3 1 a u g u s t 2 0 0 0 .
there is something to be said for the examined life.
- margaret salinger (j.d.'s daughter), new york times
three italians, three spaniards, one french boy, and me, ugly american, all at an outdoor disco at idroscalo called billy's holiday. stayed till 5am, drinking cuba libres (libri?), dancing, and looking at the gogo boys wearing american flag briefs and cowboy hats.
and this face: would you trust this face? (no.)
e questa faccia: vi fidereste di questa faccia? (no.)
and so far, the most commonly entered phrases in my search engine are as follows:
sent to me by accident:
-----Original Message-----b a c K
From: vera*****@redoak.org [mailto:vera*****@redoak.org]
Sent: Thursday, November 11, 1999 12:48 AM
To: *****@netscape.net
Subject: HeyHey Linda,
Nope, I'm not pregnant yet. But, boy, do I have a story for you. You know that girl at the gym who keeps smiling at me when I'm on the treadmill? I found out yesterday she works high up at the Pentagon. Maddie told me she's even got a photo with the President in her wallet. Believe that! Apparently she hangs out with the military brass at that restaurant across the street. Maddie tells me he saw her with a 3-star general the other day being rather seductive. Apparently the guy was red and wet like a watermelon with her. I can imagine these military people going gaga over her - everybody here at the gym even thinks she's the hottest thing with that tight tush she moves around. Anyway I don't know what she wants from me with all the smiles she sends my way. She doesn't come across gay or anything like that, but you never know these days...
Oh, by the way, before I forget, the other day Mark sent me this link to some secret international organization called the Stillwater Committee that's involved in some way with JonBenet, yeah the Ramsey kid. Isn't your company working on a documentary about her murder? If so, this site'll really get you ticking. Here's the link... www.the-shield.com Spooky.
Okay, gotta run. Just heard Bob get in. Yeah, in case you're wondering, he's been very nice to me sofar. Bye.
Vera.
i don't normally publish recommendations and reviews, not formal ones at least, but russell leong is one of the inspirations for this site and for me, so i thought i'd share:
los angeles times wednesday august 23, 2000
west words southern california living
by jonathan kirsch, special to the times
russell charles leong, the poet and filmmaker who serves as editor of amerasia journal and the publications of the asian american studies center at ucla, offers his own take on the asian experience in america in phoenix eyes and other stories (university of washington press) a collection of startling and unsettling short stories that are mostly set in the landscape of contemporary california.
some of leong's rich and evocative stories confront us with the horror of what might be played for cheap exoticism in less skillful hands. "daughters," for example, introduces us to a woman at work in a suburban brothel in the san gabriel valley and shows us how she was forced into a life of prostitution at 14 by her own a father, a fate that followed her from asia to america. abruptly, the tale shifts from the mundane details of a prostitute's life--the norplant implants, the can of lysol spray in the bathroom, the tic tacs that are chewed three at a time to conceal a recent meal of "fish paste and garlic and sweet oyster sauce and ginger and black beans and chili"--to an almost mythic scene of crisis and redemption.
"now the moon was full and her blood was flowing freely," writes leong of the prostitute called haishan at the very moment when both body and spirit fail her. "unable to avert her eyes, she saw everyone whom she had known as if in a waking dream. for an instant, she even saw herself as a nun. she would shave her head as she had threatened to do long ago and toss the filaments into the burning temple oven."
other stories in the collection are more restrained, but leong always shows us how memory and identity persist even in the melting pot of america. "bodhi leaves," for example, is a fable that focuses on the efforts of a pious monk from vietnam to transform an orange county tract home near little saigon into a proper buddhist temple, a project that relies on the exertions of mexican day laborers, the concrete status of buddha on sale at a korean nursery in hollywood, and the efforts of one young vietnamese artist who works to the strains of jay z's "hard knock life" and another who spends more time surfing than at prayer. the monk is thankful to be out of the refugee camp in thailand, but he is not entirely at ease in his new homeland. "he did not feel as liberated in america as he had hoped," leong sums up with a deadpan shrug.
"to see life as it happened, and to imagine other possibilities," is how leong describes his own mission as a writer. both of these qualities--his acute powers of observation and his poet's gift for capturing the experience of transcendence--are given full expression in the pages of "phoenix eyes."
on an unrelated note, use my new search engine (found below left/sinistra) to find the naughty bits.
this is me multitasking: reading/listening to the following at the same time:
- bahraini jetliner crashes into persian gulf (i hope it doesn't come across as downplaying this because i'm reading other things too; i just take in information this way)
- listening to fresh air online
- giggling to jami's exchange with her mom about crotches and rubbing. i'm still giggling, actually.
