vendredi 25 novembre 2011

WONDERFUL Fiona Cartledge interview, creator of SIGN OF THE TIMES in London speaks of late 70s - late 90s British Club Music Scene She Lived!!

FIONA CARTLEDGE GIVES US A SIGN OF OUR TIMES.....!!!!

ACID HOUSE WEAR MAKER AND INITIATOR, CLUB KID, PARTY-GIVER EXTRAORDINAIRE, DESIGNER TO THE ACID SCENE BRITISH CLUB MUSIC INDUSTRY....AND IN GENERAL,...FABULOUS GLAMOURPUSS AND SAVVY ENTREPRENEUR

Our dear long-time friend the wonderful and fun Fiona Cartledge, with whom Lala and I traveled to Russia with in the late 1980s, speaks brilliantly of her experiences in the Club scene in London and England in the 1970s until the 1990s.... she mentions our meeting in the 80s and a fashion show which was on an airplane of Virgin AirLines, a number of outfits and pieces which now are in my collection. She mentions my vintage Smile-y faces of that era I had and she built and catapulted her famous, über glam business SIGN OF THE TIMES from ..... hear her speak of the era, her innovations, the stars, the anecdotes and people who made the glamorous 1980s in London and England, a glamour she was so importantly implicated in creating.

http://soundcloud.com/pelirocco-platters/pelirocco-platters-22-11?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=facebook&utm_content=http%3A%2F%2Fsoundcloud.com%2Fpelirocco-platters%2Fpelirocco-platters-22-11&fb_source=message



Find Fiona's teenage club jewellery on FaceBook page; DOUBLE DICE

https://www.facebook.com/fiona.cartledge#!/pages/Double-DICE/251916374861259
from:


SOUNDCLOUD

Pelirocco Platters

jeudi 24 novembre 2011

INTRODUCTION: Excerpt NUMBER TWO from "My American Family - In One Era, Out the Other" by BillyBoy*


“BillyBoy*, artist and cocksucker” was, infact, a statement written at some point in bold Helvetica on one of my business cards. I am a cocksucker, that part was easy. Hard cock was always a real pleasure for my oral fixations, I was an abandoned child after all. The artist part however took a while to understand and develope. I was manufactured and came out on the market in the year 1960 on March the 10th. Double Pisces, extrême and psychic, créative, intuitive, if not focused on interested can be a wreck and highly, for better or worse emotional or if not dead cold indifferent. This story also is a bit of proof for the Chaos Theory they use in meterology. My birth, my adoption, is such a big fat and hard to understand story for me that to this day I have little to go on about my real origins, parents, family and even place of birth. Supposedly, it's Vienna, technically, it is address unknown. I have almost no recollection of actual beings, besides my in and out glamorous aunts and uncles (most were supposedly real, but all men were uncles, all women were aunts) and if my childhood memories could be compared to a sport score, it would be humans nil, objects and toys one hundred points. The title of this book, refers to the objects which became my family. I have such poor memories of my adopted parents, all I can recall them as is Female Parent and Male Parent. I know they must have loved me, they gave me so much. I am pretty sure I loved them, I think. I was born without roots of any kind.

Cocks, frocks and crooks, the wonderful lie of the 1960s, early in life there was to be a fairly quick introduction to a cavalcade of such. Thank you to the era I lived in. It was a peak moment for the 20th-century (a year in which the only drawback was that Howdy Doody was taken off the airwaves). I was literally, as Miss Diana Ross sang, a "Love Child" and it was the moment when the beatniks would become Wishniks and the next twenty, thirty, forty years would produce a culture (pronounced CULL-TYOUR) that would conservatively be called wacky, and influence the entire world for generations to come and turn everyone gay. As early as four years old I would, like a hell bent amoeba, absorb the Mr. Potato Head philosophy of the times and pounce and ingest anything that came on the idiotbox TV in the, as I paraphrase Harvey Fierstein, “fictional” city in New York State, where I grew up. The Flintstones, Gumby, Cecil (not Beaton, but a clearly homosexual green sea serpent in a relationship with an odd young boy named "Beany"), and Madison Avenue ad exec's imaginings (that would end up as animated films of cajoling phallic-symbol hotdogs and clitoris-shaped popcorns with smile-y faces at drive-in movies) were all blended together to become a memory that I call "My American Family". The sixties and American pop culture were very homo. It has been a love/hate relationship from the day I landed there.

I am quite sure that a number of people can admit to having been seduced at a young age by that colourful, plastic, young, and fresh World's Fair atmosphere of childhood in the 1960s and have not been able to shake it. I’m talking about the Western world, the occident, notably the USA and Europe. Some of the world’s leading young designers, artists (that word!), and writers have evolved their style from an era that was so vastly different from anything prior - not just in the amazing fast forward technological "achievements," but the mix 'n' match morals that went along with them. What we call fashion and culture today is thanks to some of those who grew up in the 1960s. Those morals. Well, at least they seemed like morals at the time - or were they only television commercials? It's so long ago, but, why, it seems like yesterday! The babyboom, likened to an atomic one, was an era of quirky perfection. It was the only era when a bourgeoise nightmare Barbie doll could have been invented and exist, when "those who think" were the only ones who were acknowledged as thinking beings. Barbie was a dangerous message for me. She fucked with my mind. For a long time. Where the rest of the unthinking world were, well, that was not discussed.

