Facebook Unfriending and Psychics

Yeah, I’ve unfriended a couple facebook "friends".

One was this porn star, who I never met and have no idea who he was, and was very young and very cute, but he posted several times an hour to vote for him in some porn contest. I got tired of seeing the endless propaganda, even though he was cute. I eventually wrote to him and said, perhaps you truly are the best bottom of the year, but I would never vote for someone who was obviously so desperate for votes. Then I quietly unfriended him.



It’s quite possible he deserved the, uhh, position (I have no idea if he won or not), perhaps it is my polite Canadian upbringing but I believe in the power of attraction rather than pummeling someone over the head with narcissitic self promotion.

Which helps to explain why I have been in LA for twenty years and why I am still not famous and my blog readership numbers in the low hundreds as opposed to the virtual thousands (or millions out there, if you happen to be Ashton Kutcher).


I’ve been unfriended a couple times. Probably more than a few times, but I don’t keep track, and as far as I know, there’s no way to keep track of how many friends you had yesterday as opposed to how many you have today, and who is missing. I have about 500 friends, and of those, I’ve never met about 480 of them. So they can come and go and I probably would never notice.

I noticed when my wife (now ex-wife) unfriended me. It didn’t come as a surprise, really.

I have another friend, more of a professional friend as opposed to a 'lets go to the movies' friend, who I’ve known for a few years. She is a psychic and I have visited her several times. I’ve always thought we got along really well and her advice, for the most part, was shockingly and consistently spot on. I even referred several friends (including my Mom) and they all raved about how wonderful and accurate she is.



Now, I suppose, like any professional, she likes what she does and she’s good at what she does. And part of being in a nurturing profession is to make people feel like they are being nurtured. I have several clients who, at least I hope, no, I know they feel loved and supported. Usually because, well, I am a nice guy first of all. But before I meet anyone, especially before I go into their house, I do a prayer and meditation, to be present, to be safe, to be nurturing, to see this person as the beautiful innocent child of god that they were created as, and thus remain, Despite any apparent evidence that seems to contradict this.

I’ve had clients who have become overly familiar, or reliant on me, or wanting more. More than I am willing to give. Sometimes I wish I were a better actor, sometimes I think I am too good of an actor.



As Marianne Williamson said last night, every person in front of you is a lesson for you (and for them). Although sometimes the lesson is to know that you need to leave.

So this psychic I’ve seen several times. Our sessions are always lengthy and emotionally intimate. Not that I necessarily wanted to go out dancing with her, (although I’m sure she would be fun), but with all the information we shared I suppose it made me feel closer to her than I truly am.

I suppose when I am massaging and touching someone over their entire body, that’s pretty intimate. I suppose it’s only natural to feel something.

Although, truthfully, I have had clients that I felt something for, and I have had clients that turned out to be more than clients. I mean, I’m not a therapist, there isn’t a really clear legal line that can’t be crossed here.


Now, I’m always a little anxious with psychics. I am always trying to develop my own spiritual abilities, and am anxious of people that are well ahead of me on the curve. I wish I understood people better.

So I’m always wondering, when in the presence of a true psychic, how much they are getting from me. How much do they really know? Are they getting information that they can use? Are they getting information that they don’t want to tell me?

Are they getting information that tells them under no circumstances befriend this person on facebook.


Now, when I joined facebook a few years ago I inadvertently asked everyone in my address book to be my friend. It’s far too easy and they make it seem so innocuous, you hit one button and suddenly you’re out there in the world. Several people wrote to me and said they weren’t on facebook (many of them have since come around).

My therapist was in my address book and he wrote to me and said he didn’t want to facebook any of his clients, which is perfectly reasonable.




My trainer told me that he had hundreds of friend requests pending but he hadn’t accepted anyone, and to not take it personally. (I’m not quite sure I understand that modus operandi, honestly)

But my psychic signed on as my friend. Every now and then I would see a post from her about her vacation, her relatives, her love life.

Sometimes I post several times a day, sometimes a week will go by without any facebook news from my homestead in the hills of Silver Lake. I do want to be out there (further than, say my trainer) but I don’t want to be obnoxious (like, say that porn star guy).