- actress heche hospitalized in calif. after breakup, courtesy of jonno's compelling blog, "anne heche: the margot kidder of the new millennium?"
- registering for united airlines' frequent flier account
- senior red technochino pants
- one-year subscription to wallpaper*
- chrome fireball bag
- heather green ringer t-shirt
- "helter skelter," meat beat manifesto (love it, it's dark and sexy)
- "coffee and tv," blur (like it, it makes me feel straight when i listen to it)
- "sunday morning," no doubt (ehh.)
- "doesn't really matter," janet jackson (making her the third, after lauryn hill and madonna, to use that song title in the last year. pop music is original)
- "the light," "geto heaven part 2," and "pops rap iii ... all my children," common (i like him a lot, which makes me even more pissed that he said "faggot" in one of his joints)
- appetite for disctruction, funkstörung (which is almost the same title as the old album [golly, 13 years old now!] by guns 'n roses, but with an oh-so-clever typo)
have other people seen this awesome french hyundai commercial? a colleague sent it to me and i love all the sexual innuendi. download it here.
picture of me at a party. it's not blurry, i'm just pulsating with energy.
walking through the duomo area of milan, i heard a string trio performing on the street; the music juxtaposed with a homeless woman groaning for money about twenty feet away.
yesterday morning i laid in max's bed as he read cards and did charts for his astrology clients. he describes most of them as grassa (fat) and pazza (crazy). having sex with someone who says "si" and "bello" and "bambino" with zero irony is, well, something; soon i'll work up the courage again to write about this stuff, but for now it's nice to be getting fucked, a lot, again.
yesterday afternoon i went to messagerie musicale and bought books in english: this much i know is true, by wally lamb, and asleep, by banana yoshimoto. looking forward to having a book to look forward to at the end of the day; i've been reading funeral rites by jean genet (thanks, jason!) but i need to take a break from it.
the most disappointing new site i've seen is lacoste.com, for its clunky online "catalogue" and lack of functionality, content, or even the shit on its print ads.
nice crop shot of my plunging neckline.
b a c K
florentinians, except for my darling lapo, can be rude as hell sometimes. i learned this by visiting florence (firenze) last weekend con mi amica claudia. despite this, we had a wild and woolly great time, eating our way through ribollita, bistecca fiorentina, nutella gelato, and other treats. views from the top of church towers, buildings, hillsides that were truly beautiful.
we ran into a group of twenty random europeans around our age (that's a lie, they were all around 21) at a bar called blob (really) and watched them, within ten minutes, all get completely shitfaced. they soon left the bar, we following because we didn't have anything better to do and the bartenders were in foul temper by then anyway, and saw someone empty their dishwater out the window, i think aiming for us.
a sixteen year old briton named ed kept saying "i am SO pissed, mates!" and then threw up, and a cool girl named, damn, i forget her name, told me how all the americans she meets say things like "you're from ireland? i LOVE beer!"
in italia, sono la cena delle zanzare. claudia suggested that upon my return to the united states, i pretend to have lost my once-remarkable english-speaking abilities. i'm game.
when i was leaving hawaii for new york for milan (i know, mi vida obnoxia), my seven-year old nephew said goodbye over the phone and told me he loved me, and my eyes welled up, i realize (now, thanks to matthew) that i need more children in my life.
i just dug up this picture: jersey shore circa 1998. i was not only count blobbula, but a dumb ass in those days.
from the silicon alley reporter:
EBay and its ilk have practically spawned a journalistic subgenre of stories about scary auctions, from the notorious kidney sale to the death row inmate's auction of his execution tickets. Now comes a site filled with the strangest flotsam and jetsam of the auction mania: DisturbingAuctions.com, dedicated to "truly tacky stuff that people really, honestly, believed that someone would (and in some cases did) buy." Choice knickknacks currently featured on the site include a coin purse made from a dead frog (sold for $5.50), a lizard-festooned coconut lamp (sold for $10.50), and a velvet painting of Jesus blessing an 18-wheeler (no bids).i think what the web needs is a fan site for elsa klensch. i'm checking now to see if there's one up yet...
in honolulu, hawaii for a two-week vacation. took nephews and nieces to see pokemon 2000, which consisted of two hours of pretty animation, about two dozen spoken English words, and an impenetrable plotline. followed that with the x-men movie, which was aws aws awesome. am i the only gay guy who had crushes on all the comic book characters he used to collect and read?
why do i find the webmd commercial (the one with the robotic voice that says "we do." and shows the scrolling chat room dialogue) so beautiful and compelling?