Happy Chinese New Year! Today is the beginning of the Year of the Fire Dog (not as exciting as last year’s Wood Cock, granted but let’s take it as it comes–pun intended). I don’t personally know too much about Chinese astrology, but I’d like to leave you with some of my predictions for this rabid year, before I step out into tonight’s festivities (and you know it’s got to be a big deal when I actually leave the house on “Deadwood” night).

FORECASTS: Year of the Fire Dog

Dalmatians may experience a slight identity crisis akin to schizophrenia. Since you’re the top fire dog, perhaps you should find a hot fireman and settle down this year.

Horny dogs–your social faux-pas of the past will be excused this year as everyone seems to be in a dog-like mood. Since you haven’t been neutered, expect sexual tensions to run high.

Dawgs–(she didn’t just say dawg), it’s time to turn off the party lingo and get real–get serious, get your shit together, ah-ight?

Lazy dogs–please read above report for “dawgs,” you get the picture.

Lap dogs–It’s time for a role reversal this year. If you’re tired of being an ornament demand a longer leash (or no leash at all). Tell all your Paris Hiltons out there that if they try to trade you in for puppies you’ll crap all over their Chanel bag.

Snoop Dog–Please give it up–you’re gross, you’re sleazy, slimy, what an unctuous voice, countenance and demeanor. Time for a makeover on a new reality show, something like Queer Eye Gone Wild. Let the fab five make you a better man, please…

And finally K9’s–Keep being the hardest working dogs in show business–bad boys, watcha gonna do?

(see image below)

Is it me, or does the cowboy (Randy Jones…he most certainly looks it) bare a striking resemblance to Leonardo DiCaprio? Perhaps there’s something we don’t know about Leo’s lineage.

Image: Seventies equal opportunity band The Village People, in their prime

So how crazy is it that the “Cop” from kitsch 70’s “boy band” The Village People is running from the law in California? Apparently Victor Edward Willis is wanted for Cocaine possession and some other charges and has failed to attend his court hearing. To me, this is truly a sign of the times…the decline of Western civilization is nigh.

But first, I have some questions:

1/ What you talkin’ about Willis? (I had to, it was dangling there like a carrot in front of my face)
2/ Is this REALLY the best news CNN can come up with when the Bush administration is in the throes of the best imitation of a dictatorship I’ve ever seen (goodbye right to privacy)?
3/ When will the 70s nostalgia end?
4/ When will VH1 give this guy his own TV show?
5/ Is it because he’s Black?
6/ Does anyone know what happened to “The Indian?” Ah, the plight of the Native American, always forgotten.
7/ Is everyone gay as Kurt Cobain pondered in the Nirvana tune “All Apologies?”
8/ Cocaine, are people STILL doing toot? The 80’s are over! We’ve all seen what it can do to your health (Andy Gibb) and your skin (Pamela Anderson)…
9/ How pissed off would Frank Serpico be if he heard about this?
10/ Shouldn’t some crusty, repressed old Neo-Con be bitching, “First them Brokeback Mountain folks desecrate the image of the cowboy, now this one’s shaming our Men in Blue?” (actually, let’s give credit where credit is due, Randy Jones, “the cowboy” in The Village People did it long before Ang Lee brought it to the screen–kudos, Mr. Jones).

The other night my good friend and fellow scribe Mieke Eerkens was lamenting the fate of one of her once-favorite magazine, Vanity Fair. As of late, the previously “high-class,” “literary,” “smart” publication, has been polluting its covers with such no-talent bimbs as Paris Hilton, Kate Moss and now, please sit down for this, Lindsay Lohan.

Mieke comiserated with the “poor writer,” who had to make a silk purse out of sow’s ears by making Lohan’s bratty brain-dead diva lifestyle at the Chateau Marmont romantic and akin to the charming, precocious character Eloise. “You can tell that this poor writer is trying desperately to cobble together a great article with nothing,” she said. The most amusing part for us was the fact that the caliber and quality of Vanity Fair’s writing hasn’t changed yet the content is fit for a dumpster, not even a dumpster in St. Paul de Vence, but a dumpster in a trailer park.

So the new Vanity Fair style effectively ’sounds’ high fallutin’ while the subjects are crass, giving way to something that sounds like this: “The statuesque Hilton has gone beyond her pedigree, emerging as a recalcitrant female rapscallion of the ladies who lunch ilk…” Blah blah blah, translation, “Hilton, spreading her legs here, has been an embarassment and disappointment to her wealthy big-name family and their friends because she behaves like a shameless ho-bag with no class.”

