Oh look who met with the Sisters and have now publicly apologized and reinvited them back to Pride Night! Aren’t they so goddamn heroic? Sure, I’ll give them credit for coming to their senses and acknowledging that they made a mistake. I honestly didn’t think that would happen.
But let’s not forget what I said in the original post. Corporations’ morality is guided by capitalism, not altruism. Hardly courageous.
Maybe no one told the Dodgers that the pull-out method doesn’t always work. If you’re going to fuck someone with no protection, then you gotta accept the consequences. For their Pride Night, the Dodgers were going to honor the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, but a bunch of Catholics and right-wing Nazis wrote a bunch of letters and the Dodgers got scared. The Dodgers have decided to uninvite the Sisters. Of all the fucking people to listen to. Yeah, we’ll take our moral cues from a bunch of pedophiles and white folks who live in a delusional racist utopian fantasy. These are the same people who think black pepper is too much spice.
Fucking pussies. I guess that’s what happens when a fucking capitalist investment what-the-fuck-ever soulless vampire owns the team.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, after all these Pride celebrations have just turned into corporate grab-bags for our queer dollars. Bud Light and Bank of America sure as hell didn’t want anything to do with us in the 80s when we were being killed off by AIDS. Now that Nazis and spineless soulless vampire politicians are attacking us queers, these corporations are showing just how tenuous their connection to us actually is, just how easy they are willing to toss us aside to ensure their bottom lines are as fat and juicy as possible (the only thing black they like, by the way.)
I also shouldn’t be surprised that the Dodgers would do this in light that they waited until that fat fuck Tommy Lasorda finally died before honoring Glenn Burke last year, arguably the creator of the high five and the first openly gay MLB player in the late 70s. His Dodger teammates didn’t care that he was gay and Burke was considered the heart of those 1976 and 1977 World Series teams. Burke refused the Dodgers offer of a honeymoon if he married a woman and was traded to the A’s in 1978. He was out of baseball by 1979 and died of AIDS in 1995. But the Dodgers couldn’t honor Burke until the guy who refused to acknowledge that his own kid died of AIDS and was gay kicked the bucket.
This is just a reminder that corporations and sporting teams don’t care about anything except your money. Capitalism is their moral guide, and they will always do what will make them the most money. I guess what makes it infuriating is you hope that life isn’t this cynical, and once you are proved wrong it just fucks you up.
Since the first time I read Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment in high school, I was obsessed with the Russian language. I thought the book was so genius that I figured if I read it in its original Russian I would unlock even more of its genius. I guess it shows how I’ve always been wary of translators.
I’ve been slowly reading Nicolai Gogol’s Dead Souls, and it really has me questioning why I’ve been obsessed with the Russian language. He doesn’t really paint a pretty picture of the Russians here, and do I really want to invest my time with learning the language of these really unsavory folks?
I first heard of Dead Souls around that same time in high school but after I heard the song “Dead Souls” by Joy Division by way of Nine Inch Nails (it was the mid-90s after all.) How fucking hardcore is it, a novel with the title of Dead Souls unapologetically teasing the puritanical public? With the chorus of “They keep calling me,” playing in my head, I was expecting something haunting and filled with torment, like the best of Poe, Shelley and Dostoevsky. I most definitely did not expect an incomplete satire of still-feudal Russia around the mid-19th century with no haunting over-, under-, anytones at all. That did not interest my 18-year old gothy self, so I put the book down.
After several more aborted reads through the years, I finally hunkered down to finish it this time. Well, as much as one can finish a novel whose manuscript the author burned parts of right before his death. Hell, even that piqued my teenage interest knowing it back then, something that was so evil that the author had to expel it from this world, like a tortured Lovecraftian soul. But no monsters or anything like that here, just the evils that seem to be burdening the Russian soul during the turbulent period. And really, the characters that Gogol come up with are about as lovable as canker sores.
