Party Monster.


While checking out Seth Green's site this week, I came across an interesting piece of news. James St. James' fascinating book, Disco Bloodbath, about Micheal Alig, the NYC club kid who murdered his drug dealer lover Angel Melendez, is being made into a film; Party Monster. The cast includes Macaulay Culkin (!) as Micheal Alig, Seth Green as James St. James, Wilson Cruz as Angel Melendez, Lucy Liu as Allesandra and Marilyn Manson as Cristina. ((More Details Here.)

I loved Disco Bloodbath. It's a juicy first person look at the club kid scene in NYC in the eighties with Michal Alig at the center of it all; how people got into the scene because it was all fresh and fun and how drugs and human nature sent everything spiraling out of control. It's a fascinating story, if not a pretty one. I think the film is going to be either really fabulous or really terrible, but I can't wait to see it. Filming started on May 13th, in NYC


Gay Day 2002 at Disney World in Orlando.


Gays Days at Disney World is this weekend and some of the Gay Cams guys are there including Steve of DazedCam, and Mikey of FunkCamLive. Mikey has been doing some reports with pictures and Steve has his cam with him so be sure to check out their sites.

On the home front.
durlx and Margaret


Robert was going through some pictures this week and found the above photo from 8 or 9 years ago of Margaret and I. I had totally forgotten about that night! There was some kind of benefit for people with AIDS and Margaret was working with the people who were doing the food for it. I got this call about 2 PM from her; "Darryl, you better get over here right now or this food is never going to be ready in time! Someone will be at your house in 15 minutes!" and she hung up. With Margaret, to hear was to obey... so I went. They were making food for 300 people to sell for $5 a plate and all to be served at the hall where the function was, not at the kitchen where they were preparing it. None of the volunteers had any experience coordinating this sort of thing and Margaret was right, they would never have made it. So I got to save the day; we got all the food over to the hall on time and were able to serve it hot, and we made a little over $1200 for the cause. And we had a good time doing it; it felt good to put my skills to work with a group of friends to do the right thing. "Why was Margaret dressed as a nun?" you might ask. Indeed you might, as the very idea of Margaret taking holy orders is beyond belief! For some reason, and if I knew it then, I certainly don't remember it now, every one working the function that night dressed as a nun. So did I and somewhere out there is a picture... (Now you know why I take pics of everything. Every so often someone hands me a picture from the past like Robert did and the memories are so sweet! Especially when they are of friends like Margaret and the memories of her are all I have now.)

Short Bits.
I've been listed on a site called The Gay Male Body. Not because of my body, hehe... it's a site that lists various gay resources and it seems to be a very good one. Our friend Alex Gildzen is listed there in the "poets" listings in the "From The Body" section and I am newly listed in the "personal web sites" area. There is this thing where you vote and rate the sites, (and you know how I simply abhor that kind of thing...hehe), but I would appreciate it if you would take the time to give me a nice rating so I don't look like chopped liver. Oh, and vote for Alex too, although he's doing quite well...

The message board has had over 4,000 posts now, and although last weekend was a lil' strange... hehe, I want you all to know how much I enjoy all of your posts. I am honored to be the host of such an amazing group and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart. Thanks also for the very interesting e-mails this week. (Now when are people going to send me pics?)

And thank you, luca. where ever you are tonight.

durlx

"every year, for Carnival time, we make a new suit"
Big Chief Bo Dollis of the Wild Magnolias



A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned seeing the Mardi Gras Indians at Jazz Fest and promised to tell you something about them. They are an amazing part of New Orleans culture and an important part of black culture here. The MGI have been parading for Mardi Gras and St. Joseph's Eve (although no one seems to know anything about the St. Joseph's connection) for over a hundred years. The cultural influences are older than that, going back to the 1800's. During the times of slavery, the local Choctaw's and other tribes sheltered the escaped slaves and taught them how to live in the wild and that bond is still alive today. The costumes, songs and chants are a tribute to the Native American connection and are also strongly influenced by African and West Indies culture. As usual with almost anything in this town, it's a kind of gumbo, a mix of cultural ingredients resulting in a very rich tradition full of vibrant color, music and joy.

The music these guys make is a very big part of Mardi Gras. The members of the tribes make new songs and chants every year and a number of them have been recorded, going on to become MG standards. The quote at the top of the page is a good example; it's from a song by Chief Bo Dollis of the Wild Magnolias and when we hear it, we know that Mardi Gras is here, just like people elsewhere feel like it's Christmas when they hear a Christmas song. New Orleans sings it's holidays!



