We lost one bad old bitch when we lost Estelle Getty. And when I say bad I mean fierce. As Sophia Petrillo she showed me the kind of sassy old bat I want to be when I grow up. R.I.P., toots.
Once upon a time I went away. I had planned to be home by dinner, but before I even realized what was happening I found myself lost in Tulgey Wood. It sneaks up on you, that. It's shadowy and twisty and very, very strange, and sometimes you even forget who you are until you accidentally remember.
It took me a while, but eventually I found my way out. Now I'm standing at the edge of an ocean, and I'm taking it in. It is fucking huge, guys. Mind-boggling even. But instead of being scared, I am totally fucking excited. I'm dipping my toe in, my entire right foot soon to follow. And if, at the end of the long adventure ahead of me, I should happen to come out of it all with a shimmering green fin instead you won't hear me complain.
Halloween 2007. For The Molly Ringwalds' Halloween show my gay boyfriend and I dressed up as a couple who were turned into zombies during prom 1987. We decided that he was the arty boy from the wrong side of the tracks and I was the rich girl who wanted more than an eventual marriage to a stockbroker and a life of shopping and alcoholism. We were going to run away together after prom but, sadly, were eaten by zombies as we consummated our love behind the school gym. Now we're just two zombies in love, living only for each other, the mouthwatering taste of brains and the zombie baby that I am surely carrying.
i want to live in a world where i have superpowers and a vampire true love. i want to harness the elemental powers of the universe in a powerful glowing ball of energy that i can use to vanquish my foes while my hair blows wildly behind me. i want to organize a zombiewalk for halloween next year. i want an arsenal of stakes and sais and poison-tipped daggers (that i know how to use) in a weapons chest in my living room. i want to live in an old victorian mansion with deep purple walls and a witch's cupboard and a ghost who plays me eerie tunes on the old out-of-tune grand piano at night. i want to turn into a bloodthirsty creature of unearthly beauty on full moons. i want to transcend time and space. i want "the kiss that fractured time". i want my eyes to flash liquid silver when i'm angry. i want to stand in a darkened, empty old ballroom with amazing acoustics and play the violin so beautifully that it makes me cry. i want to write, direct and costar in a movie about zombies in space. i want to be the maiden, the mother and the crone at the same time. i want a bag of those pumpkin-shaped candy corn to suddenly materialize in front of me. i want to be a vampire mermaid, deadly seductress of the dark waters with coal-black eyes and a devastatingly hypnotic siren's song. but i'd settle for the superpowers and the vampire true love.
"The storm is coming but I don't mind.
People are dying, I close my blinds.
All that I know is I'm breathing now.
I want to change the world...instead I sleep.
I want to believe in more than you and me.
But all that I know is I'm breathing.
All i can do is keep breathing.
All we can do is keep breathing now.
All that I know is I'm breathing.
All I can do is keep breathing.
All we can do is keep breathing now.
All we can do is keep breathing
All we can do is keep breathing
All we can do is keep breathing
All we can do is keep breathing.
All we can do is keep breathing now."
~Keep Breathing by Ingrid Michaelson
Three totally unrelated items:
-- This first one is courtesy of Moonlight, which is a totally cheesy show, but top-notch visual fanfiction. Hot sensitive broody vampire guy meets beautiful intrepid blonde reporter, love and destiny ensue. Lather, rinse, repeat. The line our fang'd hero, Nick St. John, gives is, "What if the one thing that could save your life was the one thing that would make living with yourself unbearable?" Yeah, yeah, you don't want to bite her to save your life because it would make you a monster brood brood total hotnesss blah blah blah. Only, she is giving you permission to bite her. She wants you to bite her. She wants to do this for you, and also why does everything have to be about you, broody? Maybe the thought of you biting her makes her totally hot. Maybe the idea of her life essence restoring your health and power makes her go all gooey in her ladyplace. Maybe that makes her a little bit "sick", but you're a vampire so you don't get to cast stones. I'm just saying.
--A Short Open Letter to Fundamentalist Religious Government: I find it "amusing" that it is really only "love thy neighbor" to an extent. Until they [insert grievances here]. And that there are apparently exceptions to turning the other cheek. But totally, absolutely, for sure
homosexuals are "abominations" and and women should "obey" their
husbands. How very convenient for you, Fundamentalist Religion. And,
I'm sorry--how dare you get
your tighty-whities in a twist over the subjugation of women in the
Middle East when your own policies and institutions deny women the
right to marry each other or earn more than 77 cents to the dollar of
their male counterparts.
Sincerely,
--Dumbledore is gay. Seriously. This makes me totally happy. I like the idea of Dumbledore having a
secret, forbidden wizard-on-wizard love. It makes up a little for that
teeth-rottingly saccharine ending she fed us.
This time of year I always feel particularly poetic. I hear rhythms in the breezes and in the rain and the leaves and all the mysteries that I spend the rest of the year pretending to truly understand. Everything is clear and unclear at the same time, like my baseline vision. My entire world throbs with the need for more--more knowledge, more experience, more music, more passion, more risks, more conversations about things that matter, more creativity, more deep breaths, more kindred, more discoveries, more patterns upon patterns upon patterns.
Some clichés are clichés for a reason.
"I wanna hear a poem
I wanna learn something i didn't know
I wanna say 'YES' at the end
Because I'm sick of saying 'so?'
