archive for May, 2003

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budweiser

yes, it's a tampon reference
london, are y’all ready to rock?

got so much work done yesterday dat eet ain’ eeven funnah! i’ve gotten my first glimpse of how i/we are gonna complete the next issue of the magazine. hurrah.

i cooked [!!!] dinner for stuart, consisting of crunchy sweet pepper salad, lemon pepper breaded chicken fillets, creamy italian new potatotes accompanied by a lovely 2001 chiléan merlot. go me. in return, he dragged me to see a gig at the barfly in camden. he promised grrl punk rock, and that’s what we got. caught the end of c64, a morose-but-loud thrashy band with a depressed lead singer and 14yo girl on drums: 2 stars. the next group to take the stage, the seconds looked like 3 straight-laced gap employees. petit chinese girl on bass, geeky jewish boy with 1984 glasses on drums, and big-haired white boy on guitar… they seemed like lovely people to have brunch with. until they launched into their first of 10, 2-minute long now-wave songs. the girl on bass brought all the funk of flea from the red hot chili peppers, and the singer was insane in his membrance, squealing and flailing and convulsing: 4 stars.

the main event was, of course, the grrl-rock group, the applicators. 5 girls, all gothed/punked/grrled/trashed out. i’m not sure if it was the sheer volume of 3 guitars rocking simultaneously or the two-person mosh pit that kept landing on me, but i didn’t enjoy them, in the least. their tunes u got it all, puke on you and i don’t bleed just didn’t do it for me. i admired their style, their look, and i could tell that they were good musicians… i just wasn’t getting into their bouncy fast screetch-rock: 2 stars.

that’s the kinda punk rock i came to camden for. too bad that both the seconds and the applicators are actually american groups. everyone likes the exotic import… brits seem to love their budweiser, their mcdonalds and their eric :twisted:

8 years, 12 months ago
18 Comments
tags:

supermarket in california

mitch's shirt from 10th grade
pull this thread as i walk a-way

things that cheer me up:

  1. pillaging the bounty of free CDs and porn that my magazine receives

  2. receiving an unexpected gift—in this case a fab shirt from flatmate mitch [see above]

  3. morning sex. better than a cup of tea to get you going on a rainy london morning [insert your favourite cream joke here]

  4. literary boy-on-boy action; in this case, allen ginsberg lusting after walt whitman:
A Supermarket in California
    What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for
I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a head-
Ache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
    In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went
Into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enu-
merations!
    What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families
shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in
the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! – and you, Garcia
Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

    I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber,
poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the
grocery boys.
    I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the
pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
    I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans
following you, and followed in my imagination by the store
detective.
    We strode down the open corridors together in our
solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen
delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

    Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close
in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the
supermarket and feel absurd.)
    Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees
add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we’ll both be
lonely.
    Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love
past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent
cottage?

    Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher,
What America did you have when Charon quit poling his
ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watch-
ing the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?
allen ginsberg [1963]
9 years ago
35 Comments
tags: , , ,

sebastião salgado: exodus

after visiting my favorite art gallery [.beyond] sunday morning, i decided to keep the cultural juices flowing by hopping over to the barbican with holly. holly i consider to be a good friend, although we only chat/see each other once every 6 months or so. we used to work together as overpaid webwhores, where we started the gay employees group [her in london, me in san francisco]… when i first arrived in london, she dragged me out and helped me to enjoy my first few weeks.

holly is taking her photography hobby quite seriously, and she convinced me quite easily to come see the sebastião salgado exhibition, entitled exodus. spanning 7 years and 39 countries, the brazilian photographer trekked around the globe to capture images of migrations of refugees, ghettos, slums, genocide—highlighting the human cost behind the wars, famines, urban sprawl and globalization taking over our planet. after seeing a few hundred images of bulldozers pushing bodies into mass graves, of children being caged up in refugee camps, seeing mourning mothers/wives waiting for their sons/husbands to come home… after a while, of course, you become desensitized.

he puts particular emphasis on children… the children, it seems, are always smiling. always at play, always dancing, clapping or just being silly. in each image, though, these “happy” children are covered in grime, dressed in rags, and have worn, tired, almost adult-like faces and hands.

my hope is that, as individuals, as groups, as societies, we can pause and reflect on the human condition at the turn of the millennium. in its rawest form, individualism remains a prescription for catastrophe. we have to create a new regimen of coexistence.

sebastião salgado

afterwards, we managed to catch up… strolling around islington taking photos, gossiping about her girls and my boys, enjoying some nando’s and some perspective. i must must must not let another year go by without seeing her!

