Fire Island Invasion 2009

On Friday at around 4pm I was at Independence Mall in Philadelphia. There was, as some people may call it, a protest rally by some black owned construction companies. They were demanding that more construction work be opened for black people in the city. They said that the President’s House that George Washington lived in before the White House was built and which John Adams moved into, should be reconstructed on the mall with black labor at the exclusion of others since the first house would have been originally built with slave labor. All very interesting I thought, but not quite the spirit of “Brotherly Love” the city is supposed to have especially when we were supposed to be celebrating the birth of the nation in the city that it all began. I decided to go my gym and come back later for the concert that was being held on the mall with Peter Nero and the Philly Pops.

I did go back and since I had my video camera I shot a few scenes of the Pop’s version of the theme from ET and something from Benny Goodman. Then when they started playing “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again” it was time for me to go home before the South started to rise again. Plus I knew that I would have to get up early to celebrate July 4th, the next day, not by coming back to the mall to listen to speeches or thinking of the Founding Fathers or heading to someone’s horrible barbeque, but to where I seem to go every year now, Fire Island.

The story is that back in 1976 a few drag queens were refused service from a bar in the Pines on Fire Island. The men went back to Cherry Grove on another part of the island and with their friends on the day the country was celebrating the bi-centennial anniversary for independence, they boarded a boat and invaded the Pines in full drag regalia. They and others have been doing that every year since then and organized by Panzi in the yellow. It has become known as the Fire Island Invasion of the Pines.

I have been going for the last 5 or 6 years and I wish I could say that I have been in costume, but I haven’t worn mother’s wig and pearls since I was about 8 and never in public. Usually I just head to the beach, strip down and relax. This time however because of the mass of people this year they ran out of room on the ferry that I usually take so I arrived at Cherry Grove at around 1pm just as the revelers were about to leave the Grove for the Pines. I decided to shoot this video with too much wind noise going on and to steal some pictures from flickr.com and some of the music from Priscilla Queen of the Desert.

I hope you enjoy it just as much as hope you enjoyed your weekend as I did mine.

The King & I

It's been sometime since I have actually written anything and this was something that I had never in my wildest dreams thought that I would ever do, but here it is.

There isn't much that I can write about the King of Pop that you could not think for yourself or read somewhere else. There isn't anything more that I could or even develop into something even slightly interesting that hasn't already said. For the last couple of days I’ve been thinking of Michael knowing that my life will not change one iota because of his death but realizing that my life has in a small way already been changed or at least been affected by him being alive.

I remember the first time I saw the Jackson 5 as back in '69 on the old black and white. Some people with more significant lives will tell you about chasing or running from the VC back in 'Nam, but I will tell you about looking up at a boy not much older than myself and wondering why I couldn't be as magnificent as he seemed to be. They were and he was magic and they knew it and they knew I knew it to.

I think I’ve said in this blog before that both Michael Jackson and I share the same birthday. It’s a line that I use to show how I really hip and cool I am and I want people to remember me by stating something that’s different from whatever else they may have heard. Of course using a phrase like “hip and cool” only shows how much I really am not but I have always tried to ride MJ’s coat tails by showing people the similarities between us. Although undoubtedly we have a few differences.

I am or was just a few years younger than Mr. Jackson so that was one difference and another minor one would be the talent thing. I know that I have no talent because some years ago for some strange reason I was watching with my mother, Barbara Walters or somebody interview Michael Jackson. My mother said to herself something like “such talent.” Then she turned towards me and said the word “if”, lowered her eyes and let the smile fall from her face. I swore to myself, perhaps not with words but at least pictures, I would hate Michael Jackson and everything that he stood for, for the rest of my life and maybe a little more beyond it.

It goes without saying that I never could hate Michael anymore that I could hate my left shoulder when it clicks and hurts me when I raise my arm. Like my shoulder he has been part of my life for as long as I can remember.

I remember when I stared to grow an afro because he had one. I remember the choice of clothes and the platforms that I wore were because of him. I remember posting the bedroom walls with pictures of him and his brothers that I tore out of the teeny bopper magazines. In fact the only thing that I did before he did was to catch my hair on fire, and at least I did it without getting third degree burns. I supported him when he did his Thriller album when early on, black people were thinking that MJ’s music was too pop, which is a euphemism for being too white, but I was there. I never bought the album of course; there was no need to go over the top. I was there in spirit.

I was also there in spirit during the cosmetic surgeries that made him look like another version of the Joker. I was there during the Martin Bashir interview and I realized my idol from yesteryear had either gone berserk or had never developed an adult thinking brain and my heart and my stomach fell. But I was there. I think I will be there when he is finally laid to rest. Not the memorial/spectacle "Joe Jackson somehow it’ll make money" money scheme they intend to put on in Los Angeles for him, but the one where everyone realizes that it’s all over, and then like the line that keeps going on and on in my head, “I'll be there, I'll be there, just call my name, I'll be there....”

No More Neda Soltans, Please!

So I’m watching Hannity on Fox the other night. I don’t usually do the Fox channel since it seems to be more interested in commentary rather than news and even though I hate labels, I guess I’m a liberal at heart but with a conservative streak somewhere in the middle that dislikes the stuff they do.