Let’s start off with our hero Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov. A disgraced customs officer, he now goes around trying to buy “dead souls” from landowners along the Russian countryside in a get-rich-quick scheme thanks to a loophole in the Russian bureaucracy. While Gogol bemoans the influence of western Europe into Russian culture, I guess the German bureaucracy wasn’t one of them. Chichikov does everything to get these people to sell him their dead serfs and to keep the scheme under wraps: charming Manilov; screaming and bullying the elderly widow Nastasya Korobochka; appeals to the greed of Sobakevich. The only person he fails to appeal to is Nozdryov, the town liar, cheat and drunkard. I guess like attracts like, right? Finally rumors start building up against Chichikov, the town turns against him and he is forced to flee, and at the end of the first book Gogol gives us a flashback to Chichikov’s rise and fall as a clerk and eventual customs officer.
In the second book, Chichikov is older and in a different part of Russia and still going around with the same scheme, starting over from scratch. Eventually he weasels a loan from a Kostanzoglo, a very respected and hardworking landowner, to buy a depressed property. Chichikov’s greed eventually gets him in trouble, he is jailed and released thanks to the help of his shrewd friend Murazov and again is forced to flee. The novel ends midsentence as the prince who jailed Chichikov was giving a speech speaking out against corruption.
Everyone is quite awful. The miserly Plyushkin when he realized Chichikov was going to give him money for his dead serfs, “And suddenly across that wooden face glided a warm ray.” (Part I, Chapter 6, 140.) And at a party that he is invited to in the first town, Chichikov noted that of millionaires “many people know full well that they will get nothing out of him and that they have no right to get anything, but they will invariably run ahead to meet him along the way, for instance, or laugh at his jokes, for instance, or doff their hats, for instance, or strive mightily to wangle an invitation to a dinner to which they’ve learned the millionaire has been invited.” (Part I, Chapter 8, 179.)
Gogol also notes the social hypocrisies in Russia. Chichikov, upon seeing that the serfs on Petukh’s property are well off, “But as soon as they start enlightening themselves there, in restaurants and theatres, everything will go to the Devil.” (Part II, Chapter 3, 336.) But for himself, after his lowest of lows in jail once he is able to access some of his possessions and the outlook of his release looks good “He felt a surge of hope, and once more he began dreaming of certain enticements: an evening at the theatre, a dancer whom he was running after. The country and its peaceful ways began to look paler, the town with its hum and bustle again brighter and clearer. Ah life!” (Part II, Concluding Chapter, 413) Mmmhmm.
By the end of Part I, one thing that I understood more was the amount of ambivalence in Russia on where they stood in the world. In the descriptions of the parties and people throughout the book, there is a palpable tension between Russians who want to be seen as more “cultured” and take on the airs of French and Prussian cultures and those that see Russia as a separate entity that should be able to carve their own sphere of influence. The last paragraph of Part I, “Art not thou too, O Rus, rushing onwards like a spirited troika that none can overtake?” Gogol conjures this image of Russia as a runaway carriage speeding away and finally asks, “Rus, whither art thou racing? Give an answer. She gives no answer… [A]ll that exists on earth flies by, and , looking askance, other peoples and nations step aside and make way for her.” (Part I, Chapter 11, 282-283.)
It makes me understand a little more of the psyche of the country here at the end of their feudal period, the end of their empire, the beginning of the USSR, the growing pains of their early capitalism and to now with Poo-tin conjuring a mythical Rus which I guess is like that spirited troika rushing onwards seemingly without any purpose. I guess the question is should be step aside and make way for her?
It should be noted that Gogol was born in the Ukraine, and in Part I Chichikov was telling people that he would be taking all the serfs he acquired back to the Kherson region along the Black Sea.
These are just some thoughts I noted while reading Dead Souls. There’s just too much to go over here. I’m not even talking about how it’s subtitled “A Poem,” and how Gogol had at some point wanted to structure it a bit like Dante’s Inferno (although scholars debate this, I can sorta see it.) It’s a strange book that I liked very much despite it not being a gothic horror. It was humorous, ridiculous at times, and it really left me wondering what a completed version of this book would be.
