R U GOING 2 SAN FRANCISCO?

I've never been to San Francisco for Pride shindigs, but I've heard that it's one hell of a swingin' time. Friends tell me that one of the highlights is the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, presented by a queer film outfit called Frameline.

As a temporary staffer at Frameline, my good friend Meg has been busting her rump to set up the four day conference that accompanies the film festival. Entitled Persistent Vision 2006, the conference runs June 19-22 and features celluloid hotshots like actress/writer Guinevere Turner (Go Fish) and Hedwig himself, John Cameron Mitchell (who just showed his sexually explicit, eyebrow-raising new film Shortbus at Cannes). For more information on the festival and the conference, mosey on over to www.frameline.org.

Those of us who won't be tramping around Fisherman's Wharf anytime soon will have to improvise and stir up some queer film action in our own living rooms. May I suggest the excellent German lesbian/transvestite drama Unveiled? For your perusal, here's a review I wrote recently:

UNVEILED
(Wolfe Video, $24.95)

Male and female impersonators can be hilarious, as seen in the comedy classics Tootsie and Victor/Victoria. Movies like Yentl and Boys Don’t Cry prove that gender reversals have dramatic potential, too.
Unveiled, a sensitive and well-acted German film directed by Angelina Maccarone, is a worthy addition to second category. After an extremely limited theatrical release in the U.S., it deserves to find a much larger audience on video. Lesbians will undoubtedly love it for the strong female characters and the passionate girl-on-girl action. But the story is so gripping and intelligent that it should appeal to all discerning viewers, regardless of their sexuality.
Named by The Advocate as one of the top 10 films of 2005, Unveiled has the additional distinction of being banned in Iran. Watching the film in light of Iran’s hyperconservative views on women’s rights and homosexuality, it’s not hard to see why.
In a dynamic and convincingly androgynous performance, Jasmin Tabatabai portrays an Iranian woman named Fariba. Persecuted due to her love affair with another woman, she flees to Germany and gets clearance to stay by assuming the identity of a dead man.
She lives in a male boarding house and gets an illegal job at a sauerkraut factory, rousing some suspicion from her male coworkers when she refuses to shower after work. Soon she befriends Anne, a fellow factory worker played with grace and compassion by Anneke Kim Sarnau. Anne is suspicious of Fariba’s true identity, but in an erotic bedroom scene she proves that she’s ready, willing and able to prove her love when Fariba finally reveals that he’s a she.
A happy ending for Fariba and Anne is about as likely as a post-road trip vacation to Club Med for Thelma & Louise. The story is not without hope, though. Without giving away any plot specifics, Unveiled gives Fariba the last laugh. She proves that, with enough chutzpah, women from fundamentalist countries (or any country for that matter) can trump misogyny and homophobia.
The DVD’s notable extra feature is "Everyone, Everywhere," a short film about the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. Sir Ian “Gandalf” McKellen narrates.

Here's a smart, bitchy and hilarious new release that's a worthy addition to any summer reading list:

My Lucky Star by Joe Keenan
(Little, Brown and Company, $24.95)

Joe Keenan’s My Lucky Star is a brilliant sitcom disguised as a novel.
Free from the hassle of commercial interruptions, the Emmy-winning writer and producer for Frasier fills 357 pages with catty characters, convoluted plot twists and, best of all, impossibly witty banter. Hollywood phonies are an easy target, but seldom have they been skewered with such giddy delight.
My Lucky Star follows Blue Heaven and Putting on the Ritz in Keenan’s series of books about gay songwriter and playwright Philip Cavanaugh and his pals Gilbert and Claire. You don’t need to read the first two entries in the Cavanaugh chronicles to reap the pleasures of My Lucky Star since Keenan generously fills us in on the backstory.
Combining the plucky intrigue of a Nancy Drew mystery, the biting satire of Sunset Blvd. and raunchy gay sex, Keenan peels back Hollywood’s sunny façade to reveal the arrogance, vanity and idiocy that lurk just barely beneath the surface. At the outset of the story, Philip works as a lowly courier in Manhattan because his plays keep on flopping. Enter his friend and ex-boyfriend Gilbert, who cooks up a scheme to bring Philip and his writing partner, Claire, out to Hollywood to write a screenplay.
The good news is that Philip and Claire get to adapt a novel (albeit a terrible one) for a Oscar-winning Hollywood diva and her closeted superstar son, Stephen. But due to Gilbert’s inept wheeling and dealing, Philip must also go undercover to ghostwrite the memoirs of the diva’s despised sister.
Screwball scandal erupts when Stephen gets caught up in a lurid incident involving a happy ending masseur, a hustler dressed like an Oscar statuette, video cameras and copious amounts of anal sex.
When Stephen tries to dodge blame for his indiscretion, Gilbert zings back, “You’re the one who decided to throw an open house in his ass!” Very few pages go by without this sort of exquisitely bitchy dialogue.
The novel disappoints in the final 50 pages, where the ridiculous and tedious plot twists make Three’s Company look subtle. Otherwise you couldn’t ask for a funnier or more enjoyable read.

