Stardate 12122003
Double-Crossers, Double-Dealers and Double-Dippers
Retail robbery will only get you a couple a hundred bucks. What a dismal revelation. So much for Dickensian pick-pockets and cut-purses. Where’s the romance of being a highwayman, a brigand, or a petty thief if you only get a couple of bennies for your trouble? I’m having fantasies of hanging out on the docks with people whose desperation made them bad. I want to sell my children to gypsy slave traders.
It was barely Thanksgiving. I ate lamb. I had a nice, sensible intimate meal with three people were not my family. We ate at 6pm. There was no refined sugar or wheat present. After dinner, we retired to the parlor where we had herb tea and I told fortunes with the tarot. And then I went back to the home of my most gracious hosts who were keeping me out of the rain during part of my Bay Area sojourn, where I binged on pie. They warned me about the gravy, which contained a quart of brandy. That’s what I call “hitting the sauce.”
Now here it is the Christmas shopping season. A word of advice – pay cash. Nobody’s holiday happiness is worth the financial headache of out-of-control debt. If you can’t pay cash, you can’t afford it. It’s just that simple. Love shouldn’t involve a credit counselor and a collection agency. See, I worry about my peeps.
It’s probably not correct of me to say “Christmas shopping season” because that would presume that everybody in America celebrates the birth of Christ and that’s just not true. But it is a major American holiday with a decidedly secular (and warmed-over pagan) element to it. So I’m going to refer to this Major American Holiday Wherein We All Spend More Money Than We Have So People Will Love Us and Eat Way Too Much Sugar and Drink a LOT and Cram Ourselves Into Lines and Parking Lots and Complain About How Hectic This Major American Holiday Is as … Yuletide.
We’ve heard the stories about all the curious customs and traditions surrounding Yuletide and now I’m going to tell you one more.
The Magical Tale of The Elf Nicholas Who Liked Humans
A long time ago, before the grandmothers, there was a beautiful and fearsome goddess who lived in the North and sometimes in the underworld. She loved to look at herself in the mirror for she was very beautiful. She had a brother who was her son and also her lover. He was the light that penetrated the darkness between the stars. He was unbearably beautiful and many of the other gods and goddesses were afraid to look at him, so struck they would be his unmatched beauty that they feared they would go mad with lust for him.
After an evening of love-play, this goddess took the light that was her lover into herself and she became pregnant and gave birth to the faery-kind. In those days, humans and the gods and the fey-folk were much closer than they are now. As human civilization grew, so did their arrogance and the fey and the elder gods no longer had any interest in the humans. So the beautiful and fearsome goddess drew the curtain between the human world and the world of the fey where they remain hidden unto this day.[king.jpg]
One of the fey-folk, a kindly elf which has been of old called Nicholas, knew that the humans desperately needed the fairy magic, especially in mid-winter when survival was difficult. He saw how the humans suffered so and he pondered how he could bring some of the heart-magic of the fairies to the humans. He noticed how happy they were when they were given things their hearts truly desired. He began to look into the hearts of the humans to see what kinds of things they desired most. And in the secret of night, he would bring them the things he saw in their hearts. Their squeals of delight and utter joy thrilled Old Nicholas and he would share the stories with his brothers and sisters. The other fairy-folk would yawn or scowl or scorn him and in general wondered why Nicholas even bothered with the humans.
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This work was very tiring. One night, Nicholas fell exhausted near the warm hearth inside a little cottage in a village. The woman of the house came around to see to it that the embers would last until morning and she saw Nicholas on his back, his toes pointed up and his hands resting on his little, round, heaving belly. He had a bulbous nose and a long chin and wore a green pointed hat.
She had heard of people finding the thing they wished for most and she suspected that it may have been the work of a fairy but she dared not speak about such things or she may be ridiculed. She knew the villagers were whispering amongst themselves and trying to remember the old stories and now, here, right in front of her, was the little pixie responsible for the mischief.
She tiptoed very carefully to the tired creature. Nicholas had his eyes closed but he knew she was drawing near. He rolled his head towards her and peered at her with one eye. He let the other eye continue napping. Nicholas watched her and wondered what she would do. He knew he was in no danger and he also knew that humans knew far less about his kind than he did of theirs. Besides, he wanted to get to know these hated beings.
“Sir, if you please, how do you do, sir,” She said.
“I’m very tired and very hungry. I travel all night bringing gifts to you humans but I’m afraid I just can’t go on. If you feed me, I can bring you your heart’s desire.”
The woman took a bowl down from the shelf near the hearth and looked into the cooking pot hanging over the fire. There wasn’t much left but it would have to do. She filled the bowl and handed it over to Nicholas who at this time was sitting bolt-upright with his tongue hanging out the edge of his mouth which dripped saliva onto the floor.
