Stories from a man who fails to meet media expectations of what it means to be gay:
white, frivolous, over sexed yet sexless, shrill, single, stylish, a clown, unimportant, et al.

<prior or next>

�
�
Comedy, intentional and non:
I saw Kate Clinton�s �It�s come to this� 25th anniversary tour with my Friend K, where following the rules of Dyke social events, the first familiar person we ran into was her ex.� Thinking about it, I think the last time I saw Kate Clinton was also with K about 10 or 12 years ago, right around the time she and that particular ex became ex�s.� There was filming that night, though the cameras never did quite turn all the way to where I was sitting, so if a DVD ever comes out, when the camera pans across an audience filled with laughing women, that�s my elbow on the edge of the screen.
�
It was a good show and Kate Clinton was very funny that night, covering topics from nonmonogamy, heir president, trying to explain catholic Limbo to her Hindi girlfriend, and relating an amusing anecdote about appearing on the L-word involving her underwear and a piece of nicarette gum.
�
�Speaking� of the L-word, I haven�t written anything about the new season, despite it providing one of the funniest things I�ve seen on TV in the past few months, specifically a scene were Shane and her Hot Latina Girlfriend (HLG) went to East L.A. to visit the HLG�s family.� You knew that it was supposed to be EasLos because everything was all blue collar, yet proud looking, and as if that weren�t enough, they drove the point into the ground by having a car pass by while honking it�s Mexican Hat dance playing horn.� It was so crazily embarrassingly stereotypical that I simultaneously cringed so much I looked as if I were in pain and laughed so hard I nearly fell off the couch.�
�
�
Museo One:
I went to MOCA to catch part of the Masters of American Comics show and to get mildly depressed for a few minutes.� The depression part had to do with my deciding to look at the other exhibitions before the comics, which meant that the first thing I saw was an installation by Dami�n Ortega.� Looking at how he arranged and hung a dissected Volkswagen didn�t depress me, but realizing that I was the same age as an internationally known and well-respected artist who has works in major museums did.
�
Anyway, the comics, a friend of mine said that he found the exhibit inspiring.� I won�t go quite that far, at least not for the more modern work they had at MOCA, but it was an interesting exhibit, if not a mind altering one, which just means that for the most part merely reinforced some opinions of artists that I already had.� I know people who are fans of Gary Panter�s Jimbo, but I�ve never been able to get past the intentional ugliness and bleakness of the art and stories to see if there is anything else there.� People like Chris Ware�s work as well, but while I can appreciate the effort and skill in drafting and design, there�s that feeling of desperation and fear in the content, which always leaves me feeling, troubled when I look at his stuff.
�
On the other hand, Will Eisner�s work on the Spirit was amazing, and Stan Lee�s stuff was crazy with frantic energy and ideas.� One of the odder things they had displayed was a work of his, a hybridized Romance/Science fiction short story.� In it two men who own a hat shop and live together discover the reason that things keep going missing from their home is that their apartment joins an alien dimension.� After a bizarre story of insane shapes and weird concepts it ended on a mundane note with one of the men proposing to a Martian woman, which I admit surprised me a little after the initial set up of the two bachelors living together even though it really shouldn�t have.
�
�
Play:
We saw Permanent Collection, a �serious� play about racism based on events involving a museum I am too lazy to look up the name of.� Essentially a Black college has been given control of a museum famous for it�s collection of impressionist works, and problems ensue when the new director wants to increase the number of African pieces on display even though the previous owner�s will stipulates that no changes may be made to the collection.� That�s an oversimplified explanation of the plot, but it explains how questions arise about racism and the �value� of western art over other cultures.
�
One thing that wasn�t exactly addressed in the play is class.� From what little I remember about the real museum, part of the controversy was charges of elitism and class.� Despite supposedly being a collection for �the people� rather than for the art elite, the museum is located in a rich suburb that is hard for many �real� folks to reach.
�
Museo Dos:
After MOCA I went to it�s companion space over in Little Tokyo and walked around through the Ecstasy, In and About Altered States exhibit, a bunch of work by a bunch of artists with a common altered perception theme, meaning that there where so many mushrooms it felt like an ode to getting high.
�
A lot of the pieces were interactive, so I walked into a 70�s/gay/oversexed/overdugged/�milk bar� room; walked into and immediately out of another room of disorienting & seizure inducing noise/lights; walked through an upside-down wonderland inspired mushroom room; watched fog; watched cute yet violent flash video; watched odd videos float through the floors, walls, & ceilings of another room; and finally watched a film by a Finnish (?) artist dealing with a woman who lived in a house that was no longer able to keep the outside �outside,� so that the world was happening in her living room, or perhaps she was merely going insane.� Most of drug imagery stuff seemed a bit clich�, but that last piece following a woman�s loss of sanity was very interesting, or maybe my thinking so is an age thing.� The crowd that stayed throughout the video tended to be in their 30�s and older, while the people getting off the most on the recurring mushrooms seemed to be in their 20�s.

More later,
nico

<prior or next>

� 2000-2007