I do have a somewhat offbeat sense of life sometimes, perhaps my facebook posts are sometimes a little quirky. Perhaps of my 500 virtual facebook pals, 480 of them have clicked on “don’t show me posts from this guy any more” button. And no one is actually reading them. (I know some people do read them because occasionally they respond).

So if my psychic friend was offended by my endless posts about Channing Tatum (which, knowing her, if I do know her that is, she most certainly wouldn’t be) or she grew tired of my quirky observations on society and culture, or she took one of my Course in Miracles quotes the wrong way.



Or she got tired of seeing pictures of my cat, Sebastian.

Or MAYBE she knows something about me that I don’t know. Or that I do know but it was too much for her to talk about. Maybe she knows that the ship is about to sink and doesn’t want to get sucked down by the undertow.

Maybe she was getting bad karmic energy from being my virtual friend.

Maybe she was simply weeding down her list of friends and I didn’t make the cut. Maybe I was in the bubble, on the cusp, and maybe she had a real struggle cutting me loose, but ultimately just bit her lip and hit the delete key.

Maybe she decided to be friends with my ex-wife instead of me. Although, considering the conversations we have shared over the years, I seriously doubt that.

Honestly, I don’t know what to think.

I know, I think too much...

Rod Reynolds
©2010 RocketManLA.com

Dear Channing, I mean Dear John

Friday night, rainy, cold. Very rainy. I had no clients. Lots of work to do, as always, but no clients and didn’t think I’d get any. When it rains in LA the city shuts down. It’s like a snow day in the Midwest.

I had a pass to see 'Dear John'. I like Amanda Seyfried from the ABBA movie, 'Mamma Mia' and I like her upcoming movie 'Letters to Juliet', which I saw a test screening a few months ago. And it is directed by Lasse Hallström, the director of ABBA the Movie (and several dozen ABBA videos). So I’m interested.


But no, Dear John is all about the boy. Channing Tatum. I’d read one review that said the movie was terrible, but that the director knew what he had, and showed Tatum either shirtless or in a t-shirt throughout the movie.

I'm in.

Oh, I am so cheap.

But knowing it is half the battle. Besides, I can quit any time.




So, it’s raining, it’s cold, it’s late Friday night, I get to the theatre in Glendale, and the ticket girl says, Oh, I’m sorry, that showing is sold out. I can get you into the 10:30 show.

Sold out? BBb-bbut it’s raining ? !

AND it’s a B movie chick flick!


I said, there isn’t one seat available?

She looked at her screen, and pondered, “yeah, you can likely find one seat, but it will probably be the worst seat in the theatre.

I looked at the marquee listing the 16 movies currently playing, I had seen all of the ones I was even remotely interested in, some of them several times over. So I said, ‘OK, give me the ticket and if I can’t find a seat I will come back and get a ticket to the later show.‘

So I went in, down the hall and rounded the corner into the theatre.

It was PACKED.

Packed with girls.

And when I say girls, I mean like maybe 16 years old. I don’t know. They all look so young. It’s hard to tell these days because young women dress a lot ‘older’ than they did when I was 16.

I found a seat, quite a decent seat, actually, (with a good view because everyone else in the theatre was under 5’ 2”) and settled in, prepared to see a horrible movie with some hopefully great man candy.

Which is pretty much exactly what it was. Based on a Nicholas Sparks novel. So that says all you need to know. The two main characters are introduced in the first scene, they are attached to others, but those relationships are faltering. The attraction is instant. They get together against logic. Then they get separated (in this case Tatum is in the army or something and gets shipped off to Afghanistan or somewhere.) So they write letters back and forth until they can get back together.

My suspension of disbelief was strained when the screen showed Tatum writing in perfect script, these really intense and longing letters. But I decided to play along.

It doesn’t all go smoothly of course. There is lots of drama, lots of tears, lots of kissing, even a couple fist fights.




OK, more importantly, Tatum is indeed shirtless several times in the film. The first time we see him, at the beach (always a good idea), surf board in hand. The girls in the audience screamed. Literally.

Seyfried accidentally drops her purse off the dock, and Tatum dives into the ocean, down to the bottom, and rescues her handbag. He comes back up the beach, his perfect body (trim but not overly worked out so still accessible - take a lesson, Taylor Lautner) dripping wet, his shorts sliding down, barely hanging on his perfect hips.

