“My Puss” is now a music video:
“My Puss” performed by Maureen and Angela
lyrics by Margaret Cho, Diana Yanez and Kurt Hall
music by Kurt Hall
directed by Margaret Cho
shot on location by Lorene Machado
featuring Margaret Cho and Diana Yanez as Maureen and Angela
also starring Kurt Hall, Princess Farhana, Ian Harvie, Nancy Kissam, Vivian Marie Varela, and Kara Stephens
cameo by Gudrun
Finally, the new video from Kelly! This one is going to rock you - seriously!!
…and check out my cameo:
Kelly is fucking hottt!!!!
Here’s a fantastic video from the always amazing Dresden Dolls…
From the mighty WFMU, my husband’s favorite radio station and important culture resource, here’s some really good music for a summer night on Fire Island: The Weekend of a Hairdresser
I am really in love with this kid Mickey Avalon. He is amazing and he has a song on his record called “my dick,” which i have been playing constantly. I decided to write a tribute song called “my puss” and I dedicate it to him…
“My Puss”
My puss, the gates of heaven
Your puss, closed seven eleven
My puss, spouting genius rhymes
Your puss, gets help from the march of dimes
My puss, is hot and ready to please
Your puss, is riddled with disease
My puss, has a myspace page
Your puss, all yellowed with age
My puss, cause major erections
Your puss, rigged the election
My puss, is the best on the block
Your puss, invaded Iraq
My puss, is fine so I flaunt it
Your puss, is so old that it’s haunted
My puss, make me all kind of money
Your puss, tends to smell kind of funny
My puss, did a monologue
Your puss could probably hide a log
My puss, would be pretty if it showed
Your puss has its own area code
My puss, calms the savage beast
Your puss, infected with yeast
My puss, is a hell of a dame
Your puss, outed Valerie Plame
My puss, is so tight and hot
Your puss, has a parking lot
My puss wet like hurricane Katrina
Your puss couldn’t even get help from FEMA
My puss won a Pulitzer prize
Your puss is enormous in size
My puss is sexy in lace
Your puss, could rent out some space
My puss, would please the hardest banger
Your puss, is like an airplane hangar
My puss, is keepin’ it real
Your puss, invented the wheel
I want to hear about yours!!! Write in with your genital rhymes and I will post the best ones!!!
Please check out the new music video I directed for “Fomer Miss Ontario” by “The Music Lovers.” Hosted at YouTube.
Shot on location at El Cid by Austin Young and Lorene Machado. Starring The Music Lovers, Princess Farhana, Bobby Pinz, Kelly, Vima and Margaret Cho.
“We Can’t Make It Here”
by James McMurtry
There’s a Vietnam Vet with a cardboard sign
Sitting there by the left turn line
Flag on his wheelchair flapping in the breeze
One leg missing and both hands free
No one’s paying much mind to him
The V.A. budget’s just stretched so thin
And now there’s more coming back from the Mideast war
We can’t make it here anymore
That big ol’ building was the textile mill that fed our kids and it paid our bills
But they turned us out and they closed the doors
We can’t make it here anymore
See those pallets piled up on the loading dock
They’re just gonna sit there ’til they rot
‘Cause there’s nothing to ship, nothing to pack
Just busted concrete and rusted tracks
Empty storefronts around the square
There’s a needle in the gutter and glass everywhere
You don’t come down here unless you’re looking to score
We can’t make it here anymore
The bar’s still open but man it’s slow
The tip jar’s light and the register’s low
The bartender don’t have much to say
The regular crowd gets thinner each day
Some have maxed out all their credit cards
Some are working two jobs and living in cars
Minimum wage won’t pay for a roof, won’t pay for a drink
If you gotta have proof just try it yourself Mr. CEO
See how far $5.15 an hour will go
Take a part time job at one your stores
Bet you can’t make it here anymore
There’s a high school girl with a bourgeois dream
Just like the pictures in the magazine
She found on the floor of the laundromat
A woman with kids can forget all that
If she comes up pregnant what’ll she do
Forget the career, forget about school
Can she live on faith? Live on hope?
