Freudian Fisticuffs

I nearly got into fisticuffs with a small, nerdy, Asian American gal at the Hotel Erwin last week. I say fisticuffs, because that is a ridiculous word and it is ridiculous that a long bar line would result in such shenanigans. But that is what happened.

I was at the High Rootop Lounge at the hotel for my friend’s final of three birthday celebrations. And no, Bruce is not one of these needlessly extravagant people. He just has a lot of friends all over LA and, very nicely, made himself available in three different locations throughout the week.

I don’t know what was up my ass, but I was angry from the moment I parked my car near Windward Circle. I was angry when the main elevator didn’t work and I had to take the service elevator. I was angry, when there were no signs getting off the elevator directing me to the Lounge. I was angry all the way to the rooftop, where I soon discovered there was about a 20 minute wait to get a drink at the bar.

Along with a nice professor couple, I’d been waiting in line forever for a fucking cocktail, when this young woman, of whom I have already mentioned, had a lot of questions about the drinks listed on the menu. Then, she decided she wanted to sample a couple before ordering. So, I tossed off some sarcastic remark. It was meant to entertain the academic friends of my birthday buddy, but it was a bit loud.

In her messed up pony tail, striped rugby shirt, sneakers and large round glasses, the young woman turned around and shot me a nasty look. I gave her a nastier one back. She returned to making her order. After finally getting her cocktail, she quickly skirted around me and hissed, “Classy” under her breath as she went past. I turned and, with my arms spread in an ‘oh you want a piece of me’ stance, confronted her: “That’s real brave, saying that to my back. Oh, real brave.”

For a second, I didn’t think she was going to back down. I thought she was going to pass her drink to a young male companion and come at me. But, there was some fear in her eyes at what the crazy, skinny, old, red-headed, white lady might do, so she backed off. Wise choice. Very wise choice. You don’t want to get into fisticuffs with a chick who can drop a 110 dog on his head in three seconds and whose Old Man taught her how to throw a proper punch.

When I told my story to Bruce last night at the Roozt Launch Party (appropriately flabbergasted and penitent over my behavior) he responded, “Oh honey, we need to get you laid.”

Exactly…
___

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee. 

The Brutality of Nothing: Modern Love ‘Game of Thrones’ Style

I never really had an inclination to be a feminist until I lived awhile in LA. Before I get going, let me say to all my Chicago Theatre Boys (not the bullshit lawyers who bought their way into theatre companies to play at acting), but to the real Windy City Male Theatre Artists – you guys have your problems, but archaic, over sexualized views of women is not one of them – at least not as a general rule.

I did not know how good I had it back in Chicago. I took for granted being taken seriously as an artist just on the merits of my work. Or, in regards to the ridiculous standard of mediocrity that was often in play within a pretentious theatre scene, where nobody made any money – God love you, you Chicago Theatre Folks applied it equally, across the board, waylaying the careers of great male and female performers alike!

Here in Los Angeles, I have been sexually harassed on at least half the projects I have worked. I have had a director step into a scene for my fellow actor and use it as an opportunity to grab my ass and to kiss me. I have had a producer hire me to direct a show, then make remarks, while we are on a conference call to another producer, that I was there “sitting on his lap.” Male actors often thought it was ok to greet me, their director, with a wet kiss on the lips. I’ve taken a dinner meeting with a creative executive to discuss a spec script that I had written, only to discover that I was on a date and would be expected to put out by the end of the evening. That was especially true, if I ever wanted that script to go anywhere. Ah, Los Angeles…

So, on Monday, I fasted from sunrise to sunset. (No, not to be thin and therefore more sexually desirable to men). It was the last day of winter and I wanted to clear everything out, so I’d have some nice fresh soil to plant new seeds for Spring. By the morning of the Vernal Equinox, I felt almost like a different person. Five days ago, I was the kind of woman who would lie in bed all day and into the wee hours of the morning, watching the entire first season of Game of Thrones. Today, I am the kind of woman who will probably not even watch one episode of the second season, though it is one hell of a Fantasy Medieval Soap Opera.

In reflection, the well-acted though over the top series, was better therapy than I might have given it credit. There is something about the borderline misogynistic view of women that seems to pervade LA culture that I saw reflected in Game of Thrones, though it is set some hundreds of years ago in a time where women were considered personal property.

In the story, one of the many plot lines, follows Daenerys Targaryen. She is betrothed to Khal Drogo by her brother, Viserys. Drogo is the warlord of the nomadic Dothraki, undefeated and whom I begrudgingly admit is pretty freaking sexy, in a barbaric warlord kind of way.

