Bustamante/Mateik at HOT! Festival
This is a flyer I did on the quick for Nao. I wanted to put it up because this will be an amazing show! I love Nao’s cutting edge filmformance, and Tara’s work always raises really smart questions about gender in an engaging and humorous way. Click the image to get more info or buy tickets.
The political ads this election have been wild:
A suitable memorial for George W. Bush’s Presidential legacy from the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco.
Also, my peoples give Jay Leno their gayest look.
I ran into filmmaker Sam Green outside an exhibit of George and Mike Kuchar’s work the other night at 2nd Floor Projects, a small but impressive gallery run out of artist Margaret Tedesco’s second floor apartment.
I know both Sam and Margaret from a while back; in the mid-nineties, I worked on some of the earliest designs for Sam’s film, The Weather Underground, and Margaret and I first met through one of the women I worked with at the Roxie Cinema.
I first got hired at the Roxie in 1989, eight months after I’d moved here, and just before the Loma Prieta earthquake. San Francisco was a much different place back then – the amazing spectacle of Jerome casually walking down 16th Street in custom high heels with webbed feet, the Crystal Pistol bar, Mr. Charm, ACT-UP and Queer Nation, Scarlett Harlot showing up at protests in a beautiful American flag dress, a critical mass of creatives and a young punk roommate who would make her own tofu…
I may post more about what I saw from the Roxie’s plexiglass ticket booth in the future, if there’s an interest. I could easily write a series of posts about the antics of film maker/performance artist/former San Franciscan Nao Bustamante, who has her film, Untitled #1 (from the series Earth People 2507) playing this week at Sundance (precedes Half Life Jan 22, 25, 26).
Conservative Christians seem to be playing a game of righteous bigot limbo lately, seeing how hateful they can be towards gay people. With less than 24 hours notice, a Dallas mega-church cancelled a funeral service for a Navy veteran after finding out that he was openly gay.
Maybe the deceased was just intimidated by stocky black men his entire life? Apparently it happens.
Shirley Bassey covers Pink’s Get This Party Started:
Google video has an revealing hour and a half long biography of William S. Burroughs online, including footage of Burroughs demonstrating “toad calling” outside his old family home.
Burroughs’ nonchalant, deadpan delivery, one of his most recognizable qualities, lends creedence to anything he says, factual or imagined. It is part of what makes him such a fascinating character, both as an author, and historical figure. His writing always contained an auto-biographical element, obscured and warped until it became part of his own literary mythology – a childhood remembrance by Bill Lee, Kit Carsons, or any other of his literary stand-ins.
Check out Reality Studio for a number of classic and rare Burroughs audio and video clips, including one of my favorites, his Thanksgiving Prayer. It’s tasty.
I posted this about an hour ago under my quasi-psuedonym on the NYT blog, The Caucus:
Falwell’s legacy, for me, was defined in the eighties when he began villifying AIDS sufferers, equating illness with immorality. His loud, braying voice informed much of the general public stigma about people with AIDS, and made it much easier for Reagan to do nothing, and say nothing.
Thousands of people died, neglected, judged and shunned by these so-called Christians, so forgive me if I find it just a little bit apt that Falwell himself died alone and uncared for.
After reading their poorly written post about Falwell’s death, I thought they needed much better examples of vitrol from the liberal blogosphere…so I gave.
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Now, I can understand how shocking some of the anti-Falwell venom may be for people who knew a very different man, or didn’t know him at all. To those of you, I think it’s important for you to understand that his sanctimonious condemnations, particularly of the gay community, had harsh and sometimes violent real world consequences. Gay bashings. Job discrimination. Prejudice from medical staffs.
True, there is no love in the gay community for Falwell, but a wide and deep sea of antipathy. He is the Anita Bryant of his generation, only much more of an outspoken bigot.
As an adivsor to Reagan and a major figure on the right, Falwell was also able to influence how we as a culture saw AIDS and people with HIV, and yet in his speeches, he consistently chose bigotry over compassion, hatred over understanding and personal glory over people’s lives. Asshole.
Fox News is already scandalized, no doubt, and like lemmings, the rest of the media are sure to have their own report on the “controversy” of gay people disliking Falwell, but for anyone with any knowledge of Falwell’s past actions (or the ability to Google), this shouldn’t be a surprise. This is the kind of “fake shocked” that Bill O’Reilly and his ilk excel at; exploit a story to generate ratings while doing little to inform.
But for those of you who are truly, genuinely shocked by how much anger there is toward Falwell, let me ask you this: Where were you when Falwell was blaming the gays for 9/11? Where were you when he was saying AIDS was God’s punishment?
And why are you now, only now, outraged about civility?
Perhaps collapsing under the weight of his own hypocrisy, professional hatemonger Jerry Falwell was found unconscious earlier today. Hours after his death was announced, there has still been no news on the size of the flaming pit that swallowed him up.
Think it’s inappropriate to celebrate Falwell’s demise? Read more about the life of this cartoon bigot in his own words. (Thanks, Americablog!)
I am an artist/designer living in Brooklyn, NY. I like technology, art, politics, writing, media creation & distribution, film, comics, music, photography and more.
Change is Gonna Come…Eventually
Friday, November 7th, 2008My peoples are righteously pissed about the passage of Prop. 8 in California. I went to the gay marriage march tonight and found a huge crowd of people who were not dejected by the election results, but rather, energized by their anger. You don’t take away the rights of twenty thousand people without a fight.
Already, John Aravosis of Americablog and DailyKos are calling for a boycott against the state of Utah, and major Mormon contributors to the Yes on Prop. 8 campaign, which includes the Mormon-owned Mariott Hotel chain.
Nearly 4 out of every 5 dollars raised for the Yes on Proposition 8 campaign came from Mormons – approximately 19 million dollars – according to the Huffington Post.
Facebook groups and sites such as mormonsstoleourrights.com are popping up both to call for a boycott, and to organize a letter writing campaign asking the IRS to review the Mormon Church’s tax exempt status in light of their overtly political stance on the issue (churches are supposed to be mostly apolitical in order to receive tax exempt status).
List of upcoming protests in CA here.
Posted in Chickens Coming Home to Roost, Commentary, Culture, Life, Politics, San Francisco, the gay | Comments Off