows that we don’t and just how long he’s known and why he’s so willing to thrust us into violent uncertainty for the ultimate sake of global safety when this war stands a chance of causing economic ruin to so many American industries, not to mention the nagging possibility of environmental catastrophe and irreversible lethal poisoning of our land forever.  Am I just being a dramatic queen who has seen too many post-nuclear made for TV movies, or recalls too vividly the projected damages of the Gulf Wars burning oil fields on the ozone layer and has noticed certain changes in the weather subsequently?  Am I Armageddon-happy?

We shall start to see in about 48 hours, more or less.  Are you ready?

It seems that the rather large and ever growing annual San Francisco Noise Pop Festival, one of the cities largest music events has come, showcased and gone without me even catching one show out of a multitude of different offerings, from the great funk/soul/rock traditionalists The Dirtbombs to the highly sensitive often harrowingly bad live, queen of indie rock simplicity, Cat Power.  There were some other fine acts I’d have liked to take in but generally with all the hoopla surrounding Noise Pop, I opted for trying my luck at catching them in the future, preferably in a non-festival, hassle free way when perhaps every show didn’t present a huge scramble for available tickets, and one wouldn’t have to endure the nattering of Indie-er-than-thou guys and girls out-cooling each other with their inane and unsolicited barbs of in-the-know indie rock trivia/opinions, what guest lists they’re on for the rest of the fest or anecdotes about being at the very first or the only good Cat Power show ever.  It all reminds me of a Gang of 4 show I went to years ago where I overheard two guys hitting on two girls by boasting their music knowledge in discussion and one of the girls just kept interjecting the same sentence endlessly, “…. I like Bad Brains music because it crosses cultural boundaries.”  I wanted to strangle her.   There’s a big difference between seeing a show where the crowd is there because they like the band and are thrilled to be catching them live and seeing a show that for many attendees is one stop on an intensive week-long list of shows that serve as another place to be seen to earn yet another feather in the cap of one’s indie-rock fan credibility.  Maybe they will get laid.  Girls like guys who show an interest in sensitive personal song-stylings with minimal or precious soft analog accompaniment packaged and sold by earnest obscure non-commercial indie labels.  There were a number of acts I would have liked to catch but many were sold out and I chose to avoid the tedium.

An event more to my liking was last Thursday at The Eagle Tavern for yet another installment of their popular and ever-growing live music night.  I got their in time to catch three different bands including Gravy Train!!!!, whom I’d been waiting to see for a long time based on their hilarious and filthy new wave synth driven release The “Menz” EP, a four-song disc that opens with an ode to drinking 40 oz bottles of malt liquor and heading over to the high school “to find a me a bitch, a young virgin switch” or “make him kiss my gash before I fuck his tight ass,” with a promise of  “if you make your momma cry and I’ll give you some of my St.Ides.”  How could one not love such ribald sentiments from self proclaimed rap-bitches calling themselves Hunx, Chunx, Funx and Drunx?  A visit to their very complete and quite funny website at http://www.rapbitches.com will give you loads more information on the group, like the release date of their upcoming full length album and their history and group manifesto.  Judging from the assembled crowd, large and very responsive, Gravy Train!!!! are already a growing pop phenomenon.  Dressed in sequined hotpants and black t-shirts the members took the stage, the synth program kicked in , the fog machine sputtered and the group exploded into synchronized lewd dance moves reminiscent of high school P.E. calisthenics crossed with the nasty girl moves of Prince’s Vanity 6.  From jumping jacks to doggie-style and some impressive high kicks too , the filthy dumb fun of it all really got the crowd going.  This was a party out of bounds, dirty freak-ass fun, and they sustained that feverish level all they way to the end, moist and heaving and the crowd ate it up then they were off to the patio for a cigarrette.

Next up was a group called Veronica Lipgloss whom I’d never seen before.  There’s was a more straight up rock set, drums, bass and guitar, edgy and loud and captivating enough but towards the end of their set the vocalist kind of started baiting the crowd with some simple questions regarding the Eagle.  It was something like, “How many of you like the Eagle?”  followed by another question that I didn’t quite understand completely but sensed a hint of malcontent was being expressed.  The subject was quickly dropped in favor of reminding the crowd that a few individuals were still in police custody over the recent demonstration that turned violent outside the community center.  I was perplexed so I asked my friend Malcom, who knows more of  this crowd than myself what exactly was being addressed here.

