Are you trying to tell me something?

Maybe it’s just me, and years of living on the sexual margins have made me all to ready to see hints and innuendo every where I look, but even from my warped perspective, I have to ask what exact message is this woman trying to send with her canvas tote with the shackles and noose on the side?

She was coolly reading the New Yorker from when she got on at Seventh Avenue til when she got off at 34th Street, in an outfit that had no other hints of kinkiness. Is the image an invitation to bondage or an expression of freedom from it? Some random importation of violent motifs onto the side of canvas totes as part of a fashion statement? I’ll never know.

Animal planet…

I went looking for action on Saturday night and I got it in the wilds of New Jersey. I had much fun and the results were nothing as a traumatic as this (courtesy of ). My accent remains intact.

While researching this entry this story came up, which leads me to think that despite decades of ursine identification on my part, truth be told, it’s time for me to come out at a wombat.

An A-List one.

And now I can start telling all of you who is and isn’t a real one.

Horns in Midtown

Sausage fest…

Unrelated thought: I’ve had it with the wacky auto insurance selling woman.

And now I’m going to get some action, hopefully.

Yum…

A day of reviving old projects and looking at some art. Spent this evening with Sarah Schulman at the reading of Caryl Churchill’s latest play, a compressed provocation on the topic of Israel. The format: ten minutes of play, one hour of moderated discussion, ten minutes of the play reread. From the audience, Mandy Patankin told us how he would “attack” the material. The moderator stuck his oar in a bit too much much I thought. Sarah was unimpressed. After wards, over sushi we traded stories of our religious experience and (lack of) belief. The unagi was excellent. Sarah told me the place is cult run.

Play Misty…

It’s cold and foggy here. It doesn’t feel like spring, but rather the downward creep of fall. I’ve been playing catch up with some responsibilities, and reliving some of the high points of IMsL through other people’s recaps.

I’ve been looking for my copy of “Watchmen” around my house for months and have been unable to find it. So I bought another one in the SF airport to read on the way home. Getting through it made me even less interested in seeing the movie. For one thing, it’s not at all an action story: violent things happen, but the guts of it all is reflection, memory and discussion. The narrative moves forward very slightly compared to how much it moves backwards or sideways and it’s not propelled by people doing superhero type things. When I try to think of the directors who could do it justice I think of Tarkovsky or maybe War Wong Kai. If Fassbinder wasn’t dead he could do a great version, with everyone sitting around some broken down warehouse some where.

In other pop culture news, last night’s South Park was one of their tortured analogy episodes, where a goofy incident is made to stand in for a social issue. I laughed harder at a picture of a jar in The Onion with the caption “Heroic Pickles Holding Lid Shut From Inside”.

Speaking of beloved book adaptations, on Tuesday night TCM showed “The Phantom TollBooth”, Chuck Jones’ take on one of my favorite books from my childhood. I’ve seen it before but really forgotten how dreary it was. The backgrounds are mainly recycled from “What’s Opera Doc” and the character design is shabby. Jules Pfeiffer did a great job illustrating the book, but Jones utterly jettisoned his line and balance for the movie. The songs are lackluster and forgettable, and the end is a rushed knockoff of the “All Too Much” sequence from “Yellow Submarine”.

Wipe and Wipe again….

Now that I’m wearing my glasses more often, I’m sticking them in my pockets more, which means that they are getting more and more smudged. It’s an irritating habit that I can’t really break myself of, and it means I’m wiping my lenses all the time it seems.

I remember how felt when I got the first “floaters” in my eyes: I was 34 and in New York, and it freaked me out. Now I have the same thing happening when I put my glasses on: flecks of something floating in my field of vision.

Except there is no medical explanation for schmutz. I’m just untidy.

Raisins and Dog Biscuits…

…are what I need to buy today on the way home. But really this post is about IMsL.

This was the first Leather Contest I’ve attended, and only the second title contest (in the late 90’s I was part of helping the Metro Bears put on a run/contest that had very little impact). On the whole I have stayed away from organized leather, but if there was going to be a first one, I’m happy that it was this one. The stakes, while high for the contestants, seemed low for the rest of the event. People were there for a whole array for reasons, only one of which were the contests.

It was very interesting to be at a women’s event; my Seventies feminist training kicked in and it combined with my shyness to make me quite reticent about approaching people. I was trying to mind my ps and qs, not wanting to be intrusive and to listen twice befreo speaking once. I wasn’t always successful, but on the whole it was more relaxing than it sounds.

My class fell victim to the vagaries of San Francisco’s climate. Since what I was teaching involved smoking, it had to place outdoors, on the patio outside of the hospitality suite. This was fine when the sun was shining directly on it, but once there was no sunshine, the classroom turned chill to such an extent that people were stepping inside to watch from beyond the glass patio doors. I had to cut things a little short, both on the demonstration end and in general, because it was just getting silly. Scheduling also meant that many folks could only attend part of the class, which meant that there was a constant trickle of people in and out of the session. That tends to rattle me, and I feel like I didn’t do as good a job as I might have. I did have a stalwart demo bottom, and good friends in the audience, two factors that made the whole thing much easier.

There were many great people there to connect with, and despite the above mentioned shyness, I did have some wonderful conversations and saw some hot action. My own experience was mixed. I had one encounter go wrong on me and was really rattled by it. Luckily my friends were there to help me process it all.

Maybe its because I was fairly close to the operating staff, but the event seemed exceptionally well run to me; things happened when they were supposed to with a minimum of fuss. When that happens, it means that everyone can relax and enjoy what’s happening. Problems don’t become crises.

On the whole I feel like the women’s community is a lot more vibrant and diverse than the men’s. And it’s really interesting to me the way that a younger generation is upending questions about gender style and play. There’s a kind of giddiness in the exploration and reconfiguration of rules that speaks to my heart (and other parts, since I find that kind of energy very hot).

I don’t think I’ll ever find a place in “Leather Tradition”, and I’m not really interested in doing so in any event. But I am glad to have been a small part of IMsL. And very grateful to folks who brought me there.

That’s what a flight should be…

True the flight was oversold, but all of my car connections went swimmingly, and overall this was so much easier than my trip back from LA. There’s a lot of stuff to write about the trip, but I can’t get to it right now.

To the folks in the Bay Area: I know I came in and out quietly this trip, and I’m sorry that it worked out that I couldn’t get around town to see more of you. I’m definitely coming back for a longer visit this year and I’ll be able to plan more get-togethers.

Mission…