Låt den rätte komma in

I just saw the Swedish vampire movie Let the right one in. It is beautifully haunting, set in winter in a bleak Stockholm suburb in the early 1980s and tells the strange love between a young boy, Oskar, who is the target of abuse by school bullies and a young vampire girl, Eli, played by the wonderful Lina Leandersson. The movie manages to be a romantic tell of early adolescent love set amidst serial killings and horror. It certainly isn't Twilight. It reminded me of when I lived in a similar Stockholm suburb, Taby in 1984 and then went to high school in an industrial company town farther north, Sandviken. The same endless, white grey silent winter days that quickly gave into tonight, and nothing seemed to happen. The world seemed to have slowed down and you felt that you were far, far from anything that mattered. The director managed to capture young love and the bleakness of life in a winter in Sweden c. 1980.

your very own Obamicon

silly fun for all...create your own Obama-style poster obamicon http://obamiconme.pastemagazine.com/

working-class queers writing

Still Blue Project blog is "more writing by for and about working-class queers". Submissions include fiction, essays and poetry by or about working-class queers and queer life and include an essay on gay rodeo in addition to fiction and poetry. Check it out at http://stillblueproject.blogspot.com/ and contribute.

Tammy Rae Carland

Another artist to come out of the Pacific Northwest and The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA., Tammy Rae Carland (www.tammyraecarland.com)produced seminal queer zine I (heart) Amy Carter in the 1980s in addition to designing album covers for several punk bands including Bikini Kill. A photographer who also works with video and other media, Tammy Rae is a professor at California College of the Arts. Her work and writing have appeared in Raygun, Time Out, The Village Voice and have been reviewed in Spin, The Wire and The New York Times. I (heart) Amy Carter can be read at the fantastic Queer Zine Archive www.qzap.org

Sao Paulo days and nights

Photo by Cristiano Mascaro
I just returned from Sao Paulo. How strange it is to go back to a city that used to be home for so long as a tourist or for a short visit. It makes me see the city in a new light, with blinders down since you no longer feel obliged to try and make excuses for it. Sao Paulo is an ugly city and that makes it all the more interesting, in a way since it is a city that does not captivate you with its beauty but rather with its energy. It is a hard city to be a visitor in, perhaps an easier city to live in. You discover certain buildings that are favorites, restaurants, bars, stores, nights out. But, I cannot help but think that it is a city that could be more than it is. I am always amazed that a place that is so wealthy, dynamic and, compared to most other Latin American cities, cosmopolitan, could be so lacking in basic urban services and could treat its residents so poorly. It is a city with exclusive shopping centers that are promoted in ads with Sarah Jessica Parker but almost no democratic urban space. Paulistanos love to compare the city to others, but it somehow feels neither here nor there, a city lacking an identity of its own, which at times is also its charm.
After traveling to other cities that have faced what seemed like insurmountable problems, such as Bogota, and that have managed to make improvements in city life for many residents, I realize that having decent politicians and administrators makes an enormous difference. Sao Paulo lacks in either. Most Brazilian cities do. Sao Paulo is the prize every politician is after in order to become governor of the rich state of Sao Paulo or president of Brazil. And none of them seem to particularly care to be mayor of the city. It's a shame, it is a city that deserves so much more.

os gemeos

Sao Paulo graffiti artists Os Gemeos, Nina, Nunca, Finok and Zefix have created a 680 sq. meter mural in downtown Sao Paulo after the original graffiti by Os Gemeos was painted over in 2002 during Sao Paulo's "Clean City" campaign. As Nina puts it: "Up to what point is art dirt that needs to be erased through a Clean City Law? Art dirties the city? Sao Paulo has no horizon, only buildings. And they are grey, yellow or white. When we put color onto the walls, we are opening up the horizon".

http://www.lost.art.br/muralsp2.htm

the revolution is my boyfriend

I just watched "The Raspberry Reich", Bruce LaBruce's 2004 homo-terrorist spoof of radical chic (or agit-porn!). It's great fun and worth buying the dvd just to hear German Marxist Leninist sexual revolutionary Gudrun (Susanne Sachsse) and her modern day far-left accomplices shout out lines like "Join the Homosexual Intifada!", "Put your Marxism where your mouth is!" and "Heterosexuality is the opiate of the Masses!" The acting is awful (other than Sachsse), but who cares with lines like that? La Bruce's gay zombie film "Otto; or, Up with Dead People" is now playing in San Francisco and coming to theaters near you (or on dvd if you don't live near a theater brave enough to show it).

www.theraspberryreich.com

www.brucelabruce.com

http://www.ottothezombie.com

MIA in NYT

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/arts/music/30mcdo.html?ref=music)
NY Times article on Churchill's Pub and Miami's rock scene: "In South Florida, Tropical Bohemia in the Making."