In spite of this unclear expression of morals, the advantage in it was the dream it gave the whole world, and the residue of this fantasy actually was turned a number of decades later into a true expression of a way of life - sometimes bitter, sometimes nostalgic and reassuring. The 21st-century generation of these former babyboom children, in spite of the drawbacks of the false images of perfection they were weaned on, can undeniably be seen projecting and reiterating these images over and over and over. Although the psychiatric term “neurotic” is no longer a valid definition of a pathology, I think the neurosis of the 1960s are still extremely well-felt and present in 21st-century behaviour, just worse thanks to internet and cellphones and text messages.

My earliest recollections, as a naïve and sortof gay Gerald Mc Boing-Boing, are those of Spic 'n' Span commercials, which I'd confuse with the opening of the Felix the Cat cartoon. "Your heart will go pitter-pat" was somehow received as "your heart will go Spic 'n' Span". And what did Spic 'n' Span mean? I suppose it was those biomorphic mirrory gleams around the smiling bust of Felix that, in their oppressive joy, I would imagine as the physical proof of cleanliness.

Cartoons are clean, it's true. Spic 'n' Span was the way everything should be. "Whenever he gets in a fix, he reaches into his bag of tricks..." I was sure that we could all do that. Instant cleanliness. Moral Number One: always be clean or always seem to be clean. People always seemed clean. I believed EVERYTHING! Take Mr. Bubble for example. Friendly, happy, ethereal Mr. Bubble, a bubble you could trust, a bubble that was pure goodness, pure love. Not at all like mercenary Ajax Scrubber bubbles with their bubbleland über ales rantings. Even though they were cute, they were a teensy bit too aggressive and narrow-minded. Mr. Bubble was the quintessential embodiment of the spiritual, all that was pious and NICE (the key word here!). "He has a bubbly face and a bubbly nose, Mr. Bubble. He’ll bubble you clean wherever he goes, Mr. Bubble. He'll bubble your face and bubble your chin. It's much fun when you're in Mr. Bubble!"

One of Bubble's earthly messengers, Mr. Clean (who looked like an obsessive Yul Brenner) spread the joy, the power, the pleasures of the gospel of such devices of goodness as was Crazy Foam and Fuzzy Wuzzy Soaps. Mr. Bubble spread the word, and he sure knew how to sing. He represented the fluid, moving, and ever-changing structure of the cosmos, of all that was, is, and that will be. The fact that he was a product made very little difference to me. As a matter of fact, it made him closer to home, more accessible, familiar and not so scary. It was ATTRACTIVE. It was a really heavy trip. Obviously, it was to embark on a long, weird, and clean adventure.

I remember one of my first "products." In a time when consumerism wasn't a dirty world and right before the concept would blossom into the ultimate experience, I, like any healthy-minded child, craved products, or reasonable facsimiles thereof. My handle on reality was a very realistic miniature washing machine. White plastic in the perfect image of Raymond Loewy's dream machine, it glowed with the presence and significance that only an objet d'art could. Deep in meaning, the Maytag school, like the Motorola, Kodak, and Zenith schools were contemporary leitmotiv. How happy I was with my product. My very own product.

At the 1964/65 World's Fair in Flushing Meadows, Queens (one of the most significant memories in my life along with the movies Barbarella and Casino Royale), the General Electric Hall of Appliances captured my imagination totally - the vista of "easy living" conveniences of the near future held all the mystery and magic imaginable. I was thrilled by the smell of rubber and the sound of enamel against enamel as gussied up housewives' lacquered nails tapped at refrigerators and electric ranges with a sort of sceptical admiration. The flourescent lighting, not yet disturbing, glided to a halt against Formica's newest shades, better known as "tones”.

It was after my initiation into the joys of industrial design that I became hooked on it. "Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?" I needed more products. It'd stare endlessly into a local toy emporium's window at a tiny hand-sized Hoover vacuum. It became almost sinister. Lurking around, stealing glimpses at this temptation with aerodynamic lines, I craved it. I fell into a depression of desire. So not to pine away, I was offered the diminutive mechanism and was literally "left to my own devices" A pattern emerged and soon followed a miniature faux electric can opener (with small Del Monte cans and their plastic lids), small Brillo boxes, a small electric range where I'd create delicacies with "Silly Putty" and a self-defrosting refrigerator with ice-cube trays.

Easy-Bake Oven allowed one to make one's own junk food - baked by the heat of a light bulb and industrialized by pans which slid through the oven like an assembly line. I had a bunch of Suzy Homemaker toys, like the stove, the iron to burn holes in my clothes, the fabulously dangerous but very appealing Sweet Shoppe set which let you make lollipops, chocolate bars, flavoured ice shavings in cones and malteds, and the rest of the kitchen units. I was, surprisingly, even given a Suzy Homemaker vanity table because I was as the ads on tv said I could be the “queen of your home”. Sitting on the plastic pouf and looking at myself in the three-way mirror of the cream plastic 18th-century-ish form of the vanity, I’d use Male Parent’s vaseline to slick my hair back like the gayboy I was should. (The smell of vaseline to this day brings these moments back to me, though, I don’t get to smell it often and infact when I saw it recently at a chemists I bought some just for nostalgia's sake). I had these toys all right, but somehow, the sissy name Suzy Homemaker and the bilious turquoise green of most of the toys somehow, bizarrely, did not appeal to me. I like the Hasbro Frosty Ice Cream Machine (I think Cazwell did too) as well which was very boyish compared to these girl-y kitchen things. Nonetheless, I preferred my fascinatingly bright-coloured Colorform's Miss Cookie's Kitchen whose off-register pots and pans I'd bring to my first school in a candy tin and a small piece of costume jewelery. And Miss Cookie’s Playroom and Miss Cookie’s Moon Kitchen blasted me off into orbit. How normal was that? It clearly was gay.

