If Christian New Year’s (that’s what it is folks–the Julian calendar) turns out to be a bust–which it almost certainly always does due to the pressure to perform, which causes erectile dysfunction of the partying variety–rest assured that if at first you don’t succeed…

There’s always Chinese New Year–my favorite being a half-breed, on January 29th. And for that one, feel free to light firecrackers, eat a lot of bao, take more than one fortune cookie and wear a shocking gawdy red garment (as long as you don’t take advantage and break out yet another “slutty holiday costume,” as if Halloween and Christmas weren’t enough). If you can’t pronounce “Gung hei fah tsoi” (Happy New Year), then there’s yet another chance to repeat the undoubtedly anti-climactic night on Mayan New Year: February 17th.

And if that’s a little too tribal and obscure for you, feel free to live your life, in the moment, and then one fine, serendipitous day when something magically charged occurs–proclaim it your own personal New Year. I know, I know, that sounded totally Rob Brezsny-esque (old hippie bewildered style), but this time it happens to be great advice.

I will surely think of it this Saturday as my car slides out of one Canyon and into another, attempting to dodge drunk weekend warriors from Alhambra swerving all over Hollywood Boulevard.

Expect nothing, drink responsibly, bring some Kimono condoms (allegedly the best “feeling” for a man) and let the night take you like a recently released ex-con. Happy New You!

Image: the unbearably sexy Heath Ledger and his love interest Jake Gylenhaal in Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain”

Cowboy love is the purest, grittiest, most fulfilling kind of love a woman or man could ever wish to be graced with. Cowboy love is not tough love. It’s the toughest love you’ll ever get. I’ve come to these grand conclusions after having seen “Brokeback Mountain,” and watched my first episode of HBO’s “Deadwood.” Both works come from different ends of the cowboy spectrum but possess the same deeply earthy sensibility–a rugged blend of bourbon, cigarettes, sweat and rough-housing that in the end give satisfaction as smug as that dimpled smile on Sam Elliott’s face.

“Brokeback Mountain,” or as some jokingly call it, “Bareback Mountain,” referring to the current unsafe sex trend amongst gays, is quite simply the best movie I’ve seen in years. Its slow seventies pacing combined with the hearty lines supplied by original New Yorker short story author Annie Proulx + the devastatingly sexy and talented Heath Ledger make this little girl want to get back on the saddle and ride away into the sunset.

“Brokeback Mountain” has heartbreak, heartache, aching loins, hardened gazes masking heartfelt sentiments…the Full Monty. And on that note, no Full Monty at all. Like a true urban perv, I was anticipating many hot sex scenes between Ledger and his pretty boy companion Jake Gylenhaal. There was but one man-on-man action scene and it proved subtle–struggling with belt buckles, spit on a hand, darkness, dampened whimpers. Love is sexy. Sex is loving. So go the film’s underlying symbiotic semantics. That’s a love that’s eternal, gnawing, never quenched and always cruel. That’s a love that yearns like a bout of foreplay.

Beyond these libidinous musings, it’s simply a beautiful story that–whether you’re gay, straight or bi-curious–expounds on the human condition riddled with all of its shame, identity crisis and tortured and unintended iconoclasm. See it, or prepare for a duel.

And “Deadwood,” though struggling with not nearly so grave and heavy a subject, managed to capture my attention for its unabashed vulgarism–the vulgarism that our country was founded on. And perhaps this is why we have so much trouble controlling ourselves–voracious consumers that we are–because we are all wild Westerners at heart. Here in Deadwood, the word “fuck” is not just an expletive but an element as important as air. Here all the women are at their worst–widows or whores. Here the men are gamblers, pimps, killers, cheaters. This is where the human darkness of spirit–embodied in the Lucifer archetype–exists, unafraid of any frail threats from posturing denizens of a limiting society.

And perhaps it is this grossness, all of these sins that live in Deadwood, that make it seem as earnest and cringe-inducing as a knife scar. Unlike in “Brokeback Mountain,” it’s not just the clean, sexy, glossy sweat that coats its players. One gets the sense from watching Ian McShane and his ilk that it smells real bad in “Deadwood.” But bad smell’s not necessarily a bad thing. And to some, it beats the ersatz manlihood supplied in a bottle of Calvin Klein for men.

