Reboppin with Savoy
Got called to help pimp Savoy’s Remix disc: “Did Kurt or Christine send you our new jazz remix album, Rebop? I could use a little help…like you did with St. Etienne…” In return, I am bartering an opening set and a guest DJ possibly for this monthly with Dante at his “Jean’s Cook-Up” spot, the Soundz Lounge in Harlem.
“ Could definitely get someone to jump start the party from the record. Let’s talk about that. The Rebop event will be built into this party:http://www.fusicology.com/events/?rid=3&id=2302 I’m not 100% on who is involved, but it’s looking like Smash, Spooky, Eclipse, possibly Diamond D and some others.”
Rebop on Myspace
Pas de d’uh
Rob Brezny reports:
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): On some days you work on creating your tapestry, weaving each thread with care and artistry. On other days you inexplicably unravel the same tapestry, undoing your fine efforts. Is there some hidden purpose in this maddening rhythm–a strategy I can’t fathom? Or is it fueled by a half-conscious compulsion you feel helpless to resist? Please get clear, Gemini, about what’s motivating you to take two steps forward, then two steps backward. I’d like to see you go at least *three* steps forward, two steps backward.
Er, Maybe I’m watching too much Family Guy?
Pas de d’uh
Rob Brezny reports:
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): On some days you work on creating your tapestry, weaving each thread with care and artistry. On other days you inexplicably unravel the same tapestry, undoing your fine efforts. Is there some hidden purpose in this maddening rhythm–a strategy I can’t fathom? Or is it fueled by a half-conscious compulsion you feel helpless to resist? Please get clear, Gemini, about what’s motivating you to take two steps forward, then two steps backward. I’d like to see you go at least *three* steps forward, two steps backward.
Er, Maybe I’m watching too much Family Guy?
Pinot Moi
Manic, insomniac again. Caught up on Netflix stack: Sideways.
Reminded me of growing up in California, of living with the first (closetted) ex and his best girlfriend in Toluca Lake in the late 80’s, my first year after high school. He was a graphic artist who stalked me at the Greek Theatre where I worked the VIP Hospitality room. He showed up every night, regardless of the perfomer. I so inspired him, he quit his cozy job to paint — odd, splatters on velum created in the backyard studio. He went as far as to schlep a Boy George piece alone to NYC to sell to him – Boy reappears later, but that has less to do with wine and more to do with crack, a cab, an heiress, a dancer, a sublet and an ill-fated off-Broadway “show.” He also found Mark Kostabi – who actually called long distance and woke me up one morning. The best girlfriend was a foxy redhead prop master, Irish lass with a cocker spaniel named Ashley. She drove a red convertible TBird and loved her vino. While she worked on “War of the Roses” she’d come home and bitch about Kathleen Turner being catty while we drank bottle after bottle of reds and redecorated our kitchen with used appliances from the movie. The bowl we saved our used corks in was constantly overflowing. Eventually, she got married and took to incubating a hatchling. He and I broke up on New Years eve.
In the early 90’s, I lived in West Hollywood with the next (just-out) Ex and his band. (I can’t seem to be alone with my piece; time to start dating ugly?) Now and then their college mates turned wine-tasters would drive down from Napa for the weekend with a trunk full of unlabeled bottles; much drunken cooking and jamming ensued. Soon after, I took to walking home from Paramount studios and stopping at Trader Joe’s, piling up on $8 house brands – Cabarnet Francs, Pinot Noirs, Syrahs and handfulls of chocolate, fruit, bread and cheese.
Some nights, I’d sit on the porch, before everyone else got home—including the ex who’d be out barcrawling and hoe’in—snacking and slurping, while Mount Penotubu’s lingering fallout turned the sunset a menacing, glowing burgundy from across the Pacific. Gradually, I eliminated all the whites — wines, that is; then reduced the reds, first to just Cab Francs and Syrahs, then ultimately to just Pinots.