The very first year of the 1960s was a tumultuous one and the decade came in with a bang or at least the threat of one - a big one! America was atom bomb crazy. Known as the "A" bomb, it is parallel to an "A" party in its impact and long-lasting effects. It was feared, revered, and commercialized, as was every nuance of the new decade's young culture. Bomb shelters were the "in" thing, or rather the thing to be "in". Perhaps America was taking need of the company Fred Flintstone worked for, the Rock Head and Quarry Cave Construction Co., whose motto was "Own Your Own Cave and Be Secure." Suddenly, everyone claimed to be having plumbing repaired and underground lawn sprinklers installed. As many as one thousand shelters a week were reportedly sold by late 1961. "If the Bomb Falls" pamphlets arrived in the mail, advertising a purchasable record of the same name giving the impression that just like in grade school, bells would ring everywhere and everyone would drop everything. Solemnly yet efficiently, all would run, just like Dorothy's family in the The Wizard of Oz to an underground waiting room.

The big bomb was thought of in as stylized terms as Wall Explosion by Roy Lichtenstein. People had the fantasy that they would all go underground for weeks. (Which was about as long as food and essentials that were stored could hold out), play Parchesi (games and amusements for children were an actual Fallout Shelter equipment recommendation) and eat yummy canned food. They expected then, like butterflies, to emerge into an enemy free-world. An apparel shop sold "bright, warm, comfortable things" to lounge about in and suggested "gay slacks and a dress with a cape that could double as a blanket." Waiting in the shelter took on the mood of a mere inconvenient interruption of daily life, which, like waiting for "Fire and Ice" nail polish to dry, was necessary but annoying. The "duck and cover" routine became a sick game in schools and as entertaining as the Mexican Hat Dance during school assembly pageants. The peculiar yellow and black triangular bomb shelter logo might as well have been a Robert Indiana painting or a companion to the"Woolmark" label by Francisco Saroglia. Designer shelters made the important point, "Be Comfortable...why be drab about your shelter when it costs no more to survive in style?" And if that were not the ultimate, absurdity was taken to exquisite new heights when in these odd sort of "wreckrooms" on the shelves behind the Velveta cheese spread and the Del Monte canned turnips were polaroid-lensed harlequin glasses to "watch the blast". In a campaign against Barry Goldwater, the little girl picking the petals of her daisy one second in Lyndon Johnson's TV commercial of 1964 was vaporized a few seconds later by THE bomb, leaving one with the thought: "Why wasn't she in her shelter with her glasses, watching?"

Highlights for Children though, didn't precaution you for what you might see. Radioactive waste was a mythical substance, often imagined as a greenish fog and considered as harmful and at its worst in such epics as "The Horror of Beach Party" where teenagers turn into hideous creatures in bikinis (appropriately enough considering the origins of the name "bikini" for the "end of the world" attitude of the previous generation's atom bomb-fearing fashion victims). It didn't really seem so bad. At least it was not bad enough to stop "twisting the night away" on the very beach where the monsters dwelled according to the film. Other notions of radioactive fog seemed to affect vacationing suburbanites by diminishing their size along with plot credibility as in The Incredible Shrinking Man.

Actually any dimwit knew radioactive matter was a dust that you could simply brush away or vacuum up carefully. How could the public (let alone children) understand the sheer magnitude of radioactivity when in 1962 the world understood war as it was portrayed by Roy Lichtenstein with Takka Takka, surging destruction was a colourful, enthusiastic group participation project which, as with the accomplishment of the scientists on the Skip detergent box, joined men together, like a bunch of homos. The last World War's physical destruction for most Americans was simply something one read about over the morning's bacon and eggs. Surprisingly though, in less than two decades, America was resigned to passively accepting the idea of another war, and with the popularity of television war shows like "Combat!" and "The Rat Patrol" to think of it in big, old-fashioned, and romantic terms. These last years, well....no comment.

G. I. Joe doll was a hero to most little boys. Playing with G.I.Joe was as exciting as getting to “home plate” with a girl - whatever that means - (even sex was made competitive and aggressive). The 12" plastic figure prepared little boys for all the "thrill of victory, the agony of defeat” and was a meaningful as the first time Dad sends sonny-boy to the local bordello. War in the early sixties was as glamorous as Marilyn Monroe and attracted just as many men. War was still a tremendous sexual turn-on and as convulsive and beckoning as it had been twice before in the century. War also made men gay (if they weren’t already).

One of the discoveries of the fallout shelter period was a darling little process known affectionately as "irradiating". Scientists, well-meaning folks that they are, came up with this idea during the time when the atoms were constantly on their minds, and the "Atom Ant" cartoon debuted on network television. They assumed there were fabulous things to be done with the new-found energy source (but of course we all now realize that this was just a holdover fantasy of their’s stemming from their days as children watching Buck Rodgers and Robby the Robot - both totally gay by the way. Irradiation was a system of exposing food to small doses of radiation which would destroy bacteria and spoilage-causing germs. In theory this would keep food fresher and preserve it longer. Ultimately they would be able to sell more of it and eliminate the waste of unsold perishables. Once again a brilliant example of profit-oriented experimentation with human lives, a twisted attempt in the ultimate direction of Jane Jetson's curious "foodarackacycle", a device which whipped up food instantly anytime and served four people, activated only by the simple gesture of a push of a button.