He seemed to know immediately what was going on, and it had to do with a show at the eagle about a month ago where the person in charge of setting up equipment and sound for each band, asked someone who had commandeered the microphone and was ranting about something to hand it over so he could continue set-up for the next band.  When the person refused, Doug, without whom these live Thursdays would not be possible, took the microphone away and ejected that person from the club.  This apparently stirred up some ill-feelings with a small group of people who cried macho mistreatment, anti-drag queen, etc, trying to politicize an issue that was more personally motivated, casting an indifferent cloud over a very accommodating community venue, or rather trying to.

I thought it was particularly ungrateful and ironic that a performer in a relatively young band use the stage that hosted their performance to try to stir up more ill-feelings over this erroneous accusation that the eagle is anything but accommodating, and friendly and fair and has provided a venue for many bands that in truth might not have a great deal of  options when it comes to playing live in a place as ideal and fun with an emphasis on a community that revolves around music.  By bringing this up I don’t hope to fuel this would be conflict, no one needs to have “dialogue” about it or “process” through it as a group.  It’s in the past.  Why should Thursday at the Eagle be anything but fun and most importantly about the music?  Save your counter-cultural dogma for the real enemies.

The final act of the night was The Vanishing, the sythesizer, drums and saxaphone driven trio who are forging their way into a realm of music that could be described as Gothic Disco.  Their first release a four song EP called In The Bat Haus  is a very impressive debut, a dense, layered and scary soundtrack for your favorite nightmares, it’s foreboding atmospheric quality so present you don’t just listen to it as much as walk into it.  It makes me crave the release of their first full length due out in May called Songs For Psychotic Children.  In the past, most bands or music that might be considered Gothic have always come off to me as kind of silly and dorky, but the Vanishing have effectively creeped me out.  What’s odd about that is their sound isn’t totally gloom and bloodstains, in fact judging by their new material, which they mostly featured in this set, it was among these darker qualities, quite danceable and driven.  Vocalist and sax and keyboard player Jessie Trashed formerly of The Subtonix, looks perfect with her black Louise Brooks hair and dark eye-make-up and she seems to become a more captivating performer with every time I see her.  Someone in the crowd screamed “Jessie I want to have your baby,” to which she replied “Eewww, babies are gross!”   That’s when I began to think that to some extent this whole goth influence was possibly a bit more tongue-in-cheek than I thought, that and the fact that the band seemed to be having fun as they played, not wistfully fantasizing about overdosing on belladonna.  I was also very impressed with the drummer, a good tight player and the sound mix I thought was particularly good, showcasing the band’s enveloping murky quality, a sound that’s much more than that one dark scary tagword implies.  The crowd was in intense motion throughout the set, rivaling the free for all reaction inspired by Gravy Train!!!!.  This was a great set, satisfying on many levels.  Watch out for future shows by The Vanishing

Michael Jackson proceeded to melt down before the eyes of the entire broadcast world last week, force-feeding a screaming infant he called “blanket” with a baby bottle while keeping intact the sheer chartreuse colored fabric veil the baby wore to obscure it’s face from the public at all times, his hands and legs were vibrating as he held the baby awkwardly across his knees and tried to stuff the bottle in its mouth cooing “Shhh, shhh, shhh, hey hey hey,” trying to look like this is something he does every day when it so clearly was not.  The camera managed to catch a brief shot through the fabric of the infants face and it was a tiny face twisted with confusion and fear.  Jackson was trembling like a nervous Chihuahua forced into motherhood with a foreign species or something.  While the world ponders the legality and healthiness of a grown man admitting to sharing his bed with numerous children over the years, I found this bit of footage much more disturbing and indicative that all is not well at the Neverland Ranch.  This coupled with some of the bizarre details surrounding the birth of Jackson’s most recent child by a surrogate mother, how Jackson grabbed the infant before medical professionals were allowed to properly clean it and ran from the hospital and was whisked away to the mysterious safety of the Neverland compound, how the mother of the children is resolute about not being involved with them, giving them over to him completely, etc., are all details that suggest beyond all doubt that these children are destined for a life that can never be any thing like normal by most basic standards.