OK, to me, already worth the price of admission.

And by that I mean the hassle, not the actual dollar amount.


Then when Tatum and Seyfried first kiss, the girls in the theatre swooned. Literally. Later, when the camera dollies in in anticipation of their first kiss, the girl beside me had her hands on her face and was squirming in her seat and moaning. I’m not kidding. I was looking at her out of the corner of her eye, not wanting to disturb the subject, as she was often more animated than the actual movie.

Not to mention, to me, a sociological profundity.



At one point, something bad happens and the lovers are separated. I looked over and she was crying. Later on they break up. She was sobbing, and muttering under her breath.

I was watching her, and wondering if she’d seriously ever seen a movie before. Aside from the Twilight series, obviously.

I mean, every movie cliché in the book was unfolding on the screen exactly as you would anticipate. But this girl, and seemingly every other girl in the theatre, was on an emotional roller coaster. I’m sure if she were of legal drinking age, there would be cosmopolitans around the table later with her three best friends.



I must admit the movie looked fabulous, and was directed in accordance with romantic drama protocol, and the story unfolded exactly as any Film 101 student could predict from watching the trailer. I admired the director’s restraint with the ending, and not drawing it out. I mean, right from the opening five minutes you can tell how it’s going to pan out. Even from the movie poster itself you can tell how the movie is going to end. So when it finally gets to that point, Hallström wisely felt it needed no explanation, and the ending is one brief, almost teaser scene with no dialogue. Stunning lighting, but not a word. To me, it said all you need to know.

But, as the credits started to roll, the girl beside me sat up and said, quite loudly, That’s IT? That’s the end?

She actually seemed quite upset.

But possibly, in retrospect, not at how the movie ended but that it had to end at all. And unlike the Twilight series, there is no blatantly obvious sequel in the pipeline. Although now that it beat Avatar last weekend at the box office, there may well be a sequel.

Because that girl sitting beside me in the theatre on a cold, rainy Friday night in Glendale, and from my viewpoint, most of the similarly aged and similarly gendered viewers quite enjoyed the movie.



As did I, but for entirely different reasons.

Rod
Los Angeles
©2010 RocketManLA.com

Mel Gibson - older, yes. faded, no.

In yesterday’s LA Times (Feb 1, 2010) Ben Fritz ben.fritz@latimes.com writes:



"Mel Gibson still has his fans, but after a long and controversial absence from the big screen, his overall appeal seems to have faded. The thriller, 'Edge of Darkness', which marked Mel Gibson’s first lead role since 2002’s 'Signs', opened to a fine but not fantastic $17.1 million."

(read his full blog here)




I have been a Mel Gibson fan since I first saw ‘Road Warrior’ while attending film school in 1982. I have seen all his movies since; bought them all on VHS, then again on laserdisc, then again on DVD. Some I love: 'Signs' is one of my all-time favorite movies, a film that is so flavored and nuanced I never tire of watching it.



'Conspiracy Theory' (with Julia Roberts) is consistently cited (by me) as one of the most under-rated performances of his career; he is simply outstanding. ‘What Women Want’ (with Helen Hunt) is a clever romantic comedy that I have watched several times over. Gibson is remarkably funny and consistently charming.



Others I don’t care for (I have never been able to make it all the way through 'Braveheart') but I have seen them all, including the ones that he directed but did not appear in. While I did not particularly enjoy the violence in the 'Passion of Christ', I could not help but admire the film on several artistic levels.



Through the recent public events surrounding his personal life, it seems unlikely that we would be friends (I am in more than one of those groups that he has voiced objections to), but who knows. We've never been in the same room and had a conversation. Although that is a little disappointing, ultimately it doesn’t affect my enjoyment of his movies.

In 1985 I had the cover for People Magazine’s 'Sexiest Man Alive' (he was the original) framed and hanging on my wall through several moves and several cities over nearly twenty years (it eventually suffered a fatal accident and had to be thrown out, otherwise I would still have it.)




To me, Mel Gibson has not lost his appeal and I would go see any movie with him in it. And buy the DVD when it comes out. Even when he is merely voicing an animated character (ie ''Chicken Run', which would be a hilarious movie with or without voice over Gibson's contributions).