In 1963 The Saturday Evening Post enthused, "most experts agree that irradiated foods will be a part of the American diet within ten years. Refrigerators will continue to be a popular piece of kitchen furniture... but when it comes to steaks and chops, oranges and lemons, ‘atom fresh’ could become the slogan of tomorrow." So, with all that said and done in the media, the Food and Drug Administration allowed the United States Army to serve irradiated food to the U. S. troops, starting with bacon and fish. By 1968, though, they realized that radiation in food causes cancer. The FDA withdrew their AOK and thus irradiating became a thing of the past. The army and the Atomic Energy Commission put up a bit of a fight, as the money-saving and publicity would be missed. They would just have to settle for the references to atoms in furniture design and "Prell concentrated radiant shampoo”. In any case, I kept my 1964 World's Fair irradiated dime surrounded in cheerful blue and white plastic as a souvenir.

It was with the same sort of authority which invisibly loomed over you and dictated whether or not your food was irradiated or whether you should make a mad rush to your bomb shelter that media penetrated your daily life. Cool, calm, and nearly parental visuals and audio made you feel reassured and at the same time instilled insecurity in the weak-willed. Booming at you from all sides were narrators in documentaries, cartoons, commercials, and sitcom opening themes. The voiceover reigned supreme. Often they were purring, cloyingly feminine, other times, the acme of intelligence or manliness. Sometimes they just sounded gay.

Let us not forget deep baritone, authoritative voiceovers. Shouldn't everybody have their own voice-over, or at least musical accompaniments? Muzak Corporation would make a fortune with this idea. Just imagine if we could hear the appropriate musical accompaniments for our daily routines, think of the problems we could avoid. We all know what strident violin strings mean: a ghoulish, slimy monster is just about to grab you, or of course, the “Sunrise over Bedrock" flutes mean everything will be OK. Forget it when you hear that creepy "Twilight Zone" theme.

America has a great voice culture. That is to say, the voices on TV and radio project with urgency values within the society. One of the leading examples of this phenomenon is the soul, so-to-speak, of Judy Jetson. As Hanna-Barbera's 1960s futurama-esque moon maiden and typical teenage daughter of George Jetson exclaimed, "OOooo, Oom, Eep, Ork, OoOo," she typified the exuberant era. This vocal mastery was done by a friend I knew briefly Janet Waldo. The characterization has brought to American culture an ambience that not only was a success at its inception, but also later, as she became a cult figure with the cartoon's renewed popularity on Saturday morning with the kiddies. When Lisa Douglas at the end of each "Green Acres" episode plugs away at the Great American Dream with "This has been a Filmways presentation, dahlink," one realizes immediately that America is truly a so-called "melting-pot" of culture, and that this message is projected through the total infiltration of various accents. Bucolic twangs, such as Granny Clampett's screeching ("Jed, Jed!") juxtaposed nicely with her slightly English-sounding snob neighbour Margaret Drysdale ("Milburn, those dreadful Clampetts!")

Gary Owens, from "Laugh-In" to any number of commercials, has had an authority and a command that sets forth and instills cheery willingness in any listener to "believe." Don Pardo drives it home as far as any game show guest was concerned (viewers too!) as they opt for anything he enthused about. Bert Parks, Bob Eubanks, and Bob Barker have "it" (this "power") as well.

What was reality for a child in 1965 was hardly recognizable as reality to most young adults at the very same time. First, around 1965 and 66 there were all the pre-Sesame Street Muppet commercials: Frito-Lay “Potato Crisp” Muncho’s, RC Cola, La Choy Chinese Food, the extremely funny and violent pre-Kermit Wilkin’s Coffee, Wilson’s Franks and Meats, McGarry’s Sausages, Pak-Nit, C&P telephone etc. Ed Sullivan had Muppets once in a while too. This was before Muppet Mah Na Mah Na totally thrilled me beyond words. Heeeee-larious! Then, there was Sally Field as Gidget in full-colour by Pathé tv. Divine. Soooo many cute outfits on her, and so many cute boys in bathing suits. Hair on boys chests, the endless male bodies though I don’t recall any totally latin hairy boys, just smooth ones with the occasional chest hair within limits. I particularly recall the episode called “The Great Kahuna” with Martin Milner as the studly surfer king, (who looked like the first Ken doll as all the television male studs looked like at the time). In this episode the Gidget gets worried about him becoming interested in the “creepy suburban dream” which struck a bizarre and conflictual cord in me though my mind blipped back into fantasy when she breaks the fourth wall and agrees with Plato, “Life is a gas!”. But inspite of the distraction of Gidget, the sexed-up Kahuna, Plato and the beach scenes with mod bathing suits, the controlled body hair, I was still quite mesmerized with kitchens and appliances. In spite of my obsession with all that had dials and the cool glow of practical handy-dandyness, I hadn't realized these machines worked by a systematic and mechanical series of reactions and motorizations. Master image-makers and children's brain manipulators, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera had a lot of do with this. Wilma Flintstone's vacuum was a tiny elephant, attached to a crudely fashioned trolley, her record player was a needle-nosed bird who, accompanied by a hamster on a tread mill played a slab of slate record. Airplanes in their hometown Bedrock were pterodactyl birds with cabins strapped to their backs, and cars ran by foot power. Fred Flintsone's big, Cro-Magnon three-toed feet revved them up and pushed them along ("Let's ride with the family down the street, through the courtesy of Fred's two feet...").