On their wedding night, we see an awful, yet kind of hot, sex scene between the warlord and his princess bride. In reality, being taken roughly from behind the first time you have sex by a seven foot tall, ripped warrior who is hung like a bear, is not going to be pleasant. It is going to be painful, degrading and probably bloody. They were wise to cut away the second before penetration. It is like never seeing the actual deaths in The Matador. The brutal images would prevent the audience from later sympathizing with the character.

And, as the series progresses, we do grow to have some affection for the barbaric Drogo, when he falls so deeply in love with his new Queen. Daenerys recovers from the early sex, and literally, figures out how to get on top. Thanks to some advice from a Pleasure House Gal turned Hand Maiden, the soon to be true Khaleesi, gives old Drogo something in their tent that he had no idea ever existed. She ends up with a lot of power in the relationship and, to her credit, she also genuinely loves her Khal.

It is a love story that could not exist in modern times, well, not in this part of the world. Ok, so she wasn’t technically raped as it was a marriage and she was consenting, but she was clearly treated as property and as having very few rights or options in a world of men. WARNING: BIG SPOILER ALERT: That is why I am hoping my little Khaleesi, (who literally rose from her husband’s funeral pyre in the season finale, with three baby dragons clinging to her naked, yet un-charred, body), will win the game of thrones. END SPOILER.

What I guess all this really brought up for me, was that I have made the mistake my entire life of NOT manipulating men with sex (other than the time I got pulled over for committing three moving violations in four seconds, and I played the lost damsel to the big strong officer of the law). I find it to be rather the social norm here in LA to jump in bed first and figure out if we like each other later. The idea is that, as a woman, you get a man into bed, knock his socks off with how amazing you are. Then, when he wants to keep screwing you, you use that to force him to get to know you. You get him really into you and then you deny him sex, until he gives you what you want.

I’ve never been able to do that, although I think guys have expected it. There are a few reasons that I fall short. The first being that, when I am into a guy and we start getting busy, I usually love sex so much that it is hard for me to deny myself. Since I have no will power, I can’t use it against the guy.

Secondly, I don’t want to believe that my only real power as a woman is sex or that sex is about power at all. As I am getting older and losing my attractiveness, one does begin to see signs that one finds disheartening, though. In addition, I’ve always tried to give a man some credit for having a certain degree of control over his own genitals, so that if a situation were truly bad for him, he would not put his prick into it. In this regard, I have generally given men way too much credit. Well, the men with whom I have been involving or trying to involve myself as of late, anyway…

It always amazes me when I go to the supermarket and I glance at the covers of magazines like Cosmo. I read all these headlines about how to drive a man crazy in bed, in the middle of these beauty articles and various advice on how to hide who you are long enough to trap a man. There are all these do’s and dont’s that involve pleasing a man’s ego and giving him a false sense of how you will be in a long term relationship, so as to secure a commitment. I am sure in Men’s Health or GQ, there are articles that basically are teaching men the same kind of manipulations, though probably with a different outcome in mind.

I am pretty much a “what you see is what you get” kind of gal. Now, granted I have good days and bad days, so what you’re seeing and getting may be opposite things on different days, but it’s usually honest. I’ve tried to be truthful and open. On a hopeful note, men are drawn to that. It’s just that we are so conditioned to be something for someone else, in order to get what we want, men never really know what to do with me. Add to that, the complication of great sex and you’ll get a man telling you a lot of lies, if you don’t have one doing that already. That is how I learned NOT to sleep with men who are filled with fear, no matter how much pity they might illicit.

I have found that a lot of LA men expect, if you show them any interest or are remotely friendly, that you are pretty much ready to get down. It is later, as Daenerys does in Game of Thrones, that you get your lover to acknowledge your humanity. For me, even if the sex is hot, there is still a nasty psychology kick back, if it is anonymous – if I could be any open pair of legs in the situation and it wouldn’t matter.

It leaves me in a tough spot, because I feel a man needs me to be nothing for him in order to feel secure. Then, if I am lucky, he will decide that I have worth – only after, of course, I have proven myself satisfactorily as a sexual partner. In the mid 1970s, there was a really great episode of All in the Family utilizing a storyline with the Stivics to intelligently deal with this issue.

Like Gloria (who often proved brighter than her educated husband), I have no tolerance for the brutality of nothing. In life, you don’t get to cut away before the shitty stuff happens. Even if the sex is not physically rough, being nobody for me is too painful, especially when I am naked and there is someone inside me. You end up absorbing a man’s pain, frustration and fears with no way to release it, because there is no real relationship within which to put a context on anything. When a woman is open and spiritually connected, screwing someone who is filled with fear turns the womb into an anonymous dump for masculine emotional sludge. Trust me, this causes physiological health problems.