Having seen the trailers for 'Edge of Darkness', I was not the least bit interested in the scenario. I had suffered through 'Taken' starring Liam Neesan (I know it was a big hit, but to me it was unbearably mean) and 'Law Abiding Citizen' starring Gerard Butler (the less said about that the better, in my opinion, except for the cool plot twist and one memorable scene near the end) and was in no mood for a knock off violent revenge movie. But I paid my $12 (plus $14 for snacks at the concession) and hit the theatre on opening night.



Truthfully, I did not enjoy the movie and could not wait for it to be over. To be fair, it was not as emotionally painful as I had imagined, but I must say the movie did nothing to enrich the fabric of my life. A point worth mentioning is that I went by myself; none of my friends would go see this movie with me. Neither because nor despite the presence of Mel Gibson, per se, but because of the violent and vengeful nature of the film itself.

I realize predicting movies box office takes is a cultural event in Los Angeles, but even I didn’t think it would overtake Avatar last weekend at the box office. But I disagree that Mel Gibson’s acting career is over. Clint Eastwood is still going, and he’s in his 70’s.

Rod
Los Angeles
©2010 RocketManLA.com

The great bee incident. In my bathroom.

I’ve had bees in my bathroom ceiling for many years. There’s a vent on the outside at the peak of the roof; they ventured in and made a nest in the crawl space over my bathtub. Every now and then you'd see a bee, but at one point, a few years ago, at any one point there could be five or more bees in my bathroom. There is a vent over my bathtub and they would come in there.

The bees don’t really bother me, every now and then I’d step on one or pick up a towel that had a bee in it, and I’d get stung. But for the most part we got along. My friend Stephen was not quite as enamored with the little 'circle of life' we had in the bathroom, and when he was visiting one time, he covered the vent with gaffer tape; after that I’d only see an occasional bee, sometimes two, usually buzzing around a warm, bright light bulb.

At the same time, my bathroom ceiling has been leaking for several years. In the recent couple weeks' torrential rainstorms, the polite but incessant dripping that would occur during a casual rainstorm, became a small stream running through my bathroom. After years of my begging, my landlord finally acquiesced to repair the roof.

On Friday, a contractor came and punched a hole in my bathroom ceiling to assess the situation. He cut a hole just big enough for a person to fit into, and stuck his head up into the crawl space with a flashlight. The first thing he said was, “uh, there’s some kind of nest here.”

Well, yes, I know there are critters in my attic. I can hear them scratching and chewing and running around in the middle of the night, my cat Sebastian sits on the bed and stares up at the corner of the bedroom ceiling. But she can’t see anything move. I do see the squirrels climbing up the palm trees and hopping over onto my house, and I know there are rats.

But he said, “I think I got all the nest out.

“But you have bees.”

A LOT of bees.


So I stuck my head up there and sure ebough, on the roof just above the bathtub, was a huge bees nest. I measured it, and it’s about 24” wide, 18” deep and 16” high, four layers of honeycomb, and innumberable bees crawling and buzzing around.

We quickly realized that the roof repair could not take place in the presence of all these bees, just a few feet from the leak repair site. In fact, if the contractor had punched the hole just a couple feet to the left, he would have come up right in the middle of this gigantic bee hive.


A few years ago I had called some exterminators about the bees, and they wanted several hundred dollars to take care of the situation, so, aside from not wanting to spend the money, I decided I could live with the bees. But now they had to go.

My first call was to my friend with the silverlake chamber of commerce, who referred me to a local bee keeper. He said he could relocate the bees but he would charge around $300. Hmm. I called the city, who said that if the bees were on public property they would remove them, but on private property I'm on my own. Hmm.

So I emailed all of my friends, and made posts on facebook and craigslist, in attempts to find a bee oriented person who could adopt the hive and take care of the bees. I got about three dozen responses, and several referrals, all of whom had differing opinions, procedures and rates. In the process, I learned quite a bit about bees. Not the least of which they are an endangered species and it is illegal to kill them. Several people told me it was bad luck to kill them. Killing them was never my intention, but I got lots of encouragement to protect and relocate the hive.

