Shakespeare---let's celebate his 450th birthday...

...and repost our piece about his 18th sonnet:

(So, it starts:)

Since we are a literature blog now, we have to do serious stuff, like posting some serious pictures, like. Like this one...

Tyson Beckford

...which brings to mind Shakespeare's 18th sonnet...

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. 

...(you don't want to look at the HTML code underneath)...

...but you might want to look at this clip, eternalizing David Gilmour, the singer of Pink Floyd, when he set the sonnet to his music, because that's what aging rock stars, like us, do, when, they, have, their, reflective, moments...





...and judge yourself.

Hold on, here are a few pointers to Sonnet 18:

Tuesday matinée (Jezza Smilez)

(Just a new picture from Jezza:)

(Click here for Jezza's website)

Time for a really bad poem

Upfront update: This is really getting embarrassing folks---we're getting so many hits for this post, possibly because people think: "This must be a good poem," but no, this really is a bad poem:

The Morning flame is on her mind

The up-and-up is hard to find,

For every dollar is a dime,

For summer solstice is a crime.

When moonlight strikes the heaven breaks,

Has nothing done, has eaten steaks,

Has drunken whiskey far to much,

Has left the sickbed not as such.

Halfdead she is and half alive,

Not given much to sinful strife,

How is she getting out of this,

Well, she is not, tell mighty Chris.

It's Easter morning here in town,

My neighbors dog won't show his crown,

But royals will, and that's enough.

(And you thought we were joking)

Happy Easter

Taurus (Jezza Smilez)

(Click here for Jezza's website)

San Francisco (13) --- A walk across the Berkeley campus (Teaser: "Freedom Fries")

University of California, Berkeley---market stand near the entrance

So we're visiting Berkeley across the bay and in particular the campus of UCB, because our first, still unfinished novel "Freedom Fries" is partially set there, with Pamela Woods (fictional) as the dean of Berkeley Law School, John Yoo (real; the legal brain behind the Bush/Cheney waterboarding policy) on the faculty of said school, and a harebrained subplot to abduct Yoo and somehow press him to confess to evil deeds, preferably not by waterboarding. In order to execute the plan we need to know where Yoo parks his car. Zack, Leona and Liz are co-conspirators, and Justin Bieber (fictional) is the school's vice dean; the plot is set in 2009, the year (or more precisely the week) that Justin Bieber, the Canadian singer, finally breaks through.

Not the parking lot of Berkeley  Law School ...

They need to know where Yoo parks his car; else the plan would not work. He has stopped using the parking garage in the basement, and the rumor mill---a defective tool in Yoo’s case with his few friends---the rumor mill has it that he is upset by hostile bumper stickers on his Lexus and scared of water-boarding related scratches.

... but the parking lot of the physics department (you can read it, right: it says: "Parking space reserved for Nobel Laureate.") 

Zack and Leona are at Barbara’s cabin, Liz is studying Supreme Court opinions, Jim is helping her, somebody has to find out. It is fairly urgent. She collects the secret phone---Zack could call any minute now---hides it in her bag, and leaves the office. She will take up position in the lobby, where she will play the Populist Dean. The populist dean is expected of her anyhow, occasionally, and her performance is not without merit (despite mixed reviews), especially on Friday afternoons when people want to go home early, an inclination she applauds with one hand and dismisses with the other. Anyhow, there she stands, expansive as always (not always, only since twenty years), dispensing kisses, Hi’s, compliments (“you look great”), compliments (“you look great”), feedback (“we missed you at the budget meeting, where were you”), more compliments (“where did you get that tan?”), as her academic subjects are drifting toward TGI weekend.

Handsheets for the erotic writer (6) --- from Catherine Millet to James Joyce

Not really a handsheet, but anyhow:

We haven't seriously researched this, but writing style is not different from finger prints or irises, every author has her own. And the spread of the distribution is wider, think of comparing the foot print of a dinosaur with the touch of an ant or the mark of a rabbit (even inside a genre, just compare erotic writers Susan Johnson and Ludmilla Sanders).