9 years ago
253 Comments
tags: , ,

bruised


orange skies are gonna clear up, put on a happy face.

i feel a bit bruised. my ego is a bit bruised. my heart is a bit bruised from lackluster lovin’. my body’s a bit bruised from a madcap weekend. my outlook on life is bruised from career troubles.

cousin michael thankfully dragged me out saturday evening for a few spirits at edge, which significantly boosted my, erm, spirits. i forget sometimes how incredibly caring he is, underneath the wild antics and exhibitionist mindset. his boyf galam was there, and proceeded to annoy the hell out of me like a woodpecker pecking at my skull [i think i made it clear to him that that's how i felt]. boy needs some tranquilizers. ran into swedish jakob, who was weird to me—he tried to shake my hand rather than a hug. who does that in london?! i hug and double-kiss everyone. he explained he was going to .ghetto tonight, even though i insisted he join us at .heaven. no, no, he explained, can’t do that.

met up with andrew before hopping over to .heaven. young, innocent, 20yo mousey andrew has become more than a frequent clubbing companion… turns out he’s quite thoughtful and intellectual [not just from working at waterstone's]. got to .heaven rather early, and set up camp in the vip room. wah hey. watched the dirty old men [you know, gruesome overweight types, balding former MPs, washed-up reality teevee stars] and their rent boys [17yo fauxhawk-with-highlights, caked, unevenly-applied foundation on their faces, a sprinkling of glitter and self-importance] trickle in.

andrew met up with his hot date from last weekend, twinky danny, whilst we entertained ralph, goth millionaire danny, manny and his entourage, and the recently-arrived-to-london-for-good, swedish stalker tomas and his psycho american ex-boyf aaron. ever since my holiday tryst with tomas nearly two years ago in stockholm, i’ve had to deal with tomas [sort of] stalking me, and aaron [sort of] threatening me. i’m glad i didn’t have to throw-down in the middle of the vip room.

swedish jakob was [of course] at .heaven, and wouldn’t really chat with me, but coincidentally danced next to me on three separate occasions on three separate dancefloors. i fancy him, but will not invest a single ounce of additional effort to acquire his goods. after a few hours of pleasant dancing and dull conversation with annoying pseudocelebs, i decided to head home. got my jacket, and was heading out the door when andrew stopped me to explain that his hot date, twinky danny ditched him for another boy. the only solution, definitely, was for us to fun away to .beyond and get some afterhours therapy.

between myself, andrew, and danny’s friend rico, we had exactly £49.17: that’s £10 for the taxi, £12 discounted admission each, £1.50 cloakroom for me and andrew, with 17p to spare. .beyond was filled with insane married straight women, huge hairy bears with bellies bigger than my bedroom, creep dudes in lederhosen, lots of hot essex ladz, wide-eyed short brazillians and a total of zero of my exes. not even canadian mark was there, which was a first!

with much amusement, i saw suspenders boy for the bazillionth time. i used to want him so bad, but his spraypainted-red beard kinda is a bit over the top. it’s nice that he keeps stalking me, though. spent most of the evening morning flirting with the sexy, charming, incredibly easy-going rico… he looked like a fresh-off-the-boat ibiza native—you know, the type of bloke that actually looks good wearing sunglasses on the dancefloor. we danced, we got playful, we got naughty, we got frisky. emerging into the breezy, hazy, grey, cool vauxhall morning air, i had a smile on my face. i felt healthy [???], happy and relaxed. wah hey.

9 years ago
55 Comments
tags: , , ,

little boy at play


blow me

for some reason, the lyrics to sunrise, sunset from fiddler on the roof just popped into my mind…

where is the little girl i carried?
and where is the little boy at play?
i don’t remember growing older. when did they?

looking at my life and my personality over the past few days, i’ve sort of suddenly realized that i’m not the person i thought i was… that the perception i’ve had of my personality and how others view me is a few years out-of-date. i really am not the nice, sweet, innocent guy that everyone likes. i’m not. i am the conniving, maneuvering, egotistical creature that i see and shun time and time again.

this week has been absolute insanity… i can’t begin to describe the craziness with work. i spent a few hours in a giant warehouse near heathrow, surrounded by airplane tires tyres, components of nuclear reactors [!!!] and lots of grimy crates and forklifts, rifling through boxes. i’ve raced around london, by tube, by train, by bus, by car, being perpetually 45 minutes late to meetings with photographers, lunches with my boss, deliveries of parcels, pickups of magazine mailings… the list goes on. i’ve moved into and out of flats and offices. i’ve contemplated, and very nearly quit my dream job. so much stress, not enough hope for the future. financial instability.

