INTERNATIONAL TRANSGENDER DAY OF VISIBILITY

In honor of International Transgender Day Of Visibility, here's a photo of the first Transgender woman I had a crush on, Candy Darling (R.I.P.), and a more recent and still living icon of Transgender courage, power, and poise, Janet Mock.

KIND OF

AND

my two oldest kids, Caitlin and Miles, in the early 1980s, our early years in California

A favorite photo of me and my youngest, who is 21 now so I'm guessing this was about 11 years or so ago at a reading I was doing at KGB Bar (with Terence Winch) in NYC (photo probably taken by Star Black). Oh to be in my sixties again.

AQUAMAN

AQUAMAN made a lot of money. After watching it the only conclusion I had was that Jason Momoa is so damn charmingly appealing that his screen charisma and magnetism that kept me sticking around through one of the most badly written, directed, and edited (and scored) movies in recent memory, overwhelmed good taste, or any taste.

If anyone watching this flick has any idea of who's who in any battle scene or why a viewer should care, don't let me know cause too late. I love Mamoa and hope to see him in better vehicles for his star qualities. I feel like he should switch to whoever managed The Rock to his series of predictable but at least enjoyable movies.

And what did they pay Nicole Kidman and Willem Defoe to add their star quality to this giant bungle. And poor Amber Heard, miscast and outmatched by those three. And how unwoke is having the only "black" characters be the evil criminals?! And et-endlessly-cetera. Deeply disappointing for this viewer.

ANOTHER LIST!

My post-brain op complete absence of my compulsive list-making seems to be abating almost ten years later as this morning I woke up and involuntarily started making a list in my head of favorite women writers, here's what I came up with (and I'm sure I'm leaving out many, including friends, so please feel free to make suggestions for additions, but this is still amazing, to me), I alphabetized it too (mostly in my head as I was doing it):

Angela Lockhart Aronoff
Barbara Barg
Anne Beatts
Eve Brandstein
Lee Ann Brown
Theresa Burns
Kate Chopin
Lucille Clifton
Wanda Coleman
Nana-Ana Danquah
Ann Darr
Tina Darragh
Yvonne de la Vega
Jane DeLynn
Emily Dickinson
Rachel E. Diken
Diane di Prima
Lynne Dreyer
Maggie Dubris
Elaine Equi
Mindy Thompson Fullilove
Joanna Fuhrman
Martha Gelhorn
Barbara Guest
Bobbie Louise Hawkins
Susan Hayden
Barbara Henning
Caitlin Lally Hotaling
Deak Hotaling
Mello-Re Houston
Zora Neale Hurston
Patricia Spears Jones
Beth Joselow
Stella Kamakaris
Martha Winston King
Joanne Kyger
Lee Lally
Annabel Lee
Audre Lorde
Phoebe MacAdams
Bernadette Mayer
Lady Murasaki
Merilene M. Murphy
Eileen Myles
Elinor Nauen
Alice Notley
Paula Novotnak
Maureen Owen
Trace Peterson
Holly Prado
Margaret Lally Queenan
Muriel Rukeyser
Jean Rhys
Adrienne Rich
Jamie Rose
Sonia Sanchez
Maria Sarrano
Ally Sheedy
Patti Smith
Gertrude Stein
Hedy Straus
Cecilia Vicuna
Diane Ward
Carrie White
Rebecca Wright

CHUCK LA VALLEE R.I.P.

I knew Chuck before he was a music industry success. We met in 1983, just a year after I moved to L.A. when I was forty-one and he was just out of his teens and getting his life together after some rough years. We worked together on a play (me one of those on stage, him backstage, as I remember it—am I getting that right?). He was a striking looking young man with a wise ass sense of humor and a dedication to his friends.

I wasn't a close friend, but when we ran into each other over the years it was always a treat. The guy was funny and for real. Last time we connected I think it was over FaceBook, before I made my last trip to L.A. for a reading this past December. I didn't know about the struggle he'd been going through with his cancer and he was so sweetly apologetic about not being able to make it, I felt like a dunce for even bothering him about it.

My heart goes out to his family, and to all who knew him. May he rest in the kind of joy he brought to the world.

[PS: Here's a link to the Billboard obituary.]