Leigh Bowery was a genius

Leigh Bowery, according to Wikipedia, was an "Australian performance artist, club promoter, actor, pop star, model and fashion designer." I saw a documentary about him once and fell in love with him. He did things like no one else.

This man was a monumental creative genius. Each night he'd go out to a club, dressed in a new outfit of his own design. He did this every day! And the designs, as you can see from these photos, were startling. He carved out new territory in his final years in a mad, years-long design-a-thon, never stopping, always producing, day after day. He paved the way for many artists and fashion designers who followed, among them Boy George (who copied many of his looks) and Alexander McQueen, who certainly fed off Bowery's attitude.

I think Leigh Bowery was one of the all-time, mainline sources of creativity. Something wild was working its way through this man, and he shared it all with the world, showing them things they'd never seen or imagined. I'm just floored by the images he created. I wish he was still alive today. Dog knows what he'd be doing by now. Alas, he died in 1994, reportedly from AIDS-related causes. An oddly private man when not performing, Bowery reportedly didn't want people to be told of his death. He said, "tell them I've gone pig farming in Bolivia".

He was something. I mean, just look at the large-leg thing. It's brilliant. He wasn't limited by the structure of the human body. He made his own shapes, and they were something to behold. I adore this guy.

One last image. Ain't he great?

"Hugging Saint" comes to New York, hugs

The "hugging saint".

Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, known to her followers as "Amma," is one strange cookie. She just hugs people. That's it. Amma "offers words of encouragement and prayer to anyone who comes forward". The power of suggestion does the heavy lifting. All she has to do is chill and hug.

The woman attracts huge crowds and her followers are exuberant in their addle-brained praises. According to an article on NY1:

"When you see her and she hugs you, you just get rewards beyond belief," said devotee Erica Hayward.

"I was a little bit skeptic. I don't know if it was just love. It was a beautiful experience," said Patricia Muller, who was in tears following her embrace. 

"Its an uplifting healing, connecting of the heart energies," said devotee Jerry Adler. 

Indeed. Okay, so it's wingnut stuff for wingnuts. We knew that going in. But the unusual thing is that unlike the greedy, carnivorous, science-hating, gay-hating, religious "leaders" in our country, the hugging saint seems to do good things with the money people give to her, at least, according to her rep's statement:

Her spokesman said Amma's charity, Embracing The World, has given more than $60 million to disaster relief around the world. In her native country of India, she has taken in 50,000 orphans and provided some $60 million in medical services. In the United States, she feeds some 75,000 people each day through her soup kitchen.

I'd like to know what sort of nonsense she puts in the orphans' heads, and I'd like to see actual records of that disaster relief donation, if you don't mind. But let's say for the sake of argument that she's for real and has a heart of gold. Hell, maybe it's true.

She's still a snake oil salesman but if she makes a lot of money and helps people with it, I don't see any harm in people wasting their time getting hugged. It's all pretty innocuous (except for the needless spreading of germs, of course). You know, if the religious loons in this country acted more like this woman and less like feral animals, they'd be way easier to stomach.

July 4th reading

Pfc. Bradley Manning, American hero.

Glenn Greenwald has an excellent article up today about Pfc. Bradley Manning. On this day, we should celebrate those who risk all for freedom. On this day, we should celebrate Bradley Manning, a true hero in the most American sense of the term.

Enigmatic is good

You can't get much more enigmatic than the lyrics in this song by Nick Drake. It's called "Know". Here are the lyrics:

Know that I love you

Know I don't care

Know that I see you

Know I'm not there.

And here's the song.

Since you'll all be drunk today

I figured it was time to investigate the word "hooch". And there's nowhere better to look than "A Browser's Dictionary: A Compendium of Curious Expressions and Intriguing Facts" by John Ciardi. The words you see below are all his.

Hooch. 1. Rotgut. 2. Any hard liquor. [Hoochino, the American rendering of the name of a Tlingit tribe of Eskimos of southern Alaska, the name in its unpronounceable original meaning "the people of the strait of the grizzly bear."]

HISTORIC. No Amerinds had developed fermented or distilled drinks before the coming of the white man, though many then developed a disastrous taste for firewater. Under the Russian occupation, the Alaskan Indians seem to have acquired no knowledge of alcohol. With the arrival of the Americans in the mid nineteenth century, however, the Alaskan Indians became riotous drunkards.

The Americans ate sourdough bread. A bucket of sourdough starter, if left for a few days, exudes a slightly fermented liquid, a sort of noxious flat beer for which the Tlingits developed a taste; but "hooch" was yet to come.

Regulations forbade hard liquor on the military post, and a still would be too fragrant to conceal. An American army sergeant, therefore, scrounged the parts for a still, rigged up a cooker and coils in the Hoochino village, and showed the natives how to distill.

With access to sugar and molasses from the American trading post, and with a natural talent for throwing into the mash anything else they could find, the Hoochinos soon became manufacturers of a perilous rotgut which they not only drank in binges that involved the whole village and all nearby white men, but took to distributing through most of southern Alaska. In a memoir of Alaskan travels in 1880, John Muir tells of meeting a party of Chilcat Indians on a 200-mile trek to a Hoochino village to demand blood money for a Chilcat woman who had diet of drinking their rotgut.