Mieke and I imagined other fictitious covers like Carmen Electra, “Her countenance and namesake reflect a classic bygone era perhaps even extending to the days of the Venus of Willendorf–at once fertility figure and icon of her culture,” translation, “Electra’s hot and her name is hot and she shakes her money maker and that’s why she makes a lot of money as a sex symbol and icon of sluttiness.”

The campaign against Vanity Fair has already begun as is evidenced by frequent readers’ letters–irrate and disgusted at the change in the magazine. It’s like Graydon Carter’s having a midlife crisis (or late life, in his case) and taking it out on all of the educated literary readers who have been so loyal to his publication. Someone, get him a Porsche or some cheesey flash-without-class vehicle of that breed so that so he’ll stop embarassing himself by cheapening and dumbing down the magazine. Poor Dominick Dunne is like a lonely old last-stand–do they keep the investigative pieces in there to appease the “few” relics who enjoy reading smart articles?

Image: Gilles Berquet’s “The Cloud” (2002)

So it is in fact true that you sometimes have to leave the cozy confines of your Canyon abode in order to taste the varied flavors of LA’s cultural life. Apart from having been on deadline for one of my lengthier stories, I have also been busy workalizing this week. Workalizing= working+socializing, a hybrid activity of which culture writers are particularly apt to partake–names are checked off the guest list, wine is poured, cards are exchanged, observations are made–only to end up on this BLOG–poor sad observations.

Friday night I decided to stare my “East-of-Hillhurst-o-phobia” in the face. For non-Angelenos, traversing Hollywood, one comes to a street called Hillhurst–in the Los Feliz enclave. If one travels any further East, one encounters the hipster, seedy, funky and always sceney Silver Lake area and its adjacent streety-hip neighborhood Echo Park. Home to gang members when I was growing up, these areas now boast, new restaurants, cafes, bars, clubs, oh and gang members–it’s not as if they suddenly moved out because it got too cool, you know.

Anyway, in order for me to ‘cross the line,’ and enter the belly of the beast there had to be something good awaiting me…and there was. I spent Friday night at The Echo for the Spindrift show. Spindrift is my new favorite psychedelic spaghetti western band and it just so happens that an old friend from my bratty punky teen years in LA is in the band–adding local validity to its already full-bodied flavor.

I breathed a sigh of relief upon entering the venue. These East Side folks weren’t so bad after all–in fact they had far more creative style than their West side counterparts. But much like going to a market in New Delhi–not to get all Somerset Maughm on your ass–but the air was rife with a pallette of exotic scents. I’ve been known to be smell-sensitive, which is probably why I don’t venture to the East Side too often (don’t get me wrong, going a bit further West, Sunset Plaza, is home to its share of wretched imitation perfumes–”If you like Calvin Klein’s Obsession, then you’ll love, Addiction”). That night at The Echo, there was a potpourri of Marijuana resin, stale boozey breath, patchouli and other exotic hippie oils, and as my friend noted, the unmistakable stench of “thrift store.”

Nevertheless the night progressed. The opening band, Crooked Cowboy went on–playing an interesting style of music that reminded me a bit of Stereo Lab, which is a good thing–no distinct vocals just “la la la, nuh nuh nuh,” from the subdued seated female singer. What are words for when no one listens anymore, I quoth 80s prophet Dale Bozzio.

At the stroke of midnight, before you could say, “Thriller,” Spindrift (or some of the members of the band) graced the stage for this special Friday the 13th performance. Gradually, the two other band member stragglers made it on stage. But rock n’ roll is never on time, I say. The music was incredible–so creative–and the live performance a return to the whimsical days of theatrical stage antics pioneered by Alice Cooper and friends.

Bobby Bones, formerly of Psychic TV stood center-stage in a priest costume (which brought back old memories of my first two boyfriends in high school–don’t ask, I grew up in LA). He recited a dark sermon and soon dosy-doeing, inebriated movements and crowd reinforcement were ushered in. The guitarist, whose face was painted like a skull and wore a noose, rocked out in the background–pure, unadulturated dark cowboy music. Thank God, now America will have to connect with the Jungian concept of the shadow side–we’re all cowboys in the Wild West, but it’s brooding and sinister out here.

The Jesus-bearded kid next to me, screamed in my ear with vigorous verbiage, through musty breath, “Is this the greatest band you’ve ever seen or what?” Oh and did I forget to mention that hair–facial and otherwise–was the call of the day at this show as well–mullets, lamb chops, beards, shags, you name it. It could have been a casting call for Hair II: the Silver Lake Years.