Image: Bad Santa, Billy-Bob Thornton

While sitting cozily around my old wooden door table for a Christmas eve dinner of cornish game hen, one of my friends, Jack, noted that he couldn’t stand to listen to the song, “Santa, Baby.” For those of you not familiar with it, it’s a lurid baby-talk tune originated by the fabulous Eartha Kitt but co-opted as a sort of anthem for all of those loose exhibitionists who didn’t get their fill by dressing as “slutty nurse,” or “slutty witch” during Halloween. This is yet another prime opportunity for them to draw attention to themselves.

Could it be possible that during one of the warmer more family-oriented holidays we could all enjoy a little TLC? No, these women insist that it’s T&A that you focus your attentions on. So they parade around dressed as Santa’s slutty helpers unconscious that they are on some level working through the fact that they were most likely molested. Jack explained, “They did a psychological study and found that women who use that baby voice to seduce were often molested by their dads.” Horrors, and now they need to sit on Santa’s knee and wear bobbles on their bobbles to make sure that none of the children (let’s not forget, this is predominantly their holiday) get the attention.

Once again, I say, please, please, please get some therapy so we can enjoy our warm, loving, INNOCENT holiday in peace, sans seduction, baby-talk, stripping or porno implications. I don’t want anyone out there to think I put all the blame on these attention-starved women-children. Apart from women self-objectifying, there are two other larger-than-life culprits in this case of deifying and over-emphasizing the porno aesthetic and culture: the media and the legislators.

The media proliferates the message that being a stripper or being a porn star is “hip,” “cool,” “sexy.” And the legislators, by upholding America’s long history of being puritanical, continues to enforce laws that prohibit or greatly cripple stripping and pornography–thus ensuring that both become enigmatic, forbidden and hard-to-get. By making something forbidden–we all know–we increase its market value. Am I jealous of these strippers and porn stars? Yes, well to a certain extent. You see, by just flaunting their bodies to men (and at once vulgarizing the act of true intimacy), they make 5 times as much money as I make struggling with my intellectual machinations.

I know, I know, you say, I too could make a small investment to self-desecrate by purchasing a pair of heavy plastic double-D’s and joining the leagues of “struggling” strippers in L.A. for a return–unfortunately there’s a little something called pride–a difficult bedfellow–that prohibits me from humiliating myself for cash. And yes, being a writer is a little humiliating, I know, but for all of its neurosis and stress, there is something rewarding to be proud of at the end of it (other than a guy shooting his wad in his pants).

So as a woman who enjoys being more than one thing–sexual, but also intellectual, and spiritual, I make one wish for the New Year:

I wish that–like in Holland–our legislators were more liberal with their sexual morays so that pornography and stripping could once again be seen for what they are–normal, idle, even banal passtimes that we humans use to ‘get our freak on’ when the better alternative–intimacy–is nowhere in sight. I wish that these activities were not seen as replacements for intimacy but more along the lines of taking a leak or brushing your teeth in the morning.

Then perhaps the media would stop putting prostitutes up on a pedestal as somehow gifted and unique, when in fact they’re just working girls doing a job–be it hand or blow. The demystification of sex is essential for our growth as a country. If we don’t stop obsessing over it, we will never mature from horny, clumsy, awkward, unenlightened adolescents into fully rounded adults. When we do that, perhaps we can give new meaning to the term, “adult entertainment.”

Happy Holidays from shanatinglipton.com and Shana Ting Lipton the human. May you get everything you desire…as this classic 1930’s New Yorker cover suggests. Now get away from the computer…scram…

I had lunch with my friend writer John Gilmore and his son Carson Gilmore at Duke’s (the last stronghold of “old L.A.”). John noted something interesting about the Hollywood system in L.A.–quite simply everything is “In Development,” or it’s not worth a rat’s ass (I’m eloquently summarizing). I got to thinking about this (in that “I got to thinking,” Carrie Bradshaw/Sex and the City moment where’s she’s staring out into the New York streets while her laptop cursor blinks suggestively)…Perhaps, the next time someone asks me how my life is going, I could, quite honestly reply, “It’s in development.” There’s some one-hand-clapping for your Monday–with a little “snap snap” mixed in for good measure.

NIGHTSPOTTING
Last Wednesday, I went to the opening of the new Cha Cha Lounge in Silver Lake in “Red Lion Square,” as I’ve dubbed it. The theme was dinstinctly Kitsch Mexicana with an LA twist. It was as if a Jane’s Addiction album cover had thrown up all over the ceiling. Who says, “Dia de Los Muertes” is about preserving cultural heritage? It’s an interiors trend. Expect to see D.D.L.M. shower curtains at Target any minute (designed, naturally, by Michael Kors or better yet Isaac Mizrahi). Actually the literal location of the bar was on a former Indian burial ground–urr, did I just say Indian burial ground, I meant to say drag queen bar. You can still see portraits of the former Cha Cha “queens” on the tables. Cha Cha, apart from being a slutty character in the movie “Grease,” is after all the draggiest name imaginable.

