It’s Sunday, post bar + barbecue night. So naturally, slight hangovers bring out my philosophical side…er, well not really…was just mulling over everyone’s favorite topic: sex. I started thinking about sexual stereotypes (and those who break the mold). So here are some bruising musings on my top 3:

The Lascivious Librarian:
There seems to be, in Hollywood, a notion that slutty looking women who wear their sexuality on their sleeves are incredible in bed. Obviously, there is no 100% accurate way of proving or disproving this theory. It may or may not be true, but I’d like to submit an additional theory to the limited erotic archives of the average Angeleno: brainy women get crazy in the boudoir. We are all familiar with the cliche of the buttoned-up librarian who, when stimulated in the right way whips off her glasses and blouse, lets her hair down and teaches her lover(s) a thing or two about s-e-x. Let me break it down. I was recently surprised to hear that a friend of mine who had been seeing a certain female porn star was spending his time with her kissing and renting movies–in lieu of non-stop rockin’ sex. He admitted that he enjoyed this time a lot actually. The porn star was in fact the one putting the breaks on the sex, not because she wasn’t attracted to him. But, probably because it felt like WORK–and no one likes to be on a job (’blow’ or otherwise) in their leisure time. Anyway, I don’t know if this isolated case means anything but I found it surprising. Another male friend of mine proudly admitted about his girlfriend, “She’s a total square nerd in life and a whore in bed.” I’m not going to admit that I firsthand know anything about such things (who would, in the puritanical Bush era?) But, let’s just say, fellas, that brainy ladies ALL THE MORE, need to be released from the shackles of their MENSA-worthy minds. If the most you challenge your mind is choosing nail polish that matches your thong, well, I would venture to wonder if any tension build-up is occurring at all. I would also wonder if such women are smart and creative enough to remember their past mistakes and successes in the bedroom and register this when attempting to please their current lover. Hmmm…too much food for thought, I need to release this subject…

The Sober Bartender:
This is a creature that should come with a warning label and is most likely indigenous to Los Angeles. I don’t seem to recall any sober bartenders in New York or Amsterdam (and they don’t seem to remember much themselves). So this must be at least a California phenomenon. Basically, he is the most mentally screwed up man on the planet. He spends his life preaching sobriety and then hangs out with a bunch of drunks. Most likely it makes him feel superior. And back in his drinking days, he drank to hide from his insecurities. Now, devoid of that outlet, he must find a new one–calling the shots and serving them, and of course cutting off really bad drunks (who resemble him before the Program). I bring him up because a good friend of mine recently suffered from a Sober Bartender encounter. These 12-step teases flirt shamelessly with female bar patrons and lead them on until they’re practically begging for physical contact, only to never serve up what they announced was on tap. I went through this for years with a S.B. (or should I say, S.O.B.) here. He announced to other men how hot I was, acknowledged we had a connection, bought me drinks, even kissed me once. But when it came time to sealing the deal–which would require him to give up the divider between us, the bar–forget it. I never went through this in Amsterdam–where bartenders drank on the job and followed up plenty good with their insinuations. And from the stories I’ve heard from girl friends, drinking bartenders in New York were equally easy. You see, gentlemen, the bartender is (and should always remain) the woman’s version of “the girl in Canada,” a sure thing. When sobriety enters the picture, things get, well, quite frankly fuzzy.

The Clown:
This one isn’t really a category. I just couldn’t get over what a female friend of a friend told me last night (and on the heels of an article I just penned for L.A. Times about ‘dating deal breakers’). Apparently she had been seeing a French guy for a couple of months. One night, he was supposed to go out with her and some of her friends. So, he showed up at her house to meet them, wearing, I kid you not (unless she was kidding me) full clown facial makeup. Apparently, said the girl, he had an excuse–he was just coming from the circus–but of course, oui oui, naturellement. Beyond this, he didn’t immediately run for the bathroom sink in shame to wipe off his frightening faux-countenance. He lingered, hung out with the girls, as a clown. This girl is obviously a better woman than I. Regardless of his excuses, I would have sent Marcel Marceau back to Cirque de Soleil with his tail and rubber nose between his legs. I mean, how do you erase that ‘look’ from your memory? While he’s making love to you and you stare up at his animalistic expressions as sweat pours down his face, don’t you suddenly see it turn into a makeup tear? And then the red nose, the red lips…ugh, I know clown sex exists in the fringes of fetish…then again so do Furries and frankly, I’d prefer it if my date not show up with bunny ears and a tail. It takes the expression ‘getting some tail’ just a little too far.

Sorry for the long lag. But, beyond cyberspace, believe it or not, there exists this thing called Life (to quote TAFKAP–the artist formerly known as Prince). I can only say that reading a recent cover story on Al Gore in May’s Wired magazine sort of explains my absence–in a convoluted way–while also tapping into one of my fetishes, beards.

