Halloween, 2009: Dear Diary Entry #9

Yesterday it was Halloween: A-Rod & Richard Simmons publicly fondled me while a lesbian was singing Alanis Morisette’s “Uninvited.”

Nothing in That Drawer

Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.

-Ron Padgett

Elephants, Termites, Farber

The only time I ever saw Manny Farber in person was when he screened Hou’s Goodbye South Goodbye, paired with the Chuck Jones’ Warner Bros. cartoon “One Froggy Evening,” (everybody do the Michigan rag!). The Hou film with the Jones short is emblematic of Farber’s taste, and his that high art and low art (what he used to call Underground film, different from what we think of the term now) should do its best to tagteam against the self-aggrandizing, middlebrow movies, the ones that go off to win Oscars because they’re made with the specific intent to win Oscars, like the ones that come from the Miramax machine of the 90s, like Spielberg, like Dances with Wolves, like many of the costume adaptations, you get the idea. He coined terms and wrote a  kinda-sorta manifesto called “White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art,” which is just one metaphor of many that he’s used before and after this essay. Of course the metaphor extends beyond merely categorizing art between high & low brow with middle-brow fare; they do come from the mind of Manny after all. I paraphrase Robert Polito, who has compiled Farber’s complete film criticism, when he states that Manny Farber’s writing resists summation. We can’t really know precisely the full range of meaning of termite, elephant art, negative space, we can only suggest some interpretations. Robert Polito was one of four panelists discussing the working life of Manny Farber the other night at DG Wills. His wife and collaborator, Patricia Patterson was also present; her recollection shed some personal light on Farber’s work and habits and hinted at an upcoming project that collects his lecture notes during his decade long stint as a professor @ UCSD. To have been one of his students…

The Case of the Compulsive Fellator

Some homosexuals engage in behavior which is so irrational that it virtually requires psychodynamic explanation. A good example of this is the case of the compulsive fellator who finds himself actually driven to engage in fellatio under what are sometimes situations of radical danger. This person frequently picks up rough-looking young men, e.g., hitchhikers and servicemen, and tries to persuade them to let him bring them to orgasm by fellatio. He is often a typical client of hustlers. As a result of his efforts, this individual frequently is assaulted and is occasionally murdered, although very often it is not clear from reading the press reports that there was a sexual basis for the crime.

What is the reason for this compulsive desire for fellatio?

-Martin Hoffman, The Gay World: Male Homosexuality and the Social Creation of Evil

Dear Diary Entry #8

It’s not about time but it is about time I get to work. “Funnel energy” into something “constructive.” Not Constructivist, but maybe that’ll work. & I still need help with my A4A project but what’s the point, really? I mean, really! But who will help me make these posters, who will help me plaster these posters, who will help me bake the bread? I don’t want it to be something facile, like stickers that say ERACISM, but it is about e-Racism. You know the type, right: it’s just a preference. Also, did my world just get whiter, wider this week. I taught my first class & graduate school really does take a lot time, but there seems to be enough time for beers, you know, to wash down all that anxiety, and regurgitate (literally). Like the other day, I puked during a semi-intimate moment, and I hadn’t had any beers, but I can laugh about it now, I laughed about it at the moment: because there’s no time to reflect since everything’s streamlined. But there have been other things that have needed processing: was I a horrible boyfriend? brother? Will I be a better boy & friend? Who are they, these friends? I love my cats, but I wish I had more time: I spend it all in these coffee shops and my little office, but the coffeeshops come in all sorts of flavors, right? Like sometimes they’re too wine bar-y, and that’s okay, but I don’t feel welcome plugging in my laptop there, or watching Wong Kar-Wai when I should be like, you know, planning. I think though there have been some new people in my life that will be there for a while and I guess, that works for me. I sort of want to encapsulate our encounters not in little poems, but rather in trading cards, that capture a highlight of our time: friend a) turning up the car stereo on a manmade island listening to experimental music that recontextualizes talk radio;  friend b) trading eyeglasses and discovering we have the same vision; friend c) flirtatious and flattering messaging, meeting up once a week, if only for a minute or two. I guess I don’t have to sit in class and eagerly raise my hand. Pick me, pick me!