PIT STOP

Like all felines, my three cats exhibit a wide, amusing range of neurotic, playful, bossy and flat-out mind-boggling behavior.

Rupert Braeburn, the eldest at 8-years-old, wasn't weaned properly as a little tyke because his mother died (according to his rescuer, at least) in a freak decapitation accident in an abandoned building. To this day, Rupert marches his weighty frame onto Drew or me and kneads our chests in search of milk. Sorry mister, these wells run dry.

Confetta, a black & white featherweight who turns four in a few months, takes the cake in the cute-but-controlling Diva department. She fires off ceaseless rounds of gravelly meows until she gets what she wants, be it food or an open door.

That brings us to Chicklet, the real subject of today's blog entry. We adopted her and her sis, Confetta, in 2002. She's almost entirely black, but technically she's not a full-throttled bearer of bad luck because a few small spots of white fur speckle her coat.

What, I hope you're wondering, is her distinguishing behavioral trait? To put it bluntly, she loves armpits. When Drew and I climb into bed at night or wake up in the morning, it's not unusual for Chicklet to move in for the kill, burrowing her wet nose into our musky treasure troves. Of course we can only stand her little game for about two seconds because the tickling (not to mention the occasional nip) is too intense for words.

Recently Drew and I starting making up jokes and wordplays about Chicklet's favorite pastime. I'll leave you with a few examples that you're welcome to appropriate if your cat ever starts taking pit plunges:

Q: What's Chicklet's favorite flower.

A: A Pit-unia

Q: Who is Chicklet's favorite actor (this one is a no-brainer)?

A: Brad Pitt

Q: What's Chicklet's favorite short story?

A: The Pit and the Pendulum

Q: Who is Chicklet's favorite singer?

A: Pit-ula Clark

Enough already. If you think of additional winners, please send them my way!

FISH TITS

In his flawed but entertaining new memoir I Am Not Myself These Days, Josh Kilmer-Purcell depicts his life as an alcoholic drag queen and his tempestuous love affair with a high-priced prostitute and crack addict named Jack. Its blend of wry humor and pathos recalls Running With Scissors, Augusten Burroughs' s account of growing up amid crazy people (By the way, the film adaptation of Scissors comes out in September, featuring Annette Bening as Augusten's totally bonkers mommy).

The best bits in I Am Not Myself These Days capture Kilmer-Purcell's wild drag queen exploits. By day he works for an advertising agency, but at night he becomes Aqua, a 7-foot tall (with boots, of course) wonder woman who fills two clear plastic globes with water and goldfish, seals them, and uses them as prosthetic breasts. Now why didn't I think of that when I took to the stage for a drag competition in college?

Like anyone who lives precariously close to the edge, Kilmer-Purcell pays a heavy price for his excess. As a result of spending too much time in bars and clubs, he develops a penchant for vodka that all but embalms him. And he only catches about two hours of sleep a night, showing up every morning at work with bloodshot eyes and a stormy stomach.

But at least he finds love. Well, sort of. He meets and moves in with Jack, a sex worker who fetches up to $20,000 per weekend for playing Daddy to sadomasochists with names like Houdini. Jack provides deluxe apartment accomodations for our narrator, but he also goes on crack smoking jags that leave him with burnt lips and a tendency toward violent outbursts.

Kilmer-Purcell is a talented writer who frequently delivers great punchlines and poetic observations of relationships and city life. But even at a modest 305 pages, it often feels like he's stretching the material to its absolute limit. Perhaps he makes constant references to his vodka ingestion to prove that his addiction never let up, but that doesn't make it any less tiresome to read repetitive, unimaginitive descriptions of him swigging down gulps of firewater. And though he is an undeniably funny fellow, some of his humor is way too pat to be satisfying.

Perhaps I Am Not Myself These Days would have packed a bigger punch had it been a long magazine article, or a contribution to a book of personal essays about drag queens. As it stands, it's still an admirable book. And it's a quick read, so it' s easy to forgive its shortcomings because it won't eat up much of your time.

