1. “Down, girl!” [to her lady parts] “A bitch is hungry!”
2. “Oh my God, I need to suck a dick.”
3. “Oh shit, I missed the whole song. I thought we were doing the long version!” [during THIS epic amazing performance of my absolute favorite song of hers, La Vie en Rose]
4. “Hello, Mr. Union Man working the lights – can I get the spotlight just on me? [gestures to empty space next to her] There’s no one over here.”
5. “What is his problem? He must be up there getting a blowjob.”
6. “Oh, now he hears me. Are you finished up there? Did you cum? Did they swallow?”
7. “Yes, you sexy mama.” [to the lady who brings her a glass of red wine] “My lesbian moments coming out.”
8. “Some hurricane is supposed to hit New York City. That bitch is following me!”
9. “I’m a church girl. [indicates extremely revealing and vaguely Satanic outfit] This is what I wear to church.”
10. “I KEEP IT TIGHT!”

(Geisel Library in foreground) (wacky life size crooked house sculpture in background)

Last month, I posted about a vigil I attended, for an incredible young queer woman who was active with Picture the Homeless and many other organizations, who had taken her own life. Shortly after that vigil, I first saw her short film “Keisha Knows,” a truly amazing work that she co-produced and in which she played the lead role. Which just made me sadder, to think of what talent she had, what light she could have brought into this dark world. Produced with the amazing Global Action Project, who recently got an award from Ed Norton on behalf of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities.

This Saturday, PTH will be hosting a “Youth in the Struggle SPEAK OUT,” and we’ll be screening “Keisha Knows.” You can watch the film here, but it’ll be a great experience to see it on a big screen with a bunch of awesome youth:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pc0bX_xSIvo

Full details about the event are HERE, for Facebookers. And because I always forget that some folks aren’t into the Facebooks, it’s at the Rebel Diaz Art Collective, 478 Austin Place, Bronx, NY.

(Mosey is on the left, with PTH Youth Organizer Divad Durant at a “Youth in the Struggle” event that she MC’d in the South Bronx on September 18, 2010)

KEISHA KNOWS, 9 min, 2010
A SupaFriends Production
Produced by Global Action Project

Inspired by lesbian pulp fiction novels of the 1950s and the film noir genre, Keisha Knows addresses heteronormativity through not just any love story — but one that explores what is at stake when a community is divided.

The SupaFriends took a trip to the Lesbian Herstory Archives in the Spring and learned about lesbian pulp fictions novels, which inspired the group’s choice in film genre in the pre-production process. Learn more about the Lesbian Herstory Archives: lesbianherstoryarchives.org/

For more information about Global Action Project or to order a DVD copy of this film, please contact GAP: global-action.org

If you’ve enjoyed watching this film or would like to support our youth programs please consider making a secure online donation via Guidestar: partners.guidestar.org/controller/searchResults.gs?action_donateReport=1&partner=networkforgood&ein=11-3425000

Media Educators:
Jai Dulani
J. Macchiarelli

As I’ve blogged on more than one occasion, the film version of The Last Airbender was the most traumatic thing to happen to me in the summer of 2010 (which I suppose says something good about my life at that point). This horrific affront to one of the television shows that’s most dear to my heart spurred me and J. to watch the whole original series again, starting from the beginning. Pretty much every episode has some astonishing gem of  wisdom or aesthetic grace, and as they move me I’ll be blogging them.

Episode 18, Season 1: The Waterbending Master.

There’s a lot to love about this episode – all the lovely waterbending, the look and feel of the Northern Water Tribe stronghold, Sokka’s nascent love for Yue, Iroh singing, Iroh being sneaky, Zhao seeing Zuko’s broadswords and realizing he’s the Blue Spirit… but the most exciting thing about it for me was the gender politics.

In the Northern Water Tribe, women can’t learn water-bending. Master Pakku won’t teach Katara, and when Aang tries to pass his training on to her, Pakku flips out.