I wanna hear a poem about who you are
and what you think
and why you slam
not a poem about my poem
because I know who I am
I wanna hear a love poem a sad poem an I hate my
dad poem
a dream poem an I'm not what I seem poem
an I need poem an I also bleed poem
an I'm alone poem an I can't find my home poem
I just wanna hear a poem
I wanna hear a poem about revolution
about fists raised high
and hips twisting in a rumble
like a rumba
I wanna follow the footsteps of Che
and hear the truth about the day
the CIA killed Lumumba
And because every second matters
I wanna hear long poems and short poems
about time and its limits
because it took less than three minutes
to attack Abner Louima
to frame Assata Shakur
and destroy Hiroshima
to kill Elanor Bumpers
and Anthony Baez
to gun down Malcolm with
bullets they bought
from the Feds
I wanna hear a poem
where ideas kiss similes so deeply
metaphors get jealous
where the subject matters so much
that adjectives start holding pro-noun rallies
at city hall
because I want to hear a poem
that attacks the status quo
that attracts the claps of the cats
with the phattest flows
that makes the crowd pass the hat
and pack my cap
with a stack of dough
I want to hear a poem that makes this audience
yel HOOOOO!!!!!
Because I want to guess your favourtie colour
then craft rhyme schemes out of thin air
I wanna hear a poem about why the statute
of limitations
for rape
is only five years
I wanna hear a poem
I wanna feel a poem
I wanna taste a poem
Give me your spot on the mic
If you wanna waste a poem
I wanna hear a poem"
by Steve Coleman
saturday i went to my first burlesque!
i've always been fascinated with that glamorous, tastefully sleazy, early 20th century softcore porn aesthetic. and i've always had maybe a little bit more than a little bit of the exhibitionist in me. but it wasn't until last night that i realized that i really, really, really (add a few more 'really's and you'll get the idea) want to be in a burlesque. the outfits! the feathers! the campy role-playing! the dim lights and the awesomely skeezy music! it's like a dirty fantasy come true!
the show we saw was put on by a troupe called Fleur de Tease. they had three girls that did standard burlesque, a trapeze artist, a girl who twirled and ate fire and a bellydancer who danced one song with a platter of burning candles on her head. as someone who knows a thing or two about a thing or two when it comes to bellydancing, i was wildly impressed to say the least. and also envious. i want her job. well, maybe not so much with the candles, but a bellydancer in a burlesque? that i could be happy with. it is in my blood, after all. my grandfather's grandmother came from syria to louisiana by way of argentina as a bellydancer in a traveling carnival. she is my heroine.
thanks to greg (winner of Gay Boyfriend of the Year two years running) i was able to procure a set of tassled pasties after the show, and i've already started thinking of music to dance to. hello, ethiopian jazz...i knew i dug you for a reason...
hopefully by this time next year i can add burlesque dancer/bellydancer to my ever-growing list of things to accomplish while living in new orleans. now i just have to come up with a stage name!
How did my Friday fucking rock? Let me count the ways...
I got a new tattoo!!! This was a huge step for me because I've been vascillating between wanting a tatoo on my forearm and not being entirely sure if I really wanted visible tattoos (all of my other ink is pretty discreet) for a while now. On Friday my roommate Miranda and I spent the afternoon shopping on Magazine, and we ended up stopping into a tattoo parlor called Pigment so she could look at some artwork. It's a hip, arty kind of place with kind of a rockabilly-punk aesthetic going on--I was totally in love. Miranda pussied out on a tongue ring for now, but I got the itch. For the next hour or so it was like a record skipping in my head: must get new tattoo must get new tattoo must get new tattoo must get new tattoo. So I stopped vascillating and just fucking did it. There's a quote I've always thought I would really dig as a tattoo, a quote that really captures what I'm about, what I want to acheive in my life, so I wrote it out and took it back to Pigment and had it inked about an hour before the Henry Rollins show.
Isn't she just the bees knees? I'm going to have work done around her in color, though I haven't completely worked out what yet. She translates to: By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe. I fucking love her. I love the way she turned out. I love what she stands for. I love the time in my life that I'll come to associate with her. A new era has begun--she's made it official.
That night my friend Amanda came in from Baton Rouge and she, Miranda and I went to see Henry Rollins' Provoked show at the House of Blues. The show rocked so fucking hard! It was everything I expected it to be and more, especially coming after the high of getting new ink. He talked for about three hours, mostly about his experiences traveling to Syria, Iran and Beirut, but also on topics such as why he thinks that the world would be a better place if we all lived in constant fear of being mauled by polar bears or eaten by hyenas or some other equally vicious slaughter by wild animal. He was hilarious and inspiring and thought-provoking and totally fucking hot. Let's just say I left with the blood pumping fast to all my regions.
Afterward we came back to the house, drank a lot of wine, smoked a lot of green and had a lot of good conversation. There really is nothing quite like being drunk, stoned and grubbing on greasy bar food from Café Roule with good friends at 3 a.m. After we retired to our respective beds I started replaying the night in my head, and I was hit with a sudden, intense urge to write to Henry Rollins. Just to tell him how inspired I was by the show and to thank him for coming down to New Orleans. Now, this is not the kind of thing I do (hell, my best friend and I have never even gotten around to writing to Michael Bolton proposing that he become the official spokesman for Hydrox cookies), but there was definitely something in the air that night and it hadn't yet loosened it's hold on me at 4 a.m. so I just fucking did it. I sent him an email. And Saturday he wrote me back, which I didn't expect, but is pretty fucking cool and was, I think, the perfect end to my entire Friday.
on i tilt my head, i'm trying to get an angle