In theory, based on the odyssey that is Michael Jackson’s thoroughly public and endlessly strange life, one could have formulated that Michael Jackson was a performer who was robbed of his own childhood by his career, therefore in his adult life he began filling in the blanks so to speak with child-like fascinations, the companionship of children, often young child stars like he was or even children with terminal illnesses, kids being robbed of their childhoods one way or another.  It was sort of understandable his focus on children, and to date I seriously doubt there is anything sexually driven or motivated going on there.  I think that is more a situation fueled by the media and born of a worst case scenario tendency Americans seem to have when there’s a question regarding an individuals conduct, especially a mega-star, if that conduct is something thought to be directly corrosive to the moral fiber of One Nation Under God, and fucking children is a biggie in that category, then the public and media are going to root around like pigs looking for truffles trying to prove the darkest suspicion so the lynch mob can be formed and the person in question crucified.  I think everyone should just stop the madness.  The man is unquestionably a freak of nature and his popularity has made him what he is but I think it is time to be satisfied with his insistence that he is not a child molester.  He loves children, end of story.  If America wants child molesters they certainly know where to turn, a path they’ve beaten down before, the low road taken to an alternate and evil sort of Neverland where the sexually predatory male homosexual lurks, snatching away childhoods right and left to fulfill their own selfish perverse sexual cravings, recruiting along the way of course.  It’s in the same neighborhood where other scourges of the planet like drug users, terrorists, and other risks to national security live.

Isn’t that what it’s really about anyway (besides Spring network television ratings of course)?  I suppose it would be different if Jackson were surrounding himself with little girls instead of little boys, but he isn’t.  To be able to brand him with the indelible scarlet G would really give the curious masses a clearer idea of who the enemy really is.  But I’m pretty sure he’s not one of us.  And as for his own children, decked out in various masks to shield their identity, whisked from place to place surrounded by guards and security, dangled off of a seventh floor balcony, being featured on the news daily and not having a mother figure in their lives, it seems Michael Jackson has already robbed them of the very thing he was deprived, a chance to have a normal childhood.  Perhaps at the Neverland Ranch his brood will have the chance that he didn’t, to just be children, only as the name implies, it might mean forever and ever and ever.  At any rate, I’m over speculating about Michael Jackson’s private life, his children, his friends, his plastic surgeons, his past, his money, how to moonwalk, and what Cher thinks about him and how Uri Geller fits in to it all.  You can’t bend with psychic powers something that’s already bent.  For a nation on the verge of war, aren’t there more important things to think about?  Of course there are, Joe Millionaire, American idol, J-Lo and Ben, and buying duct tape.

To change the subject completely, I caught some really first rate entertainment one night recently at the recurring monthly club put on by Jef Leopard at Club 220 called The Shaft, where I also DJ-ed for about 10 minutes.  This was the third appearance of The Shaft at this delightfully smutty tenderloin venue and it was great to see a good idea finally gather enough steam, some fabulous featured entertainment and a sexy fun-loving group of homo-punk revelers to really whip it into a defining nightclub experience.  The featured entertainment for the night was born again homo-country/western recording artist Glen Meadmore appearing in support of his latest record Cowboy Songs For Little Hustlers (a must have for all whore-mongering cowboys who’ve found the path to Jesus), and a very fun local group called The Bar-Feeders, sporting a hardcore punk-meets-swaggering-pogues-ish folk sensibility, plus they used fire in their set which is always a bonus.  Glen Meadmore made the trip up from L.A. with his band and they proceeded with a set that far surpassed my expectations in many ways.  Standing about 6’4” in a lovely fringed cowboy outfit worthy of show day at the county fair, Glen and his rhythm section reeled through most of the new release including “Never Trust A Hustler,” “Hustler Boy,” and my favorite “Tan My Hide,” plus a lovely religious ode to Jesus, the higher power with a cock big enough to fill his hole and finally an encore during which Glen turned out a blistering guitar solo that earned him new levels of respect.  On top of so many fine god-fearing qualities that motherfucker can play guitar, nifty postures and roaring feedback included.  I cant wait to see him again.

Another element that brought The Shaft into a more cohesive overall experience was the smooth integration of what goes on at Club 220 regularly (male strippers in intimate rooms performing lap dances for tips, quarter movie booths that are free, internet access in the computer room and a magnificent performer referred to as fire-boy twirling chains with balls of fire at the ends) mixed with the featured bands of the night and the freedom to oscillate between the two floors of fun.  I dressed up that night in a priest’s clerical shirt and oddly enough found myself hearing confessions from a number of young men in small dark booths.  It was a beautiful night for the lord’s work indeed, and I’m certain there will be a contingent of return offenders ready and waiting for the next installment of The Shaft because this night kicked ass in all the right ways.  Look out for news and details wherever most handbills are distributed and don’t miss the wicked fun of the new queer-punk sensation.