But it’s deeper than just bending. This is clearly a deeply patriarchal tribe, where women have no choice in matters of marriage – if they don’t want to marry the man their father picks out, they have to leave town altogether. Which is what Katara’s grandmother did.

At the end of the episode, Katara shames Master Pakku into fighting her. It’s a great fight, with both of them looking very beautiful and kick-ass all at the same time.

Now, the easy, simplified, crowd-pleaser resolution to this episode would be for Katara to dazzle Pakku with her incredible skills, and THAT would be enough to get him to change his mind. Mainstream Hollywood logic is funny that way – all it takes to change someone’s mind is to show them evidence that they’re wrong. But life doesn’t work like that. Anyone who’s ever argued with someone on a political issue (for example, global warming) knows that no matter how much evidence and information you provide, they’re not going to change their mind.

People change their mind when they see how an issue affects them. People let go of prejudices when they realize that their prejudices have harmed them – have ruined relationships, have caused them to make terrible mistakes, have crippled their ability to understand the world around them.

Master Pakku is impressed with Katara’s bending abilities, but that’s not what changes his mind about teaching women. But he finds Katara’s necklace, which was the betrothal necklace he had given to her grandmother so many years ago, and remembers how shocked he was that she refused to marry him, and left.

Katara connects the dots. “Your tribe’s stupid customs” are what made her grandmother flee. It’s why he’s spent his life alone. The discrimination that he accepted as normal, as positive – because it benefited him – has actually hurt him. Because it distorted his relationships with people. His whole life has been one of crankiness and anger, as a response to the pain of being abandoned by Kanna.

Buddha said “You will not be punished for your anger. You will be punished BY your anger.” That’s the hard challenging truth that Western civilization, with its centuries-long domination by Christianity – and then by Hollywood – has distorted. You shouldn’t be good to other people because it’ll get you into heaven. You should be good to other people because it’s the only way to live a truly happy life and to really truly be celebrated by other people. Because at the end of the day, that’s all you have.

This is the kind of brilliance that makes this show move me so profoundly, which might be easy to miss while we’re wowed by the great fight scenes, elegant animation, humor, etc.

Yesterday, we went to see the Matthew Bourne production of Swan Lake, which is in NYC at City Center for just one more week. And while the production was not flawless – the dancing overall was exceedingly sloppy – I found myself really really moved, to the point where I got pretty depressed thinking about queerness and suicide and Tchaikovsky and 1890 and 2010.

I’ve always loved the music for Swan Lake. And in a way that’s hard to describe, I’ve always felt like that music – and most of Tchaikovsky’s music – is very queer. How music can be queer when it doesn’t have any words is a good question, and one I’ll be trying to articulate in a blog post later this week – so – stay tuned. But for now I’ll just say that there’s something about the beauty and the melancholy in his music that really resonates with my experience of queerness. Tchaikovsky’s most beautiful pieces have always seemed to me to be expressions of queer desire or queer identity (his brother and biographer said that “Romeo and Juliet could not have been written” without his agonizing and unrequited love for a classmate named Vladimir Gerard (thanks, Mark, for the tip on that story!)), but because of the repression and hostility of his age, they had to be written in code – translated into an achingly beautiful format that nevertheless obscured and hid away their true meaning. So it’s easy to hear and feel and love the music while missing what their composer was trying to say.

And then – in 1998 – this production comes along. I don’t know a lot about Matthew Bourne or the history or creation of this piece – whether it was all him or another unsung artist or a whole lot of awesome brilliant folks collaborating – but to me it’s something of a miracle: the time and the place and the people were finally right for this message to be deciphered, for the layers or code to be peeled back to reveal the gorgeous tragic queerness at the center of the story Tchaikovsky was trying to tell.

And whether the actual story of this production is specifically the story that Tchaikovsky wanted to tell is not the point (remember, he did not write the scenario for the original). For me, the essence of the story gets to the profound truth of Tchaikovsky’s life as a gay man who felt that he could not live openly, whose whole life was an attempt at cryptography, a way to take the real message of who he was and distort it so no one could see the truth (Leo Tolstoy said “I am very sorry for Tchaikovsky… sorry as for a man about whom something is not quite clear”). This Swan Lake is about trying to embrace who you really are, even if it kills you, because to live without embracing it will kill you too.