The Jetson family, a sort of inverse situation but "typical family" nonetheless had equally baffling devices. Set in some time that was neither the far flung future or tomorrow, the world of the Jetsons was more time warp than anything else. It was Tupperware party visits Metropolis, or "Leave it to Beaver" on "Forbidden Planet". Plastic tubes propelled visitors and family members alike to destinations throughout the universe as well as the local orbital shopping mall or to the Cogswell Cogs factory. In addition, the sense of time was completely distorted. It took a whole twenty minutes to get from Earth to a Spacely Sprockets franchise outlet on Jupiter. Naturally, they had Bubblecars and television phones and moving sidewalks, but this I understood...the World's Fair had these things. It was their robot maid Rosey that really shook me. I needed to know what was it she ran on if not hamster power?

dimanche 20 novembre 2011

JAY ROTH ... GLAMMY NOMINEE FOR BEST GO GO BOY..... MDVANII WISHES YOU LUCK!





Cazwell Ice Cream Truck Parody: Pickles' Kosher Spot

OKAY GLAMMY'S LET'S MAKE JAY ROTH THE WINNER FOR BEST GO GO BOY! JAY ROTH HAS MDVANII SUPPORT!






C'MON GLAMMY'S MAKE JAY ROTH THE GO GO BOY OF THE YEAR! OF THE DECADE! OF THE UNIVERSE!
ONE STOP SHOPPING GO GO BOY JAY ROTH IS AS VERSATILE AS A WENGER SWISS POCKET KNIFE, HE CAN BE ANYTHING YOU WANT BY THE FLICK OF HIS CROTCH AND HIS ESPIEGLE SMILE WHICH ONCE SEEN CAN NEVER BE FORGOTTEN....

VIRILE, TOUGH,
CHILDISH, GENTLE FLIRT-Y AND GOING WAY BEYOND JUST A BOOTY SHAKER...HE TRANSCENDS GO GO AND MAKES 21ST CENTURY UNIVERSAL QUEER ART ...HIS MOVES ARE A PERFORMANCE.....HIS BODY A SCULPTURE, HIS EYES A SAVVY BOY IN A MAN'S BODY....

MDVANII SUPPORTS JAY ROTH....

SEE JAY ROTH IN:

Cazwell Ice Cream Truck Parody: Pickles' Kosher Spot



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH-iTIH8mAU

Lady Gaga - "Born This Way" Parody (Porn That's Gay) - Greg Scarnici


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpR8L1SatbU

INTRODUCTION: Excerpt from "My American Family - In One Era, Out the Other" by BillyBoy*



MY AMERICAN FAMILY, IN ONE ERA, OUT THE OTHER


"The first duty in life is to be marvellous. What the second duty is no one has yet discovered."

- Oscar Wilde

"The man of intelligence, who will never agree with anyone, should cultivate a pleasure in the conversation of imbeciles and the study of worthless books. From these he will derive a sardonic amusement which will largely repay him for his pains."

- Baudelaire

Journals, 1860

"Television, what a wonderful instrument of culture and knowledge it could be! In France, everything would be possible because administration owns television. But infact, what sleaziness sometimes! Where are the creative people? Is there someone anywhere who would have the guts to really use this amazing instrument put at his disposal? Infact, maybe. But he would not have any luck. Television is rules by civil servants without courage, fearing that they might lose their pretty cake. Civil servants without balls."

- Le Corbusier



“I don't know why I want to do these things, other than my desire to escape from Small Town, U.S.A., to dismiss the boundaries, to explore. It isn't a bad place where I grew up, but there was nothing going on but the cornfields. My life experience came from watching movies, watching TV and reading books and looking at magazines. And when your fucking culture comes from watching TV every day, you're bombarded with images of things that seem cool, places that seem interesting, people who have jobs and careers and opportunities. None of that happened where I was. You're almost taught to realize it's not for you.”

Trent Reznor, Rolling Stone Magazine

“Just why it should have happened, or why it should have happened just when it did, he could not, of course, possibly have said; nor perhaps could it even have occurred to him to ask. The thing was above all a secret, something to be preciously concealed from Mother and Father; and to that very fact it owed an enormous part of its deliciousness. It was like a peculiarly beautiful trinket to be carried unmentioned in one’s trouser-pocket - a rare stamp, an old coin, a few tiny gold links found trodden out of shape on the path in the park, a pebble of carnelian, a sea shell distinguishable from all others by an unusual spot or stripe - and, as if it were any one of these, he carried around with him everywhere a warm and persistent and increasingly beautiful sense of possession - it was also a sense of protection. It was if, in some delightful way, his secret gave him a fortress, a wall behind which he could retreat into heavenly seclusion.”

-Conrad Aiken, 1932

Silent Snow, Secret Snow

And so I have remained, in cruel pursuit of truth and excellence, an inhumane executioner of the bogus, an abomination to all but those few who have overcome their aversion to truth in order to free whatever is good in them.