JERRI DUTY

A year and a half is a long time to wait for a movie, particularly when you're a ravenous fan of the TV show it's based on. Ever since I first watched DVDs of the Comedy Central show Strangers with Candy, I've been unapologetically addicted to the crude, savagely un-PC romps of Jerri Blank, a 46-year-old high school freshman played with a lunatic's verve by Amy Sedaris. The network cancelled the show in 2001, but fans had cause to rejoice when Sedaris and her creative compadres Paul Dinello and Stephen Colbert reunited to film a feature-length prequel to the series.

Studded with cameo appearances by Allison Janney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, the film debuted at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. Warner Independent Pictures swiftly scooped up the distribution rights, only to ditch the project nine months later due to a sketchy legal technicality.

Drew and I actually planned to drive to Sundance to see the world premiere, but all the shows sold out. Suddently it looked like we'd never get to see the damn thing at all - an agonizing injustice, we thought, even though rumor had it that the movie wasn't all that great to begin with.

Thanks to the folks at ThinkFilm, who acquired the rights a few months ago, the Strangers with Candy movie hits the big screen in late June (or July, depending on where you live). Was it worth the wait? Yesterday Drew and I arrived at an answer to that question at a midday press screening.

The movie pales in comparison to the funniest episodes from the series. And at 90 minutes, the wafer thin plot about Jerri's bumbling participation in a science fair gets a little old. To complete the list of drawbacks, Stephen Colbert squanders his subversive genius with a histrionic performance that continuously recycles a handful of jokes that aren't funny to begin with.

But I can honestly say that I had a great time despite all that. From her opening scenes in a women's prison to a gym exercise where she gets pummeled by a charging bull, Amy delivers all the ugliness, offensiveness and pants-wetting hilariousness we've come to expect from Jerri Blank.

I'm not a big Sarah Jessica Parker fan, but she brings insensitivity to impressive new heights as a grief counselor who offers useless advice to her students and still demands tips at the end of the gab session.

If you've never seen the show before, chances are you'll be left cold by all this. So be sure to check out some Flatpoint High hijinks on the small screen before you pay big bucks to partake in a filthy freshman year of which no locker room shower could ever cleanse you. Even if you use a loofah.

ROTH-O-RAMA

Today The New York Times Book Review published the results of a poll to determine the best work of American fiction of the last 25 years. Toni Morrison's Beloved took top honors, but Philip Roth appeared to be the voters' true sweetheart.

Roth had more books in the running than any other author. Apart from his 1997 masterpiece American Pastoral, a prestigious board of judges that included Don DeLillo and Marilynne Robinson gave numerous votes to Operation Shylock, Sabbath's Theater, The Plot Against America and other Roth titles.

I guess this doesn't come as a big surprise, seeing that the prolific, abrasive and ingenious writer has won just about every major literary prize imaginable, including the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

My favorite Roth novel is American Pastoral, the story of a successful businessman whose life unravels when his daughter commits an act of political terrorism in the late 1960s.

A few days ago I finished his new novel, Everyman. At a mere 182 pages, it's far shorter than most of his works. The prose is lean and exquisite. In keeping with his previous books, Roth expresses a compassionate but undeniably bleak outlook on human nature.

Everyman starts off with the funeral of the man character, a man in his 70s whose name we never learn. Then, in a series of flashbacks, Roth takes us back through the man's life, from his happy childhood to an adult life riddled with illness and marital catastrophes.

Here are a couple of interesting current film releases that you probably haven't heard of thanks to undeserved spotlight-hogging by Mission Impossible 3, Poseidon and The Da Vinci Code.

DOWN IN THE VALLEY (Grade: B-)

Set in that arid wasteland known as the San Fernando Valley, David Jacobson’s strange, ambitious and ultimately unsatisfying film is equal parts Romeo and Juliet, Taxi Driver and Unforgiven. A menacing Edward Norton plays a smooth talking cowboy who wins the heart of a wild teenage girl (Thirteen’s Evan Rachel Wood) and then goes on a gun shooting spree that Billy the Kid would find excessive. The supporting cast is terrific, particularly David Morse and Rory Culkin as the girl’s father and brother. But the romance, western and psychological thriller elements never come together convincingly.

MOUNTAIN PATROL (Grade: A-)

This visually stunning and unsettling film dramatizes real events that transpired in the 1990s. In a remote region of China, Tibetan patrolmen risk their lives to chase down the poachers responsible for driving the Tibetan antelope toward extinction. Apart from the greedy and trigger-happy poachers, they face dehydration, quicksand and snow storms. Given the recent success of nature films like Winged Migration and March of the Penguins, this National Geographic release stands a good chance of being an art house hit this summer.

THE DULL VINCI CODE

This morning I sat in a freezingly air conditioned movie theater and shivered as I watched a press screening of Ron Howard's eagerly anticipated The Da Vinci Code. Up until yesterday I had actually been looking forward to the movie. I read the book a few years ago and enjoyed the roller coaster story despite Dan Brown's craptacular writing skills.

But yesterday the news broke that the critics at Cannes hated it, and that laughter broke out at pivotal dramatic moments.

I didn't think it was THAT awful, but I was mighty glad when the 2 and 1/2 hour showing was over. Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou give totally boring performances, though Ian McKellen is a hoot as the Holy Grail scholar who may or may not have our hero's best interests at heart.

Given the popularity of the book and all the Catholic controversy swirling around the film, I don't blame you if you succumb to curiosity and check out The Da Vinci Code. You'll get a few thrills - particularly the perverse treat of watching a menacing, self-flagellating albino monk played by Paul Bettany. But be prepared for lots of convoluted dialogue, cheesy historical reenactments and a 30 minute stretch at the end that seems to last 4ever.

RABBIT ODYSSEY

Do yourself a favor and drop your "adult" reading for a little while. Kate DiCamillo - the children's book authoress extraordinaire who wrote Because of Winn-Dixie and the Newberry Medal-winning The Tale of Despereaux - is back with a terrific new book called The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. It clocks in at 200 pages, but it won't keep you more than an hour or two due to the big font, humongous spacing and a generous sprinkling of pretty illustrations by artist Bagram Ibatoulline.

The story is simple, gripping and heartwarming in a way that only occassionally borders on sappiness. Edward Tulane is a toy rabbit who is totally full of himself, unable to reciprocate the love heaped on him by his girl owner. He doesn't realize how lucky he is until the day two hooligan boys toss him over the side of a ship and he sinks to the bottom of the ocean. Over the years he winds up in the hands of a fisherman and his wife, a hobo, a dying girl and a dollmaker, and each owner brings him a step closer to understanding the importance of love.

I like to think of myself as a pretty cynical guy, but I have to admit that a rather sizeable lump inhabited my throat when I closed the book, turned off my lamp and drifted off to Dreamland.

HOUSE BEAUTIFUL

It's a perfect day outside, but Drew and I have resigned ourselves to a day of indoor painting. Yesterday we stripped our stairwell of photographs and other artifacts to prepare for the project. This morning we fueled up on caffeine (Drew had a double soy mocha and I ponied up for a triple iced Americano) and got down to business. I treated the wainscoting to a coat of milk chocolaty brown paint, a shade from that high priced whore known as Ralph Lauren. Meanwhile Drew's probably dislocating his shoulder in his efforts to give the ceiling a sparkling coat of white paint. Tomorrow we'll start painting the walls a warm creamish color that will (hopefully) provide a nice neutral backdrop for the bitchin' burgundy paint that we're going to slop all over the banister.

BOOGIE QUEEN WANNABE

In 2002 I interviewed Patty Griffin, one of my favorite singer-songwriters. Since then she has released the live album A Kiss in Time and the studio album Impossible Dream, so the following article is a bit outdated:

Just when you think you’ve got singer-songwriter Patty Griffin figured out, she throws you a curve ball.
On her 1996 debut album, Living With Ghosts, she delivered ten haunting solo acoustic songs that showcased her gritty vocals and versatile guitar work.
Rather than continue in the folk music vein that served her so well, Griffin surprised fans and critics alike with her follow-up album, Flaming Red. She stuck with her trademark themes of love and loss, but traded in her stripped down acoustic sound for droning basses, electric guitars and pounding drums.
Griffin is currently on tour in support of her new album 1,000 Kisses. A return to her acoustic roots, the album contains seven original songs and three cover songs, including Bruce Springsteen’s “Stolen Car” and the Latin American standard “Mil Besos.”
She recently spoke about her music from her home in Austin, Texas.
1,000 Kisses has a spare sound, she says, largely out of financial necessity. “It’s stripped down because I made it on my own. I didn’t borrow money from a record company. Also, I wanted to focus on singing, not complex arrangements.”
Griffin occasionally cuts loose with a feel-good song, like the catchy “One Big Love” on Flaming Red. But much of her material touches on sobering themes that can leave the listener with a lump in his throat. The song “Tony,” for instance, is about a gay high school student who commits suicide, while the melancholy “Making Pies” puts us in the shoes of an old woman who reflects on the losses in her life.
She says, “Sometimes I wish I was a boogie queen. But at every time in every culture there are mournful singers. It seems to be what my voice is about. I don’t know why it turned out this way. I just have access to heavier stuff.”
Her outlook, she believes, partially comes from growing up in a small mill town in western Maine. “There were only three months of summer. The rest of the year is dark and cold. This is part of what I am now.”
Six years into her recording career, Griffin says that she’s gleaned some survival tips from her friends and mentors, Emmylou Harris and Lucinda Williams. “I’ve learned a lot from both, the way they handle themselves. Ive spent more time with Emmy. She has great compassion, and I catch myself referring to what she would do.”
Williams, on the other hand, “is the bad-ass of all time. She does her thing and doesn’t let anyone stand in her way. This is hard for me to do.”