It doesn’t take you long in this life to realize that men and women do terrible things to each other. Hollywood has been a huge contributor to the kind of socialization that has led to our modern version of accepted romantic cruelty. Anymore, so many plot lines of movies and sitcoms rely on men and women wildly deceiving each other, or, people equating sex as the only validation for love. Women get message after message from the entertainment industry and the media that looking good and being sexually desirable should be their number one concern. To be fair to men, in these modern times, they are starting to hear that same tune – LOUDLY!

Even though I reside in the heart of the beast, so to speak, if I can keep outside of it, laughing at it all, maybe I’ll hear someone else on the outside laughing at the same things. Maybe it will be a man. Maybe he will be straight. And maybe, he will see me as a human being…Regardless, I will keep laughing. What else are you going to do? Other than figure out how to raise three baby dragons…
___

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee. 

Weeding the Garden of Dark and Light

Last week, I took my first morning visit on Ocean Front Walk, since the LAPD has begun enforcing the new curfew, which bans folks off Beach and Boardwalk from midnight to 5am…The giant fluffball on my left, we strolled through a different world…Sans camps of transients between shops and shore, the Pacific seemed more present. And, like everything that is Venice, I found myself with dichotomized feelings.

On the one hand, how sad, all those people – just gone. Where did they go? What happened to the nebulous communities? Could our citizen wanderers still gather elsewhere? Or, were they all on their own? What about their animals?

A slight young man in a black wool coat approached, and asked if he could pet the dog. Of course, I allowed it. He murmured about being there to buy something, but I didn’t quite understand him. I assumed he was looking for drugs or other black market goods, available on the West Edge of Venice Beach. A bit bewildered, the young man – thin, raven-haired and kind of handsome – mumbled, “I couldn’t find anyone.”

“Oh honey,” realizing he must have been absent, as had I, “They enforce the curfew now. They run people off at night.”

“I been in jail. I didn’t know where everyone was.”

“From midnight to 5am, they have to find somewhere else to go.”

That was a little tough. A homeless guy finishes his jail time. He has been out of touch. He probably hadn’t had any visitors. He goes to his community – which for him, was this broken beach umbrella and blanket village – where he expects to find at least a few of the people he called friends – especially at six in the morning, when everyone should be planted in their spot, fast asleep…

Wishing the soft spoken, ex-con well, I moved from Sunset to Windward, basking in a widespread tranquility, which I had never previously experienced at that location. Granted, I was walking this dog much earlier than usual, but I’d been in the area at sunrise before. There was ALWAYS something going on – a strange, perpetual liveliness, not terribly alive.

Post curfew regulations, the peace rolling in from the ocean was astonishing…the solemn quiet, the waves whispering…I never thought the Boardwalk could feel that way, even so very early in the day.

Those poor homeless people, when they are sleeping, many of them still have a lot of troubled energy. That energy lay between the property tax and rent paying residents and the Lullaby of Mother Earth every single night. With the frenetic daytime activity that is inevitable, because the Ocean Front Walk economy caters to tourism, it would be nice to have a more pure serenity in those wee hours.

One could argue, I suppose, if many of the homeless are, in fact, troubled, they need that serenity washing through them more than anyone – even if it can’t bring their minds (often weak from hunger and too many chemicals) all the way to calm.

I think that it is not my battle or my choice. I do not know how to feel. People should be warm and safe and peaceful, as they sleep at night.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee.

7A: The Passing of Davy Jones

The death of Monkees’ singer, Davy Jones, keeps crossing my mind, bringing up a lot of old memories and nostalgia, as these kinds of passings often do.

Davy was my favorite, like he was with so many. I remember his charm and comic timing on the show. Stage trained, he sang with warmth, sincerity and great fun. Though he did whack a mean tambourine, his true instrument was embodying cute with grace. He was one of the Monkees’ two primary lead vocalists, but all the guys were featured. Mickey Dolenz sang most of the group’s biggest hits. As far as having a front man, the Monkees, as much as any band that has ever been, was a true ensemble.

Dismissed as bubble gum by most music critics, the Monkees were defended by one of the Great Daddies of the Counter Culture, Timothy Leary. He saw them as bringing the hippie message to children and tweens (word, of course, not yet coined). They were probably my gateway to the Beatles, though I was already listening to Janis Joplin and old Motown by the time I was in 6th grade.

Despite being a fabricated band (or because of it), the Monkees recorded tunes by some of the best song writers of the day, including Neil Diamond. Late in the 60s, Mickey, Peter, Davy and Mike worked with a young Jack Nicholson on their one movie, Head. Composed in a hotel room with a giant bag of weed, it was what you’d expect from the circumstances.