— Louise Brooks

“The term nostalgia describes a longing for the past, often in idealized form. The word is made up of two Greek roots nostos ‘returning home’ and algos ‘pain’, to refer to ‘the pain a sick person feels because he wishes to return to his native home,and fears never to see it again’. It was described as a medical condition, a form of melancholy, in the Early Modern period, and came to be an important topic in Romanticism.”

-Wikipedia definition for the word “nostalgia”

“I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream; past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Methought I was - -man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was - -and methought I had - -man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say.”

-the character Bottom played by James Cagney in the screen adaptation of William Shakespeare’s A Mid summer’s Night Dream (1935)

"Silly mortals!"

- Endora, witch on "Bewitched,"

TV series, circa 1968




I was born queer. Totally queer. I eventually became Queer. And “Once upon or maybe twice, there was an unearthly paradise called Pepperland....80,000 leagues beneath the sea it lay or lie,... I’m not too sure...” and that is where I grew up though in a parallel universe it was on earth in the 60s. But for sure, I was without any question part of the Victorian Aesthetic Movement. Later, I even further embodied the Decadent-era Oscar Wilde and Des Esseintes sensibilities even though I’d only learn of these things when I was educated. This was after the initial vileness of the Pop-era period of American Dream brainwashing I fell victim to of the same 1960s. I never really had a problem with this central aspect of my being, being entirely queer that is. From the moment I was born, even if I had many other problems such as bonkers, clowns, snapping Turks and de-music missiles, dreadful flying gloves and blueness and though Hollywood always depicted Aesthetic queerness as evil, punishable by tortured death and abject misery, I never felt that at all or was exposed to such awful things. I was never a victim of my queerness. Only dreadful flying gloves and meanies screwed around with me. In this regard I was extremely lucky.

Deep breath. "If you live by your wit, you die by your wit”, that said, sexually I am a dissident and challenge the doctrines of acceptable sexuality. I am a transgender mind what used to be called an androgynous mind. Physical sex, though I had it was infinitely less important to me than the feelings in my mind. I do not adhere to anything that society says you have to do or feel about sex because it strikes me as weird and bad for your mental health, that and the fact straight people are big fat bores when they start preaching their trade. I have no problem with them doing it amongst themselves, but leave me out of it. Straight men have often sucked my dick I may add. I adore women in every way, am very much attracted to them but have had very few who actually I had anything more than a little sexual attraction to, though the ones I have had an attraction to, I was overwhelemed with feelings of desire, all of which has formed a great part of my personality. I am very immature, often quite numbed by confusion and find it best just to be what it is I am than try to be anything else, so I guess what people call “being straight” was out of the question from the literal second I was born. Oh, and for the record, I like babies from afar and like children when they are either immensely well behaved and educated or made of cloth like dolls such as Kamkins by Louise R. Kampes or those by Kathe Kruse.

I was miserable only because I felt completely unloved and not at all because I was queer. Being queer infact saved me from a complete and entire misery. Two decades later I was to become happily co-dependant in life on my husband and though sometime in my 20s when society said it wasn’t good to be dependant on someone you love, I didn’t give a toss because it really works for me. My life was a bizarre mix of a television rerun of a Little Audrey Noveltoon (Goofy Goofy Gander for example) and a Shakespearean tragedy. I presume this is the same for everyone so essentially, I had a life so far of variable viccissitudes.

I loathe nostalgia. My mentor Diana Vreeland said this in the opening to her book, D.V and I feel totally the same about that sentimental state of being too but I have really great memories of really great people and experiences. I think also that quotations can be facetiously pedantic and leaden and Art is not a panacea in any way, though as a child I thought so. My story is the discovery that it is not, not by a long shot though Art is essential for living. I would go on a long voyage of Life as Queer Theatre and I was to create Queer Art, something only five decades later would have an meaning and even then, just a spark of it and my mission would not be over even by the half-century marker. So, when I started writing a book about my life in the world of Art, I ended up using all sorts of things to say what I mean avoiding quotes as much as possible because I thought using them was rather easy and a bit démodé. Metaphors, poetry, glib and stylish retort (or should I say réplique?) to unasked questions, sincere or saucy one-liners, schtick and plain speaking I think helped me a lot for a while. I live to read so naturally I write to quote, it defines me more easily. But something changed. They all started being deeply important to me, slowly, more and more and picked up speed. Now they are essential to knowing me a bit. I cannot even begin to imagine writing about my life without quotes now, it’d be much too difficult and I am not that talented. However, in this whole process I realized that sometimes good quotations can express a great deal about what you really feel deep within yourself more than being soi-disant inverted commas original. It’s something someone has said as if it was for you and they may have said it (and often have done so), in a much better way than you possibly could. Usually as well, it was during some other time in history, reinforcing the fact us humans can be quite similar in our feelings regardless of the era or the social station. Therefore I use quotes and specific references to other things and people often when trying to express my feelings about the many various moments I have lived up until now. I concluded that in the right context quotes can say it all. So, I looked in a TV Guide from the day I was born in 1960, March the 10th. There is this dumb TV Guide article as usual, I didn’t expect Shakespeare to be in that guide just because it was the day I was born. When In Doubt - Or Even When You Are Not - Write A Book, page 12 quotes Groucho Marx in regard to his celebrity status autobiography he’d just written called, Groucho and Me. “ I’m no Faulkner, Hemingway, Camus or Perelman...or even Kathleen Winsor. As a matter of fact, I’m not even the same sex as Kathleen. But every word of this stringy, ill-written farrago is being sweated out by me”. There you have it, same here. But he also said, “The trouble about writing a book about yourself...is that you can’t fool around. If you write about someone else, you can stretch the truth from here to Finland. If you write about yourself, the slightest deviation makes you realize instantly that there may be honor among thieves but you are just a dirty liar”. Yep, that’s totally true too.

