Organizing your writing life

CAUGHT ON TAPE: Somewhere out there is video footage of me lip-syncing to Eurythmic's "I Need A Man" while humping Theresa Davis at Art Amok on Saturday night. Yeah, you heard me. Theresa and I hosted and thought we'd have a little fun to introduce the evening. I came mincing out and performed, then Theresa strolled out...in full boy drag with whiskers! We danced around and made total fools of ourselves, but it was a hoot. I was also going to go in drag but, sadly, my costume no longer fit. The last -- and only time -- I ever did drag was about 20 or 30 pounds ago. However, I probably would have looked a little like the picture you see here, except my tits are bigger. Heee! The performers -- Rupert Fike, Bryan Pattillo, Carlos Robson, Basik Knowledge and Jon Goode -- were all in top form, and the slam was also hot. Good crowd, too. If someone sends me the video (or a picture), I'll try and post it.

Yesterday, I watched two movies: The Departed and Walkabout. Scorsese definitely earned his Oscar for best picture and director with The Departed. It was bloody and brilliant and...well...bloody brilliant. I'm just so-so on Leonardo DiCaprio's performances, but he's really good in this, as are Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson. The scene-stealers are Mark Whalberg and Alec Baldwin, both of whom continue to impress me with every role. Two hours and forty minutes never went by so quickly.

As for Walkabout, this is a cult classic from director Nicolas Roeg. It's basically a 90-minute tone poem about a brother and sister abandoned in the Australian outback and an Aboriginal boy who leads them back to civilization. Made in 1971, the film's themes of overpopulation, miscommunication and lack of cultural understanding still ring true today. Jenny Agutter is natural and beautiful as the girl who, despite near-death in the outback, cannot drop her bourgeois ways and sees her rescuer as nothing more than another servant. While she eyeballs him sexually, when he takes a sexual interest in her, she cowers in an abandoned farmhouse. The outcome of the film is devastating. There is very little dialogue in the film, but the photographer (also by Roeg) is sumptuous and frightening.

I spent a number of hours this weekend working on Wake (more sequencing, more revision to a couple of poems) and finishing up a review of Charles Jensen's chapbook Living Things, which will appear in the April edition of The Pedestal.

Oh, and I just noticed this is my 600th post! Where does the time go...