I spent the next 24 hours online and on the phone and trying to find the right person for the job. I talked to a couple dozen people, some of whom were helpful, although none could commit to actually showing up to remedy the situation. Finally, as it is, the last person I called, at Brian's Bee Removal, said, with no hesitation, "sure, I can take care of it, I will be there at 8am Saturday morning."

So in the morning a young man named Jose showed up, assessed the situation, and, after discussing parameters and fees, the bee relocation process began.



He put on his white suit and netted hat, and set up his special bee vacuum cleaner. He said normal vacuum cleaners will kill bees. (which is what one of the bee people had told me to do, as a last resort, simply vacuum them up.) His vacuum has two compartments, one I guess to suck the bees in and the second compartment to hold them safely.



He cut a larger hole in my bathroom ceiling, closer to the nest. It was a good thing he had his suit on because from the first cut into the cieling there was instantly a huge swarm of bees all around him. (I was also quite glad I hadn’t decided to “simply vacuum up the bees".)

You can't see the bees in the small picture, but if you click on the picture it will get bigger and you can see all the bees swarming on him and in the air.

I was standing in the doorway of the bathroom, watching and taking pictures, about 6 feet away. Only a couple bees even came over to me. Out of the hundreds of bees that were flying around in my bathroom, only a couple ventured more than a few feet away. A couple landed on me and one stung me as I brushed her off. Otherwise, the swarm mentality was quite remarkable.



So Jose methodically cut sections of my ceiling apart and started vacuuming the bees.

Every now and then he would remove a huge chunk of honeycomb from the attic, vacuum the bees off, and drop it onto the counter.

Meanwhile, there were bees crawling all over him and around the light and the entire bathroom was a flurry of buzzing wings.



After about an hour of cutting and vacuuming, the bees were, miraculously, for the most part contained.




The honeycomb went into a big clear trash bag. There were only a few stray bees buzzing around, most of which got vacuumed up.



The bag of honeycomb weighed twenty pounds (yes, I weighed it). Everything was sticky, I guess with honey or nectar. I wondered if the squirrels would be attracted to the sweetness; Jason said “squirrels, no, dogs and cats, no, because they realize that the smell is associated with the bees. Rats, however will love the honey. He also noted that he had seen a rat in the attic.

*sigh*

Well, next time we’ll take care of the rats. The contractor is going to seal up the vents, so the bees, rats and squirrels will hopefully stay out.




Jose said the bees wouldn’t come back. The worker bees that are right now out in the field gathering honey will come home and be very confused, many of them will die, some of them will find a new home. They would not rebuild the hive without a queen. He said because he (hopefully) captured the queen, the hive will stay together and be relocated. He said that since it’s the middle of winter, the bee count is fairly low right now, he estimated 2-300 bees. He said in the summer there would be several thousand., and a hive that size, could have as many as ten thousand bees.



But for me, the story of the bees is ended. The bees are on their way "to an orchard", according to Jose. (I hope that isn't a euphemism).

Next week they will hopefully repair the leak in my bathroom ceiling, and screen over the vents in my attic, and all will be quiet, at least on the upper level.

I still have raccoons and possums that sneak in the downstairs back door to eat the cat food in the kitchen. And rats and squirrels in the attic. But what can you do. It's a "circle of life" thing.

Rod
Los Angeles
©2010 RocketManLA.Com

my thoughts on Avatar, best picture? no way.

Avatar is imminently poised to surpass Titanic as the highest grossing movie of all time. Yet not the most seen (due to inflation and premium ticket prices for 3D movies).

Even though the trailers were not captivating, to me at least, I went to see it opening weekend. The hype machine was in overdrive. But more than that, the curiosity factor engaged me. Perhaps (only perhaps?) I am a sucker for the “latest thing.” I am a Gemini after all. We love the shiny and the new and the just released.

Because I had no idea what to expect, I went in with low expectations and an open mind; subsequently, I wasn’t really disappointed. But I certainly wasn’t blown away. Sure, the visuals are state of the art. But what you’re watching is basically an animated movie. The characters are animated. The scenery is animated. Everything you are seeing on the screen has been either digitally created or digitally enhanced, or both.