In Chicago, circa 96, I drank Merlots with Regan Comstock, former Scavullo tranny model/junky in her waning AIDS years. I’d swing up to her place off the Argyle stop after work in the Loop, picking up “a six pack of Coke, a pack of Marlboro reds and a Merlot.” While she prepared comfort food – Macaroni and cheese, often – I’d play with her cat, “Monkey Lover Now Wife,” the only other Flame point siamese I’d met beside my Guero. After “dinner” we’d pop dolls and watch movies—”Babe,” was among her favorites. Whenever the animatronic pig pined for his mom, we’d both pop another round of dolls, wash it down with a swig of red and try not to cry. Sometimes, when she didn’t feel like crying, she’d nod off before that scene, while I was massaging her burned, scarred back.
Layman I am, I could never explain my taste for Pinots, so I just chalked it up to my mom’s infamous adolescent recrimination: “You’re so high maintenance. Why are you always drawn to things beyond your means?” Last night, “Miles” the enlightened vintner vindicated me…
Um, it’s a hard grape to grow, as you know. Right? It’s uh, it’s thin-skinned, temperamental, ripens early. It’s, you know, it’s not a survivor like Cabernet, which can just grow anywhere and uh, thrive even when it’s neglected. No, Pinot needs constant care and attention. You know? And in fact it can only grow in these really specific, little, tucked away corners of the world. And, and only the most patient and nurturing of growers can do it, really. Only somebody who really takes the time to understand Pinot’s potential can then coax it into its fullest expression. Then, I mean, oh its flavors, they’re just the most haunting and brilliant and thrilling and subtle and… ancient on the planet.
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Volver, Volver (o la Cancion Mexicana)
Rainy, cold, grey day. Staying in, spring cleaning. Packing up the winter layers, unpacking the summer skimpies. Researching Chavela Vargas for the Batanga interview (Heritage issue/due date 5 de Mayo) and Tom Moulton for the Earplug interview. What can I say to the 80-something woman who “drank all the good Tequila in Mexico,” and had an affair with Frida Kahlo; how am I going to sit in 60-something Moulton’s Midtown home studio and not make him feel like he’s wasting his time?
Normally as I write, I immerse myself in the subject. So it is I find myself, after doing dishes and sorting laundry, listening to Chavela Live at Carnegie. Selma Hayak introduced her as the Mexican Billie Holiday, but to me she also comes across like a proto-KD Lang, or Tom Waits and Marianne Faithfull—a witchy Blues crooner, outsider cabaret royalty.
I was on all fours, cleaning the floors by hand with a rag, because Terre had convinced me in his Cancerian wisdom that it was the only way to truly do the job right. I was contemplating the obligatory pre-interview conversation with my mom, warning her that I might publish a few pertinent details about our home life, when Chavela started singing “Vamonos“:
Que no somos iguales dice la gente,
que tu vida y mi vida se van a perder.
Que yo soy una canalla y que tu eres decente,
que dos seres distintos no se pueden querer.
Vamonos donde nadie nos juzgue,
donde nadie nos diga que hacemos mal,
Vamonos alejados del mundo
donde no haya justicia,
ni leyes ni nada, no mas nuestro amor.
(Translate)
I got goosebumps, my hand trembled a little, my eyes watered up, and I started crying into the Murphy’s oil soap. I envisioned a magic realist fantasia: my teardrops migling with the suds, the circular motion wiping the floors to a mystical sheen that filled the room with a blinding gentle light. I settled into a slumped Cinderalla pose against the futon and waited for the sing-along finale— inevitably, “Volver, Volver,” the unofficial Mexican anthem of regret and longing:
Este amor apasionado
anda todo alborotado por volver.
Voy camino a la locura
y aunque todo me tortura, sé querer.
Nos dejamos hace tiempo
pero me llegó el momento de perder.
Tú tenías mucha razón;
Le hago caso al corazón
Y me muero por volver.
Y volver volver volver
a tus brazos otra vez;
Llegaré hasta donde estés;
Yo sé perder, yo sé perder;
Quiero volver, volver, volver.
(Translate)
The Latino imagination cannot conceive love (or life) in linear terms. The cycical impulse manifests in Catholic confession and resurrection. For Mexicans in particular, passion is not black or white and singular; like everything else about us, it is mixed and redundant. We return again and again to heartache for absolution and clarity. Consider also the legend of another signature Chavela song, “La Llorona,” wherein a haughty beauty guilty of retaliatory infanticide roams the riverbanks wailing, in vain search of her two sons she spitefully cast in the stream when her gentleman lover “married up.”