We had this idea to look at a few female erotic authors, their rendering of the climax, the crest, the moment, when he

brings you off with that extraordinary precision soon unbearable, sooner or later after having you mounted with the vacant expression of a mating animal, having you kept there for an hour with his extraordinary erotic fabulations, perhaps after he would have tried out the most acrobatic positions, and the most improbable substitutes (cucumbers, sausages, Perrier bottles, a policeman's luminous white trunchheon), and then he would suddenly become quiet a few moments before orgasm...

...and compose all this into a report of last night's meeting of minds and bodies of John ("Ben") Fletcher and erotic author Brigitta Haagen-Dasz in the second part of the Green Eyes.

Yes, along those lines, more or less, although we'd like it to be a bit more poetic.

Let's think.

Okay, let's proceed this way, let's try to apply a simple elimination filter, not really modifying anything, just eliminating unnecessary, extraneous, or otherwise irritating expressions.

Catherine Millet at home

So, for example, let's not employ the verbification (yes, it exists, and an ugly word it is) the verbification of climax.

By the way, all expressions above are from Catherine Millet, founder and editor of France's leading art magazine Art Press, you may have heard of her and her book The sexual life of Catherine M. It is---spoiler alert---extraordinary---her book, and there's this familiar clustering of superlatives that we will now try to tackle:

Tuesday matinée

(Bobby Jones)

Green Eyes (teaser) --- Germans playing Monopoly

Apologies, apologies, this has nothing to do with the Green Eyes, except that we played Monopoly once, with Sacha, the model for Jack Horn in the novel, and it ended in tears like this (I was Karl Marx)  (click to enlarge):


(find a few lines from the Jack Horn chapter underneath)

San Francisco (12) --- Bullit

While Chang and I were strolling through San Francisco yesterday, the conversation turned to the peculiarities of the street layout here, each street being its own turnpike, as it were, connecting A and B like Alpha Romeos would in the old days, no, wrong, we mean via the shortest route afforded by Euclidean geometry, straight, that is, straight, regardless of the third dimension---and the opportunities this affords to the cinematography of car chases. So here it is---you've certainly seen it a hundred times already---the car chase scene from Bullit, the 1968 movie with Steve McQueen:

It's Obama's fault

(Recent paintings by George W. Bush)

Monday matinée

(I listened to this, in Horowitz's interpretation, perhaps 500 times, so there you have it. My Horowitz was a studio recording; this is a bit slower, and it is somehow even more gripping.)

San Francisco (11) --- Camp Meeker(2)

More from Redwooood Country north of the Bay Area where we are staying during the weekend, thanks to an invite of Karen, our landlady in San Francisco, to her cabin in Camp Meeker.

Karen's cabin in Camp Meeker

Connubial bliss inside Karen's cabin

Sunday matinée

We rearranged the furniture at Karen's cabin a bit.

San Francisco (10) --- Camp Meeker

À la recherche du temps perdu...along those lines: how does one manage to arrive in San Francisco? We apparently can't make it stick. So we're now in Camp Meeker, 1:30 hours north of SF, in serious Redwood country.

Easy

The view from the terrace

We already had dinner at the Bistrot des Garçon in nearby Occidental. 

San Francisco (9)

Harvey Milk, former (and assasinated) gay mayor of San Francisco

(Another picture from the superb artist Tony de Carlo, whom we discovered lately)

Go here for the previous San Francisco post

Tony de Carlo

Tony de Carlo: "Bird Man Of The Desert", 18" x 24", Acrylic on Canvas, 2006

(We discovered another superb gay artist, Tony de Carlo; see right column for a link to his site)

San Francisco (8) --- Lufthansa flight 454 (reposted)

We posted this once before, a year ago, in a post "not about erotic writing," and in blissful ignorance of our future. So here it is again, and this time it is about erotic writing, at least in the sense that it is about us, and our flight into the world capital of erotic writing:



It appears to be difficult to arrive in San Francisco once and for all, this is our 8th post already, but anyhow. Watch the clip, it's fascinating.

Go here for the previous SF post, and there for the next.

San Francisco (7) --- Pitch-O-rama (1)

We arrive at San Francisco SFO (San Francisco International Airport, why SFO?) and the international press, the paparazzi ("paps"), the adolescent girls and boys, all of them, there's a riot. A blogger with 390,000 page views comes all the way from Europe and there's a riot. Well, no, sorry, that was Seoul, Korea, the airport, when we got mixed up with a charismatic baseball player.