High on Jesus or hooked on dope
When it’s way too late to just say no
You can’t make it here anymore
Now I’m stocking shirts in the Wal-Mart store
Just like the ones we made before
‘Cept this one came from Singapore
I guess we can’t make it here anymore
Should I hate a people for the shade of their skin
Or the shape of their eyes or the shape I’m in
Should I hate ‘em for having our jobs today
No I hate the men sent the jobs away
I can see them all now, they haunt my dreams
All lily white and squeaky clean
They’ve never known want, they’ll never know need
Their shit don’t stink and their kids won’t bleed
Their kids won’t bleed in their damn little war
And we can’t make it here anymore
Will work for food will die for oil
Will kill for power and to us the spoils
The billionaires get to pay less tax
The working poor get to fall through the cracks
So let ‘em eat jellybeans let ‘em eat cake
Let ‘em eat shit, whatever it takes
They can join the Air Force, or join the Corps
If they can’t make it here anymore
So that’s how it is, that’s what we got
If the president wants to admit it or not
You can read it in the paper, read it on the wall
Hear it on the wind if you’re listening at all
Get out of that limo, look us in the eye
Call us on the cell phone tell us all why
In Dayton Ohio or Portland Maine
Or a cotton gin out on the great high plains
That’s done closed down along with the school
And the hospital and the swimming pool
Dust devils dance in the noonday heat
There’s rats in the alley and trash in the street
Gang graffiti on a boxcar door
We can’t make it here anymore
The terrible Iraq war continues, for three years now, and Bush won’t bring the troops home. Isn’t that typical of a straight man – unable to prematurely withdraw?
I performed at “Bring ‘Em Home Now!”- the massive anti-war concert at the Hammerstein Ballroom last night, and it was a lavish, star-studded sold out affair. I saw lots of people I love, like Alan Cumming, who wasn’t performing, just looking gorgeous, Peaches, who rocked the house and was incredibly sexy and awe-inspiring (and name checked me!), the great Rufus Wainwright (who is sooooo fine, this woman I was sitting next to swooned, “He will never love me.” I said, “He might. Maybe not in the way you are thinking of though…alas…we need a refuge from all this beauty…”), Fischerspooner, Steve Earle, Moby with Laura Dawn, Bright Eyes, Chuck D, Michael Stipe - all kinds of rock elite, proving that if the politicians can’t be bothered to save us, music surely will.
I did a set, then walked out into the audience to find my friends. I didn’t manage to see them, but I met a couple of guys from Iraq Veterans Against the War, Geoffrey Millard and Jose Vasquez. Geoffrey told me that he watched my dvds while he was over there, to keep his spirits up, which just blew my mind. They are courageous and deeply passionate about peace, having seen war first hand, and their work is vital to seeing an end to this madness. Everyone should check them out!
I sat in an overflowing box on the side and watched Cindy Sheehan, who brought the crowd to tears and fury. Through her activism, she has really helped turn this nation around, because she was brave and angry enough to question Bush, and we all share her frustration and grief over her son Casey. It makes me so mad, all this death and destruction, and for what?! It is still happening because the government cannot and will not admit that they were wrong. They cannot admit they were lying. We must hold them accountable. My enthusiasm and commitment to doing whatever I can to help end the war were renewed again and again. I am honored to have been able to participate at such a historic and powerfully moving event, and I hope that its impact will be felt around the world.
Gwen Stefani’s Harajuku girls have been getting lots of lip service lately, and I have to say I am confused.
I like Gwen Stefani, she’s alright. She is very stylish and has a nice voice and a really flat stomach. She is a rock star, and quite good at it. I am always impressed by her platinum hair and her incredibly organized steamer trunks. She keeps all her wristbands in separate zip-lock bags. I too have lots of nice things, but they are all getting moth eaten and mashed together in a pile on my closet floor. I could never understand the concept of a pair: of shoes, gloves, stockings, earrings, hearts, whatever. How can you possibly keep two separate and entirely whole things together in the crazy whirling world we live in? Anyway, Gwen manages to do it all with great panache.
Now she has 4 things all together, the Harajuku Girls. I want to like them, and I want to think they are great, but I am not sure if I can. I mean, racial stereotypes are really cute sometimes, and I don’t want to bum everyone out by pointing out the minstrel show. I think it is totally acceptable to enjoy the Harajuku girls, because there are not that many other Asian people out there in the media really, so we have to take whatever we can get. Amos ‘n Andy had lots of fans, didn’t they? At least it is a measure of visibility, which is much better than invisibility. I am so sick of not existing, that I would settle for following any white person around with an umbrella just so I could say I was there.
It is weird being Asian American right now, because I don’t exactly know what my place is. America is supposed to be for everyone, and people are supposed to treat me like I belong here, and yet you would never know that from watching tv or movies. I still get the questions about where I am really from. Then when I try to explain this feeling of invisibility to those whose every move and moment is entirely visible, they come back at me with, “Maybe Asian Americans don’t want to be in entertainment!” Yes he really said that. I just screamed, because there was no other way I could answer without hitting him.