“FOR ME? FOR ME?”, he said. He had his hands out and his fingers quivered.
The woman placed the bowl in his hands and said, “Yes, for you.”
Nicholas ate the stew, disappeared and immediately reappeared with a golden broach finely wrought by fairy hands, too precious even for human royalty – which was no real royalty at all. The woman was astonished and Nicholas forbade her from showing the broach to anyone. He did, however, tell her to whisper into the ears of those she knew to leave food out for the little elf so he can do his work, which was to bring them gifts to brighten their spirits. He knew that they would tell their friends and they would tell THEIR friends and soon the whole world would know that if you want to get an elf to do anything for you, you have to feed them first.
Years went by and the woman wanted to give a precious gift to someone she loved and who loved her just as much. So she made a little silk pouch for the fairy-broach and handed it to her beloved. When the beloved opened the pouch, what slid out revealed the nature of the fairy magic - a common field stone.
And that is also why we leave cookies and milk out for Santa Claus who hides the real face of Nicholas, the only fairy who likes humans.
So Did You Actually DO Anything?
I know, if you are going to have a column called ABOUT TOWN, you should at least be doing things to chronicle. I just thought the Nicholas story was more interesting, but I did see Ang Lee at a benefit for the Jade Ribbon Campaign, hosted by NOODLE Magazine. NOODLE is a lifestyle magazine for “Gaysians” … aka Gay Males of Asian Descent … which also marginally includes South-East Asians in the complicated identity politics of the Politically Correct World. I didn’t have much time to talk to the Editor-In-Chief, Max Lau, but I did manage to get him to stop being the busy host and pose for a photo with the films principal Winston Chao and a supporting actor, Mitchell Lichtenstein who is the son of the famed 20th century pop artist, Roy Lichtenstein. I wonder how tiring it gets to be referred to as “the son of.”
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I once met the niece of Don Knotts and that is exactly how she was described to me. Her name is Patty and she showed me this atrocious low-budge set in the new-wave bohemian underground of San Francisco in the mid-80s. Think leather, queer, exotic lifestyles, artsy-fartsy, West Coast Factory with a rock band. It was a horror film. It’s so bad, but tries so hard and has the best intentions, that it deserves to be seen. I don’t think it’s available anywhere, though. So take my word for it. Patty plays the hapless , big-haired, broad shoulder-padded heroine who does her darndest not to get snuffed out by an unknown killer. Given that the film was made at the very beginning of the AIDS crisis, the film is metaphorically poignant.
The screening of THE WEDDING BANQUET coincided with the tenth anniversary of the film and was held at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco. I love the private lounge area of the Herbst because of the third floor veranda that overlooks Van Ness Avenue with views of City Hall. Not wanting to waste yet another opportunity to soak in the rare view, I sat on a baroque-accented cement bench and sipped my boba tea and watched lots of middle aged Chinese women line up next to Winston – who is very handsome -- and while he plays gay, I’m not sure if he actually is. My butt may have been cold but my heart was warmed by all the good cheer.
The Jade Ribbon Campaign is an awareness campaign to fight Hepatitis B in Asian-American and Pacific-Islander American communities, which are disproportionately affected by the disease.
What I Learned from NOODLE Magazine
The Gaysian subculture classifies racial types with food euphemisms: Chocolate, Potatoes, Jalapeños and Rice. Guess which is which. Also, there is a thing called a “Rice Queen.” I’ve been scouring the bars in the Castro looking for one. It doesn’t sound like something you want to be called, but I didn’t say it. I’m just repeating it. I also think it’s kind of a limited perspective on racial categories, sort of like the four major food groups.
I’m going to start writing my personals ads using the newly discovered food euphemisms.
Potato tired of potato salad. Wants to get hands sticky with Sushi. WASABE makes me hot. Vegetarian a plus.
Ang Lee, as you probably know, directed THE HULK, but he also made a movie called THE WEDDING BANQUET which is a gay Asian classic about an inter-racial couple and also about homophobia in Chinese culture. “Gay, you can’t be gay, there is no such thing as gay.” That’s what I learned from NOODLE. The End.
Or is it?
The press hoo-ha for MONSTER starring Charlize Theron and Christina Ricci is next week and I would write about that and I think it would be cool to interview them but not “drive 400 miles cool.” I’m also going to miss interviewing Helen Mirren for CALENDAR GIRLS. Oh well.
Tinsletown, you will just have to wait a couple more months. It’s not like the whole movie business dealio is just going to stop.
Robin Williams and Aidan Quinn are in some play called THE EXONERATED. That bears investigating. Also other stuff and stuff I don’t know about yet because it hasn’t happened. SO STAY TUNED. We’ve got loads of surprises, celebrity guests, the hottest musicians and GIVEAWAYS and LOTS OF STUFF!
No, we don’t. Go bake a pie. Nicholas is hungry.
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