Lusty Lady becomes first worker-owned strip club
From boas and high heels to boardrooms and high finance
"I'm thinking we ought to have underwear with a sign across the rear end that says, "'Look for the union label.'"

why yes, she does rock. but we've known that for a long time.

my good friend and favorite writer and thinker Daphne Gottlieb has had some lovely and articulate things said about her writing before, but this absolutely takes the cake:
This Is Your Issue and It’s a Party and Nothing Bad Will Happen to You Here.
Through secret sources, we've uncovered this excellent mention of her, too, in the Orange County Weekly.

I'd forgotten all about the LRB Personals:

'No,' I said, 'this is comedy' and threw the biscotti - and his skinny mocha latte - right back in his face. Edgy, humourless F., 41, banned from most train station Costas. Strangely alone at box no. 11/13.

When you do that voodoo that you do so well, I invoke 16th Century witchcraft laws and have you burned at the stake. No shenanigans with Quaker M, 39, at box no. 11/11.

Without love, it doesn't matter if you have all the qualifications in the world. Which I have. Please write for full list. I also have all the money in the world and look like Jude Law. Yes, I can provide a photo. M, 71, Ottrershaw. When named I am the man apart. Box no. 11/08

not as screamingly funny as the first time I found them, but still a good distraction for a moment or two.

looking for the perfect gift for that special traveler in your life?
the American Apology Shirt is finally here. oh, it's good.

guten morgen!

pleasing fungus beetles!
hurray!

sins

"es ist richtig so, Anna, aber so schwer..."

Last night I went out, and everyone I met seemed about 24; by the end of the night I felt ancient and exhausted.
If ever there existed a cure for feeling ancient (at 31!), it might just be attending a Sunday matinee at the SF Symphony. I haven't seen so many walkers and canes in one place in years. Despite a mild hangover and sleep deprivation, I started feeling quite spry almost as soon as we arrived.

In January I bought a couple tickets to see Ute Lemper perform "The Seven Deadly Sins" (a Kurt Weill/Bertolt Brecht collaboration which premiered in Paris in 1933, and one of my favorite pieces of music) and some Berlin cabaret songs (most of which she recorded a few years ago as part of a series of "Entartete Musik"). The concert was, at long last, today, and Deb and I tarted ourselves up and had a nice brunch first.

the concert was splendid. our seats were decent, though for this occasion I feel I should have splurged for the orchestra seats, or at least brought some opera glasses along.
Ms. Lemper came out in a long, black, form-fitting jacket over something red, and after the first song peeled off the outer layer to reveal a red velvet dress that looked as if it had been poured over her.
At the end of Spoliansky's "I am a Vamp" she hopped off the stage to finish the song, then leaned over and bit some gentleman on the neck. (not exactly what the traditional symphony crowd would have expected.) She turned back to the stage, only to realize that the little staircase she was expecting wasn't there, and improved a hilarious performance out of getting her victim to help her back up on the stage. I'm not doing the moment any justice here, but that poor guy will never forget it, that's for certain. She ended up managing, quite gracefully, to get back up mostly by herself.
I was glad she sang Hollaender's "Munchhausen," one of my favorite songs from the Berlin Cabaret Songs recording, and even more grateful that she came out with "The Lavender Song" ("weil wir ja anders als die andern sind") for an encore after the first act.
She switched back and forth between German and English for the cabaret songs, which was confusing, but I later saw a notice in the program explaining that, due to copyright restrictions, they couldn't provide texts or translations for that part of the program. It was a good compromise. The translations of these songs (and for the Weill) are horrible, in my opinion. I s'pose I'm lucky and shouldn't complain.
"The Seven Deadly Sins" was gorgeously done, with the Hudson Shad quartet singing the part of "The Family."
When I got home I had to do a few calculations, and- yes, I believe I have been guilty of all seven sins. possibly even this week! maybe I'll take a page from Brecht/Weill and refer to myself as Susan I and Susan II from now on.

" Meine Schwester ist schön, ich bin praktisch.
Sie ist etwas verrückt, ich bin bei Verstand.
Wir sind eigentlich nicht zwei Personen,
sondern nur eine einzige.
Wir heissen beide Anna,
wir haben eine Vergangenheit und eine Zukunft,
ein Herz und ein Sparkassenbuch,
und jede tut nur, was für die andere gut ist.
Nicht war, Anna?

Ja, Anna."

this is for the locals:
"I wanted to ask Frank Chu under whose authority the 12 Galaxies could impeach a U.S. President. So I did."

made me laugh. I'm sick of those Commonwealth Club ads everywhere.
I was on the 5 Fulton a couple weeks ago, coming back from a massage waaay out in the Avenues, and the 12 Galaxies guy (apparently named Frank Chu) got on the bus, with his sign, at about 32nd Avenue. I guess he goes in to work late on Saturdays...

two related, useful, and mildly entertaining links:
Welcome to 12 Galaxies!
and
"So I Wrote a Snide Column:
On big teeth, demographic pandering, and the Commonwealth Club"

thanks to Harrumph for the fine links!

Gregory Peck, 1916-2003

"If these Mount Everests of the financial world are going to labor and bring forth still more pictures with people being blown to bits with bazookas and automatic assault rifles with no gory detail left unexploited, if they are going to encourage anxious, ambitious actors, directors, writers and producers to continue their assault on the English language by reducing the vocabularies of their characters to half a dozen words, with one colorful but overused Anglo-Saxon verb and one unbeautiful Anglo-Saxon noun covering just about every situation, then I would like to suggest that they stop and think about this: making millions is not the whole ball game, fellows. Pride of workmanship is worth more. Artistry is worth more."