To get back to my initial question. Sure Gogol poked a lot of fun at Russians and really highlighted a lot of ambivalence that still exists now amongst the people. I mean I’m not sure as to how I feel about Russian culture. But I still do want to learn the language. Who wouldn’t want to read Мёртвые Души untranslated?
I did nothing elaborate this year. No weekend trip to Berlin. No big orgy bash. Had dinner at The Little Door on Third Street in Mid City with Madd Sunday night. Tonight Gina is coming to take me to 71 Above. So no biggie.
A big thing I noticed this year is that my mental age is nowhere near my physical age. Physically I do feel 44. I’m thicker around the middle. Thanks to bouts of sciatica over the years, I have dead nerves in my left foot (meaning I have no feeling in parts of it.) It takes a little bit for my muscles and bones to stretch out and get me in motion.
But mentally, I still feel like I’m in my 20s. I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. I still hate and don’t trust anyone. I don’t want to share my bed with anyone. I hate vacuuming/sweeping/mopping.
So I’m 44. And I take solace in the fact that it can only go downhill from here.
I don’t know how to process Bret Easton Ellis. I don’t know if I like him, think he’s a twat, find him being a performative act. I just don’t know. I tend to like the fact that his opinions piss people off, and I always find myself not really caring what it was that pissed those people off. But fuck, he comes off like a pompous ass which sets my hair on end.
(From a Goodreads review of this book: “Banal, polemical, self-indulgent, misogynistic, sensationalist, verbose, and frankly, just all over the place. Ellis is an edgelord who brought to mind those wannabe auteurs like Sam Levinson whose work is desperately trying way too hard to be transgressive and brilliant (emphasis by the reviewer.)” Bret must have really pissed this reviewer off.)
Nonetheless I always tend to like his novels. I love his drug-hazed, philistine characters who are bereft of any emotions. I like the how they can be like caricatures at times much like how I love Gregg Araki’s characters in this teenage films.
In The Shards, Bret goes faux-tobiographical to his senior year at Buckley, a rich hoity-toity private school in the hills. It’s 1981, the start of his senior year, and he just wants to get through senior year and get the fuck away. A few things keep him occupied: writing his first novel which would become Less Than Zero; staying mostly in the closet by dating the prettiest girl in school Debbie Schaffer while having side pieces Matt Kellner and Ryan Vaughn; having a crush on his best friend Susan Reynolds’s boyfriend Thom Wright; a serial killer nicknamed The Thrawler on the loose attacking random young women in the area; a new kid Robert Mallory from Chicago transferring in his senior year who has a mysterious past who Bret thinks is mixed up with the serial killer (if not the serial killer himself.) Bret documents the murders, the parties, the shenanigans that all lead to the climax on Saturday night, November 7, 1981.
Bret does a great job of setting the scene. He gets everything down to the clothes, the scent, the cars, the places, the soundtrack. While the aforementioned reviewer thought it was Bret flaunting their status and wealth, these are things that 17-year olds are obsessed with regardless of status. As someone who grew up 15 years later (and much poorer) on the other side of the hills, I did appreciate the details. As cool and blasé as he wanted to be, he fully acknowledged some of the naïveté he still held on to: when his girlfriend’s father Hollywood producer du jour Terry Schaffer came calling for script ideas, he was disappointed when it amounted to nothing more than a booty call. I also thought it was funny that Bret kept interspersing full names throughout the story as if he was also trying to keep acquainting himself with the characters.
This book could have used some editing. It is 588 pages, and there are parts when Bret takes us out of the narrative to tell us just how his friends don’t understand all of his misgivings about Robert Mallory. Even I did not see how he jumped to the conclusion that Robert was the Trawler, although I would have liked to have seen them hook up.
Yeah, the book is worth the read. Bret Easton Ellis can be a total cunt for all I care, but he surely can create one hell of a story.
