I’m super excited to be reading alongside one of my fave queer writers, Alvin Orloff, at the NYC release party for his new book Why Aren’t You Smiling?

Alvin wrote Gutter Boys, which my husband and I both adored (you can see him enjoying it back in 2005 in the picture, below).

If you’re in or near NYC on the night of June 6th, come on by!

Joe Westmoreland, Sam J. Miller, Stephen Boyer, and Ben Rosenberg join Alvin Orloff to celebrate the release his latest novel on Manic D Press.

Unnameable Books - Brooklyn NY - 7:30PM - June 6th - 600 Vanderbilt Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11238-3803.

The Facebook event is here.

The novel – called “endearingly funny” by K. M. Soehnlein, “hilariously funny” by Kevin Killian, and “swell” by Daniel Handler – follows a clueless queer teen’s ill-fated quests for spiritual enlightenment and social acceptance amidst the cultural no-man’s land of mid 1970s California.

Five vivacious and talented writers will be joining forces to celebrate the release of Alvin Orloff’s latest novel, Why Aren’t You Smiling? on Manic D Press. The story follows a clueless queer teen’s ill-fated quests for spiritual enlightenment and social acceptance amidst the cultural wasteland of mid 1970s California. Daniel Handler called the book “swell” and K.M. Soehnlein deemed it “endearingly funny.”

Alvin Orloff, a longtime San Francisco denizen, began writing in 1977, penning lyrics for his friend’s punk band, The Blowdryers. He spent the couple decades dabbling in performance art, activism, underground theater, low-level wage-slavery, and exotic dancing, all the while scribbling for now-forgotten ‘zines. In 1996 he co-authored The Unsinkable Bambi Lake, a transsexual showbiz memoir, following that with I Married an Earthling (2000) and Gutter Boys (2004). He will be reading from his latest, Why Aren’t You Smiling? (2011).

Stephen Boyer is the author of the chapbook GHOSTS and has been published in the anthology Cool Thing: Best New Gay Fiction, Madder Lover: Queer Men and the Precincts of Surrealism, for the gallery 2nd Floor Projects, the Occupied Wall Street Journal as well as elsewhere. Boyer also put together the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology. He’ll be reading from his novel PARASITE.

Joe Westmoreland has published a short story and essay in AlLuPiNiT, contributed from 2003-06 a column “Still Kickin’” to POZ Magazine, has been published in the anthologies Discontents, The New Fuck You, XXX Fruit, Best American Gay Fiction1996, Queer 13: Lesbian and Gay Writers Recall Seventh Grade, Latin Lovers: True Stories of Latin Men In Love, and The Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly. His novel, Tramps Like Us, was first published June 2001, and is available from the University of Wisconsin Press. He is currently working on his second novel. He will be reading a new story called “Falling Don.”

Ben Rosenberg is a multimedia designer and performer currently working in New York City. He is a part of queer electro punk collective, Lotus Eater Machine, and curates PHAN[T.A.Z.]MAGORIA!, an irregular series bringing together artists from across disciplines to create an interactive, multi-sensory experience.

Sam J. Miller is a writer and a community organizer. His work has been published in places like The Minnesota Review, Arts & Letters, Fiction International, and lots more. He’s the co-editor of the critical anthology “Horror After 9/11,” which New York Magazine included in the “Brilliant/Lowbrow” quadrant of its famed Approval Matrix.

… I just sort of feel sorry for you.

“Our lives are radical acts that demand radical compassion to be understood.”

Seriously, go there now. Go there, and read it, and get your dungeon shook, and fall in love, because he’s an amazing writer, and subscribe to it in your RSS reader or whatever the kids are using these days, and then go about your business, probably work but maybe not, the economy is rough and a lot of people don’t have work, and then click back in a couple of hours because you can’t stop thinking about it, and then go through and read three years worth of awesome writing in one sitting, probably neglecting some important things in the process.

Or is that just me?

“I’d jerk off to them being my friends.”

Big kudos to the unfailingly-awesome Rumpus for reprinting and hyping Conner, which is what brought him to my attention, or anyway brought his blog to my attention because maybe I was already, uh, familiar with his other line of work, but the Rumpus reminded me he had a blog, when they promoted this incredibly brilliant thing that I don’t have any words to describe, besides incredibly and brilliant. And terrifying. And quivery-making. I don’t think quivery-making was a thing before, but it’s a thing now.