work definitely took over my life this week, and as of right now i remain borderline optimistic for the future. borderline. my personality has warped so dramatically from happy-go-lucky and bubbly to bitter, jaded and condescending. a certain friend called me wednesday, asking hi, how are you? i told him, actually, i’m feeling very stressed and miserable, if you really want to know! he breezes past my statement, asking listen, can you sort out any k for this weekend, cuz james’ boyfriend wants to… yeah, thanks buddy, thanks for your support.

i have managed to see stuart quite a bit this week [once again, convenience], but even that hasn’t really cheered me up, and i’m beginning to sabotage find flaws with our… relationship. i’m so demanding. i’ve only known him for like two weeks, and he’s been 99% perfect. last night, we went out… i know i wasn’t supposed to hear it, but he introduced me to one of his friends as this is my boyfriend, eric.

so, yeah, last night i treated him to a nice dinner at zizzi in covent garden… normally one of my fave [date] restaurants. last night, though, the crowd was full of pseudo-theatre-patrons and hapless tourists, and the service was rushed and unrefined… we need this table by nine, so you’ll have to eat quickly and the hostess plopping down the menus on the table rather than waiting for us to sit and then hand them to us. stuart had a crap week as well, but didn’t seem the least bit interested in my complaints… throughout the evening i played a game, where i’d talk about myself for a bit and then just trail off and see if he’d noticed. he didn’t. it would be one thing if i was doing the usual date thing of talking about myself to impress my prey, but last night i was just looking for sympathy and guidance.

we very grudgingly trouped over to sahara nights and .popstarz, for the 179th consecutive friday. i’ve said it before and i said it again to stuart last night… i despise taking dates to gay bars and clubs. it’s not a chance to bond, it’s not a chance to be romantic, and for me, i can’t help myself from flirting, pulling and snogging. i just can’t. especially a place like .popstarz, where i have the pilled-out simon the biter groping me, vanilla ice boy gettin’ all justin timberlake-like in my business, and ghosts from christmas past exes whom i’d long forgotten circling around like vultures.

i took this with my phone's camera

everything i do these days seems to have some selfish, not-so-hidden agenda. i no longer am nice to people outright. i keep using people, for their connections, for their charms, for their sex, for their companionship. i have no sense of tact, of decency, or even of right and wrong, it would seem. flirting with models right in front of their photographer boyfriends. playing mindgames with friends. i gotta start keeping it real, yo.

9 years ago
22 Comments
tags:

premium peruvian blow


how do you doooo….?

mark morford has a brilliant take on recent allegations that president kennedy employed a 19yo intern for sexual favors:

President John F. Kennedy had an affair with a 19-year-old intern who traveled with him on official trips, according to a new biography. “She had no skills. She could answer the phone,” Robert Dallek, author of “An Unfinished Life,” told “Dateline NBC”. “Apparently, her only skill was to provide sexual release for JFK on those trips and maybe in the White House.” Dallek learned of the affair from a White House aide, Barbara Gamarekian, whose oral history was recently unsealed. President Bush, who obtains sexual release from dry humping a mangy taxidermied colt named Binkers while snorting premium Peruvian blow through the hollow case of an ExxonMobile ballpoint pen, was visibly appalled and shaken at the news, unless that was just the lithium and Demerol, as was Dick Cheney, whose idea of sexual release is, of course, a dozen gin/Viagra Martinis and cranking the defibrillator on 10 and having Lynney stuff used nylons into every orifice and then coating his body with liver-flavored kibble and letting a swarm of rabid Chihuahuas in heat run all over his mounds of milky white cottage cheese while Lynney jumps on a trampoline and does a sloppy heavily Paxiled strip-tease and belts out ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’ through a megaphone.

oh, yeah, we all agree president bush is a hottie, but i’d rather have dick cheney anyday.

9 years ago
25 Comments
tags: , , , , , ,

ice cream plug

you guys suck. you forgot to remind me about both the april [edible panties, and, umm... lamps] and may [lemonade!] editions of the plug. and you say you’re my friend? psyeah, right, some friend you are.

had an incredibly stressful stress-filled day yesterday, with my worklife exhausterating me. stress. money. drama. future. business. ugh. i finally got off the phone with my boss around midnight, distinctly feeling like i needed to decapitate a small furry creature or at least shuck some corn.

i had a very elaborate, detailed dream last night, where i went back to work at the whiting dairy queen, where i served ice cream delights for a few years in highschool. in my dream, i just kinda went back in, punched my timecard, and everyone welcomed me back. for hours, i just got back into the swing of making banana splits, serving customers and gossiping with my teenage coworkers. everyone was dismayed to see me return, as they all thought mr. most likely to succeed would never be coming back to small-town indiana with his head held low.

then, as the alarm went off and stuart and i snoozed to chicane rocking out my boudoir, i started to dream that i was sitting at the edge of the puerto de eivissa with duane, watching the sun come up. i nodded off again, moments later stuart nudging me, waking me from another beach dream—this time at josh’s annual birthday beachhouse party at laguna beach… the sun had just set, and we were starting to get naughty on the beach. both scenes were simple pleasures—friends, bliss, warmth. probably two of the few times that my life was 100% stress-free.

vivid dreams after a very stressful stress-filled day. i don’t deal well with prolonged stress or unexpected drama, particularly in my work environment, and any sane person would’ve retreated to a more stable, more lucrative job a long long time ago. [to the handful of peeps who keep pestering me to write/model/photograph for the magazine, take this as a hint to look somewhere else.] i’ve been pretending things will get better for months now, but i’m starting to think my dream job isn’t developing to be the dream i had hoped for.

9 years ago
48 Comments

convenience

it’s far too convenient that stuart is so easy to get along with. it’s far too convenient that he lives just around the corner from me. it’s far too convenient that he works just down the street from my office. it’s far too convenient that we enjoy the same places to party, and have similar mindsets about life, love and the pursuit of happiness.

thursday after the concert, he came by to hang out. friday morning we each went to work, only to meet for lunch at the hospital he works at. i got to see the impressive sci-fi-looking machines he works with, where he performs experiments on mutants treats cancer patients. i also got to see atif in action, much to everyone’s amusement. having lunch with stuart felt like i was on the set of casualty or holby city, and solidified that he’s an impressive young man with a solid job and a real life [unlike the plethora of student/living-at-home boys that i've been dating recently].
Continue reading ‘convenience’

9 years ago
48 Comments
tags:

move your feet


junior senior

this morning, my dear friend jason in san fran forwards me a link to the video for the junior senior hit, move your feet. this afternoon, my boss peter asks me to explain all of this junior senior mumbo-jumbo to him, and i reluctantly agree to review them for the american mag i write for. but, just now, an amazing thing happened:

i’m sitting on the toilet, flipping through a copy of boyz, you know, just passing the time. it’s an old issue, with junior senior on the cover. my phone rings, and i currently have the polyphonic ringtone for move your feet by junior senior as my ringtone. the song starts, i flip it open, only to hear the song perfectly continue—this time, the sounds are coming from stuart, who’s at the junior senior concert. the melodies lined up perfectly. on the floor, are junior senior smiling at me from the cover of boyz.

there must be a name for this phenomenon of media coincidentallity? déjà vunior? déjunior senioràvu?

9 years ago
2 Comments
tags:

bomb-itty

dragged along kevin last night to see the bomb-itty of errors, a hip-hop staging of shakespeare’s classic, comedy of errors.

if you’re unfamiliar with the story, it’s pretty simple. a mother gives birth to two sets of idential twins, two named aegeon and two named dromio. one aegeon and dromio grow up in syracuse, the other aegeon and dromio grow up in ephesus, and at the age of 18 they cross paths for the first time… but, neither they, their wives, their servants, their whores or their jewelers know that there are two sets of brothers. hilarity ensues.

i know what you’re thinking about a bastardized, lame, hip-hop wannabe remake of a dull classic like comedy of errors… i had the same thoughts going into the performance. i was blown away by the production… the lyrics were amazing, listenable, enjoyable, lyrical and just plain smooth… pretty much every scene was at least good enough to make it as a beastie boy b-side. the four actors play some 10 characters, and they each are amazing singers, dancers, break-dancers, free-stylers, rappers and actors.

check out the prologue to get a feel for the flow, and also get a sense of the quality of the performance. definitely a must-see! i think i might have to go see it again, as i was continually distracted by the cute-and-nerdy-white-boy-cum-superstar-selecta deejay, kevin shand [above, right]. hubba hubba. thanks to marcos and gayhiphop.com boys for the free tix.

9 years ago
18 Comments
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