We’ve gotten quite a bit of rain here in Southern California. From last Friday to last Tuesday in Downtown LA we’ve gotten almost six inches of rain. I know in our local mountains some places have received 10 feet of snow.
The bulk of the rain fell here on Friday and Saturday. I made sure that my fridge was full so I wouldn’t subject the food delivery folks to the treacherous road conditions — there was no way I wanted to be out there, so how in good conscious could I subject anyone else to that shit?
After a gloomy and cold couple of weeks, next weekend is supposed to get warm again. I can’t wait.
I got tickets to the Numero Twenty fest just so I could see Unwound again tonight. Also I realized I didn’t have The Future of What on vinyl, so I got a copy along with another tee. It was a shorter set tonight unfortunately, but here it is:
Also playing was Karate, Chisel, Tsunami and UI. I missed both UI and Tsunami. Also it was at the Palace Theater which is two blocks from my apartment. So you understand why I had to go see Unwound, right?
No? Well fuck you.
On April 1, 2002, we received this following announcement:
Yes, Unwound has decided to call it quits. Due to our inability to do any touring for an indefinite period we have decided to disband. We will continue to play music in different forms (other than unwound) in the future and also hope to release a collection of live tracks, demos and any unreleased material there is. Also hopefully a live/tour video-movie of some sort. Apologies to those who missed their chance to see us last year due to our cancellations. We can’t begin to thank all of those who helped us over the years, so we hope you know who you are! A round of applause from us to all the fans that came and went.
Thanks and good night!
unwound people
I used to make fun of Fatkid so much for loving Unwound. Mostly because I was (and still!) am an asshole and like poking at people. To be honest, I don’t think I ever really heard their music at all, but hey, anything to amuse myself.
But once I heard them, fuck, I was hooked. Absolute chaos and darkness from the guitars and throat of Justin Trosper that surrounded the steady beat of Sara Lund’s drumming and Vern Rumsey’s bass was sublime. They were less Grateful Dead than early 90s Sonic Youth, more complex than the simplicity of Nirvana and more cohesive than most of the other Olympia bands. All of us who are fans wonder why they were not bigger than they were even after their demise.
Along with Nine Inch Nails, Unwound is (are?) my favorite band/musical act of all time which is why their breakup affected me a lot back in 2002. With their last album Leaves Turn Inside You in 2001, they seemed to reach a zenith in their artistry and could have gone so much farther. But the inevitable communication breakdowns, substance issues and all that typical rock star bullshit even made its way to them.
I didn’t think I would ever get to see them live again especially after Vern died in 2020. But Justin and Sara have come back together bringing along Jared Warren of Karp and the Melvins to fill in on bass and Scott Seckington of one of Justin’s post-Unwound bands Nocturnal Habits on guitars and keyboards. There I was at the Wiltern on the second night of their sold-out shows here in LA. After coming out to what sounded like the National Weather Service radio report of Northern California, they launched into their normal open “All Soul’s Day.” Holy fuck.
Then came “Envelope”, “Hexenzsene” and “Look a Ghost.” Boom boom boom. They weren’t fucking around here. This was for all of us who stood by holding the torch after all of these years. After this section, Sara asked who of us saw them back at the Jabberjaw. Then, perhaps most surprisingly, when she asked who weren’t even born yet when they last played, there was quite a bit of cheering. “This next song is for you,” she said as they launched into “New Energy”, a quick burst screaming for passion, youth and burning shit to the ground. It was also nice to notice that there was a bit of moshing down in the pit which I haven’t seen in ages.
It was spellbinding being on this journey as they calmed things down with “Usual Dosage” to the snarky “Laugh Track” and dark “Corpse Pose” and “Scarlette.” It was hard not to get choked up during “Disappoint” especially when Justin screamed out in the chorus “I never want to dive / Inside this heart of mine,” and then a resigned mournful singing “I’ll disappear and then I won’t know it’s true / Disappointed in me, disappointed in you.”