This is great writing, and it makes me quivery in a couple dozen ways. The sexy way, the about-to-cry way, the “tell-tale tingle down the spine” way that Vladimir Nabokov said was the sign of truly great art.

So Adrienne Rich is dead.

One of our brightest lights, out.

And not just a light in the conventional sense of the word, when it’s usually applied to literary luminaries, “stars,” celebrities, the best and brightest.

Light in the sense of: the opposite of darkness, a beacon banishing the shadows of oppression, of suffering, of patriarchy, of hate and exploitation and genocide and racism. Light as fire, creative instead of destructive. A candle, a campfire, a lighthouse.

In October of 2007, I was privileged to be part of the planning committee for the Marshall T. Meyer Awards with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, when we honored Adrienne. I wrote the following brief words that were read when the award was presented to her. There’s video, here, of her marvelous acceptance speech from that night. I didn’t get to meet her then, although I had adored and admired her for ages, and in fact I couldn’t even get a seat, but standing in the back of the synagogue and watching her acceptance I felt so moved and touched to be part of the event, and to use the following few measly words (even if someone else was reading them) to help communicate how profoundly and brilliantly she had changed so many of our worlds:

When an artist has become one of the most respected and admired voices of her generation, it’s easy to think of her as simply “part of the landscape.” Adrienne Rich has never let that happen. From refusing the National Medal of the Arts from then-President Bill Clinton because, as she said, “the very meaning of art is incompatible with the cynical politics of this administration,” to nurturing marginalized voices and diving into the wreckage of history to salvage new narratives of resistance, Adrienne’s voice has, as E.M.Forster said of Virginia Woolf, “pushed the light of the English language a little further against the darkness.” Adrienne Rich’s every line is an eloquent rebuttal of the assumption that politics is not the proper province of poetry. Her work has constantly interrogated notions of  identity, nation, democracy and place. Adrienne’s art asks: what does it mean to be a woman, an American, to be white, a lesbian, Jewish, a citizen in a democracy? How do these identities enrich or oppress us, or make us party to oppression? What responsibilities do they demand? What legacies do we inherit with them? Her successful blending of aesthetics,politics and the erotic has enriched contemporary poetry and our nation’s literary canon beyond measure. And the same passion she has wielded with her pen, she has brought to a lifetime’s engagment in struggles for social justice. For her unceasing witness to the power of art as activism and activism through and beyond art, JFREJ is honored to present Adrienne Rich with the 2007 Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer Risk-Taker Award.

Seen on the corner of Fordham Road and Morris Avenue. It’s not every day you see an Alice Walker quote spraypainted on the side of a building!

Anno Dracula is one of my all-time favorite novels. It’s an “alternate history” of Bram Stoker’s Dracula universe, in which the vampire count’s plans for global conquest were NOT foiled by the fearless vampire killers of Stoker’s novel, am. It’s been out of print for a long time…

And now it’s being re-published!!

Seriously, if you like:

• Vampires
• Sex
• Violence
• Victorian fiction
• Jack the Ripper
• Steampunk
• Tons of obscure literary references
• Tons of obscure historical references

… this book is totally worth checking out. Or pre-ordering on Amazon. In fact, the whole series is worth checking out. Word is they’ll be reissuing the rest of the series soon.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee…………

Pride is not the opposite of shame, but its source. True humility is the only antidote to shame.

Avatar: The Last Airbender. Season 2, episode 9. “Bitter Work.”

Face/Off turned out to be a surprisingly good show, with a really high caliber of craft - some really excellent and creepy make-up on display…

… I was rooting for Gage from the beginning, at first just cuz he was gay, and I need to support my peeps, and it’s sadly still surprisingly rare to see out gay guys as contestants on reality shows, and plus he was really rocking that punk-rock-grown-up-Eddie-Munster thing, but he was really talented, and while he was just sort of in the middle for most of the show he totally killed the last few challenges, and he made it to the finale, and his witch make-up for an industrial re-imagining of Hansel and Gretel was terrifying and impressive.