Even though to me, a Japanese schoolgirl uniform is kind of like blackface, I am just in acceptance over it, because something is better than nothing. An ugly picture is better than a blank space, and it means that one day, we will have another display at the Museum of Asian Invisibility, that groups of children will crowd around in disbelief, because once upon a time, we weren’t there.
I am going to do radio this morning, and a bunch of work all day, but I am worried. David Bowie is recovering from a difficult health issue. He was hospitalized and had to cancel tour dates to deal with emergency heart surgery. The weight of this is too terrible to bear.
I had an emergency room episode not long ago, and it is highly unpleasant. Nobody from the TV show is there, and it is not fun. How terrible, when you are confronted with the frailty of the human body. I am ok, and I believe Bowie is doing well.
People around me are angry because they think that I did it on purpose, as if this is my way of retaliating against them. The world is a selfish place.
Anyway, pray for Bowie, pray for rock and roll, and if you are young enough to have perfect health, I salute you.
Why would you change your name to Esther? I am trying to understand, but it is hard. I would understand taking your husband’s name. If I had, I would have the same last name as Chuck D. I love my husband, and I love Chuck D., but I have worked hard for my name, and I tend to think that it is important to hang onto.
You were the biggest public force in entertainment in history. You have changed the definition of what it means to be a woman in the business. You have redefined the world, and challenged the system that would at turns adore you, vilify you, worship you, hate you. And you take it all in stride. I don’t wish to blame your religious beliefs, which I respect totally. I understand Cat Stevens’ name change, and that was entirely a decision based on faith. Yet I forget The Cat’s new name, and that causes problems when searching for his new material to download.
Prince changed his name to that symbol, then changed it to the Artist, and then to the Artist Formerly Known As Prince, and then back to Prince again, but that wasn’t because of religion, or that he was crazy. He was trying to escape being a slave to the music industry, and that his name had become a commodity, a product, and we all know he is much more than that.
But what does Esther mean? I admit, I hate the name, only because it is a common name for Korean American girls my age. There is one particularly heinous Esther that I grew up with, slightly older than me, who was a terror, but physically perfect in most every way. She made my life a living hell, until sometime in her early adulthood, she began to look like her personality, and she was not pretty on the inside. It was good revenge for the sake of girls who feel tormented by society’s standards of pretty, and how we are judged accordingly, and a kind of soulful justice for me, because she was such a bitch and completely deserved it. Perhaps I have too much baggage with that name to accept it. I don’t know the meaning of the word.
Madonna has changed meaning because of you. They used to be referring to the mother of God, but now, it is your name. You had the power to make the Virgin Mary fade into ecumenical history, while you remained the reigning Madonna, the mother of us all. I will still refer to your past and important self as Madonna, but I feel like I don’t know you anymore. Oh Madonna, Madonna, why hast thou forsaken us? I still love you as I ever did, but it is like you have killed off the warrior you once were. Perhaps being a warrior is impractical if you are a mother and a wife, but then again, you never have to drive a minivan or carpool, so you could still do both. You did everything. You were everything I ever wanted to be. I was the Madonna Wannabe that never stopped wanting to be.
Once, I was kicking a drunk and belligerent trannie out of my house, at 4am, after I found an ancient Buddhist relic in her magenta clutch. As she stormed out of the front door, she screamed, “You aren’t Madonna!” The comment stung, because I wanted to be you so badly. And I still do. I just don’t want to be Esther.
In 1983, Elvis Costello was an enigmatic deity in British pop music; Woody Allen-esque in his avoidance of the press. He didn’t do interviews and was never seen in public offstage. That year, at the height of his hermetic glory, he released an album, brilliant and acidly political, called “Punch The Clock,” which contained the single “Shipbuilding.” “Shipbuilding” is a sorrowful ballad about the Falklands War, and about Margaret Thatcher sending ships to fight while simultaneously closing down the shipyards. It is a wrenching, melodic plea for the working class, for the protest of the war, for the opposition of the government that solidly places itself against the people it purports to represent.
I am such a music geek, I actually watch all the extras on “The Old Grey Whistle Test” DVD, so I know all this arcane music history. Elvis was so intent on “Shipbuilding” reaching as many people as possible, he actually physically brought a copy of it directly to the head of a powerful music magazine in the U.K. and tried to get as much coverage of it as he could. The gesture was astounding, considering his status at the time.
Elvis has always been political. Once on Saturday Night Live, as a last minute replacement for The Sex Pistols, he awkwardly but gracefully - the Elvis way of doing things - stopped the performance of a second song, “Less Than Zero,” to play the song they told him not to play, “Radio, Radio.”