P.S. – The depression lasted until I was in my costume and about to head out for Halloween partying. Stay tuned for a much more upbeat blog post about that.

Interactive mapping is about more than just fun and games and Grindr-style hookups and helping me find the best subway line to take to get to a morning meeting on time.

Crowd-sourced mapping has the potential to impact people’s lives in truly transformative ways. Ushahidi was developed as a way to help people document and keep themselves safe from ethnic violence in Kenya, in the wake of a disputed election. In the Bay Area, when a police officer was convicted of manslaughter even though he shot and killed an unarmed, handcuffed Black man named Oscar Grant who was lying on the ground on his stomach, and the police prepared a riot squad response in anticipation of an uprising, protesters developed an open map at OscarGrantProtests.com, so that peaceful demonstrators could avoid the violence of overzealous cops.

Picture the Homeless is betting that the power of crowd-sourced mapping can go deeper than that. We think it can get progressive legislation passed, and forever change New York City housing policy. We recently deployed an Ushahidi-based open map called VACANT NYC that will help us get an accurate count of vacant property citywide.

For years, homeless people have been demanding action from city government around the massive numbers of vacant buildings and lots in New York City. While the city spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on providing shelter to the homeless, perfectly good property languishes in the hands of private landlords and city agencies. That’s why homeless folks drafted Intro 48, a city council bill that would empower the city to conduct an annual count of vacant buildings and lots.

But government officials say vacant property is not a problem… and even if it was, there’s no money to count these properties. To prove that vacant property is still a huge problem in this city, and that a census of these buildings and lots can be accomplished without breaking the bank, we’re turning this project over to the public. VACANT NYC lets New Yorkers send a text message or an email or fill out an online form, every time they see a vacant building or lot anywhere in the five boroughs.

Our little map is already getting big buzz. It was featured prominently in a recent article documenting the fight for Intro 48. This was subsequently picked-up as a featured story in the Housing and Land Use News Digest of NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy.

Other allies in the housing struggle have covered the map, including the Campaign to Restore National Housing Rights: http://restorehousingrights.org/?p=1093

If VACANT NYC can prove that this is still a major problem, and that an accurate census of under-utilized property can be cost-effectively accomplished through participatory mapping, it’ll be a major revolution in the way that open-source technology impacts public policy.

So please – help us out! If you see something, say something. Tell us about vacant property in New York City. Publicize VACANT NYC on your own blog/website/Facebook/Twitter/Whatever. We are re-making the world as we map it; let’s make sure we map the kind of world we want to live in.

The go-go boy walks by and leaves a cloud of bowling-alley wax smell; his body, lubed up for the lights and turned blue-and-then-red by flashing strobes, looks sticky and insubstantial.

Hungry men of all ages stare up at stuffed crotches and marble thighs. They curve dollar bills into underwear that cost as much as the boy’s weekly food budget. They leer; they stare; they feel economically superior and physically inferior all at once.

And it occurs to me: go-go boys are just naked panhandlers. They are engaging in the same basic activity: a bare-bones display of themselves, in the hopes that it will move someone to give them a dollar. And people give for a lot of reasons, with pity being right up by the top. Pity and the momentary relief of feeling like no matter how poorly you might be doing economically, there’s someone worse off – there’s a desperate human being literally begging for one of those crinkled damp singles in your pocket.

I’m not saying this to be mean to go-go boys. I work closely with and consider myself friends with a lot of people who are panhandlers, so I recognize the courage and the sense of self that are necessary for both forms of soliciting the public.

But I do find it ironic/offensive that the fine upstanding Chelsea men who are so happy to ogle a gym-addicted go-go stud will then turn around and lobby hard to oppose the opening of a homeless shelter in their neighborhood, using deeply problematic fear-mongering language about “those people” taking over “our streets,” all with a heavy, hard-to-miss racist subtext when you consider what a disproportionate percentage of the homeless community is African-American.