But he didn’t win. And it sucks. The guy who did win is definitely talented, but plays it so safe and unimaginative that he really just needs to find a nice effects studio and be a drone on the factory floor.

Ah well. I can always follow Gage on Twitter. Oh wait - I’m not on Twitter. At least after this kind of exposure of his talent, I’m sure he’ll get tons of work. I’ll be watching his IMDb page - and the opening credits of every horror film I see now.

Late summer; we’re out to dinner on St Mark’s, some former squat or head shop or shooting gallery gentrified into a ritzy Chinese restaurant. One of our friends is a musician, his musical career roughly analogous to my literary one, meaning we’re making beautiful things that reach very small audiences, neither of us anywhere near being able to make a living from our art even though we work on it absolutely all the time (and of course we’re both insanely talented and very handsome and certain to conquer the world).

Halfway through dinner he leans across the table and aims a fork in my direction. “I need to ask you a serious question. What do you think of Jonathan Franzen?”

I laugh because JF is ubiquitous that week or month, and our friends and parents all want to talk about him, and  so every writer has had to think about what they think of him. And because it IS a serious question. Because art is serious, it’s life and it’s death, and artists take it very seriously. And sometimes we get a little bit mad about the big success stories.

My friend continues. “I ask because he’s on the cover of Time and everybody makes such a huge deal out of him, but I just feel absolutely no impulse to pick up anything by him.”

Which is pretty much exactly how I feel. I’ve only read some of his essays, in How To Be Alone, which a friend gave me as a gift, and which left me utterly unchanged and left my head in a matter of weeks.

“I get the sense that it’s really just middle class white people and their problems and their dysfunctions,” he continues. “And I just have zero interest in that.”

I tell him the truth, which is that I have no idea if this is accurate, but it’s absolutely my sense of Jonathan Franzen. Like a lot of the “literary fiction” (meaning, I guess, non-genre?), I see it in the bookstore and roll my eyes, thinking, do I really need to be told, again, how soul-killing suburban life can be? How put-upon the Heterosexual American Caucasoid male is?

[Aside: because I know he has billions of devoted fans and because I get enough nastiness in my life already I want to repeat that I have no real experience of reading the man - I'm owning my ignorance. Everyone has stuff that leaves them totally cold - lots of folks feel totally turned off by science fiction, and I can only pity them for all the awesome sh*t they're missing out on. So by all means, Franzenfans, pity me]

So then it’s my turn to lean across the table and ask a serious question. “What do you think of the Hold Steady?”

Now *he* laughed. “They don’t do much for me. They sound like so many other things.”

I asked because they seem analogous to Franzen - a BFD (Big Frakking Deal) to tons of people; eerily familiar, comforting but fresh, doing what they do really well.

I actually don’t think very much of this can be chalked up to jealousy. Maybe a teeny bit of resentment, the same as any artist who feels like they’re making something wonderful and toiling in obscurity and resents very popular work. Most fans of either one probably won’t think the equation of Jonathan Franzen and the Hold Steady is a pejorative. I’m sure both of them worked very hard to get where they are.

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

Ab Fab might return.

Mary McDonnell is in the new Scream movie.

Grizzly bears chasing bison.

Giant otter emperors.

When I learned last week that Caprica had been canceled, I thought to myself “Gee… that sucks… BUT it was pretty weak and slow and uncompelling, and I was getting very bored with those characters and their teeny-tiny ranges… now if it had only been more like Rubicon, where so much was at stake, where they didn’t hold back on the big beats, where the characters keep you guessing and keep surprising you in great ways… MAYBE it would have had a chance.”

And now I find out that Rubicon is canceled.

whatEVER. Just more confirmation that I know absolutely nothing about what audiences or executives value.

I realize now that it’s gone that I really did love this show. I mean, I knew I loved it before, but I was too caught up in nit-picking and the heat of the moment to realize just how unique it was among current television programs.

The silver lining is - that’s two more hours per week that I won’t be spending glued to the television, which might make me a little more able to keep my promise to blog and write more often. Maybe.

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.

The Dyckman Street stop on the 1 train, which is a block from my house, has been shut down until… I don’t know… AUGUST 2011!!!!!!!!!! Which pisses off a lot of people. Including me. J. took this photograph on the uptown 1 train platform at 168th Street. It eloquently gives voice to our whole community.