Here’s the passage I’d like to hone in on:

On the morning they were due to return to the US, Tipper says, she walked into the bathroom and found Gore preparing for his end-of-vacation ritual, just as he had done countless times during his days as a US congressman, senator, and vice president. “I said, ‘Al, you don’t have a job to go back to. The beard is fun. Leave it.’ He said, ‘Oh yeah,’ and put down his razor. And then we came back and everyone saw the beard and it was ‘yada yada yada.’”

When Gore hit US shores looking like a well-fed Grizzly Adams, the late-night comics lampooned him without mercy. The political talking heads puzzled endlessly about Gore’s latest “makeover” and what signal he was trying to send. “It’s not as if we were talking about Allen Ginsberg,” Tipper told me, clearly amused by the image of her husband as a closet counterculturist. “It was just his way of saying he was free.”

I guess what I’m sort of doing is likening my absence to Al Gore growing a beard. Sometimes, when you’re in an interim phase–caught between two worlds–about to dive into action, you need to pause. During that pause, like Gore, you conceptually speaking, let you beard grow out. All wisdom and allure stems from the beard, as we know on this beard-loving BLOG.

In this case my beard is not like David Guest’s ex–LIZA with a “z”–but the very slow process of growth, and coming into my own sense of freedom and my comfort zone. Before all of this conjures up un-appetizing images of bearded ladies and clams let me add that on a personal hygene level, I’m a stalwart proponent of the wax strip. Long live Surgi-Wax!

One piece of sound advice for all you folks out there in TV-land, do not watch documentaries on prophets of the Apocalypse late at night, prior to turning in. Armageddon and REM sleep make a nauseating cocktail. Why, oh why did I feel the need to stay up late with the History Channel’s depressing and orange-level alert heightening episode of “Decoding the Past?” featuring such doomsday faves as Nostradamus, Mother Shipton and Edgar Cayce? Your garden variety prophets, they seemed to share one prescient collective unconscious chain of thoughts: floods, earthquakes, fires, pestilence, the Earth’s comeuppance for its lifetime of domestic abuse at the hands of wife-beater-clad humans. We’re sorry we did it, we swear, we love you, we didn’t mean it, here’s a bouquet of flowers.

Admittedly, I don’t give much creedence to Nostradamus or Mother Shipton. Anyone could make up pithy little poems vaguely predicting End Days. Here, let’s see, I’ll try it:

The year is 2012
Into the abyss humanity delves
Into the ocean of the dead
The land, a bloody red

The end of the world is near
Humans are filled with fear
The sky pitch black as night
The Earth’s revenge with spite

See! Sounds a bit like Ozzy Osbourne with a pinch of Beatrix Potter. Voila! However, I must say that Edgar Cayce’s story amazed me and truly resonated. He was a simple man who had the gift of self-hypnosis. In unconscious states he would reach into the akashic records and access any information he needed (how to cure a disease not yet curable, secret of the past not yet uncovered, visions of the future with exacting precision). He never charged any of his clients, which most phony psychics tend to do. He predicted the stock market crash of 1929, the Hitler era, etc.

What fascinates me most about this man is his philosophy on the big picture, which pretty much exactly matches mine. The difference being that he accessed the information to bolster his theories in his self-hypnotized states. He believed that time as we know it (the dimension of time, let’s say) is a necessary illusion. In other words, it serves some sort of purpose. Actually, past, present and future, as viewed from another dimensional plane–the plane he so naturally traversed in a hypnotized state–all exist concurrently, part of one wave or impulse. We only perceive this wave or impulse in a linear fashion because in our waking 3-dimensional conscious state, it SEEMS that way. In our current state we are limited in our perceptions and understanding. Think of that inexplicable feeling of deja-vu (which I know some neurologists will say is some sort of minor glitch in the brain). Cayce would not be the first man to question space/time continuum. I believe that it is a common point of discussion amongst Millennium era scientists, physicists, cosmologists, etc.

Anyway, after all that heavy food for thought was digested with a gurgling thump, I made the mistake of flipping the channel again (the click of the remote is the insomniac’s shot of heroine). And I ended up watching most of “Fahrenheit 911,” a film I had already seen but clearly needed a midnight refresher course on. So I added political conspiracy, war and corruption to the above-mentioned cocktail of the Apocolypse. And, alas, the sky isn’t falling yet but my eyelids most certainly are.

My friends and I were looking forward to a quiet Saturday evening in the Hills of Beverly. The gallery opening we were set to attend was, after all, scheduled between the geriatric hours of 6 and 8PM. I imagined a small crowd, surely consisting of the usual unctuous BH suspects, men’s clothing billboard kingpin Amir or perhaps a Marciano brother or two.

Nothing could have prepared us for the bonfire of vanities that awaited inside the Gagosian Gallery for the Francesco Vezzoli show based on books-to-film by Gore Vidal. Pardon me for being gauche and unhip, but I had never heard of this artist before in my life (he’s a Milan native and this was his first L.A. show) but apparently Milla Jovovich had. She along with Courtney Love and Karen Black–in attendance–were the stars of Vezzoli’s spoof film about Vidal’s “Caligula” (which was being shown upstairs in the gallery screening room). It was supposed to be a joke on how depraved and raunchy the film had been–a sort of updated, even saucier, more perverse version of the original work—flesh upon flesh anything goes—Alt.com Ancient Roman style.

