DOGFIGHT

Watched this movie tonight on TCM. Hadn't seen it since it came out in 1991, when it had a deep impact on me. It takes place over one night in San Francisco in 1963 with a coda in '66. It gets a few things wrong, but they're minor compared to what it gets right about the time and place and four newly minted marines on a one night leave before shipping out to Viet Nam, not yet the total morass it would become.

It stars River Phoenix in what must have been one of his last films, and Lili Taylor in one of her first films. I fell in love with her the first time I saw it and again tonight. I joined the military in 1962 and got out in '66 and spent time AWOL in Frisco in '62, so it resonates. I wasn't a marine and I didn't go to Viet Nam, but I did end up marrying a woman I'd only met in person once four years earlier, who had a sightly deformed face, which also resonates with the plot.

It's a powerful little movie with two powerful performances, at least, and well worth seeing.

YEP (OR "YUP" IF YOU PREFER)

COMING OUT

They say it's National Coming Out Day, so here's another short version of my story. I "came out" when I was 29 in February of 1972 in DC as "gay" though I preferred the term "queer" or "pansexual" (though I was the only one I ever encountered using that term then) and others labeled me "bisexual" because I continued to have relationships with people who identified as "women" (cis, as they now say, and trans et al.).

I also called myself "a sissy" and still do,  and "a thug" though I don't say that anymore. And a "punk" (before that was a thing) "and an intellectual" (rarely say that anymore). I could go on. I like the term "fluid" because I got in touch back then with my feminine side in a big way (wore dresses and clip on earrings etc. out in public (to make a statement, but I also enjoyed the way it felt and looked). I embrace all the categories that keep being named, both in me and in others, and am grateful for how full it has made life. 

TERMINATOR: DARK FATE

 
Took a break from current events to watch TERMINATOR: DARK FATE and was glad. The usual preposterous plot, but the acting was a treat. Linda Hamilton back as Sarah Connor and why she hasn't been seen in more movies besides this franchise is one of those Hollywood mysteries; she's not just a great action star, she's a really good actor. Arnold makes an appearance too, but the movie belongs to the three women (Mackenzie Davis and Natalia Reyes are the other two) who all should be starring in action flicks from now on. It came out last year but seems much more relevant post-covid, unfortunately. 

23!

 My youngest, Flynn, turns 23 today. Here's some photos of us over those years:

c. 2002

c. 2003

two shots on a movie location taken by the great movie stills photographer and friend Robert Zuckerman c. 2005

2005 photo by Jamie Rose I believe

c. 2006 at a skateboard competition

c. 2007 at a poetry reading at NYC's KGB club, taken I think by his Aunt Luloo

c. 2010

Occupy Wall Street 2011

2012

c.2013

 2014

c. 2016

2017

2018 election

c.2019

2019

2020

HAPPY B'DAY SIS

today is my sister Irene's birthday (83 I think), the brother between us died as an infant so she was the one of my five then living siblings I grew up with who was closest in age to me (we two are the only ones still living)...here we are in front of our father's home repair shop (1954?) and a more recent photo of her (and her handiwork..

Partial shot of the 1979 KOFF magazine naked poets calendar showing partial 37-year-old me posing among other poets. To learn more about this and the fabulous writer folks Johnny Stanton and Elinor Nauen who wrote some of my favorite books, check out this interview with them: here.