15 Minutes of Bliss

Check out this Beatles tribute that aired on the 1977 TV special, Rolling Stone Magazine: The 10th Anniversary:



It goes on and on, but I didn't want it to end, found myself sitting at the computer snorting and guffawing at the over-the-top shmaltzy spectacularity. The montage so corrupts and kitsch-ifies counter-cultural ideals that, looking back, the slide of the late 70s into Reagan's 1980 election feels inevitable.

For "Strawberry Fields, dancers in green tights with giant strawberries attached to their bodies gyrate around a white-robed guru. For "Helter Skelter" a riot scene is staged in which guerrillas shooting guns bump hips with student and race rioters. Afros abound. "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is a cross between Busby Berkeley and a bad acid trip movie—a firmament of gorgeous babes stand on platforms in skin colored body tights with huge sparkling shrubs hanging from their bodices. In the middle of all the delightfully embarrassing dreck, Patti LaBelle kicks ass, standing on a giant spider web, belting out "Polythene Pam." Nothing can keep that woman down. Three sections of the montage revolve around a plastic-headed Nixon, "Back in the USSR" (sexy fur-muffed Russian babes join him in the Oval office adding a very Monica Lewinsky vibe to it all), "I'm a Loser," and "Nowhere Man." It ends with the guy who played Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar singing, "I read the news today," with the entire cast behind him opening—what I imagine through the degraded video image—to be issues of Rolling Stone. What can I say, I sat in my desk chair and applauded when it was over. If you're into excess, you won't be disappointed by this puppy.

Here's the original link, should you want to watch it larger.

LA Confidential

Here's a few quick souvenirs of my trip to L.A. mid-December.

This photo of Chris Allegra and Brian Bauman is the only pic that turned out from the December 13th Raymond Pettibon opening at Regen Projects. If only we'd had the presence of mind to photograph the actor Aaron Eckhart, who was there very dressed down with some children in tow. Standing beside us was the designer Hedi Slimane. I'd never heard of him, but Brian and Kevin were bug eyed. They told me that HS invented the tight jeans look for men—and also the faux hawk. Brian said that Hedi Slimane employs two assistants just to get him into his tight pants and that rumor has it that HS lives on one jar of specially processed baby food a day in order to fit into those tight pants. His hair looked like a little anvil sitting on top of his head. The blurry small squares in the background are Raymond's drawings and paintings.

After the opening we went to a dinner at the home of gallerist Shaun Caley. We walked in and Kevin gasped at this giant Richard Prince painting of the pulp novel Jet Set Nurse:


I was expecting the dinner to be one of those dreary after opening things full of collectors being schmoozed, but to my surprise, this tasty buffet was populated with mostly artists and Raymond's inner circle of friends and family. I got to hang out with Cathy Opie. How cool is that? We reminisced about the Kiki Gallery days, where Cathy first exhibited her large color portraits of the sexual underground of San Francisco. And here's a pic of me and Mike Kelley:

I hadn't seen him since the early 90s. Here's an excerpt from my novel the Letters of Mina Harker in which Dodie/Mina encounter him:

Mike Kelley’s opening at Rosamund Felsen Gallery—forty years ago Marilyn’s famous calendar nudes were shot in this same studio, now it’s hung with portraits of rag dolls a wall of them, human-sized black and white they loom above the actual dolls which lie on the floor in miniature coffins representation has killed them in one corner white-haired and tall as a legend John Baldessari stands in a bright blue shirt chatting with a couple of academic types … in another Mike Kelley’s long graying hair is pulled back in a ponytail, his arm is being pumped by a corpulent man in a plaid leisure suit. There is a tiny door on each coffin over the face an abyss that divides the axis of vision from the axis of things a woman in camouflage stretch pants lifts one of the doors and peers in at the stuffed cotton expression then up at the canvas without imaginative interiority a face is a nothingness a guard rushes up and grabs her by the shoulder DON’T TOUCH THE COFFINS.

I was surprised by the changes in Mike Kelley. He's still an attractive guy and very charming, but he's no longer so super punk kool that I was afraid to talk to him. We had fun chortling about Toni Bentley, the Balanchine ballerina who liked to be butt-fucked, or so she confesses in a recent memoir. As soon as I said the word "butt-fucked" Mike visibly warmed to me and we were able to launch into a huge gossip session down memory lane, like Truman Capote and Lee Radziwill in a shadowy corner of Studio 54.

The following weekend Brian Bauman and I went to dinner with Raymond Pettibon and Erlea Maneros Zabala. Here's the three of them at La Cabana in Venice:

Eating at La Cabana always fills me with a bittersweet nostalgia. It's where we'd all go in the Mike Kelley days after events at Beyond Baroque, when Benjamin Weissman ran the series. I can't walk in there without thinking of Bob Flanagan and missing him—his partner Sheree Rose, and the newness of knowing Dennis Cooper and Amy Gerstler and David Trinidad—and the complexities of the late Ed Smith, who I had sex with in San Francisco at Roberto Bedoya's house and I caught Roberto peeking in at us. It was an incredibly exciting time for writing in LA.

After dinner we all went over to Erlea's and Raymond's home, and sat around drinking tea and chatting. Even Raymond had tea, and Erlea marveled in her heavy Basque accent, "Dude, I don't believe it, you're drinking tea!" She takes fiery to a new level. I adore her.

The following night when I read with Vanessa Place at the Poetic Research Bureau I was again struck with the vitality of the LA writing scene. They were a wonderful audience, so smart and generous with their attention. Imagine trekking all the way over to Glendale to be there. The traffic wasn't bad and it still took me a solid hour from Culver City. Here's a few glimpses of the before reading reception:

Here's Chris Kraus and Aaron Kunin. I don't know if they'd ever met before this photo, but they both seem to know everybody, so they probably have. Aaron turned up in San Francisco later in the month for the big off-site poets of the MLA-reading that Small Press Distribution sponsored. His 2 minutes blew me away, and that's hard to do in 2 minutes.


LA artists are still cohabitating with the writers. In the foreground, here's artists Christopher Russell and Marcus Civin, and between them in the background is one of my hosts, poet and editor Joseph Mosconi.


This past summer Kevin and I went to lunch here in San Francisco with Vanessa Place and Teresa Carmody, and Kevin told our visitors the advice Allen Ginsberg gave his models: always put your hands in the picture, for hands, not eyes, are the real windows of the soul. Here's Vanessa and Brian Kim Stefans being all "handy."


On the right, Teresa Carmody's hand steals the picture. Beside her is Veronica Gonzalez. I've heard great things about Veronica's novel Twin Time: or, How Death Befell Me. My copy just arrived and I'm looking forward to diving into it. In the background is a friend of Chris Kraus, whose name I've sadly forgotten.

When people snarl and say they hate LA, I just don't get it. I love it down there—but I guess it's the people who make a place, and I'm lucky to have met so many wonderful people there.