Miami Jewish Film Festival

The 12th Annual Miami Jewish Film Festival runs from January 24 to February 1 in venues around MIA. Films include The Fire Within: Jews in the Amazonian Rainforest by Lorry Salcedo Mitrani. The film documents the tiny Jewish community of Iquitos, Peru and the descendants of Jewish and non-Jewish Peruvians in the Amazon who choose to convert, At Home in Utopia by Michael Goldman on the mostly Jewish working class Bronx Co-ops, and Mushon Samona's Vasermil, about 3 Jewish teen-age football players in Be'er Sheva.

spank zine

The folks at homo art zine Spank are putting out a "down & dirty" old school b&w zine and looking for contributors. Their post on Facebook:

"We may not have told ya but when we were printing our last issue we got turned down by not one but two printers who couldn’t handle our homo art content. It was pretty disappointing and frustrating considering how freakin mild the SEX factor was. No penetration and hardly any full-frontal exposure. We’re putting the big middle finger to the man this month and putting out and old school down-and-dirty black and white homo zine with all the dirty stories, filthy photos, and erotic art we can find. So, send us your art, you’re stories and anything else that’s giving you a woodie right now. Email us at spankparty@gmail.com by Jan 31. Will distribute the zine at our Spank SEX party (aka Smell My Finger) at The Hose in Feb."
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=49129290372

happy MLK day

Bayard Rustin: American civil rights leader.

Angela Davis: American civil rights leader.
For volunteer opportunities in the MIA go to http://www.handsonmiami.org/

Alice O'Malley

Alice O'Malley's work can be seen on Isis Gallery's website http://www.isisgallery.org/ Including her book "Community of Elsewheres" with photos of downtown Manhattan artists and performers from the 1990s such as Antony, Page, Dean Johnson, Kenny Kenny and friends of the photographers.

GB Jones "Lollipop Generation"

K.C. Klass and Jena von Brücker in "The Lollipop Generation", photo taken onset by Johnny Noxzema
http://www.youtube.com/user/GBJonesTown
For a glimpse of the trailer to Toronto-based artist, filmmaker and musician G.B. Jones's epic underground film The Lollipop Generation, which will be showing on Saturday, January 24th at 8 PM at Hallwalls in Buffalo, NY. For more information:http://www.hallwalls.org/media-arts.html

The film took around 15 years to make and stars Jena von Brucker, Mark Ewert, Jane Danger, Vaginal Davis, Calvin Johnson, Joel Gibb and many others. Music includes The Hidden Cameras. GB Jones used to play in Fifth Column and founded queer punk zine J.D. with Bruce LaBruce. Her art work was recently featured in an exhibition with Joel Gibb at Exile Gallery in Berlin.

Sweat Records

After moving to Miami six months ago I finally went to check out Sweat Records and was glad I did. I don't know what took me this long. It is a record store, coffee shop and community center in one. I bought two old 45's from Team Dresch and Fifth Column and two zines. They have a good selection of vinyl, CD's, books and music and art zines you can find nowhere else in Miami. And, a welcome relief, they are really nice and the store is located on the edge of Little Haiti, a neighborhood that could not be further from South Beach and, in fact, feels like...Haiti. It makes a great Saturday day outing, or any day. Their website is http://www.sweatrecordsmiami.com/ and it is a good way to stay abreast of local happenings.

the best of 2008

"I am a fascist pig" 1985, pencil on paper. Artist GB Jones

Here's a list of some of my favorite things of late.

1. Moving back to US after 8 years living in Brazil and London (and missing the entire Bush presidency)
2. Discovering the good in Miami (Wynwood gallery district and parallel Art Basel events, community center Sweat Records in Little Haiti, 90.5 FM, biking and tennis all year)
3. Alice O'Malleys photos of artists and performers from the Lower East Side in the 1980s and 1990s, published in the book Community of Elswheres by Isis Gallery, http://www.isisgallery.org/artists/alice_omalley.html
4. G.B. Jones's film The Lollipop Generation premeiring in Toronto, 15 years in the making. I can't wait to see it. And her artwork.

5. Writing again
6. Family, friends (including ones from decades ago) and feeling like life does really come full circle, sometimes and in small ways
7. Working for a Nuclear Free City's Businessmen & Ghosts release- released in 2007, but new to me
8. Milk and the new lgbt activism after Proposition 8 passed
9. Learning to deep sea dive in Colombia and saying good-bye to Brazil at my favorite out-of-the-way beach town
10. No more Bush.