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November 27, 2002
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Thank you friends, wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you
I’m cranky and crampy, outside is sludgy and slurpy.
Last night on the news (or whatever it is Fox purports to pass off as “the news”) there was the traditional seasonal feelgood story of the haves going to the shelters and homes of the have-nots and giving them turkey dinners with all the fixings. The very next story showed people at some bowling alley in Austin bowling with fucking frozen turkeys. I was so angered! Not even considering everything that’s disgusting and cruel about our agricultural system here, it just seemed so callous and wasteful. So flippant and blatant and wrong, wrong, wrong, when not everyone can eat some stupid bird, some people are flinging them down bowling alleys and drinking beer. Oy.
And so it began. Like I said, I’m crampy and cranky. I’m a sourpuss. And while there are horrible things on every newscast, there’s just no personal justifying this ick. Things are Not So Bad. In a hippy dippy attempt to shame myself out of feeling like such a memme, today gets a special, festive holiday list. Strangely, this is a list I’ve never officially made before, though everyone is supposed to at this time of year.
Top Ten Things I Am Grateful for This Thanksgiving:
10) I am very happy that the good people at Buffalo Exchange saw through my attempt at styleyness and didn’t give me a job. There are many reasons that I would be very, very unhappy working there.
9) Fire engine red lipstick and coal black liquid eyeliner. Punk rock!
8) I’m thankful for tigers!
7) I’m glad that I’ve become a Texan. I lived a dark and gloomy life before I moved here, one entirely devoid of migas and chilaquiles. I didn’t even know what migas were! I could have migas everyday now if I wanted and for this, I am most thankful. How I ever lived without breakfast tacos within walking distance, I’ll never know.
6) Sort of continuing on the last bit, I’m very, very thankful that I live in a place that doesn’t snow or freeze very often. If just grayness outside can throw me into the funk I’m in, it’s best if I avoid very cold, very gray places.
5) My darkroom is the happiest, stinkiest place on earth and it thrills me down to my boots that I get to spend countless hours there, working creepily alone in the dark and shortening my life with every inhale.
4) I would like to say a sincere prayer of thanks for the existence of (in no particular order): Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue,” John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme,” X’s first three records, the Buzzcocks’ “Singles Going Steady” and the collected works of the Velvet Underground, Hank Williams and Patsy Cline and the existence of hardcore in general. Records have saved my life over and over again, and they probably won’t ever stop.
3) This is the cliche, but this is the most heartfelt one, too. I’m really lucky. The world is full of good folks, and I know a good deal of them. The people I know are smart and funny and listen when I talk. I know some really amazing people. I just wish I could get them all to converge in one place every once in awhile (oops, I’m slipping back into complaining…)
2) Pie. Pecan pie. Derby pie. Pumpkin pie, even. Sweet potatoes, with or without marshmallows (I’m really no purist). Potatoes in general. I love food. Thanksgiving is a holiday based on food. I hate Christmas, but I can really get behind Thanksgiving. I like to eat, eat, eat.
1) I have the greatest boyfriend on earth, and I’m the luckiest space cat, ever. As long as this is the case, I really have nothing to complain about.
Everybody feel better now? Hmmm… I do. Happy Thanksgiving.
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November 25, 2002
Howling at Midnight
It’s weird how being in a strange place gives you an unspoken sort of license to do things you wouldn’t normally. In my case, it usually consists of both drinking and talking too much.
I had fun in Houston this weekend.
Things got off to a perfect road-trip start, with Khattie and La Rita (her van) showing up Saturday morning with yummy coffee for me. We picked up all our charges and hit the road with me as co-pilot.
Khattie is the sunniest, funnest lady I know. She’s tops to have adventures with, because for her, everything is an adventure. We played records that we loved, smoking cigarettes and screaming along at the top of our lungs. Patti Smith, the Gossip, Loretta Lynn. There’s something so pure about driving and singing.
I really like Gina, the girl we stayed with. Her new band, the Kimonos, played their first show Saturday night, and they were excellent. The Bad Apples played a fun, drunken set, and the Houstonians didn’t seem to know what to make of them, but the Donnas sure did. They liked them, and told them so. It was too crowded trying to watch the Donnas and I was tired of being shoved around by asshole boys and standing there mentally deconstructing the Donnas mythos, so I just went back downstairs and saw the Down and Dirties, though I must confess I remember absolutely nothing of their set. I was a cocktail on legs that night, beer, vodka, tequila… Like I said, things you wouldn’t normally do.
I ran into an old friend from Austin who had moved away and was back in Houston and talked his ear off about i don’t even know what. I was really happy to see him; I don’t know if he felt the same way after an hour of my drunken rambling. Sheesh.
The night went on and got weirder. There was a wee accident with a parked car, but everything was fine. There was confusion and sex and rock and roll and drugs and a late night argument, all whirling around me.
Luckily, I was passed out and missed a lot of the drama. Everyone got to discuss it over yummy Mexican breakfasts (Spanish Flowers in the Heights, I think. I recommend it. Delicious, thick tortillas and mariachis playing such sad songs I almost cried) and coffee. Then back into the van, back to Austin, back home. Sunday night and restful reading and visiting with Jacob.
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November 22, 2002
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Johnathan Richman Says You’re Crazy For Taking the Bus.
Yesterday, when I went to my regular bus stop, someone had scrawled “all you dumb bitches suck my dick” on the bench. Now, I don’t think that this would normally piss me off to the extent it did then, but I could be wrong. Sometimes I can just shrug it off, a little disgusted, a little more angry, and sometimes it just fucking consumes me. Some days there’s no way to shrug off dumb bitch.
So, I just whipped out my Sharpie, made my peace and then went on my way to have a lovely afternoon full of darkroom fun.
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November 19, 2002
from “33 Moments of Happiness” by Ingo Schulze
10.
Ivan Toporyshkin, the father, orders for all the guests at the table. Suddenly the waiter says, “That really doesn’t taste very good.”
Everyone at the table looks up at him.
“It doesn’t taste very good,” the waiter repeats, and exchanges glances with all the guests, including Ivan Toporyshkin, the father.
Pointing once again to the dish designated number 3012, Ivan Toporyshkin, the father, says, “I want it!”
“It doesn’t taste good, though,” the waiter says for the third time, and jots down number 3012 and goes to the kitchen.
Now all the guests, including Ivan Toporyshkin, the father, start laughing. They laugh so hard that their faces touch the napkins folded at each setting and the manager has to be called.
“It doesn’t taste good!” Ivan Toporyshkin, the father, splutters, and every face is in its napkin again.
“What impudence,” the manager says. Finally, however, the whole story comes out, the waiter is called and fired. A waitress arrives with the meal, including dish number 3012.
“Number 3012 doesn’t taste good,” Ivan Toporyshkin, the father, says, laying knife and fork back on the table and reaching for his napkin. The manager is called and the waiter is rehired.
Every time I hear stories like this one, I gather renewed courage.
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November 18, 2002
My Sin & The Lucky Star
This is a picture of Exene at Club Foot sometime in the 80’s.
Do you believe that I’ve heard the name of that place cited a million different times and I’m just now getting the joke? Sheesh.
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A hundred lives are shoved inside … Gotta Get In But There’s No Room
Listening to “Marrakesh” by New Model Army, a perfectly sad song full of bittersweet longing. An autumn song. I woke up with it in my head.
I feel like today is to be used for getting everything in order. I’ve been so busy all last week, and so lazy all weekend, now I’ve got things I must do. Everything is messy, chaotic. And in my head, I’m still kind of reeling from Friday night at Emo’s.
I remember when I moved here, I thought Emo’s was the coolest club. A club dedicated to the idea that you shouldn’t have to spend a good portion of your hard-earned beer money just to get into a club and see a band. Founded on the belief that people who give a shit about bands should be able to see those bands.
I don’t actually know if the powers-that-were behind Emo’s actually believed that, but it’s the best that I could figure, and it’s what I wanted to believe and I was very excited about it. Two bucks? A pittance! Gladly, I’ll pay (although back in those days, my friends and I hardly ever had to pay a cover to get in). I remember laughing at people who used to complain, “I remember when Emo’s was free,” as that just seemed so greedy and overlooking such a gift horse.
Then I spent way too many weekends there. Too many nights when the fate of the Blue Flame(ingo) was uncertain, or too many good touring bands were playing that I couldn’t miss, or just plain nothing else to do. The vibe turned sour, sour. I recognized fewer and fewer of the bartenders and door people. Ownership changed hands.
One night I walked in and headed directly to the women’s bathroom on the left side of the club. It was crowded and I was following the herd simply in order to get to the courtyard. As we passed the bar, one of the guys working back there leapt up on the bar and across it and pounced on the guy directly in front of me, who was holding a bottle of beer. The bartender went directly for the guy’s throat, the beer went on the ground and glass found its way into my open-toed shoes. I was appalled. What sort of thug establishment lets and even encourages its employees to maul its customers?
I took a little break from Emo’s then. It had just gotten out of hand with the neanderthals running the joint. Good friends of mine will recall these as the “Hoo-hoo’s” years, where I was so disgusted with the place that I couldn’t bring myself to even name it out loud and so just referred to it as “Hoo-hoo’s” or “That Place.” (Where the name Hoo-hoo’s came from can only be found at the wrong end of a good portion of tequila sunrises.)
When I started going back a little more frequently, the cover had gone up. It was hardly ever less than five bucks, usually more like seven, even for local bands. All my friends have been forcibly removed from there, unjustifiably, girls and boys, some more than once. The other night we paid twenty dollars to see X, my favorite punk band of all time, ever.
X were brilliant. Everyone should love X. In their day, X transcended everything they were supposed to be. They were a Raymond Chandler novel, the dusty, desperate dream of the myth of the great west, the city of angels. And when I saw them just the other night, twenty-five years later, they still had it. The songs were haunting, haunted. It hurt to hear John and Exene harmonize on “White Girl” (supposedly written for Darby Crash’s old girlfriend) and “Back to the Base,” just thinking about how lived-in these songs were, how real and pained and still true. “The New World” never rang truer. The band was amazing. Billy Zoom and DJ Bonebreak were as tight and punk rock as ever. And John and Exene, in my deepest, sincerest, punkest heart of hearts, belong together, screaming and scowling, and it pleased me down deep to see them together, playing with each other.
That was the good part of the night.
The bad part is much bigger. The place was packed, too, too crowded. The surly and aged shoved and pushed and tried to act like they weren’t. They were condescending and loud and annoying. After the first few songs, I pushed my way out of that terrible crowd (worse than any hardcore show i’ve been on the floor for) and headed for the back and my friends. I discovered half of my group had been thrown out, and I’m still not really certain why. We were yelled at for standing on the stairs, even with nowhere else to go, no other way to see the band.
I hate that fucking place. I’ll continue to go there, as long as bands have nowhere else to play. I do it begrudgingly. I hate that fucking place.
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November 14, 2002
Some Smooth Chords on the Car Radio
Last night I dreamed about going to see X. I can’t remember the last time I was this excited to go see a show. I can’t wait, I can’t wait, I can’t wait.
I’ve been thinking today about how people, as they get older, do things to make themselves feel better. Cutting out red meat, quitting smoking, exercising, all sorts of things you don’t really want to do, but know you should. I try to stay moderately healthy just so I’m tolerable to be around.
This week I’ve been living on coffee, cigarettes and beer. I’ve been huffing untold amounts of chemicals in a poorly ventilated darkroom. I haven’t been to a yoga class in weeks. Today I ate lunch at Tamale House on Airport Blvd.
I’ve never felt better in my life.
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November 13, 2002
I’m busy in the darkroom this week.
So, busy yourself with some politics and I’ll be back and fascinating as ever soon.
Announcement for an upcoming free workshop in Austin.
Learn what you can do to save women’s health care funding in Texas.
No Going Back!
Saving women’s health care in a time of crisis
Coalition Conference and Advocacy Training
Saturday, November 23, 2002
Texas Medical Association Auditorium
401 15th Street, Austin, Texas
You can make a difference. The Texas Campaign for Women’s Health invites you
to attend this free, day-long conference and advocacy training session. Join
TCWH coalition partners from around the state in a discussion of upcoming
issue battles. Learn what health care advocates are doing in their own
communities to ensure access to affordable health care for women, and find
out what you can do to keep women’s health care on the agenda.
Tentative Agenda
8:00-5:30 pm
Registration
8:45 am
Opening Session Welcome
9:00-10:30 am
Presentation: Election Wrap-up and Legislative Preview
10:30-12:00
Panel Discussion: Regional Issues and Strategies
12:00-1:30 pm
Lunch Special guest speaker on universal healthcare
1:45-2:45 pm
Keynote Speaker Jill Morrison, National Women’s Law Center
3:00-4:30 pm
Panel Discussion Policy Basics
-Review of legislative and budget process
-Points of access for effective health care advocacy
-Rules for lobbying by non-profits
4:30-5:30 pm
The Grassroots Connection: Making a difference at home
Basic skills training in advocacy and community organizing techniques
5:30-7:00 pm
Dinner on your own
7:00 pm
Reception Social gathering for networking at casual local spot
Participants are also invited to attend an informal TCWH strategy session
Sunday morning, November 24, at time and location TBA.
Both events are free and open to the public.
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People, Get Ready
from Tuesday’s edition of the San Francisco Chronicle:
Women, get angry
Joan Ryan
Tuesday, November 12, 2002
©2002 San Francisco Chronicle.
I came across a photo spread last week of the 16 people who likely will head up the Senate’s major committees when the Republicans take control of the 108th Congress.
Only one of the 16 wore lipstick.
This could strike a female American citizen as monumentally depressing. It’s 2002. Women represent 51 percent of the population. We run Fortune 500 companies, repair space stations, transplant hearts. And still men get 15 committees in the most powerful legislative body in the land, and we get one.
But this is what’s really depressing:
The one female committee chair would represent a 100 percent increase over the number of female committee chairs in the Senate now (which is zero). (The chairmanships are based on seniority, so don’t look for much improvement any time soon.)
It’s been 10 years since the much-heralded Year of the Woman, when 24 women were elected to Congress, nearly doubling the female population on Capitol Hill. There are now 72 women in Congress, an improvement in membership that still accounts for less than 14 percent of the House and 13 percent of the Senate. To gain some perspective, these percentages rank the United States as 52nd in the world in terms of female representation in national legislatures (tied with Slovakia).
Among mayors of the top 100 cities, only 15 percent are women. When last week’s winning candidates are installed, California will have no women in any statewide constitutional office.
Countries that are, supposedly, less progressive than the United States already have had women presidents. We can’t get a woman nominated. My goodness,
we still run polls asking if America is “ready” for a female president, as if it were a radical notion.
Yes, the past week brought some good news. Ten women ran robust campaigns for governorships. Four won, raising the number of female governors in the United States to six, the most ever. And San Francisco’s Nancy Pelosi is likely this week to become House minority leader, the highest congressional position a woman has ever held.
“The whole story of women in American politics over the last 30 years has been slow, steady progress,” says Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “It’s not about overnight transformation.”
Yet, when I look at the slowly rising number of women in Congress, I still feel as if I’ve walked into a party and, expecting to see more familiar faces, wondered, “Where is everybody?”
Perhaps the biggest problem in getting more women in office is that too many women don’t see it as a problem. Or maybe they are simply willing to be more patient than I am. I get angry when I look at the numbers of women in high office. I want others to be angry, too. Anger fuels action. It’s an essential precondition for change.
Our anger will make us relentless in recruiting women to run for office, in pressuring our political parties to reach out to potential female candidates.
Women have many friends among the men in Congress and in statehouses across the country. They champion issues that are important to us. But our government can never be truly representative of the female half of the population as long as nearly all of the decision-makers have never been working mothers, choosing between decent child care and decent housing, never whacked their heads on a glass ceiling, never sat in a bathroom staring at a positive pregnancy test.
In the world of politics, we are still outsiders, and the status quo protects itself against outsiders. It will take angry, activist women working together to achieve real representation. In order to lead the country, we first have to lead ourselves.
E-mail Joan Ryan at joanryan@sfchronicle.com.
©2002 San Francisco Chronicle. Page A - 19
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November 12, 2002
We saw “Frida” last night. I had really been looking forward to seeing it, because I am predictably fascinated with Frida, and Frida and Diego, and Mexican Communist artists in the 1920s. So. I’m not sure what I expected, other than a movie that would make me cry. And that’s what I got.
After we saw it last night, I was a little disappointed, because in the movie it seemed as though all Frida ever did was get injured in a trolley accident and alternately tolerate and be tormented by Diego’s womanizing. Thinking about it this morning, that makes a little more sense, considering what huge events they were in her life. Even so, she managed to do other interesting things. You would think the filmmaker might want to mention some of them.
I was a little disappointed. I wanted more Siqueiros, more Tina Modotti and Edward Weston, more of a sense of all the art and politics going on at that time, but this really isn’t that sort of a movie, and I shouldn’t be disappointed. There are books to learn about that sort of thing, and dramatization usually falls flat in one way or another. This is a movie about the spirit of Frida, the myth of Frida, and, most importantly, the paintings of Frida, which ultimately should be allowed to speak for themselves.
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November 11, 2002
It’s 11/11; Make a Wish.
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November 08, 2002
Today is a list day.
Friday’s list is of:
All-time greatest duets (subject to change):
5) Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot, “Bonnie and Clyde”
“Voilą le tac tac tac”
Much cooler than that overplayed “Je Taime Moi Non Plus” that kind of gives
me the heebie jeebies.
4) George Jones and Tammy Wynette, “Golden Ring”
The Heroine of Heartbreak, the First Lady of Country Music and the ‘Possum.
A match made in honky-tonk heaven, with all the appropriate storminess
accompanying.
3) (tie)
The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl, “Fairytale of New York”
Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, “You’re All I Need To Get By”
The former is the only Christmas song I really like. The latter can make
you believe in good and sweetness, even when you don’t think you can.
2) Johnny and June Carter Cash, “Jackson”
For sheer sassiness and the lines
“They’ll laugh at you in Jackson
And I’ll be dancing on a pony keg
You’ll be running round town
like a scalded hound
with your tail tucked between your legs.”
1) X, “Los Angeles”
The greatest punk band of all time. Many of their songs could fill this slot. If you don’t own this record, I’m going to have a harder time being your friend than I would otherwise.
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November 07, 2002
This is not a photograph
Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.
-Walker Evans
I’m tired of having the argument about whether or not photography is an art or craft or what. I just can’t be bothered. I’m old and I don’t care about changing people’s minds anymore. It’s just what I do, and rather than argue about it, I’m just going to continue doing it.
Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to go remove my film from its bath.
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November 04, 2002
This world is not my home, I’m just a’passin’ through
Ever since I was in Kentucky, I’ve been singing old gospel songs (against my will) in my head. It doesn’t make much sense, because I didn’t really hear any music when I was there. The best I can figure out, it must just be burned into my memory in the space of my brain that occupies Kentucky thoughts. The radio at my grandparents’ house was always on in every memory I have of being there, and it was always tuned to WCBL (which, everyone should know, is the station where the funniest scene in “Coal Miner’s Daughter” takes place) and they play nothing but old-time country, old-time gospel and Swap Shop for the old-timers.
I heard a theory that says wherever your dreams take place is your home, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Maybe that’s because my dreams usually take place in Kentucky (if they’re anywhere that’s real at all), with bits and pieces of things and characters from all the other places I’ve lived, and I’m just not ready or willing to claim that as of yet.
I also heard that if you write down all the places you’ve ever lived and next to it, account for all the times your heart was broken while you lived there, you determine where you belong. Your city is the city that broke your heart the most. I couldn’t disagree with this more.
These are the thoughts that I woke up with, along with a gospel song in my head, this morning when I finally woke up at home, slowly and sweetly.
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November 03, 2002
It’s just the wasted years so close behind
Yesterday I got to see nine Manuel Alvarez Bravo prints and my favorite Max Ernst painting. I had the worst taco, of all time, ever. I drank in a Bosnian bar where everyone knew the song the band was playing except for me and my friends. I went to a party full of dancing girls, where everyone was standing on the verge of getting it on. I whinged too much about the weather. I probably bored my friends to tears over dinner. I saw Cary’s art hung gorgeously in a little wine bar in Lafayette Square where I had the most delicious stout I’ve ever tasted. I made my brother drive me all over the city and he did it without question. I conspired. I fell into bed at 6 a.m.
I’m not sure I’ve used my time here altogether wisely.
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Tomorrow I will be home and it will be such a sweet and blissful, happy, happy thing. I miss my fella. I miss my bed. I miss decent tacos within walking distance. I miss warm arms to fall into each night. I miss home.
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November 02, 2002
Tennessee Flat Top Box
Today I woke up a million miles from here. There were hay bales and trees a thousand colors of red and yellow and orange and cows that looked me directly in the eye. Now I hear cars go by unceasingly and hear honking and shouting and I’ve obviously had too much Irish whiskey and I don’t think either one of these scenarios suits me very well.
I’m never very comfortable.
I can’t wait to be back in Austin.
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November 01, 2002
Queen of Pies
Tonight for supper I had a beer and strawberry-rhubarb pie. I am a princess.
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