For Mickey Dolenz, and especially Davy Jones, they were actors cast as guys in a pop band. It was a bit absurd, in a way, that they would be expected to play their own instruments and go out on tour. An actor, hired to portray a doctor, doesn’t go to an actual hospital, when off set, and operate on people. But so crazy were girls for them, the Monkees had to deliver. Mickey Dolenz learned the drums in a matter of months, a task made more difficult for a right handed guy being taught on a left handed drum set.

As far as the band’s first two albums, they were not allowed to play on the records. It was all studio musicians. This was particularly hard on Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork. Both good guitarists, Peter Tork had a degree in music and was proficient on numerous instruments. There were constant battles with the studio for increased creative control. After their second studio album, bolstered by wild popularity, the Monkees pushed out their commercially successful producer, the “man with the golden ear” himself, Don Kirschner. He took his marbles (in the form of the soon to be Archie’s smash, Sugar Sugar) and went home. At that point, the Monkees were in charge of their music. Not bad for the pre-fab four, even if they did sacrifice continued mainstream popularity.

Incredibly beloved by their fans back in day, the Monkees enjoyed a couple of revivals in the decades that followed. In the mid 80s, the series picked up a new generation of fans on MTV and Nickelodeon. The only thing that kept their Christmas Video (holiday medley recorded with the VJs) from reaching number one on the MTV Daily Top Ten was Bon Jovi’s video for Living on a Prayer. The hair band of all hair bands locked the Monkees out of the top spot the entire holiday season. I remember you could call in and vote for your favorite. Several times, I voted for the Monkees (all in their 40s at that time). Never once in my life have I ever voted for anything else via telephone or text, and that includes American Idol.

I saw the Monkees twice in concert. One show was in northern Indiana, a city called Merryville I think, where we stayed in the same hotel. Weird Al opened for them. Though never a huge Weird Al fan, he was a more appropriate pairing for their semi-vaudeville style than when Jimi Hendrix opened briefly for them, during one of their first tours in the 60s. The boys loved having the guitar god around, but Hendrix quickly grew too frustrated with the thousands of girls, who screamed non-stop for the Monkees during his entire set. He left the tour early with a one fingered salute to the teeny boppers on his way out.

In the mid 80s, I met Mickey Dolenz at The World of Wheels in Indianapolis where he autographed a picture. When I was in junior high, I had that photo hanging on my wall, along with reproductions of Monkee’s posters from back in the day. I had all of their albums on cassette, which I had ordered from Rhino Records or bought at Honey Creek Mall in Terre Haute. So familiar I was with their catalogue, I had phonetically learned to sing The Monkees Theme in Italian.

By the end of my sophomore year of high school, I was over the Monkees. With the release of I Want Your Sex, fantasies that George Michael would take me to prom and ravish me after, replaced holding hands and Eskimo kisses with Davy Jones. Sadly, George wouldn’t be my last or only gay crush, but he still indicated a certain kind of maturity on my part. So, tapes were thrown in boxes, posters rolled up and stashed or tossed away, and that was it for me and the Monkees and my time travel fantasies to be Davy Jones’ true love.

My favorite Monkees song of all time is and always will be Daydream Believer. Maybe it is because my mother used to rouse me for school when I was little, by calling, “Wake up Sleepy Jean!” Maybe it is the light and that little smile in Davy Jones’ voice. Maybe it is because I can see him, so short, so cute and so sweet…My first celebrity love.

Oh, I could hide ‘neath the wings of the bluebird, as she sings. The six o’clock alarm would never ring…Cheer up sleepy Jean, oh what can it mean, to a Daydream Believer and a Homecoming Queen?…You once thought of me, as a white knight on his steed. Now you know how happy I can be…Cheer up sleepy Jean…

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee.

Urban Nature II: Bees and Blooms

There are many things in which one might become lost while in Venice Beach. The natural beauty certainly ranks up there with the most obvious. Ocean views and sunsets, mountains to the north…all stunning…

In Venice, as in most communities, there is the tiny beauty that hovers all the time that we do notice, but perhaps, at which we don’t often take a hard look. On my days working as a dog walker, I try to snap a shot or two for posterity with my smart phone, an HTC Imagine.

I was lucky to catch this bee, not only working such a beautiful flower, but with that old blue car in the background.

This worker appears quite in love with the lilac, tucked away in her sweet fragrance and tasty nectar.

Kissed by a buzz and the California sun. I never realized how beautiful bees were. When you look hard at nature this small, you can really see how it all works together.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee.