I join in this week's salute to vidiotic musical ancient history, what with Cafe Muscato's Petula Clark anniversary and the usual shenanigans of The Redundant Variety Hour stooping to Olivia Newton Whatever, by presenting T. Rex tearing it up with Children of the Revolution.
You can squint all you want, but eventually you have to concede lead singer Marc Bolan, partially buried under a wig he seems to have boosted from Cher, is wearing a two piece yellow miniskirt, decorated with random string.
More disturbing than his fashion choices is the spectacle of Straight White People Trying to Dance. Girl, the fucking downbeat is practically delivered by cannon shot, how can you possibly miss it? And let us not overlook the guy in the fuscia t-shirt standing perfectly still, waving his hands aimlessly as if he were trying to contact the spirit world through an invisible ouija board.
Nevertheless, a great tune, rocketing up the charts.
Secret Agent Fred and I went out for drinks and, eventually, pizza with longtime mrpeenee commenter Salty Miss Jill the other night. She had blown in from the big city and I was delighted to meet her: she is both salty and sweet and I like meeting the people who bestir themselves to comment here. It makes their sassy insolence seem more heartfelt. Plus did I mention she was charming? We wound up in the bar for a couple of hours talking blogger talk. SMJ has allowed her blog to fall fallow and I was encouraging her to hit the keyboard once again. I think there are just never enough amusing bloggers out there. How else am I supposed to waste my time?
Also, she revealed that she had a waitressing past with teeny-tiny pornster Samuel Colt, which I think alone requires extensive blog coverage.
San Francisco won the World Series. Whoo. Yay. Considered me as thrilled for the home team as it is possible for a gay man completely uninterested in sports to be.
Celebrations of the win around town turned into the widely expected teeny tiny riots. Dozens arrested, people stabbed or shot, small-ish bonfires hither and yon (and by "yon" I mean the middle of Mission Street.)
Even the Castro, our gay epicenter, was not immune, but much more tastefully. Secret Agent Fred and I were down there about midnight (long story, let's just leave it at we were down there.) Toilet paper streamers crumpled onto the street everywhere. I've been saying for years how the Castro has been dwindling as Gaylandia, but last night, perhaps, just perhaps, gave me pause as we heard someone screaming "Christina!, Christina! Clean up this mess." And plenty of people apparently got the joke. Maybe there's life in the old girl yet.
The ever urbane Muscato from Cafe Muscato describes an afternoon swanning about Vienna and then asks what the rest of us lesser mortals did lately for amusement. I bought a suede coat and a pair of giant blue and white porcelain vases; got trapped in a clusterfuck of traffic because of this World Series thing here for an hour and a half and then leaned out of my car window and spat on a limo that was causing a bottleneck on the only escape route out of downtown San Francisco.
Even as I let loose, I wondered who on earth I had become. I may have launched originally from Texas, but I've been a Lady for years now. Nevertheless, the limo's passenger's look of horror was immensely gratifying.
I may have been watching a little too much American Horror Story lately.
I've spent the last few days hovering on the edge of being sick; sort of feverish and queasy, wondering when the ebola was going to strike. Turns out it was just a reaction to a flu shot I got last week, but that didn't stop Saki from occasionally checking in to see if I was dead enough to eat.
This was all shortly after Secret Agent Fred and I returned from New Orleans where Fred entertained the hotel staff by raiding the self service bar in the lobby and then settling in to take a nap on the couch there despite the staff's efforts to shoo him off to his room They seemed fairly amused by the whole thing in describing it to me the next day, which says a lot about both Fred's charm and their pleasure in watching me squirm as they dragged out each mortifying detail. All of which I repeated to Fred, except for the parts I exaggerated. And the ones I just made completely up.
I also was able to check in on the progress of the renovation of my house there which was terribly gratifying. I was especially please with the big back room. I took the back two rooms on each side of the double and combined all four into one ginormous room and then put in a wall of windows across the back to see the garden, which currently is a mud and mildew pit, but one day soon will be full of Camellias and elephant ears and crape myrtle and other old timey New Orleans garden stalwarts.
before
Currently, complete with riff raft.
Again, before. Who knew what horrors lay beneath those innocent looking dirty walls and cheap tile?
And yet another clip. I seem to be turning into a lesser Redundant Variety Hour. This one comes to us from the our dear Sister Mary Legs in the Air, who's running the reno in New Orleans for me. Sister got his name initially because of his fondness for all things religious, but specifically Catholic. Sort of a passion for the Passion. Natch, his contribution turns out to be a rocktastic nun. Irene Cara, Bride of Christ.
Bitch nails those power notes. Dancing in Oxfords. Religious ecstasy in the audience. Safety Gay monks stripping down to pastel clam diggers. Everything you want except for dumping a bucket of water over her. She's a maniac. Do you think this is a standard for Italian drag queens now?
Sister is much in the mrpeenee news this week because Secret Agent Fred and I leave Thursday morning for New Orleans to check in on what shenanigans the crew has gotten up to lately while putting my house there back together. With any luck I will return with photos of the lovely electrician, Marty. Or maybe his name is Marti. Could be.
Secret Agent Fred and I stumbled in to a little place we know for dinner tonight and while we were tucking in, a wheezy three piece combo in the room next door struck up. I was willing to ignore them until I realized they were covering (or attempting to do so) Pink Floyd's Money.
From there on, it was just down hill, of course. A Beatle's medley; something Fred claimed was from The Smiths (for which I took his word, since I hate all things Morrisey;) and finally the smooth jazz sound of Perfect Day.
I like Perfect Day very much, the mismatch between the song's cheery bubble of lalalalala and Lou Reed's kind of atonal drone. I have always assumed it was something of a sneer on his part against the very sunny type of music it parodies so spot on. And yet, it also seems to be his sincere appreciation of what a perfect day is: simple, unstructured but full, happy. With you.
So to then hear it ground out by the very kind of band the underlying mockery is aiming at was not just ironic, but thought provoking. Three hacks plodding through their set, stuck in a barful of people who wouldn't pay them any attention if their combined hair (which wasn't much) was on fire. Did the band get the joke? Is that why they were playing it? Or had some snarky hipster requested it and then gone off to snicker at his musical wit.
You know there's that old joke that not that many people bought the Velvet Underground's music, but they all went right out and started their own band. Maybe that's the drummer's story and he insisted on including it. Maybe it's one twelve songs the keyboardist knows. There are many possibilities.
Then when I was looking for a video to illustrate this post, I ran across this promo one from the BBC in 1997. Again, it largely seems to miss out on the sarcasm I've always heard in the song, so maybe I'm just imagining it, bitter old queen that I am. Still, that's my story and I'm sticking with it.
The cast is certainly star-studded. Of course, Bono makes an appearance. Is there ever one of these kind of things he misses out on? But also, David Bowie, in an earring that, were he not a Big Star or if he had had a friend on hand, surely he would have been talked out of.
Also, (look quick or you'll miss them) Suzanne Vega, Doctor John (!), Emmylou Harris, sounding swell, and Tom Jones, who is not identified. Did the BBC assume everyone would know who he is? Maybe they were right. Not to mention, Mrs. Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, pixie-ish as ever.
I hope you enjoy it. Try not to get stuck on Bowie's ear-bob.
