AatomBomb

EveryoneIsFamous,WhereAreTheStars?

I just wanted to share a recent piece that I did for movmnt. Enjoy:

The disease of instant celebrity in the post-pop era.

The scene: A starlet, recently freed from a grueling 72-hour ordeal, careens out of a correctional facility parking lot and dials the first coke dealer she can find in her iPhone. Nothing can slow her down now. She is pissed but giddy over the press she has received. Stupid paparazzi. And the studio keeps calling leaving threatening messages with her manager. Can’t they see she’s having a crisis? No one understands how hard it is to be in the spotlight constantly, she thinks. Of course she parties a little, everyone does. She chucks a fast food shake out the window, hitting an oncoming car. Fucking idiots. No one understands what she is going through.

The unmistakable stench of rot and decay lingers over popular culture right now. Celebrity, once the domain of an elite (and elitist) class of hand-picked talent and well crafted studio production, is now mass-produced. How did we get here? When did fame become an end unto itself? The promise of unlimited access to the means of media distribution was supposed to even the playing field, allowing the cream to rise to the top. Everyone can play; everyone can hit the jackpot; everyone can be famous. Yet the very nature of fame is corrupted by its ubiquity. It is meaningless unless there are those less famous looking up to you. You can have 6,234 friends on MySpace and never meet more than ten of them. Fame is now the crack cocaine of success – cheaper, readily available, self-destructive, and quicker to fade.

Read the whole thing here.

Starrbooty!

Last Thursday I attended the press screening for Starrbooty, a feature length resurrection of the blaxploitation-style series of low budget episodes made by RuPaul in the Eighties.  Ru was there (and yes, he goes by Ru out of character, somewhat to my surprise) and was witty and effervescent, as always.  He confessed an unhealthy degree of excitement for the Judge Judy show, but gave a great pre-screening interview.  Quick, clever, and thoughtful, as all great queens must be to survive. 

Joe from Joe.My.God was there, and gives a nice synopsis of the thing over at his place.  My EIC and I enjoyed the film very much, as evidenced by our constant level of obnoxious laughter.  No punches pulled, this is not the safe-for-radio-airplay Ru of the Nineties.  She flexes all of her drag muscles, and the result, with stellar performances by Candis Cayne and Sweetie, is a wicked old-school romp through the Meatpacking District with a bunch of tranny hookers.  Kind of makes you nostalgic.  We'll be interviewing Ru for noiZe soon, stay tuned...

BuckingConvention

I had the pleasure of attending the premiere of the Black Party docudrama Schwarzwald - Rites XXVII last night at The Box.  I have to say it was one of the most enjoyable evenings I've had in a long while, for several reasons aside from the free vodka. 

As my boyfriend and I arrived at The Box, I recognized the face of Joe from Joe.My.God waiting outside for the Manhattan Offender.  I'd never had the pleasure of meeting Joe in person, but I recently used his formidable writing skills for the launch of noiZe, so I introduced myself and we ended up chatting for much of the evening.  We all swapped wacky backroom stories, and momo from Manhattan Offender turned out to be as witty and amusing as I expected.  Joe had the best stories of course, the man is a wealth of anecdotal information. 

The star of the evening, though, was Buck Angel, the female-to-male transsexual porn star who has been making a big splash recently.  It's hard to ignore "The Man With A Pussy", as his business card delicately puts it.  He turned out to be one of the sweetest and most interesting people I've met, and we ended up talking with him until one in the morning.  My boyfriend is absolutely fascinated, and is already planning a trip to Mexico for us to visit Buck, who actually put his money where his mouth was when Bush was elected and moved out of the country.  Take that, you Hollywood pussies!  The courage of his convictions is something that Mr. Angel is certainly not lacking. 

The movie was decent for an indie film about a circuit party.  The best parts were the footage of the party itself, interspersed with a nonsensical pagan storyline that occurs in the woods, amusingly accompanied by peppy disco tracks most of the time.  Buck was strangely adorable throughout, looking surprisingly innocent for a muscular bald man with tattoos and a vagina.  He told us after how fascinated gay men were with him, to the point of almost being gang-raped on the floor of the Black Party one year.  Men, as it turns out, are indeed pigs.  Joe summed it up nicely.  He said imagine a room full of the most hardcore sex freaks in the city, men who make a regular habit out of practices such as fisting and bloodletting (the bloodletting scene of the movie was by far the most disturbing - and kind of hot in a wrong wrong wrong way) and then put Buck onstage wearing nothing more than thigh-high leather boots.  It's the one perversion none of them have ever experienced before, and it drives them crazy.  That might help explain why Buck no longer goes on the main dance floor alone anymore. 

All in all, a fabulous evening.  I'm still working off a bit of a hangover (no more gin on long nights. Just no.) but it made me blog again so it must have been pretty fucking special.

Here's a pic of Buck and my angel of a boyfriend:

Aww.

PeopleWhoHatePeople

"Be polite, or I will shove your face into the ground, you fucking neo-con prick! Don't you have a fucking sense of humor? Look, here's my impression of Bush as a monkey. It's fucking hilarious, asswipe. Laugh, or I'll stab you in the throat!!"

- Babs!

HumanNature:ComplexOrStupid?

I'm going with both:

Girl: I hate southern people.
Friend: How can you hate all southern people?
Girl: I just do. Some people hate black people, some people hate Jewish people, I hate Southern people.
Friend: Why?
Girl: They're so prejudiced.