Interview with Amanda Lear

This isn't a music video. It's Amanda Lear (Chinese Walk) being interviewed at the Dali Museum in Bruges, on Dutch TV. Although the interviewer speaks Dutch, Lear's responses are in English.

At the time of the interview, they seemed to be having an exhibition of her art at the Dali Museum. You see it behind her in the clip, and she speaks about the road she traveled as an artist. I found the clip interesting, especially the part where she recounts a story about her interaction with Salvador Dali. I thought others might enjoy it, too. It's not long: four minutes and 20 seconds.

Popey guy's makin' a profit again!

"Vatican budget emerges from the red." So says a BBC headline. The lede expands on this, adding "The Vatican has announced its finances have returned to profit after three consecutive years in the red."

Hooray!! Is this fabulous or what? The popey guy must be so pleased. I mean, just think -- despite the raping of so many little boys, they're turning a profit! Oh, happy days!

I hope the popey guy celebrates with several male street urchins tonight. He's turning a profit again! Oh, boy!

Offering thanks to Dolan this Sunday

The smiling face of evil.

I want to openly offer my thanks to Archbishop Timothy Dolan. I firmly believe that his vicious and relentless remarks against gay people and gay marriage literally brought about the passage of the bill to legalize same-sex marriage in New York last week.

Everyone heard the terrible things he said and they saw the viciousness of the man. Here is a higher-up in a trillion-dollar mega-church whose power spans the globe -- and yet he took the time to denouce the right of two people to formalize their loving relationship. And he made believe he was speaking for god as he vomited forth these words. It was sickening -- and people were watching.

This is a man whose church closed adoption agencies in areas that began to allow gay couples to adopt. They kept children in orphanages rather than allow gay couples to offer them a loving home. This single act reveals so much about the empty "morality" of the Roman Catholic church.

For years, Dolan has used his bully pulpit to rail against same-sex marriage. He has equated the love between two men or two women with polygamy and bestiality. And he always tells his listeners that these are not merely his words, but the wishes of a "loving" god.

People, including lawmakers, saw this evil man express hatred for an entire class of people for no intelligible reason. This made them think, though not the way Dolan intended. The foolish archbishop's words caused lawmakers to see the stark inequity before them, perhaps for the first time. And they couldn't countenance it so they voted for fairness and equality.

You did this, Timothy Dolan. And for this I offer you my thanks this Sunday. You lowered the status of the church with your rank, indefensible actions, while simultaneously raising gays to official status. Your vicious words actually helped gay marriage become a reality in our state. And know this: when you uttered those words, you also destroyed your church's credibility.

Keep it up, Timmy. Because if you do, there won't be a Catholic church in New York twenty years from now -- and that will be a very good thing.

A dog's life

A loving gaze.

This is my sister's chocolate lab, Candy. (Oh, and my sister Maria and her husband, Tom are in the photo too.) Don't blame her for the dog's name. Candy was adopted from a puppy breeding operation and the name came with her.

Not that she knows her name, mind you. I've come to love her but she's quite strange. Perhaps that's no wonder, given her history. It strikes me as creepy that she was forced to have litter after litter for over ten years. The poor thing. My sister adopted her two years ago and she's 12 now -- pretty darn old for a dog.

She's almost deaf and only able to hear the loudest noises. I'm also not sure how much she can smell. Since I live nearby, I walk her whenever my sister is off gallivanting. During those walks, she's like any dog, nose to the ground and wildly interested in certain scents. So she smells something.

But she can't find her way home. Isn't that what dog's noses help them do? Well, Candy's doesn't. We lost her a couple of times, once for several weeks. She just wandered off. Isn't every dog supposed to be able to find her way home after a bit of a wander? This one can't.

She's quite lame now in one of her rear legs, and even falls over at times seemingly for no reason. She can't walk up or down stairs, so we carry her. She's a wreck but what can you do? She's old. Still, she appears happy and doesn't seem to be in too much pain. Don't worry -- we'll have her euthanized if it comes to that. We won't let her suffer. But as I say, she seems happy -- very happy.

The dog lives for my sister. In the photo above (and at every instant in her life) she's gazing adoringly at my sister. She seems to have her confused with god. These two have been in perfect synch since the day she brought the dog home. Candy also loves my mother and, here's the shock, my mother likes her back! She usually pushes animals away, but this dog she allows in her bedroom. The dog's so sweet she just wins you over.

Dogs: each one is a treasure and this one's ours, even if she can't find her way home. We like her just as she is and we'll make sure she's comfortable. We have to. She's family.

Never mind

The other day I foolishly suggested that the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley might actually be presenting the real news. Well, they're not. Last night they glossed over American culpability for torture as if they were spokespeople for the government.

So move along. Nothing to see here. There's still no real news in America. Sorry about getting your hopes up. I was far too gullible in this instance.