Finally, I really must say that after three LP’s, all of which I thought were pretty good but didn’t really rip it up or knock me back totally, The Donna’s fourth LP Spend The Night, their first major label release on Atlantic has totally turned me around completely on the Santa Cruz based girl group who formed while still in high school about 10 years ago.  This disc is pure and clever bad girl attitude and pop-culture sarcasm delivered with precision, confidence and guitar heroics to spare.  They have gotten so good! End to end there’s not a single cut that doesn’t hit its mark and lyrically they continue to mine areas of courtship, partying, stupid guys, lots of drinking, etc. but this batch of  13 songs finds the messages more aggressive, more overtly sexual and loaded with hilarious and clever turns of the phrase and double-meanings and inspired rhymes like, “So I’m callin all my ladies/We’re gonna key your Mercedes” or the emasculating “You were hot till you took off your shirt,” and my favorite cut’s stern observation, “It’s too bad about your girl/ she doesn’t look like she’s much fun….She left but now she’s back/ sticking out her rack/ she’s got you running down the wrong track…If you were smart/ you’d send her home on BART/ before the real trouble starts.”  It all just cracks me up, and as far as driven choppy aggressive guitar rock goes, the Donnas quite obviously kick the asses of any of these punk rock boy bands currently favored by MTV like Sum 41, Good Charlotte, New Found Glory, and Unwritten Law.  Spend The Night is pure rock and roll joy and The Donna’s have graduated to a powerful new high point in the big picture.  They were on Saturday Night Live last week!

Buy this record.

Gosh there’s so many things to write about I just almost can’t decide where to start.  I suppose chronologically would be good, and the first thing I thought about tackling was the recent Rolling Stone Magazine feature story entitled Bug Chasers a glimpse into the life and philosophy of basically one gay guy who is on some erotically charged romanticized quest to become infected with HIV.  According to the article, this person is part of an intricate underground world that has sprouted, driven almost completely by the Internet, in which men who want to be infected with HIV get together with those who are willing to infect them.  With cute names like “bug-chasers” and “gift-givers” the article describes an entire subculture of gay men who celebrate and eroticize the virus, with unforgivably sensationalist lines like, “HIV-infected semen is treated like liquid gold,” or “Like a lot of sexual fetishes or extreme behaviors, bug-chasing could not exist without the internet, or at least it couldn’t thrive.”  Come on, that’s like saying that the resurgence of syphilis cases in the gay population was largely due to the AOL chat room M4M San Francisco.  But wait, the media did say that.  Then it must be true, right?  Come on.  Why was this bug-chaser story featured in Rolling Stone Magazine?  Didn’t they have any of their usual knee-jerk reactionary psuedo-liberal dreck from some front line location in the Middle East where they assassinate journalists regularly or an expose on the inner-workings of a drug cartel in South America or better yet which new drug culture you haven’t even heard of has the entire Midwest in the throes of addiction and brain damage.

I guess not, so they decided to run this story, one that would almost certainly get the gay political groups angry and questioning the sources and facts, one that would possibly knock back the perception of gays by the hetero majority to the fun levels of the past, depraved compulsive predatory sexual deviants, and finally, a story that Louis P.Sheldon and the True Values Coalition would place on the front page of their website, hoping to spread more fear, intolerance and the impetus for eventually stripping away our civil rights.  Thanks Rolling Stone, you shouldn’t have.

The principle character of the story, reluctant bug-chaser poster boy “Carlos” was exactly the kind of ignorant faggot that makes me cringe to hear expound on anything they feel passionate about, because one day it might be the “bug-chaser community” and the next it might be the leather community or competition aerobics.  He struck me as completely shallow, vain and perversely exhibitionist, inviting the writer to watch him have unprotected sex with a date.  Someone was enjoying his15 minutes of fame by indicating that this whole questionable subculture existed around gay men trying to get HIV like queens trying to begat an heir to the throne.  If I were to encounter a person like this, on a hunt for a “hot poz load” I’d suggest that they go bang dope with dirty needles.  The odd simile these “bug-chasers” create regarding taking an infected load to being “bred” or impregnated is enough to turn my stomach.  And you thought drag was a sexual buzz-kill!  Imagine getting real hot and heavy with some guy and he starts in with, “Oh yeah, breed me, seed me.  Yeah baby, knock me up!”   Shut the fuck up.

Now I know that plenty of gay men who are positive choose to have unprotected sex with other positive individuals, there’s no denying that men make this choice, but I can’t really buy that a significant portion of gay males who are HIV negative actively eroticize and seek out infection, especially the figures this article puts forth, some of them direct quotes from experts who have claimed they were flagrantly misquoted upon the articles publication.  It’s just more absurd bullshit carefully designed to put gays in a negative light, a warm up for round two of lets make gays out to be unpatriotic terrorist-loving security risks and non-redeemable wastes of humanity.  Lets march them off to the ovens.  Does it sound paranoid and drastic?  Look around.