--N train

The above may very well be a sort of Rosetta Stone for human nature itself.  Like a lazy Buddha clapping with only one hand, this conversation probably holds the key to understanding the frustrating complexities and hypocrisies that being human entails.  I suspect it may have a lot to do with my recent pet theory that the unique hallmark of human consciousness is the ability to both believe in something and not believe in it at the same time. 

Race relations were on my mind most of the long weekend actually, as I watched the first season of Extras on HBO again, and was impressed with the raw, brutal treatment that Gervais gives to the issue.  Watching him try to weasel his way out of referring to asians as "yellow" to a sophisticated Japanese woman is high comedic art of the most excruciating variety.  His friend Maggie, brilliant in her own right, gets the best racial humor, however.  Her aborted attempt to woo a handsome black extra into bed is one of the best explorations of how political correctness fails more often than it succeeds.  As she desperately tries to hide her slavery-era Golliwogg doll named "Sambo" so as not to offend her black date, he catches her and she rambles her way right into the loony bin trying to explain herself.  Then Gervais makes it worse by trying to explain her actions to Samuel L. Jackson.  The offense is always in the explaining and the tip-toeing around the issue, which is brilliant social commentary.  It once again confirms my motto that you should never chalk up to malice what can easily be explained by ignorance.

Even the networks gave me something to chew on this weekend.  I caught an episode of Julia Louis-Dreyfus' horribly named The New Adventures of Old Christine last night.  I think she is a brilliant comedian, and she didn't let me down in this rerun.  A misguided attempt to force more diversity on her son's white bread school finds her sponsoring a nice black family to get their daughter in, only to regret it when they complain about all of the fags in the last school they tried.  To balance it out, she sponsors a gay family, and they promptly complain about the Jews.  It's refreshing to finally see some recognition that the "bad guys" aren't always white in a mainstream outlet.  Her show is vastly more sophisticated than most sitcoms, so I imagine it will be cancelled momentarily.

PartyLikeIt's1499

"The Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543) never liked the Earth-based view of the universe, yet he never publicly announced his views until he was old. This was due to the Church -- anyone who opposed Church doctrine was branded a heretic, and that would destroy your reputation, put you in prison, or even sentence you to death." - The Church & Copernicus

"Pope Benedict XVI has sacked his chief astronomer after a series of public clashes over the theory of evolution.

He has removed Father George Coyne from his position as director of the Vatican Observatory after the American Jesuit priest repeatedly contradicted the Holy See's endorsement of "intelligent design" theory, which essentially backs the "Adam and Eve" theory of creation." - Daily Mail, today

Electroma!

Electroplankton has stills from a Daft Punk movie screened at Cannes called Electroma.  I love Daft Punk and their quirky French acid funk, especially the song Around the World, so I hope to catch this futuristic film about two robots trying to become human. 

But when are we going to start making movies about humans that try to become robots?

St.Valentine'sDay

I hope everyone truly enjoys the "Hallmark" holiday this year, I know it will have special significance for me in light of this kind of medieval shit.

ViolenceIsTheEnemy

The chilling saga of the 18 year old boy who walked into a gay bar in New Bedford, Mass. and attacked 3 gay men with a gun and a machete has come to a tragic end.  Making a run for it in Arkansas with a female companion, police stopped him for some other reason and then got into a high speed chase when he attempted to flee.  After crashing the car, he shot his companion point blank in the head and then opened fire on the police.  They killed him, but only after he took down one of their men. 

A note that warned of "something violent" led police to hunt him down with urgency.  A makeshift poster with anti-semitic scribbling on it and a homemade coffin greeted investigators in his bedroom, as well as the note. 

Despite the deeply disturbing events described here, you probably won't be surprised to find that Ted Kennedy is using the whole thing as a political tool, pounding the drum for hate crimes legislation once more.  This incident has been officially classified as a hate crime in Mass.  Hate crimes feel good to us, because it appears that society is highlighting the particular injustice of homophobia (or whatever brand of hate we are dealing with at the time.)  I can understand the impulse to want to shine a bright light on something that is so deeply personal and disturbing to us as a group of people.  But chalking this type of thing up to "intolerance" merely whitewashes the complex and chaotic nature of what has happened here.  Hate crime delineation seeks to divine the true motives of a violent criminal, beyond the necessary distinctions of premeditation and the physical extent of the violence itself.  That sets up a layer of bureaucracy specifically concerned with policing our thoughts.  Why this doesn't disturb gay people has always been a complete mystery to me.

Incidents like this, and the Shepard case, are always much more confusing when you know more about them than the latest fundraising letter you just received would have you believe.  The roots of violence are particularly important to understand right now, as Muslims take to the streets chanting for the extermination of everything that doesn't fit narrowly into their harsh perspective.  Limiting our own perspective to the tired, well-worn talking points of gay victimhood doesn't get us any closer to understanding why so many young men around the world think that destruction is the only way to fix their problems. 

RedStringForYourThroat

Gawker discovers the Kaballah Brand Energy Drink at Duane Reade.  I had one of these over a week ago, so they obviously don't get out of the house very often (busy blogging in their pajamas, no doubt.)

____________________________

For a kick-ass Hebrew cocktail:

- 3 shots of kosher vodka

- 1 can of Kaballah Brand Energy Drink

- 1 dash of ancient Jewish mysticism

Stir.  Garnish with red string.  Serve.  Complain about low tip.