There’s few things more annoying than a  Monty Python fan. I should know, I am one.

The first thing I ever saw from this most-famous, British comedy troupe was “The Meaning of Life”, their fourth and final film, released in 1983. I was eight. It was completely inappropriate for a child and I still taunt my older sister for taking me to see it.

Being the baby of the family, I was inevitably stuck with my older sister on dates, so all the films I saw as a child were wrong for my age.

My first film was the whimsical and high-spirited “Reds”, based on real-life American Communist, John Reed, and his affair with a married woman. Tee hee! Next, I remember seeing “Gandhi”, that laugh-a-minute movie that’s warmed the cockles of so many tots. Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” was a memorable evening for me (I was still small enough to hide under my seat); “Mommie Dearest” caused a temporary phobia of wire coat hangers; watching “Sybil” resulted, ironically, in me developing a split personality to handle the memory of seeing it, and imagine my delight at being the only kid in class to say he’d seen “Chariots of Fire”… twice.


In my sister’s defense, she did once take me to see a showing of “Bambi” at her college theatre, but the reel broke just after the forest fire that claims Bambi’s Mommy’s life. Whereas the other kids were crying and traumatized by this, I wasn’t phased. After all, what’s one dead deer when I had already witnessed the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre?

But this isn’t therapy and you’re not a psychologist*, so I won’t pursue this tangent.

Is it wrong to have Coors Light for breakfast?

This is the question I’m struggling with right now. It’s so cuss-word hot in Hollywood today. It makes it hard to think. I need to write a blog!

I wish Amoeba Music sold Coors Light, then I could just blog about that. I could be drinking it and telling you how I “recommend it” and stuff like that. That would rock.

Oh hey – I saw a great concert the other night. It was the final performance of the True Colors Tour, which started a month ago in Las Vegas and ended at the Greek Theatre in LA, as opposed to the Greek Theatre in San Francisco, where they played the night before.

(The Greek thing is a tip off.)

I got to see Debbie Harry and Cyndi Lauper in the same line-up. Added to that was Erasure; between these three acts I felt as though I was 14 again and had escaped to the city for a concert. Except I was sober and the car wasn’t stolen, so I guess it wasn’t too much like being 14…

The Dresden Dolls also performed, but my sweetheart and I missed it; we were cuddled on a grassy knoll eating the most expensive and, ironically, most horrid cheeseburgers I’ve ever had in my life.

I had never seen so many homos in my life. I’ve never been to Pride or Bed, Bath & Beyond, so this event was the gayest I’ve attended. Of course, Margaret Cho was the host, and as a particularly surreal touch, Cyndi Lauper’s encore was backed-up on drums played by… Rosie O’Donnell?

It’s seven-thirty in the morning; I’ve just rolled out of bed after a weird and ultimately unhelpful dream about being accidentally tossed off the Thunder Mountain Railroad ride at Disneyland, after which I ended up drenched in water and yelling at Timothy Dalton, who was working as a security guard, for not believing that their stupid ride malfunctioned and landed me in a private parking garage.

Seriously. That’s what I was dreaming. Is it any wonder I’m awake an hour before normal? I mean, who needs that kind of crap? I am like, totally giving my subconscious mind the silent treatment today.

Two things are helping salvage my mood. One is writing this to you, of course. The other is listening to Jobriath.


This dude’s story is mostly tragic; one of the casualties of the music industry. He was glam at a time when glam had just started retiring. Bowie had already reinvented himself as a Zoot-suit wearing soul singer. Even so, Jobriath was promoted by Elektra Records as though his debut album would be more popular than The Beatles, and subsequently, God.

His half-naked frame was plastered all over cities at a time when we weren’t used to seeing such things. (I mean, nowadays it’s like, “Oh, a huge billboard of two, scantily-clad beefcakes frolicking in a pool together… in an advertisement for Toilet Duck.”) Jobriath’s first album was inescapable, and it hadn’t even been released.

So that, when it finally did hit the shelves, though it was critically acclaimed by many, it couldn’t live up to the hype that had come before it. Jobriath was eventually abandoned by his management and lived the rest of his life out in relative obscurity; his major legacy being an example to record companies on how NOT to handle a new act.

Job is busy making me dinner right now, so the least I can do is blog for him. I have also had one of his vodka-pomegranate cocktails, so I may be more lucid than usual.

At any rate, what is so hard about blogging? I do it all the time for The Advocate. Of course, it is usually at a film festival or something, so I have something interesting to talk about. But in the absence of such obvious content, what does one say?

I will tell you this: Job spends far too much time on these blogs. Time, I might add, not spent with me. I don’t think he got the memo that these should be short and pithy. The reader doesn’t have that much of an attention span anyway, and no patience for rambling and self-indulgence. What is more self-indulgent than a blog about someone’s life, never met, and their friends and experiences, never met, nor experienced. Does anyone really want to read any of that? Does anyone really want to see pictures of me in a red, satin tuxedo jacket perched atop a rock in the middle of Joshua tree? (Besides myself and Job of course).

It is only right that I tell you a few things about Job that perhaps he would never tell you. Only I can’t think of anything he doesn’t cop to. I just waxed his back this afternoon, but that isn’t very salacious. Let’s think… He barks a UPS trucks whenever he sees them. Yes, he barks, like a dog. No matter who is in the car. He acts like a real baby at about 11:30 pm every night. I ask him if he is tired (knowing, of course, that he is) and he responds “no” with pouted lower lip, and eyes droopy and childlike. The voice also is dismissive, blurted and vaguely resembling a grunt. Then he makes me pull him off the couch and pretends to be too tired to get up of his own will. He then pretends to be too tired to undress himself, get under sheets, or get on his own side. There is even fake crying and the rubbing of eyes. It is of course incredibly cute to me, but to the outside witness it would appear vaguely retarded and co-dependent. 

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I don’t own a television. I can’t.

I just can’t face another TV commercial. It doesn’t matter how good a show is, if it must stop all of a sudden in order for some hopped-up, bling-bling supermodel to salaciously coax me into purchasing the latest acacia-infused douche/pudding pop, I will barf.

Maybe my resistance is low because I spent most of my childhood glued to the boob-tube. I could tell anyone what I was “going to do that day” in half-hour increments.

“Four o’clock? Well, ‘Dangermouse’ will just be finishing up, then segueing into ‘You Can’t Do That On Television,’ after which I will switch channels to Mtv to watch ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus’…” ad infinitum.

(Monty Python on Mtv? Man, those were good times. ‘Just Say Julie’ and ‘Post Modern Mtv’… I weep for our losses.)


At some point, I switched watching copious amounts of TV for lots and lots of mind-altering drugs. So yeah, things were getting healthier. By the time I sobered up and realized that my life wasn’t going to figure itself out, I had a quick nervous breakdown and spiritual crisis, considered suicide, came back from the brink of annihilation, got a job and a girlfriend and discovered I could no longer cope with Nike ads.

Really, this could be anyone’s story.

This is my very personal and long-winded way of saying that I only watch TV shows on DVD. On my computer. In control. No swooshes.

Currently, I am enjoying HBO’s epic saga, “Rome”. I can’t say that I’m bowled over, but it’s amusing enough to watch when I scurry home from Amoeba Music for my lunch break. I’ve only watched the first four episodes, too, so there’s still a chance I’ll get addicted. It took about that long before I realized that “Deadwood” was (curse-word) brilliant.