Now, I’m a huge fan of animated movies. Pixar is incredible, I have seen all their movies and have them all on DVD. I have watched ‘A Bug’s Life’ over and over and it still makes me laugh out loud. ‘Up’ is solidly entrenched in my Top Five favorite movies of 2009, I’ve seen it several times (in 3D and 2D). ‘Monsters Inc’ is hilarious and touching. ‘The Incredibles’ is, well, incredible.

‘Avatar’ doesn’t have the complexity of story that any of these Pixar movie has. The subtleties that the ants in ‘A Bug’s Life’ have, both in character and in animation, is not represented in ‘Avatar’ by the blue Na-Vi creatures. The bugs are more human than the Na-Vi, characters based on humans!



The technology that created the characters and the backgrounds of Avatar is unquestionably innovative, groundbreaking, and even remarkable; it certainly surpasses the ‘vacant eye’ look of motion capture films like ‘Polar Express’ (which I loved despite this) or ‘Beowolf’ (which I didn’t).

The story is a standard ecology fable (corporate greed vs clearly more evolved nature), the dialogue is stilted and clumsy, the acting is certainly less than subtle. (My computer auto filled “bored” back there and for a moment I pondered leaving it in. )

I went to see Avatar a second time because I wanted to understand it a little better, and I wanted to see what I missed the first time (there is a lot happening on the screen). I am a film student and I do like to deconstruct what is happening on the screen. The second time was almost unbearably boring. The second viewing lent nothing beyond the original screening, which is highly unusual for me.

I had to contend with watching the eye catching visuals (the ‘light up’ vegetation, the floating mountains, etc.) The lizards and dinosaurs and seemed real enough, but at the same time they were clearly totally fake. I totally believed the dinosaurs in ‘Jurassic Park’, I didn’t believe the ‘horses’ the Na-Vi rode were real for one second.

Now it appears that ‘Avatar’ is throwing the Oscar race. (read today’s LA Times column by Patrick Goldstein here) and will likely win the coveted Best Picture award.



Is ‘Avatar’ a better movie than ‘Up’? Not by a long shot. ‘Up’ is a breathtaking movie that works on several emotional as well as creative levels, and its astoundingly sophisticated level of animation alone is worth the price of admission (for me, in this case, five times in the theatre alone).

‘Avatar’ is, yes, I will dare to say it (am I the first to admit it?)… boring. It’s shallow, it’s simplistic storyline couldn’t keep my attention even on a second viewing, whereas I have sat through ‘500 Days of Summer’ and ‘A Single Man’ several times each this year and been amused, intrigued, saddened and touched each time.



But ‘Avatar’ has become a cultural phenomenon, and will surely sweep the Oscars race, just as ‘Titanic’ did more than a decade ago, for better or worse. But while ‘Titanic’ is still inherently watchable today, in twelve years time, will ‘Avatar’ play as well in 2020? It will surely seem incredibly dated and sophomoric. And, probably, and especially because the technology will have advanced still further, thus eliminating the ‘dazzle’ factor, still boring.

Should you see it? By all means. (and most definitely pay the extra couple dollars to see it in 3D).

But best picture of the year? Not by my vote.

My coming out song (July, 1980)

My closest door crashed open one July night in 1980, when my manager from work took me to a gay bar where his boyfriend was the DJ. I eventually started DJ-ing there myself. And I'm still a DJ all these years later.

I grew up on a farm in northern Alberta, Canada; talk about lonely and hostile territory for a sensitive artistic blonde gay boy in training. My solace was the Columbia House Record Club, where every month I could order new records that would come in the mail, and I would listen to Fleetwood Mac, the Carpenters, Heart and Supertramp on the headphones for hours and hours, holding the sleeves in my hand, reading the credits, looking at the pictures.

When I turned 16 I could drive, my Dad bought me a 1966 powder blue Ford Fairlaine; it was embarrasing because it was kind of dorky and almost as old as me, but I installed a cassette sound system that was surely worth more than the car itself, and I started going to an academic high school in the big city of Edmonton, and I got a part time job at my favorite record store. It was called Mister Sound at that time, now it is (or was?) called HMV. Eventually, due to my complete lack of interest in school, school became part time and the record store job that I loved became full time.

One night after work, I had just graduated from high school, and just turned 18, and it was the long weekend around the first of July. My manager from the record store took me downtown to this gay bar called The Roost. I had never seen such a thing. Being a small town, everyone was there. I mean drag queens, leather men, jocks, farmers. All in the same room. All dancing to the same music. With each other. It was like stepping into a new, spectacular and colorful world.