On Friday, I went to the Avalon to see 30 Seconds to Mars (a.k.a. Jared Leto’s band, a.k.a. My So-Called Band). It was a work thang. Lots of serious cultish teenie boppers and twentysomethings worshiping at the altar of the Leto’s (the actor’s brother also plays drums so it’s two for one, Leto boys be Leto boys). All at once, in what would have been a strobe light storm back in my day, everyone in the front row vicinity’s camera phone went off. They had to of course capture JL’s fabulously Dynasty-esque (with a pinch of The Cult) attire–a white blazer with shoulder pads. And the Robert Smith ‘do was quite fetching. Yet, I couldn’t help feeling once again (as I do when I see a TV commercial for Swiffer mops or Old Navy) that the music from my youth in the 80’s was being a bit exploited. Or maybe I’m being too harsh and “updated” is more appropriate.

Later, it was off to a funky, grungy Blue Space art opening including work by one of my gal pal’s Lady Barbara Anne Crumm. We were even privy to a special Christmas marionette show. Unfortunately, cute as it was (with the Christmas rabbit getting drunk on a bottle of vodka, and singing), the marionette show has forever been ruined or “creepified” for me by the film “Being John Malkevich.” And I also have a faint recollection of my own bizarre pirate marionette getting all tangled up when I was a kid—argh, too much of the sauce for him as well.

TO BE REAL
Trendsters, night owls, tragic hipsters…hear ye, hear ye, it has come to my attention that your cold, standoffish ways are “out.” “Keeping it real” is in. In a glass brick jungle like Los Angeles, where bobbing silicon lurks around every corner, regular botox is as normal as eating a bowl of Kellogg’s corn flakes in the morning and everyone is trying so desperately to keep up the appearance of apathy–keeping it real is like a rare diamond, an exceptional caviar–something infrequently experienced but greatly prized. If you can cut the bullshit and be honest and true to your spirit for just 24 hours, you are golden. That means no niceties (”I would love to see you tonight but I have plans”), no downplays (”It was pretty cool going out with you”), and no masks (that requires nixing the “don’t ever let them see you sweat” philosophy). At this moment, there is such a dearth of reality in Los Angeles, that we attempt to fabricate it through the dishonestly named “reality TV” world. Sorry folks, bimbos and mimbos from Bumfuck trying to make a “love connection” is not reality–it’s keeping George W. Bush’ American dream alive. So, get ready, here’s the jingle to market this new trend: Keeping it Real, Try it, You Might Like it!

ABS-FAB
My latest remote gym crush (it gets boring on the isometric machine–harmless distractions welcome) is none other than actor Jeff Goldblum. The total antithesis of the W.A.S.P.’s I am usually attracted to, Mr. G. is a Member of the Tribe (half my tribe, that is). Call me crazy–since he was “the fly” and all, but there’s something deeply commanding and sexy about this seemingly discombobulated, eccentric and brainy type. And, amidst a sea of “catty girls and pretty boys” (as the Go-Go’s sang in, “This Town,” their eulogy to their hometown and mine, L.A.) he’s unusual and disarming. So, if you’re reading this, Jeff, normally I verbally claw guys at the gym to death for offering to help me with the free weights, but for you…Just say those magic words: “Excuse me but you’re going to injure yourself if you keep doing it that way. Let me show you how it’s done…”

On a Thursday evening, and again on a Saturday, I found myself + friends at the Paper magazine LA Project party–a sort of five day arty farty party bonanza, during which hipster New Yorkers show style-challenged Angelenos how to take care of business, so to speak. The events brought out the coolest of the coolsters from ‘black turtle-neck guy with a shaved head,’ to ‘mascara clad lad with sequined cape.’ In short, the guest list was, as Fats Domino once told my mother when she was a publicist in London, “Cool, baby, cool.”

After the first event, my friend Paul mused on the state of “cool.” He and I and his girlfriend Sarah had all enjoyed the party but he posited, “Imagine waking up in the morning with the guy with the sequined cape.” I thought for a moment. I would rub my eyes, turn over and nudge him, “Wake up sleepy head, let’s go get some French Toast.” Then he would respond, in a panic, “Oh no, where’s my eyeliner, my cape?”