The tribes have members of various ranks. The first in line in the parade is Spy Boy who leads the parade and looks out for other tribes that they might run across as they move about the neighborhood. There has never been a planned route for these street parades. It's important to note here that up until the late 40's, when two tribes met on the street there was often violence and sometimes death, very much like street gangs today, but with a great deal of style. (The tribes with West Indies descendants and the tribes with African descendants were often in conflict, a sort of "uptown/downtown" thing, it seems.) A lot of the elements of street challenge are still there, but the violence is a thing of the past; today it's all about who has done the best costume work and who has the most style. When Spy Boy spots another tribe ahead, he signals to Flag Boy, who passes the message down the parade line through the Wild Men and finally, to the Big Chief who can send a signal back up to Spy Boy in the front. In this way, the Big Chief can control where the tribe goes, even when they are spread out over several blocks. All this information is passed along through the parade group by hand signals and chants.

Flag Boy and Big Chief


The costumes are incredible. They consist of many hand-beaded and hand-sewn panels, with most, if not all of the work being done by the guy who will wear the costume. It's very much a labor of love and dedication and very often the design for the next year is thought of before the present years costume hits the streets. The people who do this are really into doing it and have the support of many family members and friends. But in the end, the position they hold in the tribe is a matter of their own personal strength and character, and the costume is a physical representation of that.

These days the tribes meet on the streets one other time, for Super Sunday when they all parade together in harmony and show off their stuff. Like I said, it's an amazing culture; it comes out of the poorest neighborhoods of the city but it's incredibly rich in tradition and history. It's difficult to really tell you all about it; it's a very complex thing and so much of it comes from a long time ago. I've researched this over the years, (and if I have anything wrong, I apologize). I have known a few of the people involved, (there are gay men in these tribes, although I think it's not talked about...), but it is also in many ways a social group with it's own secrets and private ways. And that is as it should be.

I stopped working on this for a bit because the people in the big house next door were having a voodoo ceremony in their yard with drums and chanting! Incredible. Wonderful. Do you wonder why I love it here?

Other News
If I didn't have bad luck, I wouldn't have no luck at all. Don't want to go into it here, but things ain't right. No honey, no money... I ought to start a blues band.

Special thanks to all of you who have sent me e-mails this week. Ford, thanks for your tidal wav. file! And thank you, tejaz, you got to be one of the nicest guys out there...amigo.

durlx

GROUND FORCE

There's this wonderful show on the BBC called Ground Force, where a team of people come in and redo someone's yard or garden in 48 hours as a surprise. The relatives or friends all conspire to get the person out of the way for two days and then the team comes in and does a total makeover, with the big payoff being the look of surprise and tears of joy on the face of the recipient. I love this show!

But they never showed up at my house...

remember this from pic from earlier this year?


It was a disaster! There was soooo much crap all over the place, I thought I would never get it cleaned up! But I started doing a little every couple of days, chopping up the dead banana trees and trimming the dead wood and making piles of it all. I kept pushing the piles into the corners, (there's no way that the city trash pickup would take that much stuff) and fortunately stuff rots here pretty fast, so the piles kept getting smaller as the days wore on. Each week, I reclaimed a little more of the yard while trimming back some of the overgrown stuff. Things started to grow back in, (most of the banana trees that I cut down are 10 to 15 feet high again) and the extremely dry spring has actually helped a few things that I like to get a chance to grow, (there's this very strangely shaped avocado tree; the bananas kept shading it out and twisting it so it was more like a vine than a tree, but this year it's thriving and even more strangely shaped). I reseeded the grass area and had to water it every day; this is very strange for New Orleans, there's usually enough rain and humidity to keep everything green. I really started to get into it all and...

...it's starting to shape up.


There's still bits of debris in the corners and edges, but I now have two areas of the yard almost totally cleaned up. Right outside the back door, which you can often see from the "other cam" is a little area with some chairs that is shaded by an overhang and a lattice work arbor that I built a couple of years ago. It is now densly covered with Confederate Jasmine that has grown over from Robert's side, so it's very pleasant in the daytime, (and I have it artistically lit at night). Next to that and under the messy Japanese Plum tree is the larger pond.