As for Art, as glorious as it seems when you are on the surface of it, riding the waves with it’s many pleasures, it has been both my enemy and friend so far throughout my life. Art is what you can get away with, to paraphrase MuCluhan (for which can practically be my credo, it’s such an evident thing). Art can be heavy and pedantic as well and it seems I have never been able to escape it, even when I have really tried. It has always been there in everything it seems, right there in my face, both taunting and discouraging me and at the same time making me feel complete and quite good. When I started to write about my life and all the Art in all of it’s forms which I have experienced these fifty some odd years, I saw that it could read at times like a long jeremiad. I felt at some moments as if I was lost like the child I had been. Ortega y Gasset, the philosopher, hit it on the head when he said, “We are all lost creatures. It is only when we admit this that we have a chance of finding ourselves”. When I wrote about all those many moments with the slow build up of words which form sentences and sometimes complete thoughts, if I did not make an effort at moments it seemed like a big, fat and tiring diatribe of intellectual contradictions. Like in my repetitive dreams, I was lost in a big city, trying to get somewhere. In saying that though, in my confusion and disappointment I started to see a bit more clearly, it seemed like something else, something very positive, was emerging in my life and in writing about it. I think looking back on the relatively immediate past has given me an amazing entry and some insight into my own soul which in a way I am sharing with you the reader if of course, you the reader believes in such a thing. Or, if you the reader do not believe in the soul, perhaps my writing about my life may simply make you question not only my own belief in the existance of a soul but perhaps your belief in it as well. I have a very special sense of humour too and this book may possibly give you a look into the rather ironic humour I have about life and all it’s intense and vivid sensations and hopefully, make you laugh a bit. I certainly laughed when writing this. Since I am a middle-aged man now and I have many metaphysical and often, moreso than not, rather contrite and rudimentary questions about life and Art, this book helped me answer a few of them. It did also bring up many more questions about everything though. The result, this book, finally is not a jeremiad but a homage to the absurdity and beauty of human error and attempt to make beauty out of chaos. When you boil it all down, when you look at any life and when I look and recount my own, I find it all quite funny in the end. Happily, joyously funny and tragically funny despite the fact it was a form of suburban gothique, Desperate Housewives before it’s time. The 60s and 70s were all about appearances and in the world I lived in, everyone had some terrible dark secret hidden by lovely patio furniture, clean modern houses, haute couture and Ivy League clothes and Littlechap doll family lifestyles.

I decided to also write this book, compiled also from years and years worth of diaries, letters and articles because I thought, “why not?”. I’ve got the time. I’ve got the computer. I really enjoy to make fun out of myself because I find myself to be the most curious and silly of creatures. If you are familiar with the camp best-seller written by Patrick Dennis called Little Me and it’s heroine Belle Poitrine, this book may sound a bit like it, the only difference is that my life is real and all these things took place, with a big scoop of doolally thrown in. At times, this book may also seem like a very screwed up Kinsey case study, my private life and especially my sex life would seem to most people quite doolally indeed. It’s a homage to my friends and those I’ve known in some way or another, a book of experiences and feelings, not necessarily flowingly related. It’s a synopsis of some parts of the eras I have lived through and what it felt like. I have come to, begrudingly, realize that my youth is now behind me and so many of the great people of my era are gone. Some I knew. Some very closely, others lightly and superficially. I can tell only so much, but I can say I do have a few anecdotes or two to submit to the world.

Also; The pre-conceived image people can have of a somehow public person often is very wrong and even unfair and writing some things about my life may put a few of my own myths to rest. I’m not Madonna or Michael Jackson, clearly, but I have been in the media all my life and so much crap has been written about me, I thought, those who have followed my career and work, might like to read the real me, for a change though I love and do believe somehow what Cocteau said is very true; “Whatever the public blames you for, cultivate it - it is yourself”. Maybe the crap and the glory, the myth and the rumour was a sort of truth but I think there is a big part of me which I have not shared with the world so far. For better or for worse, I have had some colourful experiences, made tons of mistakes and had many successes. This is how I experienced it. Some may think I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth, but this is far from true. Sometimes what people may think of me is flattering but not true at all either. I just want to, in my now middle age, tell some stories about what was happening behind the scenes of what appeared to be an easy camelot of a career. My life was never easy, never really light or calm.