NEW ON DVD TODAY:

THE NEW WORLD (Grade: B-)

Like other Terrence Malick films, this historical drama features gorgeous cinematography and poetic voice-over narration. But unlike his 1970s masterpieces, Badlands and Days of Heaven, his latest effort has a preachy tone that’s hard to stomach, and much of the dialogue is flat-out corny. In keeping with his recent clump of crappy performances, Colin Farrell lacks charisma as John Smith, the Brit who woos Pocahontas amidst warfare between English settlers and Native Americans in 1607 Virginia. For all its beauty and epic grandeur, the picture never fully engages. And to the dismay of Disney lovers everywhere, Pocahontas doesn’t belt out “Colors of the Wind” in this version of the story.

MUNICH (Grade: B-)

Based on true events, Steven Spielberg’s ambitious film follows a group of men who track down and kill the Palestinian terrorists who masterminded the murders of eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. Flashes of cinematic genius punctuate the film, most notably the bombing and shooting scenes that are disturbingly artful in the vein of The Godfather. But the characters are not particularly engaging, and the emotionally manipulative climax all but cancels out the reflective mood that anchors the rest of the movie. For a more convincing lesson on this subject, rent the Academy Award-winning documentary One Day in September.

TRANSAMERICA (Grade: A-)

No offense Reese, but Felicity Huffman deserved to win the Best Actress Oscar for her poignant portrayal of a pre-operative male-to-female transsexual named Bree. In a funny and subversive twist on the road movie genre, she discovers she has a son (who happens to be a gay hustler) and drives him cross-country without telling him the truth about their relationship or her gender identity. Huffman is the main attraction, but writer/director Duncan Tucker draws terrific performances from the entire cast, especially Fionnula Flanagan as Bree’s flamboyant and stifling mother.

*Don't get too excited about renting Transamerica right away, because I just found out that doesn't come out on video until May 23.

WESTERN WAREHOUSE

I've never wanted to be in a rodeo, and I've never been a big John Wayne fan. But over the years I've discovered that no fashion statement suits me better than a dynamite Western shirt. The gaudy embroidery and the heavenly pearl buttons make me feel spunky, and I feel like I've virtually achieved celebrity status on the occassions when envious strangers offer to buy my shirts right off my back.

Over the past week I saw two films that prominently featured Western wear, and they inspired me to take a moment to celebrate my own cherished cowboy duds. First I watched the horribly dated (but totally entertaining) Urban Cowboy, which afforded me the joyous opportunity to see John Travolta getting the living shit fucked out of him by a mechanical bull. And yesterday Drew and I went out to see Don't Come Knocking, a new film by Wim Wenders. Sam Shepard models some to-die-for Western shirts in his role as a has-been actor who meets up with children he never knew he had.

SMOKING BABY

Aside from some great performances by Aaron Eckhart, Mario Bello and Robert Duvall, I wasn't all that jazzed by Thank You For Smoking, a satire that pulls its punches and ends up tasting more like an ultralight cigarette than an unfiltered one. But I am nuts about the promotional toy I got at a screening about a month ago. It's a little plastic baby doll that comes with tiny cigarettes. Stick 'em in the baby's mouth, light 'em and voila - you've given underage smoking a whole new meaning. Insensitive? Yes. Stupid? Of course. An invaluable tchotchke? For sure.

Here are some intriguing thoughts on courage from March, an excellent Civil War-era novel by Geraldine Brooks (it just won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, by the way). Mr. March - the patriarch of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women clan - narrates the story. He heads to the South to serve the cause of abolitionism while his wife and daughters hold down the fort in Concord, Massachusetts:

Who is the brave man - he who feels no fear?

If so, then bravery is but a polite term for a mind

devoid of rationality and imagination. The brave

man, the real hero, quakes with terror, sweats,

feels his very bowels betray him, and in spite of

this moves forward to do the act he dreads.

I'm up to my arse in non-blog writing obligations, so I thought I'd lighten my scribbling mode by posting a little photo spread of our beauteous house and garden. The cats are doing their best to keep the soil fertilized, which may account for this year's blooming bonanza.