But, no shit, tears did come out in their noisy culmination of their set “Swan.” A complete banger in 5/4 time signature, it hit me when Justin screamed “What I see is the end of the end of the end,” before the song complete breaks apart into a wall of feedback. As they left the stage, they played a tape of “Pardon My French” on a loop as they took a break and gave us all a change to catch our breaths.
Fuck. That was so fucking good.
I was talking with Shea from San Diego who was sitting next to me. Talking about the last time we had seen Unwound live (he in 2002, me in 2001) over 20 years ago, we chatted about how much things have changed: we used to be the ones smoking cigarettes in venues that we were now complaining about; that we now paid for actual seats because standing in the pit for hours on end is a no-go now. It was just reassuring to be next to someone who was just as into seeing Unwound as I was. (While talking, he even reminded me of the DC band Circus Lupus who I had completely forgotten about!!!!!!)
As we were gabbing, Unwound came back out and launched into “Dragnalus” which brought all of us old folks a lot of excitement. “THIS BOREDOM REALLY SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!” went into another Fake Train gem “Nervous Energy.” There is something about the chaos on that album that really causes the head to violently bang so-to-speak. They slowed it down with “Arboretum” and “Lady Elect” before ending the show with THE trilogy: “Valentine Card”, “Kantina” and “Were Are and Was or Is.” It was here that I really noticed Vern’s absence. While Jared held the fort down and you could hardly tell the difference, there was something mournful as Justin was screaming and pleading, “STAY! DON’T GO!!!!!!”
And just like that it was over. They spent a few minutes handing out the flowers to those in the pit, then the roadies came onstage and turned the amps off. “That was fucking amazing,” I noted to Shea. We both sat there for a few minutes to regain ourselves before going our separate ways.
Yes, I wished they had played “Equally Stupid”, “Unauthorized Autobiography”, “Devoid”, “Summer Freeze”, “Radio Gra”, “Broken E Strings”, “Seen Not Heard.” Sure, I wish this was a three-hour show. But this little tidbit was such a fucking gem of a show which made up for all the lost time.
Last month I bought a PS5. Yes, I was able to my hands on a PS5 through the Sony website just paying retail. Right before New Years I was on the PS5 webpage and just for kicks opted to put one in the shopping cart. To my shock it went in rather than the usual “Sorry, we are sold out,” or whatever bullshit they have been rejecting us with for the last few years. I was able to put in my payment details. Next thing you know, I purchased it, and five days later it came to my front door.
I’ve been wanting to play video games more for a bit, and here I am now. I got the original Mr. Driller and Puzzle Fighter, but the real game I had been wanting to play is Stray. It starts off with the trauma of the cat falling down the wall and landing in the city. Then there are those little monsters that jump up and try eating you. I’m at the rooftop scene now, and I’m totally enthralled. Now I’m not at the point where I will spend three, four hours playing a game at one time, although I do see how easy you can fall into that.
I also downloaded the updated version of Doom but really haven’t started getting into that. The one thing I do have a problem with is controlling the aim and all that.
Lately I’ve been having a recurring dream that I had started hormone treatments to become female a couple of months ago. The other day I received news that somehow, inexplicably, I became pregnant. Now, in this dream, I’m walking around work aimlessly trying to distract myself from the reality of it all. I know I need to go to an OB/GYN to get the baby checked up, to figure out how in the hell this was possible since I’d only been on hormone treatments for a couple of months, figure out who the baby daddy is and tell him. But I’m just trying to delay this as much as possible.
While I have all of this weighing me down, I run into some coworkers and I just had to tell them that I’m pregnant. I don’t pay attention to their reaction — I’m just venting.
Ok now here in the real world. I am not trans and have never had any gender dysphoria. I am very comfortable being a man. While I may not like the actual vessel I’m in, I like that my genitals are on the outside. Also, I do not want children.
So what does this mean?
Just a note: I KNOW that’s now how things work. I know taking hormones won’t magically give me female genitals, and I know it would take more than that to get pregnant. But tell that to my stupid subconscious. What a typical man. Ugh.