So we feel un-famous and under-appreciated and seek consolation on the internet and find a page belonging to the San Francisco Writer's Conference. We send them a message about feeling un-famous and under-appreciated and get a prompt reply pointing us to an upcoming pitchfest of the Women's National Book Association San Francisco Chapter on Saturday in the Women's building around the corner from where we reside. It would be an opportunity to "connect." We procrastinate, then sign up via Paypal.

Spoiler alert: a pitchfest is about pitching manuscripts to agents and publishers, and we're in possession of such a manuscript, the Green Eyes, gay romance/erotica, easily the most topical subject when it comes to Women's Lib. We're not, however, in possession of  a printer here in our temporary abode, and the battery of the laptop won't live for longer than a minute when unplugged. So we don't have any material to take to the event, not even a calling card or anything that could get agents and publishers interested in our work. Plus, one of the participating agents, Andy Ross, has a post on his blog about this: he, Andy, would never go to a pitchfest, not as a pitcher at least, since he wouldn't survive the humiliation of being turned down by his colleagues. That decides the case. We will go, but not pitch. Perhaps there's enough in it for another short story. That's what failed writers do, they write about failed writers. Do your research.

We're apprehensive nonetheless, and it starts early, at 8 AM, and it rains, and we overtip the taxi driver out of sheer apprehension. We expect a crowd of young women, multi-faceted, multi-racial, done up in neo-Afro-look, i.e., all looking like Angela Davis waiving Angela-Davis-inspired manuscripts---waiving their manuscripts at us, balding, aging, failed writers of gay porn---think of a wind farm during a hurricane.

Angela Davis

Find a caption (Glenn)

San Francisco (5) Potrero Hill

Potrero Hill, that's where we reside, on 1229 de Haro Street. "Potrero" means paddock in English, and the place probably was a paddock before the city took over. The neighborhood is still Spanish (mostly).

1229, de Haro Street --- we're on the second floor, left (Chang in the left corner) 

Opposite side of the street

Health warning (Glenn)

Saturday matinée: Telegraph Road

Telegraph Avenue or Telegraph Road ... see previous post for an explanation.

San Francisco (4) Telegraph Avenue

We're in San Francisco now, which means that the first thing in the morning would be a trip to Telegraph Road, Oakland, CA, where Morning Glory is located, the KP-Asian Supermarket, where they sell Korean food.

The Korean supermarket on Telegraph Avenue

Oakland---you will possibly agree with us---has---or at least had---a notoriously bad reputation---because bad reputations are always notorious---especially next to San Francisco, the reputation---and now we know why.

What we didn't know at that point---or, more precisely, didn't remember---Michael Chabon's latest novel is set on Telegraph Road there---or Avenue---something about a record store and race etc.

Michael Chabon

And then we had a little connubial bliss with Chang---in the afternoon---who abruptly changed directions during a walk through the Mission District after a very brief verbal exchange (the bliss), and departed in the other direction, yelling a departing "f@@k you,  f@@k you," at us, so we went to the Castro district to find a new lover, and went into a bookstore to buy a new York Times, and the Staff's Choice of Book was Michael Chabon's new novel, and since Chabon is one of the new American authors we in fact did read---quite extensively by our standards---we picked up his new book and re-discovered---we had read a review---that it was set on Telegraph Avenue, whence the title of the book---spoiler alert---Telegraph Avenue. We feel---spoiler alert---part of new literary history now. Not yet Chang though, because I didn't tell him yet; we have, however---spoiler alert---reconciled.

Previous SF-post here.

San Francisco (3) Flight 370

Lets start with a picture:

 Malaysia Airline advertisement (as found on Facebook; perhaps you can explain to us why a normal Boing 777 has only two engines, instead of four)

Flight 370, that would be Malaysian Air, the missing plane. Not Flight 545 to San Francisco though, because that would be Lufthansa, our flight from Frankfurt.