Engel & Orkin: New York treasures

Rachel and I rented a movie in my recent New Haven/ New York trip and we chose an adaptation of The Maids, Kings and Queen, and the only two we ended up watching, Lovers & Lollipops and Weddings & Babies. The two we saw were forefathers of independent cinema that obviously had an influence, at least with technique, on the French New Wave, particularly Francois Truffaut. In New York, I also caught, from the same director/s Little Fugitive, the better-known film of husband-wife team of Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin (their daughter was apparently in the screening). All three films, their whole oeuvre, provide a sort of a personal travelogue of New York City, in the fifties that we don’t see in their Hollywood contemporaries because of their reliance on sets and sound stages. I was particularly interested in the sound of the city even if the recurring theme songs tend to drown them sometime. It is no surprise that Rachel and I both responded better to Little Fugitive and Lovers, the two films with child protagonists. The acting of the little boy and little girl mirror the visual and aural spontaneity conveyed in their respective films. I wonder why Hollywood directors have such a hard time today scouting great child actors, but maybe it’s because Hollywood/Indiewood would rather foreground cute and quirky and ignore the child-ishness of the child.

Pictures of the Maya Lin exhibit, 10/10/09

Crammed into a seemingly small space are these large structures Maya Lin built to recreate contours of the earth and sea but resemble more like giant models of topographic charts and graphs. But also, in a way, they are three-dimensional landscapes pared down to what essentially makes a landscape. The use of wood was interesting too, because it acts as a subtle model for sustainability. To represent the earth use the earth.

East Coast Trip, Preface

I’m still in New Haven and they found the body of the disappeared med student. But she didn’t seem to have disappeared at all. Her face was plastered all over the shops and lampposts in the city, the front pages of local newspapers, and at least an hour on Nancy Grace. It’s kind of the opposite of disappearing. It’s my last day here and they’ve found her body in the walls of the research building where she worked. She was 4’11 and was a bride-to-be, the news reiterates constantly. This city favors the billionaire’s kids and they seem distant from the whole thing because the victim was not an undergrad. Usually I wouldn’t bother mentioning sensationalistic deaths but it is difficult to ignore the whole thing when everywhere you go, there are bricks, elm trees, and her xeroxed face.

I don’t bother writing complete sentences anymore

I lost my notebook and until I get a new one, I’ll settle for this recap of my last week:

New couch, “Without You” by Harry Nilsson with Geraldine, brunch@Herbivore, Small Press Distribution, potluck in Bernal Heights/outer-Mission, Beatriz & Edgar building the couch, that alley with the murals, thrift stores, The Devil Wears Prada, not one but two tables, Denise, traffic, dialing 911 because of that guy’s heavy fall, Batman villains at Dolores Park, casseroles, celebrity 21, Fluxx, cuddling, Oakland bubble tea, Charlie Horse, Anna Conda, Downey Friend, confetti all over, The Revolution is My Boyfriend, the televnovela across the street, casserole, broccolini, dinner on Ivan’s patio, QVC, $35,000 bathroom renovations, less Target, less IKEA, less alone time, the fog, someone paying for our toll, overwhelming number of books, that annoying straight person interrupting queer movie night.

I wonder if I’ll remember what all of this means in five years.

Choices: Illusions and/or Distractions?!?!

It’s just coincidence that I picked up I never knew what time it was by David Antin on my last day in San Francisco. The first piece, entitled “the theory and practice of postmodernism: a manifesto,” mirrors mine and Ivan’s experiences buying just about anything for his place: his kitchenware, his television, his paper towels, couches and for the last week his car. In the piece, husband and wife debate the pros and cons on where, in the endless listings in the yellowpages, to buy the mattress, which store location to go, and of course, which mattress to purchase. The dizziness of buying stuff for either of our apartments accounts for our own self-imposed submission to the overbearing consumer culture of choices: It took almost five minutes to decide the toilet paper, for example. Do you want these bobbing frogs for toothbrush holders? A magnet for the knives or the wooden thing with the slits? And of course as the item needed increases in price, we are taught to spend more time on our decision. The story of how we purchased his television is a half-a-day long epic drive to three Big Box Stores in the suburbs of San Francisco. Costco was a no-go, Fry’s was a let down, and finally Best Buy either fulfilled its namesake or we just gave up finding the right deal. We’ve listened to schpeel after schpeel about the difference between 1080i or 700i whatever that means, and quite frankly does it really matter if we’re not playing videogames or watching The Dark Knight on the machine. Later in San Diego, Ivan bought a new car. His first new new car. Dealer after dealer trying to relate to the customer: “You’re getting your PhD,” says the Hyundai guy to Ivan. “You must like to read books then. I like to read self-help books. Do you know the Four Agreements?” Relating to people at any angle…this is how to win friends and influence people, I’m sure. I know that its desperate times for autodealers and it’s their job to try and sell you cars so they can earn a paycheck but why are they so pushy? It’s ironic that Ivan chose from the dealer that was downright insulting to him after the news that Ivan had to wait for his parents’ opinion: “You’re a PhD, why do you need your parents help to decide!” This last few weeks reinforced the idea that these tough decisions we make in our life (furnishing your home, which car insurance, DVD player, dish strainer) takes so much of our time that art and wars become marginalia.