The larger pond


Oh, the water lillies are plastic! hehe. The pond gets too much shade now to grow water lillies, but Karen and Chris found these floating plastic ones at the water garden place around the corner when they were visiting and plopped them into the pond to surprise me. They are remarkably realistic and so easy to care for!

The smaller pond (they call it a "water feature" on Ground Force) and the brick patio in the back of the yard were totally buried in silt and crap and took a lot of work, (and me occasionally screaming like a girl when I uncovered some slimy wiggly thing). I've got most of the brick cleaned up and the area around the umbrella covered table is pleasant enough for now, although there is still a lot more to do. This next week, I'll get the rest of the debris out of this area.

The small pond


Two of the neighborhood cats like to hang out in the back part of the yard and one of them uses the statue as a spring board to get over the fence; the last two mornings I've found the lil dolphin boy knocked over.

I pleased with my progress, it's been very gratifying, sweating like a navy, digging and trimming in my lil yard and then watching it grow and change. It's very satisfying. I have lots of ideas about what I want to do next.

Now, if only someone would come and sit with me in my yard...sigh...

Short bits.
Thanks again Robert for all your help this week!
Congratulations, Dr. Justin!
Congrats to Tejaz, Fordian of the Month!
And a special Hi to MaryAnn, (my cousin) and Marianne, (a long time friend)!

This may not have been the most exciting journal entry I've ever done... but we have a saying in my native village; "some days you party hard, some days you hang out in the yard!" durlx

A weeks worth of news.


It's been a rather boring week visually; I don't really have any pictures to show so this will be wordier journal entry than usual. The image above is from the Weekly World News web site. When you see me reading a newspaper on cam with some bizarre article, it's this wonderfully silly supermarket tabloid. I just looked at the web site for the first time today. Yikes! It's also very, very wierd. They have a message board populated with the strangest people...

I hope it doesn't come as a shock to any of you that they make all this stuff up! The reason I know for sure (besides the fact that they admitted it in a libel suit) is that when Bill and I had the Deli in the Quarter, there was this couple who came in every day for a while and they had the greatest job; they took photos for the WWN and a few other tabs. They traveled around the country staying a few months here and a few months there, finding people who were willing to pose in some crazy set up for 50 or 75 bucks. The French Quarter was just chock full of crazies who were thrilled to do it; for a couple of months there was a picture of a friend or neighbor in the paper almost every week next to some ridiculous story. Like the local grocery delivery boy who posed for the story "Women pay me to father their babies! I've never worked a day in my life! says millionaire stud!" It was hilarious; we couldn't wait for the paper to arrive each week!

Moving to California, not.
I was up for a real kewl job on the west coast, but it fell through, didn't happen. It looked like it would have suited me to the ground and I had talked myself into moving to So Cal... a real disappointment when I got the news. I indulged in a two day bo bo face sulk fest, but I'm over it now, after all, I get to stay in New Orleans! As much as I love travel and new vistas, I love my sweet home Big Easy more. And there is something else on the horizon, jobwise. (BTW, thanks for the So Cal info on the message board!)

The rainy season, not.
This time of year, during April and May, we usually have a lot of rain, in fact, we often have huge storms with up to 10 inches of rain or more and flooding. This year there hasn't been a drop for almost a month. We aren't officially in a drought... one big storm could just about catch us up, but it's very dry in the big mother swamp right now. The temps have also been way up there; highs of 92 or 93 F and lows of 79 or 80. I have had to water the lawn! I sowed some new grass seed in the back yard trying to get that little patch green again and it is taking daily serious watering to get it going. This is sooo not the usual thing this time of year. There is one up side to the dryness; it does slow down some of the more aggressive weeds and vines that can literally take over over night. We're supposed to get a ten degree break in the temps next week; a front is coming that is supposed to break through the high that has been blocking any relief. It would be so great to shut off the A/C for a few days. One funny thing; this is neither a result of "El Nino" (warm Pacific conditions) or "La Nina" (cold Pacific conditions). The term that they used in the paper this week for the current situation is "La Nada"! hehe!