You guessed right, our conspiracy theories would revolve around sex and crime, and our departure would be supposedly a real story (I mean, we would start with a real story), told by a stewardess (female flight attendant) who enters the cockpit---spoiler alert---never thought about this, no word is safe in English---and finds the autopilot on, and---spoiler alert---pilot and copilot in the nude, and in a significant embrace. They got fired, supposedly, the---no spoiler alert---fucking pilots. Perhaps they went on to work for Malaysian Air, and---spoiler alert (in the sense that the remainder of this sentence is real silly)---and had it in their contract that they would have to fly Flight 69 only. No, that's not what I wanted to say. I wanted to say that one fine day, namely on March 7---spoiler alert---that they forgot to switch the autopilot on.

Along those lines. In the meantime, let's marvel at the brilliance of our colleagues from the Huffpost blog, who use the following picture---spoiler alert

"I wonder where they are."

---to illustrate a post about the search for the missing plane.

Next SF post here. Previous SF post here.

San Francisco (2) ("Sex im Zeitalter seiner technischer Reproduzierbarkeit")

Right. "Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter..." Even readers of The New Yorker will know, this was Walter Benjamin. What they don't know, what even I didn't know at the time, I went to school with Walter Benjamin, sort of, in the sense that the house of his (Walter's) parents was located right opposite to my primary school in Grunewald, Berlin, Germany. He was born there. I didn't know since I didn't know about Benjamin at the age of 6 through 11, and because the plaque that informs post-nazi Germany about his birthplace had not been in place so soon after the war.

Walter Benjamin

Reader's of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung will certainly know (about Benjamin), Germany's newspaper of record, although a bit less than the New York Times (the record), because they (the Frankfurters) had been leaning a bit too far to the right (then). They sound more balanced now (the FAZ), (are you still there?) (nice, isn't it, running your own blog, no anal copy editor to deal with), the layout has changed (the FAZ's), and square miles of its tree-based newspaper space are now dedicated to large, pictogrammatical pieces of artwork so that Germany's post-intellectual elite doesn't have to read so much. The German sounds different, too, a bit more modern. What sounds surprisingly old-fashioned is an article in the last weekend edition of the FAZ about sex and the internet. I didn't keep the copy of the paper, so this is from memory (stupid). (See below for more about Ampersant's hyper-parenthesization).

San Francisco (1)

"We're on our way" (no, actually, "I'm on my way") was the sad swansong of an aging Phil Collins eight years ago. Well, we are on our way now, even arrived in San Francisco already, but stopped over in Frankfurt, Germany, at the Hilton Garden Inn of Frankfurt Airport, the Ikea among the Hilton brands. Right next to the entrance for the Hilton Garden Inn there's the entrance of the Hilton Frankfurt Airport, The Hilton among the Hilton brands, and both outfits share a common atrium, 11 floors high. We're sent up in Hollywood glass elevators to the 11th floor, to room 1126, and an atrium bridge sends us to the other side, the Hilton-hilton side of the atrium.

Not painted by Piero della Francesca

Everything is new here, including the smallness of a room that radiates the coziness of a mansarde of three-pane insulation windows 6 inches thick, and a fashionable bathroom design (if bathroom designs can be radiated (lol, (loller)))---a fashionable bathroom design of misleading tiles that look like hardwood but are made of materials from Mars (this sounds unintentionally old-fashioned but there's no way to salvage this sentence anyway).

We take a shower. Shower and bathtub are integrated, as usual in hotels, and our eye falls on the sink.

Now what?

Have you ever seen a sink like this? Yes. Have you ever seen a sink in this location, right at the center of the tub? Come on, it's not so difficult. It's all about sex, or at least foreplay. You understand if you ever tried in a traditional bath tub.





In the next post we'll hazard a mini-essay about sex and modernity, which, if it were written in German, would be titled "Sex im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit."

Go here for the next SF post.

Turtles all the way down

You'll figure this out yourself (2)

George Washington boozehound (reblogged)

Andrew Sullivan found this for us here: 

Indeed, we still have available the bar tab from a 1787 farewell party in Philadelphia for George Washington just days before the framers signed off on the Constitution. According to the bill preserved from the evening, the 55 attendees drank 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of claret, eight of whiskey, 22 of porter, eight of hard cider, 12 of beer, and seven bowls of alcoholic punch.