The more I pondered the thriving underground subculture of the “bug-chaser” the more I started to think maybe it was a typo.  Maybe it was supposed to be “bag-chaser” instead.  I’d say there’s a hell of a lot more gays having sex to get at their partners bag of dope than to get at their HIV infected spunk.  Now there’s a thriving underground subculture, and it even pre-dates the Internet.

On the lighter side of the news, which story disappointed you more, The Oakland Raider’s loss at the Superbowl or the loss of another batch of astronauts with the explosion of the space shuttle as it re-entered the earth’s atmosphere?  It’s a toss up for me really.  I worked the Eagle’s beer bust on Superbowl Sunday and I guess I’m the only one who finds it strange to see large groups of gay males assembling to watch a fucking national sports event.  I don’t know how many rabid gay sports fans asked me if I was going to put the game on instead of the carefully selected and meaningful rock music selections I was playing!  I gave them the finger. Was it not enough that all the tv monitors in the place were tuned in to the game?  They wanted the audio too?  For god’s sake, we are male homosexuals here.  Was I the only semi-fragile klutzy last-to-be-chosen- for-any-team in Physical Education type guy present there?   Sports were just synonymous with trauma and fear and anxiety enough to send me running in the other direction forever, except for a brief period of time when I had a crush on Jose Canseco, but that was a long time ago.

By the point when the horrifying half-time extravaganza was rolling out in all of it’s over-the-top splendor, it was pretty clear that Oakland was losing so I can’t say I was disappointed at all, in fact I was glad.  Now we could rest assured that cars wouldn’t be overturned and lit on fire and riots and looting and drunken sports-fan lawlessness wouldn’t ensue throughout the greater bay area.  I was even less disappointed on the following weekend when news of the space shuttle’s disintegration hit or came down, so to speak.  I very vividly recall the first time this happened, the teacher in space episode of Nasa’s best bloopers series.  I couldn’t believe the nation was so wrapped up in this routine space expedition gone awry, mostly because the mission included a schoolteacher and ultimately the most famous female aviator this side of Amelia Earhart, Christine McCullough.  Oh the sad sad tragedy that was.  I couldn’t believe how the nation mourned, how children cried, how the media deified the civilian passenger and educator.  I was all caught up in the simple fact that the first wave of death from AIDS was starting to touch my life personally and space exploration was a folly that sucked up a huge amount of government resources while AIDS research got nothing, like the government wasn’t sure if it was necessarily a bad thing yet.  So if anything, I was glad about the big horrifying blunder, the omnipotent NASA had egg on it’s face and billions of dollars went down the tube, and all we got was some great filmed fireball footage and pieces of space junk falling from the sky.

With the current space shuttle blunder, the first thought that occurred to me was how unaware I was that any such mission was currently going on.  I mean with the current climate of impending war and the many aspects of our lives that are changed because of this (have you read the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 lately?), you’d think perhaps space exploration projects might be called off.  But the space program has always been a major macho national dick size contest for America (why does a rocket look like a cock?  Hmmmm.) so I can understand projects continuing even during these trying times.  I recall a time when space programs were very much about these particular trying times and they probably still are.  But back to the tragedy at hand, America’s great loss of 7 heroic astronauts returning from a routine research expedition.  The nation mourns.  Boo Fucking Hoo.  I’ve sort of been of the idea that every few years there should be a tragic space exploration accident that takes the lives of a NASA crew.  Apparently NASA seems to feel the same way.  I wonder.  America thrives on televised tragedy or coverage of emergency situations and rescue attempts, and it’s been awhile since the WTC attack and the saga of the trapped miners played out to a glorious heroic “I Love America” conclusion.  Maybe we needed this.  So far there have been no signs of an outside force being the cause of the shuttles explosion, but I’m sure most of America was hoping that.  The masses are as hungry for war as our leader seems to be.  He’s whet their appetite for it and drawn them to the idea like a schoolyard bully to an after school fight.  I was especially shocked to note that our president took the opportunity to publicly shed a few tears over this nations terrible tragic loss of the Shuttle and Crew.  Was this in line with his unprecedented coverage of AIDS in his recent state of the union address?  Was he showing his more sensitive compassionate side?  I believe he was speaking of AIDS in Africa mainly, and I’d cry every time I looked in the mirror if I were him.  It’s tough when your main supporters are stodgy old feeble-minded fundamentalists on the edge of normal life-expectancy who crave Armageddon and think you are just the guy who can take us there and fulfill their prophesies.