Paul thinks cool is passe. It’s all about being hot–someone who brings excitement and creative ideas to the table. I think a melange of both with a base of earthiness is the best mix of all. I’m not into hot hot hot people who demand all of your attention and suffocate you with their noxious “me generation” vapors. When I think hot, I think unctuous, Italian and ‘all over me.’ Hot does not bode well in the realm of my personal connotations.

In any case, on Saturday night, I was back at Paper central with my date, “the guy with the derby” (see last entry). When we arrived we were greeted by the usual hipster huddle–the line of poised and posed bodies next to the door–complete with “clipboard nazi,” as Toby Young refers to them in his self-effacing memoir. I was momentarily frenzied. The last Paper event on Thursday had been open–there had been no mention of clipboards and hoards.

Nevertheless, we decided to wait in the heard of sheeple. I tried to reach the editor on cell before we got to the front of the line but alas no answer…and I knew for a fact that we weren’t on the list because there had been no mention of a list prior to that night. Being a veteran night owl, I usually take every precaution before stepping up to a venue–press pass, printout of email to said publicist, phone verification (at least twice). It almost takes the fun out of going out…But tonight I was taken off guard.

When we reached the front of the line I started bumbling to the “clipboard nazi,” who actually looked amiable as she gazed down onto her sheet of paper and asked us for our names. I panicked. But my date was calm, cool and reasoned (as Mr. Brady once advised Greg to be). He gave the door girl his name. This was a bold and stunning move–considering he was wholeheartedly B.S.’ing. But it worked. With all the finesse of a reality TV show “actor,” she smiled and said, “Yes, here it is,” and made a check mark on her sheet. I was bewildered. My derby clad friend seemed to think that he had indeed unbeknownst to him been placed on the list (he’s a photographer/director). I doubted it. In my mind, his game of “door chicken” had worked, pure and simple. And in the land of cool–the coolest (he who breaks not a drop of sweat) wins.

When inside we saw the usual glam dandies, fetish girls and arty thriftstore clothing aficionados. But, “the guy with the derby,” was more ecstatic to see the fire marshall. He pointed out and I had to agree, that this man–who had been in business since ‘77 policing L.A.’s night spots–was literally the only man in the city who could get into ANY concert, party or event he wanted on any given night. “The things he’s seen,” said my date as he proceeded to go up and introduce himself to the salt and pepper haired African American. So, in an ocean of cool–the one who has authority over the inflow of water is in fact the coolest, though he’s not, as Sammy the Bull might have said, “swimmin wid duh fishes.”

After listening to a glam band with our backs to them–positioned towards the art on the wall, of course–we headed out to the next event. I had been invited to the book release party for “The VJ Book” (Feral House). When I hear book party, I think sad, uncomfortable bespectacled author sitting alone at a table dwarfed by many books–which he is supposed to sign. I think Martinis and literary banter. I think, assemblage of the city’s most neurotic and fascinating scribes. Instead, we had entered a rave of sorts (of course…the VJ Book), complete with eye candy visuals, long bathroom lines, misty eyed Burning Man reunions and MDMA casualties. I did catch one Adam Parfrey (publisher of Feral House) pacing through the venue. But he was gone before you could say, “where’s my whistle and my bottled water?”

After waiting in line for the bathroom for ten minutes I entered and exited the tiny amber-lit room. Behind me was a desheveled night fiend who I could only describe as an Ecstasy invalid. He hobbled into the bathroom like a 90-year-old man and then whipped out his johnson without even closing the door. I wouldn’t necessarily call that cool. But it didn’t turn me on so it wasn’t hot either. It was just sad.

So, “derby man” and I headed next door to the Blu Monkey where things were oh so caliente as wannabe exhibitionist lipstick lesbians flounced and pounced to funk. Inebriated patrons did the white man’s overbite to “Bad Mama Jama.” And of course they played the classic, “Brick House,” which I can barely stand to listen to now that Wickes furniture has co-opted it for their commericals. “She’s a Wickes…house…”

With all the cool and hot scenes in LA one may wonder what in the end makes a thrilling night? Perhaps, sometimes it’s necessary to take the inside temperature–stop looking around at the hipsters on parade–see what’s going on in your immediate vicinity. I pulled my gaze away from the creatures of the night–cool, hot and designer drug impaired. They were fun to watch, like urban animals in a zoo. But the night was young–and so were my date and I. Ultimately, as it turns out–there’s one scene that’s REALLY exclusive, very hard to come by in LA but if you’re in-the-know enough to follow it, you’re guaranteed a great time–go where it’s warm.