The club was lame. The party was lame. The go-go boys and the bad music and the anti-homeless hostility of the property-owners and “community leaders” in the city’s foremost queer neighborhood had me depressed.

“In all human beings, if only understanding be brought to the business, dignity will be found, and that dignity cannot fail to reveal itself, soon or late, in the words and phrases with which they make known their high hopes and aspirations and cry out against the intolerable meaninglessness of life.”
– H.L. Mencken

MTV’s 1990’s sketch-comedy show The State was messy, smart, queer, stupid, and brilliant, and it warped lots of young minds in all the right ways. For me, the State was edgy and weird enough to be all mine, something no one else in my school liked. The fact that I found most of the guys sexy as hell was also a significant factor.

MTV has never released the show on DVD, until this week, when the whole damn thing came out in a shiny happy 5-disc set.

As a result of which, I got to interview State member David Wain for the fabulous Anthem magazine. It’s a wonderful thing, being able to ask questions of an artist who you intensely admire, and whose work you’ve thought a lot about. Even if you only have twelve minutes and forty-three seconds to do it.

Here’s my interview:
====================
http://anthemmagazine.com/story/1608/
====================

Last week, I had the opportunity to interview one of my favorite artists, Mary McDonnell. The complete text of that interview is up at the Galactica Sitrep:

http://galacticasitrep.blogspot.com/2009/06/heart-of-female-warrior-sitrep.html

Me: In popular culture, we always imagine that the robots will want to exterminate us. There’s a real fear that as soon as machines become intelligent, they become a threat to us. Why do you think people have that knee-jerk reaction?

Exciting day today – I helped organize this phenomenal direct action…

“This morning, homeless people and community allies took over a vacant building in El Barrio/East Harlem. The target was a beautiful two-story building at the corner of Madison Avenue and 116th that has been vacant for decades…”

Blog entry:

http://picturethehomeless.org/blog/node/84

Flickr photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/27985255@N05/

Article in the Indypendent:

http://www.indypendent.org/2009/03/19/east-harlem-residents-and-housing-advocates-rally/

All photographs are from the Flickr stream, and were taken by Camilo Rayo.

In the BSG episode “No Exit,” we got to spend our first bit of quality time with Number One, or Cavil, or John. Up to now we’ve just seen him be evil and manipulative in little fits and jerks – a cylon board meeting here, an interrogation there… we’ve never gotten an up-close look at who he is and what makes it tick.

The events of “No Exit” paint a picture of Cavil as far more evil and powerful than we ever suspected. He murdered the Final Five and blocked all access to their memories when they resurrected. He tortured them by giving them “front row seats” to the Fall of the Twelve Colonies. In fact, he is the closest thing we have to an “architect” of the Cylon Holocaust.

And yet… in this episode, I would argue that we finally see how human Cavil is. When he delivers his excellent soliloquoy about the limitations of the human body, its sense organs and its instruments of communication, his anger is utterly comprehensible. After all – what is more human than being frustrated with our own physical frailty and shortcomings? Men have always been angry that they can’t see x-rays or microscopic animals – that is WHY we created x-ray machines and microscopes! Man has always raged and wept about the fact that we must die, that our consciousnesses are so flimsy – that’s why we create great art, or hunt for technological means of extending and enhancing life! And in the universe of Battlestar Galactica, the human dissatisfaction with our own limits is what led to the creation of the cylons… to fight our wars, and dig our ditches, and bear our grudges, and want to grow up to be just like us… in all the worst ways.

Cavil’s complaints are very human, and the irony is that he can’t grasp the connection. He thinks he’s so different from the humans. He’s not. He’s scarily human. That doesn’t mean he won’t continue to pursue a genocidal course of action against the humans. Because the humans, also acting out of rage and fear, have a genocidal strategy of their own for the cylons.

And what’s more human than genocide?