It's important to stretch the birthday thing out for as long as you possibly can. I started celebrating mine at least a week early, and haven't quite finished yet. two weeks seems about right.

Debra took me out to eat the other night at Walzwerk, an East German restaurant in my neighborhood I've wanted to go to for a long time. There was an old yellow MZ parked in front, which would have made my brother very happy.
I'd go back again in a heartbeat for the Red Beet Soup alone. The Rinderbraten (marinated beef) melted in my mouth, though the Kartoffelklößen (pototoes) had a weird gummy texture, and the Rote Grütze (red berry pudding) was pureed, which was a bummer. I've been craving Rote Grütze for a long time; may have to venture up to Lehr's to see if they have any jars of the version I remember.
I'd only been to East Germany a few times, and then only when I was very little, so I don't really remember much. In '98 I spent a week in Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin; in spite of all the gentrification, I still had a pretty clear picture of what things might have looked like 10 years before. Constanze and Ulrich said, "Aside from this bar, and this store, everything else is new." There was scaffolding everywhere, buildings being renovated and painted post-amt gelb- post office yellow. I still have photos of that trip I've never scanned.
At any rate, being in Walzwerk was very surreal- so many things the same, yet different. my German-American upbringing was very different from a West German experience, and far, far away from an East German childhood.
It made me nostalgic for my mother's cooking anyway.

Last night Randy and Eileen had me over for dinner- scrumptious homemade cornmeal crust pizza with two different toppings! I'm officially spoiled rotten.
Afterwards we watched two classic and very silly sci-fi movies- The Monolith Monsters and It Came From Beneath the Sea. Both had us in fits of giggles all the way through. "Monolith Monsters" is about, well, monster rocks. little, harmless looking black rocks from outer space that grow into huge, um, monoliths when they find water, and then fall over, crushing homes and turning people into stone. none of it makes any sense, and the fact that you could outwalk the damn rocks is pretty funny, but the music is fabulous, and the whole thing is short enough to make it very watchable. "It Came From Beneath the Sea" is about a huge, hungry, mutant octopus. The special effects are Ray Harryhausen, whose budget was apparently so limited that the octopus ended up with only 5 legs. The monster eventually destroys the Golden Gate Bridge, and then moves over to the Embarcadero, where it tears up the tower on the Ferry Building, which was really fun for me since I work next to that building. (going in tomorrow should be fun as I picture the big tentacles squeezing the hell out of the familiar architecture.) The subplot is pretty funny- two scientists, Professor Leslie Joyce (who makes a pretty unexpected feminist speech at some point) and her colleague, Dr. John Carter, who can only be described as a butch, smart, charming, yet sadly de-sexed homosexual, work around the clock to figure out what the "thing" is. Joyce gets, of course, to fall for the manly Navy Captain- but only once she's made it very clear that her work comes first. At the end of the film Carter saves the Navy Captain (for himself? or for Joyce? or for both of them?), the octopus is destroyed, and one can only hope that the three main characters live happily ever after in a nice poly sort of arrangement.

"You two are so giggly."
an interview with John and Audi Bayley
thanks to Open Brackets for the link

dennis lee's un came in the mail today.

---------------------------------------------
Under the
thes, under the as, under the
unders--
old folds of other, ob-
structing our schlep to the warm & fuzzy:

slag in the heartcraw,
paradise named away.

-----------------------------------------------

I want verbs of a slagscape thrombosis.
Syntax of chromosome pileups.
Make me
slubtalk; gerundibles; gummy embrouchure.

my heroes

my good friends Eileen & Randy have written a most excellent op-ed piece about the dog/park/Natural Areas Program battles here in SF. it's in this week's Guardian. go read.

My sister Erika has a special Peace Corps Volunteer project this summer in Kyrgyzstan.
please click here for information or to contribute funds. below the description is a link that says "Contribute to this project!"
(to look at other Peace Corps Volunteer projects, click here.)

31 is the magic number

my weekend in Los Angeles with Greg was lovely and perfect.
it was possibly, probably, sadly, my last visit there with him- he landed in NYC a few hours ago, and there he will stay. We spent a lot of quiet time on the porch with martinis, looking at the garden and the flower boxes, contemplating the end of an era, and talking about how soon I can make it to New York to visit.
Friday we went to the Getty and had a sumptuous lunch outside (oh, the view!) before wandering around the grounds and the garden. We looked at a lot of art and got totally overstimulated. the collections aren't particularly magnificent, but there's a lot of stuff to see. What stands out in memory are the Lee Miller photos (the shot of her in Hitler's bathtub after the war is pretty unforgettable) and the illuminated manuscripts- not the most stunning collection, but always my favorite thing. Holbein's "An Allegory of Passion" was fabulous, too.

E cosi desio me mena (And so desire carries me along)

I don't want to like the Getty so much, but I do. The last time I was there the garden wasn't even complete. the grounds are spectacular. it was a gorgeous day, though the marine layer ended up obscuring the sunset we hoped to see.
At the bookstore Greg had to tear me away from a copy of Albertus Seba's Cabinet of Natural Curiosities. I settled for a few postcards.
Saturday was my birthday, and we went out for dinner with the rest of the boys (my boys- important to say it like Roxie Hart) at Chameau in Silverlake- we love that place, yes we do, especially the lamb.
then we were off for some booty-shaking, which I haven't done in years, and oh, I'm still sore. all those silly back bends and- what was I doing exactly?
photos to follow, eventually.