Blog humbug, I’m tired and don’t much feel like writing but where’s my Chrismahanakwanzaka (millionaire made-up word by Richard Branson) spirit? Ok, here goes…

On Sunday, LA Alternative Press held its re-launch (as LA Alternative boasting Robert Sheer’s ousted LA Times column) at the King King in Hollywood. The venue, the bands and the guests, for the mostpart, all top notch alternative–NOT your run of the mill alternative–Lisa Lobe-alikes with thrift store dresses from the 40’s. Much more creative.

They were just old enough to have some grit but not old enough to be receiving their pensions via years of record trades and hocking signed headshots of LA grub royalty (like Fear’s Lee-Ving seen pimping this very item at a concert recently or The Germs’ Don Bolles–whose autographed photo, God bless him sits in my office drawer wedged between Hello Kitty stickers and my unpublished teen poetry).

They weren’t so young as to have forgotten what it was like to have a cassette warped to death on a dashboard on a sunny afternoon. So let’s just say they were demographically right. And of course the head-count was by my standards ideal for cavorting and kibitzing. Two of the bands, Monsters are Waiting, and the 88 were great–the former scenester up-and-comers, the latter, big enough to make it onto the O.C. soundtrack but indie enough to survive sans underground backlash.

The one thing that distracted from all of these wonderful night world attributes was…gasp (and I did gasp many times) a pungent and putrid odor which permeated the venue. So ghastly and all-powerful was this smell that it almost begged to be named (in the same way that hurricanes and tornadoes are). Alas, the most disturbing thing about the vile odor (apart from having to consciously hold my nose through most of the night) was the deep and agonizing question marks that came with it. What is that odor? From where is it emanating? How is it reaking so badly? Am I being overly sensitive, no one else seems too bothered by it?

Thankfully, the ollfactory Gods were listening. As a desheveled poncho’d man grinning ear to ear, came up to my friends–whom he recognized–to have a chat, the answer to the first question was clear. As he took a swig of his beer and then expelled some words they flew in one ear and out the other, so conscious was I of his stench. When he finally left, I quite literally breathed a sigh of relief. And then I just confronted my friends about the smell. Isn’t it funny how when you finally confront people about a stench suddenly you’re all in the same club–they were thinking this all along but too polite to say anything–now everyone’s bitching and moaning together in unity about how aweful it smelled.

Apart from the poncho’d one’s flouncings back and forth–which gave off a different more “eau de” variant of the stench–I became somewhat desensetized to the odor after a while. Plus I spotted a cute guy wearing a derby, standing by the stage. Unsure of how to approach a total stranger in such a situation, I asked my friend and her boyfriend to please make out on command. They awkwardly complied and I bolted over to the guy and asked him if it would be alright if I stood by him because my friends were being make-out monsters . At that moment he looked over and they had of course stopped their forced public display of affection. But it didn’t seem to matter. Flirtation was in the air (mixed, of course, with a faint lingering beer and b.o. stench).

Images: Albert Camus (left) and Hamburglar (right)
“Mother stole a hamburger today, or was it yesterday, I can’t be sure…”

Been around the block a few times…this week that is…from new-ish L.A. eateries like Magnolia (on Sunset) and Ortolan (on 3rd) to scribations (my own word for libations with writers) at HMS Bounty. And then of course my usual jaunts to the gym and the Country Store.

There’s definitely something in the air…because things are sounding mighty funny these days. Here are some stupefying things heard and said in my meanderings through the city of LA LA:

-A positive, motivational quote by Albert Camus attached in an email (imagine that, the ol’ existentialist bugger had something to say that didn’t involve flies, his mother dying and the plague…call him Deepak)

At the Country Store:

Male sneaks up behind female stranger: “What would you do if I asked you on a date?”
Female: “I’d say no because I’m private, I don’t like dating, and I’m in a career mode.”

At the HMS Bounty:

Questioner: “Does HMS stand for his majesty or her majesty?”
Respondant (emphatic and surprised): “Who’s mad at me?”

Barmaid: “He ordered onion rings and left without paying his bill.” (A writer who was surely a cross between Hamburglar and Hemingway)

“What do you expect from a news network whose catchphrase is ‘get your news on?’” ( referring to channel 13 and their “bimbo brigade” news broadcasts).

“I guess the story about the German cannibal who sautéed the guy’s penis turned everybody off.”

Indeed.