I was overjoyed to find that this was the antithesis of the usual “sober” crowd that has become such a staple in the scene (kids who grew up in the scene, went out of control and are now 12-steppers and their socially awkward friends sans substance abuse problems just looking to make some new trendy friends). Spindrift night at the Echo was home to a was a wasted scene, and folks that’s what rock n’ roll is about. I don’t mean to sound like an advocate for drugs and alcohol. Personally, I only drink. But do you think The Rolling Stones were well-adjusted and sober when they made some of their best music? What about The Doors, more recently Nirvana…Sorry guys but the fucked-upness of the human condition and its concomitant chemical substances make for out-of-control creativity–that’s rock n’ roll. Going to a meeting on a Saturday night may for some be mentally healthy but it’s NOT rock n’ roll. I realize that everybody’s got to grow up at some point, take responsibility for their lives and be healthy and I wholeheartedly commend that–and in the same breath add that it has no place in the halls of rock.

‘Nuff said, as they say. Onto Saturday night. I attended an opening at my favorite small gallery, Clair Obscur. Dark dutchman, Nico Bruinsma was in full effect, flowing with the wine and ushering people into the show of Gilles Berquet’s photographic work. Berquet is apparently well known in the fetish community and I saw some of these pieces in the back of the gallery–women squirting pee and the like. This work, frankly bored me–and to call it erotic is a misnomer–it was vulgar and fetishistic but erotic–”non.” The photographs on display in the front of the gallery were incredible, the erotic work from a bygone era of Surrealists–including the likes of Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp.

But my opinion would later be outnumbered when I continued on my night trek with my friends to Lucy’s Mexican restaurant for a dinner held in the honor of the visiting editor of “Skin 2.” Personally, I didn’t know anything about “Skin 1, ” let alone, “Part Deux,” but it seemed like an interesting subcultural foray…Bondage and Burritos, great fun.

The guests were indeed a motley crew of fetish photographers and models who much like anyone in any profession (insurance salesmen and so on) were there to network with their peers–neck ties were, in this case, replaced by dog collars, but hey, it’s a living. My friends and I sat at a table with an interesting guy–an older gentleman, a sort of Roddy MacDowell type, the director of one of the recent James Bond films, there with his lady friend. Both were clad in latex and vinyl. We discussed the work of Kenneth Anger, and Brokeback Mountain among other things. All in all, a great time–PVC-clad cohorts chatting to the background music of Chicago’s “You’re my Inspiration” (not kidding guys, that’s what the music was). Peter Cetera would have been proud (or at least titillated).

All in all, pleased to have made it into the belly of the beast and equally content to have made it home where Pepto Bismol and an early evening of HBO’s “Deadwood” await.

(property of Microsoft Corporation)

Yes, Mr. Paperclip wants you all to know that he’s here as a pop cultural guest on Shana Ting Lipton’s BLOG because he is the property of Microsoft Corporation. Unfortunately for Mr. Paperclip, icon suffrage has not yet emerged as a political movement.

Suffice to say that I’m plugging away at a lengthy feature–my only friends the blinking cursor and the clip (who incidentally knows how annoying you all think he is and would love a second chance at making a first impression). So I’ll be back in BLOGworthy condition very soon, perhaps even tomorrow.

Had to share: I was just at the gym winding down on the treadmill when I looked up at the TV monitor, set on CNN, with hearing impaired sub-titles. Wolf Blitzer was reporting on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s condition. The hearing impaired translator claimed that he was in, “criminal condition.” I guess some folks might be of that opinion about Mr. Sharon’s politics–folks like loopy evangelist Pat Robertson, who according to the hearing impaired translator, was critical of Mr. Sharon’s “MidWest policies.” Might those include cow-tipping and excessive indulging in Americana?

Image: Hibiscus of the legendary Cockettes, photographed by Ingeborg Gerdes

Founded in my favorite era, the bridge between the late sixties and the early seventies, the Cockettes came out of (quite literally) psychedelic San Francisco. A collective of gays, women and babies (yes, I said babies), they were lead by Hibiscus, a member of the KaliFlower commune. Beyond their splashy, glammy, gender-bending fashion, they also spawned none other than disco king/queen Sylvester.

As a sexual movement, gender-bending somewhat turns me off. I’m a bit too hung up on the strict male/female delineations of masculine/feminine. But as art, could there possibly be anything more visually stimulating? The Cockettes: 1969-1972, those golden, verge-of-Bowie years!