When will fails as it often does, we turn to tequila and song, as my aunt did on summer nights in Echo Park, serenading the moonlit neighbors whether they appreciated it or not. One of them threw petroleum on our house, another got into a water hose fight with her, someone else stole one of our dogs, at one point our garage wall was tagged with homophobic graffiti. And yet, whenever the weather was right, and the spirit moved her, my aunt would sit in her chair, in her tank top (sans bra), with her guitar and woo the stars anew. The last time I was home in Los Angeles, we attended our old church in memoriam of my aunt’s passing. I was suprised to find the house of worship outfitted with a booming sound system, and a full Mariachi to accompany the choir.
It wasn’t until the clouds crackled and the raindrops hit the inner sill that I realized the courtains were soaked from billowing in and out the wide open windows. I put the rag in the bucket, washed my hands and Googled Chavela. I found a review of the concert wherein the writer mentions the Carnegie Program notes:
“Rancheras accompany Mexicans, regardless of their social class, through important moments, while also providing a catharsis for everyday life.In a culture where emotional intimacy is repressed, “la cancion mexicana” becomes the means of communicating with the heart.”
Ahem…
Single White Look-Alike: "Was never an escort."
PARIS WANNABES SQUARED OFF
NATALIE Reid, the Paris Hilton look-alike, was a stripper at Scores East for most of last year. “She was good. She made a lot of money,” said a source. But the 21-year-old Canadian had problems with another “Paris.” “Paris is a common name among dancers, and we have a lot of girls who look like Paris,” said a source at the club. “Natalie nearly came to blows with another Paris look-alike. The way it was settled. Natalie worked on the East Side. The other girl worked on the West Side.”
Reid was so obsessed with the real Paris that when she learned that Nicky Hilton had come into the mammary mecca on her night off, “she went into a deep depression.” Meanwhile, the ditzy doppelganger denies she also worked as an escort for Emperors’ Club VIP, where prices start at $800 an hour. The agency’s Web site had listed a Canadian woman named “Melissa” with “amazing physical beauty, high intelligence and the purity of youth,” plus a photo of a Reid look-alike. The woman who answered the phone at Emperors’ told PAGE SIX: “I can’t help you reach her because she no longer works here. She moved on.” But Alex Hiemberg, who now books Reid through his Screaming Queens Entertainment, said, “She never worked as an escort. She said that must be somebody who looks like her.”
[Must be....]
FASHION WEEK VIDEO
MySpace Profile
Voices of the Streets: "Ugly on the Ear"
Item 01: “London’s cockney rhyming phrases have been taken over by a new type of multicultural-influenced speech, dubbed Jafaican and Tikkiny.
Words like “yoot,” “nuff” and “nang” – meaning child, very and good, respectively – are forming the new accepted slang in London’s inner boroughs.
“Now, you have African, South American and Asian families blending all of those old influences from cockney and their native languages together into a new variety of speech.”
Michael Plumbe, chairman of the Queen’s English Society, a London-based institute pledged to preserve proper British English grammar, usage and pronunciation, said, while Jafaican and other dialects may be “rather ugly on the ear”, they deserve recognition as legitimate forms of proper speech.”
Item 02: Mexican aliens seek to retake ’stolen’ land
Source: Washington Times (4-16-06)
La reconquista, a radical movement calling for Mexico to “reconquer” America’s Southwest, has stepped out of the shadows at recent immigration-reform protests nationwide as marchers held signs saying, “Uncle Sam Stole Our Land!” and waved Mexico’s flag.
What a load of… (#86820)
by Jonathan Dresner on April 17, 2006 at 3:34 AM
…mythology and propaganda!
The reconquista is a fantasy of white supremacists looking for a reason to exclude hard-working brown Catholics who could take their semi-skilled jobs away from them.
The radicalization of immigrants, illegal and legal, and their native co-ethnics, is a natural result of the pressure they’ve been feeling from white racists and their Republican allies; the GOP could make reconquista a reality by making it a necessity….
Item 03: Mike “The Streets” Skinner Tops Billboard Charts.
Other voices of the UK Streets: MIA and Dizee Rascal
America Eats Its Young
In blog-space, everyone can hear you scream.