And the sound! I had grown up in the disco era, I had all the records by Donna Summer, Chic, Patrick Hernandez, Santa Esmeralda, Boney M, KC & the Sunshine Band, Sister Sledge, the Bee Gees, ABBA of course. But I had never heard music this amazing, and this LOUD, on what was reputedly a $10,000 sound system. All sorts of new music, like Tantra, Boystown Gang, Sharon Redd, Grace Jones, Sylvester. I adored electro disco like Patrick Cowley, Bobby O, Cerrone, the Flirts.


This was also the place I first heard Duran Duran, the song was "Planet Earth", they had a 12" single import from the UK. Duran Duran would come to be one of my all time favorite bands. To this day whenever I hear the 12" Night Version of 'Planet Earth' I am back in that night club.

But the song that I identify most with from that very specific time and place, is "Feels Like I'm In Love" by Kelly Marie. She sings, "My head is in a spin, my feet don't touch the ground," which describes exactly how I felt. God, I loved that song. And still do, now nearly thirty years later!

When I was still in school there was a very rogue band from Toronto called Rough Trade. The lead singer was a woman named Carole Pope, their music was so out there, so sexual, so provocative. Rumour around school was that Carole was a transexual. It later turned out that she was simply a lesbian (and was Dusty Springfield's girlfriend at the time), but either way, for us high school kids in 1980 it was a VERY big deal.


Their hit single at the time was "High School Confidential" and it was very vivid, and very sexual. Carole sang about a high school vamp, teasing all the boys, and there is a line in the song where she says, "she makes me cream my jeans when she comes my way." That was VERY titillating for us, and the radio version bleeped out the word "creamed" LOL.

The first drag show I saw, there was this guy who did that song and it blew my mind. He (she) was so amazing, so perfect, so sexual, so ambiguous! This was a couple years before Annie Lennox hit big. When I finally saw Rough Trade perform the song a couple years later it was actually disappointing! The drag queen was better than the real thing! But I bought all Rough Trade's albums and Carole Pope's solo albums and still love them. I wish there were more of them.

I still remember the first guy I went home with, that fateful evening, but how could I not! His name was Robbie, he had beautiful eyes, dark hair and stubble, and a hairy chest (and a huge dick) and he was the most gorgeous thing I had ever seen. The next day all my friends from school were calling me on the phone to get the scoop. Yep, I'm gay! (no cover of Time magazine for me, though).

Rod
Los Angeles

Crazy Heart screening with Jeff Bridges

I went to a screening of 'Crazy Heart' tonight in Hollywood, followed by a Q&A with Jeff Bridges; it was GREAT. Jeff Bridges was amazing in the movie. VERY similar to the Wrestler, in story and performance and type of movie. Except this one is about an alcoholic faded country singer, modeled after Merle Haggard (according to the director) but looking astonishingly like Kris Kristofferson and/or Waylon Jennings. Jeff Bridges does his own singing. He should definitely be nominated, his performance is utterly devastating. Maggie Gyllenhaal was also at the Q&A, as well as the director and writer.


Jeff signed my Fisher King laserdisc (previously signed by Robin Williams and Terry Gilliam). Click on the small picture to see a larger version, note: Terry signed on Jeff's face. Robin signed in the middle. Jeff looked at it and, after consideration, signed on Robin.

The movie has a 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.


A bit of a cluster this weekend at the box office for me

The Princess and the Frog, a must see


A Single Man, I attended a screening a couple weeks ago, Q&A with director Tom Ford, I can't wait to see it again. The oscar race for me is between Colin Firth, Jeff Bridges and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (from 500 Days of Summer).

The Lovely Bones, which I'm only 2/3 of the way through the book so must finish before I see the movie. The movie can't possibly be as engaging as the book (are they ever?)


They are screening the new movie 'Uncertainty' on Friday and Saturday at 7:30 at the Fairfax theatre. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is doing a Q&A after. I want to try and get his autograph on my 500 Days of Summer poster (my favorite movie of the year) but I'm also interested in the new movie.


Anything else?





Rod Reynolds
Los Angeles CA USA

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