That's more than two bottles of fruit of the vine, plus a number of shots and a lot of punch and beer, for every delegate. That seems humanly impossible to modern Americans. But, you see, across the country during the Colonial era, the average American consumed many times as much beverage alcohol as contemporary Americans do. Getting drunk—but not losing control—was simply socially accepted.

Reality meets art (Glenn)

Find a caption (Glenn)

Find a caption

(In Seattle they have a sex cinema with a sign outside: "Veni, vidi, veni." Along those lines, how about "Fail, fame, fail?")
(Okay, just trying.)

Bank Kapi (2) (Mr. E.) (A year in shorts --- teaser)

Mr, E., yes, Mr. E., the mysterious blogger behind the brilliant blog 50ShadyGays has finished his book, and here's another teaser, the second part of the first chapter, titled "Bang Kapi." It's out, the book, it's on Amazon, scroll down for the link. (Artwork by Bob Bienpensant).

He is distracted and his eyes are searching for some stimulation and they come to rest upon the slender hips of our geeky-looking waiter. James’s eyelids squint a gluttonous moment of gratification, and in a hideously Freudian moment, his conversation ambles towards obscenity as he recounts the tales of his new lover’s sexual exploits.

“I love to feel his rock-hard cock inside me...”

I try very hard not to care, or even to let his words take effect, but there is something primal in imagining true horror. Already my overactive imagination has concocted a revolting picture of smooth, tanned skin greedily exploring the folds of James’s over-indulged rump. I bulk at the thought of his muscle-weak corpulence receiving the attention and the care of anyone, but why should I care? My prissy judgment says more about me than it does about him.

It strikes me that I am being hypocritical about this. In asking myself the question, “why would anyone share such intimate information with virtual strangers?” The irony is not lost on me. I have looked back at my own blogs, postings and articles, and I cannot fully understand my motivations for discussing my sexuality. Is it pure narcissism? Is it indulgence? I’ve not ruled these explanations out; however, I maintain that human sexuality is a natural aspect of our lives that frequently gets distorted. I feel to some degree that my sexuality has been hijacked. I’m not sure of the exact moment it happened, but all of a sudden, I felt the language of gay discourse no longer included me. It began to serve a privileged elite who publicly proclaimed their love and sought to marginalize the cruising that has, at its heart, an authentic engagement with the sexuality of men.

Why do we post this? (Green Eyes teaser: 500 million spermatozoa can't be wrong)

Because...





...we have a pretext, a clip alluding to Part I of the Green Eyes, Chapter 42 (500 million spermatozoa can't be wrong):   

An anchorman and an anchorwoman appear in the beaming studio and greet each other expansively against the backdrop of the police department’s parking lot. Assorted vehicles are still parked there, and Charleze (the local reporter), is still on location. "The top story today is so breathtaking, it is positively, absolutely, and definitively unbelievable," the anchorwoman (“Olivia”) enthuses, “Charleze has more." Charleze expansively greets anchorwoman (“Olivia”), who expansively greets back. Next to Charleze a man is standing whom we know already thanks to our interest in family blogs. Hunnsbruck is dressed this time, dressed to kill, you’d say, or at least dressed to advocate innovative punishments for police department homicides, so he’s emphasizing local roots with a light seersucker suit of modest stripes and cut. The reporter turns to the seersucker suit and introduces him as the youngest DA in the history of the galaxy: "When we arrived on the scene this morning," Charleze explains to Hunnsbruck, "having been alerted by vigilant members of the Georgia Beach community to the unsettling traffic on the lot outside the local police department, right here where we are standing, rumors were swirling that an officer has been shockingly shot dead inside and that an assistant district attorney from your office is implicated. Does the size of the CSI vehicle” (pan on the white-cubicled truck) “points to the size of the crime committed inside?"
“Splendid”—Maurice.
"Thank you for having me on"—Hunnsbruck.
"You are always welcome"—Charleze.

And now, in unison: “Thank you”—both.