Radio is a sound salvation
Radio is cleaning up the nation
They say you better listen to the voice of reason
But they don’t give you any choice
’cause they think that it’s treason.
So you had better do as you are told.
You better listen to the radio.
I wanna bite the hand that feeds me.
I wanna bite that hand so badly.
I want to make them wish they’d never seen me.
That is some straight up thug genius. “Radio, Radio” was a massive hit, and a continual rousing crowd pleaser at his live shows. He sometimes closes with it, because it sums up what he has been doing his entire life. Doing whatever the fuck he wants. Sadly, the urgency of the message wasn’t the same for “Shipbuilding.” They are both incredible songs. These songs are addressing critical issues as relevant today as ever: censorship, and the senseless, inhumane treatment of the working class in times of warfare, both with beautiful, ominous lyrics and the lushly layered jangled but symphonic chamber music punk rock that makes Elvis like no other artist.
“Shipbuilding” was not a success, because the government sponsored radio wouldn’t play it, and it didn’t go far in terms of the charts, but it is a perennial favorite. It has been covered many times by diverse artists such as handicapped rock activist Robert Wyatt, Suede and Tasmin Archer. I would cover it if I could, but I cannot sing for shit, especially an important and potently moving song like this one and I wouldn’t be able to make it ‘ironic’ like at a Planet Hollywood ribbon cutting, with a beer soaked wife beater and Ray-Bans on, smoking a cigar.
It speaks volumes about how the government can subtly and easily disarm anyone in the media, shut them down without ceremony, no matter who you are, or which government you are talking about, or which war you are talking about.
I got confused when I found out that my new film, “Revolution” was being dropped from promotion by Westwood One because of ‘indecent, inappropriate content.’ I am nowhere near being Elvis Costello in pre- Falklands England in the early 80s, and could never dream of the very comparison of the body of work and the unbelievable talent that he possesses, but nonetheless, I feel like I might get there eventually. People telling me what to do, dismissively, unclearly, insults me, rather than scares me. It is less that I rebel, but I realize a bit more of my true nature, and revel in it. Ultimately, it is a good thing, for the silencing of a voice, only serves to make it louder later.
I would advise earplugs soon. To paraphrase the edict of another artist I worship - I will be playing at maximum volume.
Update 6/3/2004: Thank you Dana for the following correction:
Love your blog, love you.
But re your recent entry on Elvis Costello’s wonderful song, “Shipbuilding,” I wanted to point out one thing: The song was actually a collaboration (unusual for Elvis): lyrics by EC, music by Clive Langer. This was Langer’s favorite song he ever wrote, and is, as you point out, a masterpiece of pop protest music, so it just seemed like Langer should get some recognition for being its co-author, especially since your post is being linked to blogs far and wide. Here’s the story of the song.
–snip–
Dana Stevens
The small miracles keep you going which actually makes them big, in the scheme of things. In the despairing times that are now, these awful news reports and the endless onslaught of dehumanizing defeat and death, I am looking for a brief, sunlit moment that will illuminate me from within so that I can be a beacon of light for just a second, to help another look for a lost contact lens, or a lost life.
I have found it. The Apple music store shows videos! They can be downloaded and watched over and over again, and the one I am unable to stop playing on my computer screen is “Maps” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It’s my favorite song right now, and the magnetic charm of the lead singer Karen O, singing the sadly happy refrain “they don’t love you like I love you,” is the hook that catches on my mouth. I am singing along, even though my voice will never have her lush, burgundy tones. It doesn’t matter. Beauty like this is for everyone and meant to be shared.
The video is fairly simple, focusing most of the camera lens on Karen’s face, shrouded in the black drama of her shag haircut. The song passionately plays on as she rocks harder and the sweat from her brow starts to make passages through the mystery of her bangs, and slowly, her exquisite face is revealed. At a critical point, awash with the love that she has that no one else has for the unseen lover, a luminous beam, like a lighthouse flash, slowly passes from underneath her chin to the top of her head. That second of perfect, omnipotent human glory - the soul for once instead of the eyes - seeing - is all I need to remember that after all, the world, and life itself, is good. Better than good. No matter what else is going on, outside, inside.