Puddin' the happy cat, not.
My little feline companion is not the most sociable of beings (she usual bites newcomers hello, just ask unokhan's friend...) although she has warmed up to luca a bit. She's fiercely loyal to me, but she is descended from a family of tough street wise cats and a tad territorial and wary of others. Well, Karen and Chris were here for a week and she loves them! (They are very devoted cat people and spent hours playing and socializing the lil beast.) Puddin' has spent nearly the whole week moping around; she actually misses them! Oh, I tried to amuse her! I tossed around the little string toy that they made that she found endlessly amusing when they were here, but no, it just wasn't the same. She would take a few swipes at it and walk away to go sulk in a corner. I talked to her until I began to doubt my sanity, but she obviously preferred the more dulcet coos of the girls. Once this week, I walked into the living room and I caught her playing wildly with that string thing and talking to herself! (Oh yeah, this cat talks to herself...she seems to have a very active internal life.) She was obviously pretending that her new friends were there. I admit, I felt a pang of jealousy.

Things seem to be getting back to normal, but now I'll always wonder if she likes them better...

After reading the preceeding paragraph over, I am thinking how very important it is that I get back to work...and out of the house more...~grin~

I must mention here that I don't spend all my time alone with my cat. I do have a very dear friend and neighbor, Robert ( Robea) who I meet up with in our back yards every day for a chat or two. He's been a rock to me at times when I haven't been feeling so great and he's always there for grocery shopping or to drive me to an interview or when I need to fix my screen door... or just talk. Thanks Robert.

And thanks to all of you as well! Thanks for the e-mails, e-cards and the phone calls during the week; sometimes it means more than you might imagine.


That's about it. I will get to the Mardi Gras Indians, whom I mentioned during Jazz Fest. I just want to do a little more research first; they are truly unique and I don't want to get anything wrong.

...and once again, Happy Birthday Auntie Vera!

Thursday, and Friday at Jazz Fest.

Thursday, Robert, Karen, Chris and I did the Magazine Street Run; lunch at Nirvana, an Indian restaurant, and then some shopping in the antique and esoteric junque stores on the street. We stopped at Anne Rice's shop; she has this place where she is selling all her cast off stuff, dolls, posters, jewelry, all kinds of stuff... (one of her old computer monitors for $300. Someone bought it...). Just amazing and too weird! The young man at the counter was ethereally beautiful in the extreme...

Chris and, especially Robert, experience Nirvana.



Jazz Fest

It was another hot, but gorgeous day Friday at Jazz Fest. The crowd was quite a bit larger than last Sunday, but as always very cool and easy to deal with. Karen and Chris wanted to visit all the craft vendors and artists, which we did in detail. (These gurls love to shop! Well, so do I...)

but my eye did wander a bit


We stopped by the Gospel Tent and Lady Tamborine was jumping! The group on the stage was The Greater Antioch Music Ministry and they had everybody up and wailing!
Lady Tamborine. I love this woman!







Then it was time for Bonnie Raitt! She is a big favorite at Jazz Fest; she has been performing at the fest since 1977, which means that she was supporting the festival when it was a very small affair. She's known as "The Queen of Jazz Fest" and she was incredible! She can still rock intensely, but her ballads had people hugging each other and swaying to the music. Performing with her was John Cleary, a consumate NO style pianist and on a few numbers, Ivan Neville, of the Neville Brothers.



For her encore, she did three numbers. The first one soft and beautiful, (she can really sing...), the middle one was a Mose Allison song from the 70's: "Everybody's crying Mercy, but they don't even know the meaning of the word." She finished out with a rocker featuring the kind of slide guitar work that she is known for. Just blew everyone away.




On the way home, on the city bus, we were sitting there listening to the lively chatter of all the folks who had been to Jazz Fest that day and I looked around at the people around me. The bus was filled with people of all ages and races, all sunburned and tired and happy. It's this amazing thing that the fest does to people; they all come together around the music and for a while, they are all so happy to be together.

And this one cute young man that was sitting next to me on the bus was sooo tired... He kept nodding off and resting his head on my shoulder...

sweet...

IMAX Space Station 3D




Yesterday we went to the IMAX theater at the Aquarium to see Space Station 3D.


This has to be the most fantastic use of the IMAX 3D technology to date! The images from within the space station are stunning and the launch sequences are almost over whelming! This is something I can't recommend highly enough; it's something you just have to see to believe. It's being shown around the country and if it's playing anywhere near where you are go see it! This is the web site.

Karen and Chris in 3D glasses!


After the film, we walked along the Mississippi for a while
and the Natchez steamed by.


Then we strolled over to the Napoleon house for muffalettas and then home. Today we're going uptown to have lunch at one of luca's favorite places, Nirvana, and then do some antiquing on Magazine Street.

Tomorrow, Jazz Fest and Bonnie Raitt!