I am not sure if I can actually call some people cocksuckers, sons-of-bitches, perverts and faggots. I had to deal with a closet case lawyer once, in Switzerland with a loud-mouth bitch female partner (though she is more manly than most men and wears cheap démodé pointy heels from shoe outlets in Milan). In court he tried to slap me! On his pasty pimply face, that automatic gesture to slap which he did despite all good reason, showed what a real scumbag lowlife he was and still is. So, there are people like my psychiatrist said to me later that day, who are just fucked up and total shit. “GROW UP!” he said and he is right. One of the first and only people I have ever hated, a sanctimonious cunt bourgeoise neighbour, I had to sue her fat (literally so) ass. SO, I try to grow up and understand why such people exist. Cecil Beaton told me when I was a teen I was like someone called Stephen Tennant, someone I had almost no knowledge of at the time. When Jesse Kornbluth and his wife Annette gave me Peter Hoare’s book Stephen Tennant, Serious Pleasures in 1991 for my birthday, I finally understood why he may have thought so, though I did find out who the brightest of all the Bright Young Things of London pre-war era was years before when Christopher Isherwood and Quentin Crisp said the same thing to me. Tennant was notoriously eccentric and known for having never grown up. When I read the book, a shudder chilled me to the bone, I didn’t want to be a Peter Pan kind of person like Tennant. Yes, perhaps his childish ways were cute when he was 20 years old, but as an adult it seemed so ugly. I saw the similarities in his and my own personality. So, I have made every attempt to be as adult as possible. I call people what I believe they are when necessary. When provoked. When I have to.

Some are superkalafragalisticespealidosiously challenged. Readers should try to read through the lines. My humour can be heavy-handed and a bit vulgar at times as well but that’s because I have always felt sometimes it’s the only way to say the truth. Diana believed in vulgarity to, she wrote about it and how it’s like the paprika of life. I am a bizarre mixture of utter passion and total indifference, being the astrological signs of double pisces that I am and something the reader will get more than a whiff of in this book, sometimes it flip flops back and forth so much you really have to read things twice. I also tend to be a bit mean when I don’t like something or someone. I am the kind of person you either love or hate, rarely are people indifferent. I am also probably different people to different people, to some I am dreadful and others delightful. Some people just get annoyed at me because I am very mercurial in society, I can play the game up to a point, with great polite manners and then I crack and either go numb or say something really out of place. For some people, I am a very faithful and devoted person. For these people I can put up with their worst character traits. It really all depends. I guess this book will clearly illustrate that.

A lot of the people I have known, and perhaps even still know, are quite lovely and I have enjoyed or still enjoy their company for loads of different reasons. These people I have had a great pleasure in writing about. However, there are those who have been the opposite of lovely or interesting, some have been total scumbags and salauds, even thoughscumbags and salauds” sounds like some sort of delightful bill of fare at the Paris Ritz. I’ve known many people who have been total fuck ups, nasty pieces of work with no morals whatsoever and of course, many regular people who are just a mixture of yin and yang-ish behaviour. These we call “normal” people. Sometimes also, I have behaved not very nicely, speaking my mind, usually too hastily due to my impatience, usually with someone’s stupidity or vanity. Sometimes just because I was being stupid or vain myself. Sometimes it was only “Will Monsieur have some wine with his scumbags and salauds?”.

Some of these people I have encountered and maybe write about, thank God, are dead, so you’ll kind of know what I am talking about and what I really mean to say when you read about them here. Some are still alive and I cannot outwardly say what fucking bastards they are...but try to read through my sometimes deliberately neutral and legal-schmegal words. I wish I could totally say the unsayable, but I don’t feel like being sued by already fucked up people or relatives of dead celebrities. Some of them I fucked and others fucked me, both literally and figuratively but I cannot say, sometimes, here in this book. This is for various reasons, including my own desire for quand meme, a bit of discretion and also because I’m not really ready to talk about it. Try to figure it out yourself a bit, I wish I could say a teeny amount more of the actual things which I experienced but hélas, I cannot, and I am sure you will understand. Nonetheless, you’ll get some very vivid ideas of what really happened anyway. This book is very politically-incorrect, so those with sensitive whatevers, (minds, souls, bodies, whatever makes people over-react to someone’s, in this case my, brutal reality or over-react to the what I think is banality of opinions which are not homogenized) just stop here and don’t read this book, go buy a Martha Stewart cookbook or join the Oprah Winfrey bookclub instead. This is my disclaimer.

I wrote this book also very much in the way I speak. I do not have Coprolalia or Tourette’s Syndrome. I just want to point that out now though for in a few places it may appear that I do (though I am not sure this illness actually shows up when one is writing). I added these occasional expletives only because I, during the years I wrote this book and edited it over and over, I slowly had the impression I was such a sissy that I needed to make it more gritty the way my life has actually been so far. Since I was also striving a bit to get away from my reputation during the early years of my professional career as an artist who was a goody-two-shoes, it needed a few fuck yous here and there. Deal with it.

However, to be serious and use a good quote, here is a favourite of mine; Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Just walk beside me and be my friend (Albert Camus). At the end of the day, when people are insane or gross, freaks and fuck ups et al I feel sorry for them and it makes me somewhat sad. I have never really adapted well to the negative side of people and it always makes me feel terribly disappointed. I would much prefer friends then people I dislike though I can get angry, I hate it, it’s a big fat bore to not like people. I also have to admit I have the ability to be indifferent to people, so when I don’t like someone, in the end, I turn very indifferent, after of course I chop them! My indifference also has caused me problems and made me enemies once in a while.

As Evelyn Waugh wrote in one of his diaries and I wholly agree is the following: “I...don’t want to influence opinions or events, or expose humbug or anything like that kind. I don’t want to be of service to anyone or anything. I simply want to do my work as an artist” . I may have imbued ideas into some of my work, but my point was not to change anyone’s minds.

So, now, I will start the actual book part, enjoy!


copyright 2010 BillyBoy*