Sometimes youre rushing for the train or the train is hustling past the local stops and you’re late but not ridiculously late and life feels like Nintendo, you’ve stepped into Castlevania 3, and the music’s pulsing fast, that urgent simple music when you’re so close to the end but everything’s moving too fast, gears are grinding and skeletons throw their bones and bats fly in their elliptical deceptively simple lines, even the slightest mistake will kill you, you’ve spent weeks and months crouched down on the cold carpeted basement floor fighting your way past endless monsters and over dizzying precipices and booby trapped bridges, to arrive here, in this place, and you belong here, you are equal to this world, its horrors will not overwhelm you and its herculean challenges won’t stop you, and now you’re back on the train, and the city is dirty and your apartment is too expensive, and miserable people are all around you, and bombs are going off in gaza, but you are not overwhelmed, you will not be crushed, you’ve spent a long time practicing for this moment and the music thrumming in your head says you can master this world just like that other one, the 8-bit brightly colored digital one, the place you started from.

My favorite literary meditation on turning thirty is this one, from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

—

After a moment Tom got up and began wrapping the unopened bottle of whiskey in the towel.

“Want any of this stuff? Jordan? . . . Nick?”

I didn’t answer.

“Nick?” He asked again.

“What?”

“Want any?”

“No . . . I just remembered that to-day’s my birthday.”

I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road of a new decade.

It was seven o’clock when we got into the coupe with him and started for Long Island. Tom talked incessantly, exulting and laughing, but his voice was as remote from Jordan and me as the foreign clamor on the sidewalk or the tumult of the elevated overhead. Human sympathy has its limits, and we were content to let all their tragic arguments fade with the city lights behind. Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair. But there was Jordan beside me, who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age. As we passed over the dark bridge her wan face fell lazily against my coat’s shoulder and the formidable stroke of thirty died away with the reassuring pressure of her hand.

So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.

Watching Lost last night, after the initial euphoria died down, I realize – I don’t trust these people. I love the show a ton, I really do, but there’s something about Lost that makes me feel like the producers are used car salesmen trying to rush me through a shiny showroom so I won’t notice how flimsy and cheap all the merchandise is.

Faraday says ‘we have to to the hatch,’ Sawyer etc follows him, the forward motion of it carries us through to the next act, Sawyer gets to scowl and be shirtless and say ‘you better tell me what’s going on,’ etc, but when they get to the hatch… nothing. Faraday does not learn anything he didn’t already know, there’s no supplies to be found, and it’s only as a major incidental afterthought that Faraday tries to confront Desmond. The whole thing was just a narrative tool to create some drama, and did not develop naturally out of the story and the characters.

I don’t mind being tricked, or sucker-punched, or shocked, or heartbroken, or spending a long time scratching my head going “wha????!?” …… as long as I trust that the writers & producers are treating me with respect and assuming I’m smart enough to scrutinize every little thing. I watch Lost for the big picture story, and the questions it raises about the meaning of life and identity, and the dilemmas each character faces, and even the characters themselves, although I generally think they’re ridiculous and unappealing. But watching the premiere of season five right after the premiere of BSG’s season 4.5 brought into stark relief the reasons I trust the BSG folks so much more. Even when Galactica sucker-punches me, it makes perfect sense. When the fifth cylon was revealed, it came out of left field in a way no one had ever imagined, but I trusted that the producers were going to make it all make perfect sense.

I’ve never felt like the creative team behind LOST had any endgame in mind, and that their overall goal has always been to keep the show going for as long as possible by making sh*t as complicated as possible, raising more questions than can ever be answered. BSG is so tight that it’s hard to find a wasted word, let alone a wasted episode or character or big-picture question.

Then again, it’s probably unfair for me to compare any show to BSG. There’s simply nothing else on television that comes close.

The phenomenal GALACTICA SITREP has published an original essay of mine, entitled “The Eyeglasses of Laura Roslin,” a silly rhapsody about the way the re-imagined BSG uses this simple prop to deepen our understanding of the character played by Mary McDonnell:

“The Eyeglasses of Laura Roslin”

WARNING – this is for hardcore Battlestar Galactica fans only! Other readers are likely to be bored senseless…