In Oklahoma, cannibalistically inclined Kevin Ray Underwood is in jail for the murder of a 10-year old girl. According to CNN:
“Underwood’s Internet blog allegedly revealed his bizarre intentions. Underwood, 26, wrote, “If you were a cannibal, what would you wear to dinner?” “My fantasies are getting weirder and weirder,” he wrote in another entry. “Dangerously weird. If people knew the kinds of things I think about anymore, I’d probably be locked away.”
(That is, unless of course, you’re a celebrity: in Hollywood, Tom Cruise delivers on Funkadelic’s promise—”America Eats Its Young“—“I’m going to eat the cord and the placenta right there.”)
Based on their comments, some of the readers on MyCrimeSpace —”a place for fiends”—should probably be locked away—or find agents—as well.
Kevin is a good-looking man with sick fantasies. He can choke me anytime.
#6 deena brown on 2006-04-17 10:58 (Reply)
Congratulations Deena, you’re MyCrimeSpace’s first mutant troll.
#6.1 Trench (Link) on 2006-04-17 11:03 (Reply)
Someone should choke your ass out!
#6.2 does it matter? (Link) on 2006-04-17 12:38 (Reply)
I hope he gets the chance!!
#6.3 barton on 2006-04-17 13:17 (Reply)
Hey Deena: Seriously, I hope you do not have any kids.
Good Friday: Owen & Mzee & Molly
Owen & Mzee: The True Story of a Remarkable Friendship
For the Holidays, I posted this gem about a baby Hippo and Tortoise who became pals in Kenya after the big Christmas Tsunami, 2004. The story has circulated seemingly endlessly, resulting in TWO–count em, haters —best-selling books.
After being stuck in a wall in the West Village for over 2 weeks, Molly the cat is free. According to Craigslist, “everyone is happy.” Who says New Yorkers are mean?
NY TIMES
CRAIGSLIST
NY1
Bloody Crip Radio, Mate
From the BBC: The Ouch Podcast
“You’re so special we’ve made a podcast for you”
Liz Carr says: “It felt like it was the first broadcast of ‘crip radio’, and that there had been nothing like it before. It seemed like we were part of history, and I realised what had been missing over the years.”
LATEST! We’re looking for new contestants to take part in the show’s phone-in quiz, Vegetable, Vegetable or Vegetable! Find out more!
911 is a Joke
Let’s see if I got this right…
Kansas: White girl lies, FBI hunts:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/04/13/missing.teen.ap/index.html
Detroit: Black boy scolded, Mom dies:
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200660410033
Bad Apple, Cool Beans, Lickable!?
Nano No-no: Miracle Reported: Apple Contemplates Policy Change
Bay Area CBS affiliate TV-5 reports that Shea O’Gorman, a South Bay third-grader, received an unwelcome reply to her hand-written letter to Steve Jobs suggesting improvements to the iPod nano.
She wrote the letter as a school project and received an unpleasant response from Apple’s legal department noting the company does not accept unsolicited product ideas. Shea’s mother’s description of the girl running into her bedroom to hide is a perfect description of how it usually feels to ask questions of Apple.
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Punto, Que?: Hispanics Online Will Pass 20 Million By 2010
According to the report, Hispanic Youth Online: Language and Culture Define Usage, there were 15.7 million Hispanics who had access to the Web in 2005. By 2010, that audience is expected to hit 20.9 million users.
While a ‘digital divide’ was said to have existed in the early days of the Web, as Hispanics and African Americans trailed the general population in Web access, that appears to have gone by the wayside for Hispanics, who have rapidly embraced broadband in recent years–especially among the young.
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Breyer’s, in a word: Lickable
June Pointer, RIP
Billboard reports:
June Pointer, a member of singing group the Pointer Sisters, died yesterday (April 11) of cancer. The 52-year-old singer was the youngest member of the Grammy-winning group, which also featured sisters Ruth, Anita and Bonnie.
According to a statement released by the family, June had been hospitalized since late February at Santa Monica University of California, Los Angeles, Medical Center. The type of cancer she was suffering from was not revealed.
June was ordered into a rehabilitation facility two years ago after pleading guilty to cocaine possession.
Funeral arrangements are still pending.