A brief moment of recovery, Charleze catching some breath. "The word is, Sir, that Lieutenant Blake Jackson of the Georgia Beach police force was shot dead last night."
"Although I’ve never had a chance to meet him in person, I am convinced that he is, or was, a truly wonderful person. My thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends at this difficult juncture."

"We have to interrupt briefly for this message," Charleze informs Hunnsbruck, who gracefully cedes the floor to a risqué soda commercial with a curly-blond girl, the wind-surfer back of a hot male (only the back), and a soda bottle. When finally allowed back, Charleze and Hunnsbruck have obviously had a chance to follow the ad on their return video—so Charleze suppresses a giggle when asking Hunnsbruck: "Sir, this is a shocking crime, is it not,” (her left hand gesturing, digits splayed, dramatic nail-paint-jobs exposed, the right hand doggedly clinging to the phallic mike) “is it not a shocking crime when a trusted member of the local police force is shot dead while in full discharge of his duties. How do you feel about this?"


Are you still there? Then you'll possibly like the GREEN EYES. The first part is out now, available as Kindle book on Amazon, under this link:

"click"

Family material

In a bow to romantic romanticism, Bob Bienpensant has managed to produced a non-pornographic picture; behold:

Shaolin monks training session

How not to use dope

Make it full screen, stare at it for the duration of the forty seconds it lasts, the look elsewhere. Apparently, the Strobe-illusion tricks your brain to release the drug DMT, in small quantities, and for a minute thereafter you enjoy real hallucinations. The walls undulating, and stuff. Really works. Great. As if we had nothing better to do.

The view (of the slopes) again ...

...yesterday...

...and this morning.

I knew it, I knew it

(Glenn)

Hair by Brad Pitt (2)

(Let's see how many hits we'll get)

Crocodile hates model (Glenn)

Déja-vue

I was re-reading George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-four" in preparation of a review of Dave Egger's "The Circle," (Facebook as new totalitarianism), when this message from Tagged@taggedmail.com arrived in my mailbox:

To self-publish... (Glenn)

...or not to self-publish?

(Glenn sent the link to this picture, which is to be found on Walmart called, your photos are ready.)

The religious war is over

Bang Kapi (Mr. E.)

Mr, E., yes, Mr. E., the mysterious blogger behind the brilliant blog 50ShadyGays has finished his book, and here's a teaser, the first part of the first chapter, titled "Bang Kapi." It's out, the book, it's on Amazon, scroll down for the link. (Artwork by Bob Bienpensant).

I had descended with some trepidation. It felt like I was looking for justice, but here in Bangkok there is no justice, only karma. The motorbike taxi driver who had greeted me at the entrance to my condo was particularly feral, he had skin tight jeans and oil stained hands. He reeked of Thai Whiskey, cheap cigarettes and fingering. A heavy night weighed down on his eyelids, and I could see the morning sun was not his friend. He drove like a lunatic and decided to have an argument with a girl on his phone while we were speeding on the burning overpass. Now I am sitting in a soulless shopping mall, listening to a fat, old drunk who is dressed like a clown. He is talking and all I can hope is that this grotesque scene is merely a shadow dancing on the wall of my imagination.

“...You see it was the seventies and it was a whole different time back then...”

I’m not exactly sure why I had arranged this meeting with James, it is the third time that I have met him. I suppose I had become fascinated by the twisted turns of our conversations, I don’t know, I have always been drawn to the macabre. As he pours Whiskey from his silver flask into his paper Starbucks cup, I am still trying to figure this all out.

He’s talking again but I’m not really listening. I acknowledge the clangs of the dropping names which animate his anecdotes, but these people are meaningless to me. Who are they? It’s a list of notorious drunks who were all celebrated at some point for being, “such fun.”

James Farnham is now both spiritually and physically redundant, he does little more than consume in order to maintain a veneer of usefulness. He looks like something that might have knocked up Ronald McDonald’s mother at a traveling fair back in the 1960’s. Beneath his rubber mask and bright orange wig, his thinning hair is dyed sandy brown. As he removes the mask and the wig to drink his coffee, I cannot help wondering where the wig ends and his hair begins. He likes people looking at him. He absorbs attention along with everything else.

Bürchen again

We arrived yesterday. Here's a view of the main ski run.

Be yourself