This night they were talking about what is going on in Iran and the protests and the lack of President Obama to come out strongly against the recent election results there. Hannity brought up time and again the death or “martyrdom” of the young lady who was shot and killed during one of the protests and I realized that even though I had heard the story before, I hadn’t really paid that much attention to it.

I believe Senators McCain and Graham and other Republicans had told the story in order to criticize the President as being weak and timid and decided that I would see what they were talking about. It wasn’t difficult to find the video of the death of Neda Soltan, the Young Iranian girl who was shot, and I was surprised that it was still up. Here is a link to that video if you are interested. I didn’t post the actual video because it’s sad and discomforting as you see her slip away as I’m sure most deaths are. But even more than the death of the young Neda, I was struck by idea that many politicians seem not to realize that her death may have been determined 30 or more years even before she was born by the actions of the British and Americans in the ‘50’s. Here is what I mean.

In 1953 the freely elected Iranian Prime Minister Dr. Mossadegh was ousted by British and American interests when he decided to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC). Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi was reinstalled as the absolute ruler of Iran with the support of the Americans until the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Then American hostages were taken in Tehran and we backed and supplied Sadam Hussein with arms in his war against Iran. That war now over, the Iranian government now reflects an Islamic fundamentalist outlook and is a total rejection of the Shah’s rule and the distrust of and disaffection towards the United States.

This view and the recent Iranian elections have led many young people, such as Neda Soltan, to protest against it and the outbreak of violence in the streets where the militia has cracked down on them. The Republicans and some Democrats want the President decry what’s happening, increase sanctions and isolation against Iran and threaten the possibility of military intervention in the name of “freedom” and to what end? So we can start the cycle again? So there can be more blood shed by Iranians and possibly American or Coalition troops. Hasn’t there been an adequate amount of life lost in that region where we can say “enough already” and just stay away?

Sure I grieve for Neda as much as anyone else will who didn’t know her, but I don’t want her held up as a poster child for an excuse for more violence, for more suffering and for more fear. I don't want to see more friends and family go off to places they shouldn't be in to die or kill again. I don’t want to read the papers 60 years from now and say this all seems familiar.

I wonder if I’ll still be able to read 60 years from now?

I hate Hoaxes!

“There is someone being sucked out of the aircraft where the tail is supposed to be and there is some bozo standing up taking a picture of it happening,” was my first thought to myself. The second was that I was ashamed for even giving a nanosecond of thought to the picture and the others that came with it.

The pictures screamed hoax and I felt sorry for myself that I gave them any attention. I felt sorry that someone or some people didn’t have the sensibility to restrain their urge for fame or notoriety by not playing with someone else’s tragedy. I felt sorry for friends and family who might have been subjected to their losses as just a joke.


I am referring to a series of pictures that were circulating on the net this week showing what was supposedly the last moments of Air France’s flight #447 from Rio to Paris. It was said that a camera belonging to a Brazilian had been found in and amongst parts of the wreckage and it had three pictures of when the plane’s fuselage had broken apart. It reminded me of the picture of the tourist in his winter coat and hat at the end of summer on top of one of the Twin Towers in NYC having his picture took just seconds before one of the jets hit the World Trade Center. Why do people get a thrill from this, I don’t get it?

Sure, my sense of humor can be little sordid and out of place at times, but give me a minute or two and something will usually kick in and tell me to rethink what I’m about to do. As long as I haven’t said anything, I can generally steer clear of any mess that I’m about to commit and no one is the wiser for it. Why can’t others do that?


Speaking of which my next post will be about why I think John McCain is a crazy bitch and that the world is so much better than it would have been if he had become President. Well maybe. I have to think it through first.

Philly Pride 2009

Misery o’ misery!

I hadn’t really intended to write anything about Gay Pride this year. If truth be told, I’m not really that much into it, politically that is. Yes, I see the significance placing yourself out there so everyone else can see you and not brush you aside like yesterday’s trash. I realize the need to be heard when I or anyone else wants to state that we are human, we are equal and we deserve the rights that everyone else has in order to exist because our lives are not less than anyone else’s. But I’ve never really seen these events as being that effective.

In fact when President Clinton wanted to ban the ban on gays in the military, video tapes of gay celebration parades were shown to the top brass and the politicians including John McCain and said if gay people acted like this in the street then it would a cold day you know where before they would knowingly allow anyone with homosexual tendencies in their armed services. They thought the parades to be too flamboyant and too drag queeny to have officers and men like those among them. They must not have known that I would do a video that would be as dull as dish water and thrown out all of those fun concepts out.

As usual I decided to go to Philly’s Gay Pride Parade at Penn's Landing this year instead of Odunde, the African-American festival they have in South Philly. I don’t go there anymore because I’m becoming more of a snob as I get older and I realize that those people are really not my sort and there’s also less chance of me losing part of a kidney from gunshots if I stay away completely.

So after arriving after 4pm, less than 2 hours before the event would finish and probably well after any of the good stuff, acts, people and half naked muscle boys (there, I’ve said it), had left and I was wondering why was I there. It looked like I had missed all the fun part of the festival but just in time to sign up for the political stuff which as I said I wasn’t interested in.

Oh well, in order to salvage part of the weekend there is this little video which I realize is edited all wrong but I’m over it and I’m just looking forward to some leather at Folsom St East in NYC this weekend. Hopefully that will bring me out of this misery. I wonder what I will wear.