“They don’t love you like I love you.” I think of all who might apply to this sweet yet profoundly barren declaration, and there are so many. Here are a few:
There is a man I will see soon, who waits for me, who is always there, who cares for me, coaxes me to eat and sleep because I forget but he never does, no matter how far I fly away, with whom I share everything but time, hours, days, weeks - what I wish I had more of;
The black dog and the blonde dog, and the regal tiny visitor dog/princess who arrives some months, when the queen mother is away, who are impolite and ill-mannered in varied and surprisingly adorable ways, as they have been raised to believe that they are children and not pets, who eat at the table, and allow us to sleep in their beds, who surround me in slumber so that I will not leave them again, as I always do, as I always must;
A sweet friend in sunny London, heroically rebuilding her life, brick by brick, who I can feel smiling as I write this;
An old friend, one I want to see all the time, but somehow never do, who never fails to send me into gasping, paralyzing fits of laughter no matter how much time and tide has passed between us;
The gentle and remarkable husband and wife, bound to one another by blissful, overwhelming joy, but remain separated by walls of steel, glass and injustice, who listen to my DVD together over a payphone, so they can laugh, like they are sitting in the same room, like they are right next to each other;
My mother, who gets stronger every day, feeling better than ever.
“They don’t love you like I love you.”
David Bowie is more than a star, more than a celebrity, more than an icon, more than anyone, anything, anywhere. Also, he is fucking cool. The coolest guy in the world. There is an intensity in the room that I cannot discern. I am only trying to get out. I cannot meet him. He means too much to me.
As I said, fame doesn’t impress me, I have been in the game for two decades, but David Bowie is more than the “famewhatsyourname” of the elegant and eternally loved intergenerational hit song. It is almost embarrassing. I can’t explain, but maybe you would try to understand if I explain properly.
If you took Beatlemania, the real one, not the touring company show, but the insane, truly historical and hysterical, Saint Vitus Dance of the newly born teenagers, happening on and around the weeks John, Paul, George and Ringo came to America in 1964, and you boiled all those tears and screams and enthusiasms of the countless girls trying to hide in laundry bins and pose as room service carts, and made it into a tincture, strong as plutonium, then injected yourself with it, mainlining all that worship and admiration and fan clubs and love and ecclesiastical bliss - but remembering that it wasn’t about The Beatles, but about David Bowie - not that I do not absolutely love The Beatles, and have had life changing moments with one or two, but I will tell you that another time - then you might get an idea of how much a freak I am about the cat from Japan. If you felt in my veins what I felt right then, you would understand. You would make that the moment you would want to capture and hold in your heart forever, into all of your next lifetimes, into heaven, over the river and over the rainbow. Your future self would wake from dreams of this moment, not knowing why, but ever and forever replaying itself into infinity.
Marilyn Manson is talking with a mad passion. He loves David Bowie, maybe a little like I do. He says that he proposed to Dita with the song “Be My Wife” and that he listens to “Diamond Dogs” right before he goes on stage. Dita smiles and winks at me in the corner. She is beautiful beyond words, with her jet black hair and white, translucent skin. I am convinced she is part woman, part orchid, a hothouse flower that wears couture and will be married to rock.
David is looking at me, and smiling, stealing looks out of the corner of his eye. He is stunning. His beauty is relentless and alarming. Fresh from the concert hall’s Byzantine corridors - I wonder if he uses the showers that are always back there.
I never do. I emerge out of the bowels of the dressing rooms to the green room, the fans waiting in annoyed anticipation, and then disappointment, as I arrive, sweaty and makeup running everywhere, friendly and too small for them to believe that it is actually me. When I receive people, I greet them quickly, so that I might leave the theatre quickly, and go to bed. I am no diva. I will sign every autograph I am asked for, and I love and adore anyone who will wait around to meet me, talk to me, but I cannot imagine that I am really that interesting, especially after talking about myself onstage for hours.
But here it is a different story. This time, I am the fan. The biggest fan. My heart will burst out of my chest in a moment. His eyes dart towards me, there are others to talk to, but he keeps looking. Smiling. He is magnificent. Time hasn’t changed him, not a bit, not at all. Tears are running down my face and here it is, the moment that I wish I could play over and over again, when I die. When it is all said and done, and I have reached the “Afterlife” set, and the crew is setting up the green room just like it was. They have hired an actor to look like David Bowie, and more to play the supporting roles of Ava and Dawnne, Marilyn and Dita, Nadir - the tremendously helpful tour manager, Coco Schwab - yes THE Coco Schwab. David reaches both arms out to me. His hands are warm, and he holds my face. He kisses me on both cheeks and says my name. He smells like violets.
There is more, but there is a show I must to do tonight, and there isn’t time to say all I want to. Some things, you need to keep to yourself anyway, because they are yours. Sometimes when you talk about them, they cease to be yours. Some things, I want to hang onto, I want to hang onto myself. These are my precious gems, my memory is my jewelry box, and the twinkling ballerina does a pirouette whenever I open it.