Image: Mel Brooks, the master of the panic attack, in “High Anxiety”

During a delightful dinner at the ol’ Ivy last night, the everygreen topic of anxiety attacks came up. It’s starting to become clear to me that I should collect all of these stories of sweltering panic and put them in an anthology dubbed, “Panic in L.A.” (with a slight nod to David Bowie for that brilliant song, “Panic in Detroit”). How about it, Simon & Schuster, I am, after all, the queen bee of anxiety.

Last night’s tale was about a woman having to do a bit of public speaking, moderating a show. She had been fine prior to that, moderating a smaller, lower profile show. But when she heard some of the names of her chatty and famous predecessors, the pressure began to build. When she arrived at the venue, the organizers were ready to whisk her away onto the podium. One problem, her legs started to buckle, she broke into a sweat and said, “I thought they were going to have to wheel me out of there in a stretcher”). She hastily told her shocked cohorts that there was no way she would be able to fulfill her responsibility, took several shallow breaths and bolted.

Odd, because on Monday night I was over at a Canyon friend’s house for dinner when we got on this very same topic. “The last time we went out to dinner,” he told me, “I was about to have a serious anxiety attack.” We had been in the bustling Mexican eatery El Compadre, and I had sensed that my friend was nervous. His eyes were darting around the room like a meth freak’s, and he seemed rabidly on-guard. I had in fact wondered, “Is he having a panic attack?” but hadn’t said anything. Instead I had asked if he wanted to take a walk to the Rock Walk. He opted for sitting outside on the patio, a quieter, gentler place where we chatted until our table was ready. Our table, luckily was by the door (a fact that he in retrospect had noted). I too often sit by the door, “just in case,” the social, atmospheric or psychological pressure gets to be too much and I have to motor out of there. “It was a wonder I made it through the whole dinner,” my friend told me.

I can also recall having been on a date with a guy, not too long ago when an attack took hold. We were drinking wine back at his place, poring through his book collection when he stopped on one old tome. It was an underground war novel from the forties filled with darkly poetic accounts of blood, gore and the smell of decaying flesh and other romantic things… It was in fact an interesting collectors’ item and I was curious to know a bit more of the background on it. But as my date got lost deeper and deeper in the trenches…reading disturbed passage after disturbed passage, my breathing sped up and became shallow. My palms started to sweat and my vision amplified. It was as if I was having combat fatigue, only it was after an expensive meal.

Too shy, timid and self-conscious to divulge to the zealous storyteller that his book was quite literally making me sick, I gritted my teeth and prepared for my own battle. I stealthly slipped my hand into my purse and unearthed a tiny herbal relaxant pill that I’d gotten at the health food store. It was sublingual, thank God, so it would take effect immediately. Somehow, by hook and by crook, I got out of that one sans scars.

Nevertheless, I recall another time, having challenged myself to get up and ask a question in front of a live panel for Warren Olney’s “To the Point,” on KCRW. The subject was the warm and fuzzy, but kind of omnipotent GOD. I had the perfect question that would befuddle even the guy in the Skeptics Society. Yet, when I got the dreaded tap on the shoulder, “You’re on,” and was escorted to an aisle facing the panel (flanked by a hundred people on either side) I got a taste of the “fame drug.”

You see, actors, performers, and generally vain exhibitionists love the “fame drug.” When all eyes are on them, and the energy that each set of eyes carries with it penetrates their very being, they are flooded with the motherload of endorfin rushes. I too was flooded with that rush at that moment, only mine produced a sort of “bad trip.” My knees became shakey, so much so that I thought I would collapse. The crowd seemed to sway like something out of a Munch painting. And my voice trembled in an effort to get some smart prepared words out. Instead, all I sensed were the turned heads of the crowd all facing me and the intent eyes of the panelists seering through me. I ultimately succeeded in getting it out only to hurry back to my seat where I collapsed on the spot.

A panic attack is caused by a person thinking that a given situation is putting them in imminent danger–or at least that’s how the nervous system and mind registers this. It contorts and often magnifies the situation so that mere laugh becomes a demonic howl and a question a verbal assault. What’s funny is that I wondered for a moment, at the Suicidal Tendencies show in October if I would have an anxiety attack–so foul was the carnage and rife the testosterone in the air–but then I thought to myself, “You know, you are in imminent danger, there’s guys walking around with black eyes and prison tattoos.” Then I just smiled knowing that my alarmism had been merited and the moment of panic was replaced by a smug smile and some laughs.