Interesting subject matter, seeing as the gallery took on a ‘decline of the Roman empire,’ sort of vibe–wealthy sybarites congratulating each other for, well, simply being fabulous, dahling (as Zsa Zsa would say). Flash bulbs went off like firecrackers on the Fourth of July. And despite the Dolce Vida overtone, this was a truly American spectacle. Farah Fawcett (it doesn’t get more American than that) chatted with her cohorts in front of the ‘walk of Fame’/”Suddenly, Last Summer” wall eulogies. Then there was the shy Billy Corgan standing in the background as Jovovich and a faithfully and eternally hammered Love hammed it up for the cameras. Michael York took in a massive “Suddenly Last Summer” film poster art piece which monopolized the gallery. And, let’s of course not forget Beverly Hills prodigal restaurant son Michael Chow, who needed only walk a block from his eatery to make an appearance at the event.

Upstairs (apart from the screening room), there was a really interesting voyeuristic live-art show going on. Visitors could peek in a hole which looked out onto a secret room downstairs and see a “Myra Breckinridge” ‘06 casting call in action–a buff shirtless guy and two girls clad in versions of Raquel Welch’s ‘America the beautiful’ attire from the famed drag-queen classic.

After our foray into the fabulous world of multimedia and performance art we realized we had done a full tour of the gallery and one familiar prerequesite was missing: our complimentary wine bar. So we headed back downstairs where the man of the hour, scribe extraordinaire Gore Vidal had staked his spot like a king in his wheelchair flanked by well dressed lookouts. To be honest, that was the only star spotting that made my heart skip a beat. I’d met Karen Black (an amazing actress who personified the 70s independent film) at a party a year or so ago. I’d seen Courtney Love trip and babble backstage at Saturday Night Live with Nirvana years back (and honestly, groupies-turned-plastic-surgically-altered-celebs don’t do much for me). Same with the others.

Beauty and fame, sans wit and intelligence is like well, Mrs. Gump, an empty box of chocolates. Besides, I heard an angry, “excuse me!” from Love as I attempted to squeeze past her indicating that I would surely be a cat-fight target had I not rushed up the stairs in panicked haste. Ironically (or not, seeing as we’re in L.A. here), Vidal was unmarred by fans. In fact, he was so ‘wide open’ that I almost very naturally walked up to him until I realized that I did not know him and would have nothing particularly spectacular to say. Had it been New York, I wouldn’t have been able to have gotten near him.

All in all, a not-so-quiet evening with the makings of a debauched, Roman-ish cornucopia of greed, vanity and all the trimmings–sadly devoid of the one ingredient that could have stirred things up–the booze. Next time I’ll go to Ace Gallery where the ventilation may be akin to a sweatshop in Taiwan but at least they know how to quench a celebrity-sized thirst.

I was just waxing Quixotic about the good ol’ days of old fashioned letter writing before the email emoticon “said it all” for a generation of non-emoters. There was a time when I waited patiently for that delectable letter. Whether mangled or pristine, it was personally addressed to me and gave me great joy to receive. Nowadays it’s just clutter in my in-box. Rarely has an email come in that has been heartfelt, personal and true of its scribe. There seems to be an alternate email persona that we all adopt, even when writing about serious things. There’s something about using your hand in the process–scratching paper–the tangiability of it all that makes a real letter special.

Granted I had what many would deem a pretty exotic set of letter writing friends and penpals, so maybe that’s why I’m romanticizing the whole practice, who knows? Most of this writing was done when I was a kid or at least a ‘tween. I guess I had oodles of time on my hands and a rich imagination and fantasy life. The letters took on a life of their own.

There was my penpal Florent, an upper-crusty French boy who lived in Neuilly in France (the Bel-Air of Paris). He used to handwrite his letters to me (puppylove letters) in ink pen on respectable stationary. The missives would tell tales of his country home, horsebackriding, the life of a young artistocrat. One of the most charming parts of his letters actually had nothing to do with his writing style: he would seal the envelopes with a wax mark of his family crest. I’m sure this all sounds like I’m an immortal like the Vampire Lestat’s daughter or something but I assure you I was born in the 70s–this French kid was just kooky, romantic and old-fashioned that way.

Then there was Zena, a Lebanese school friend who had to move back to Beirut with her family during the war. I was fetching the mail one day and found a creased and weighty weathered envelope from her. I ripped it open excited to know of its contents–which ended up being a piece of shrapnel–a reminder of the war, right there in my hands. Most of her notes were sent via boat so they took ages to arrive (again, I know I sound like a survivor from The Titantic but it’s true). The letters were well worth the wait–ten pagers (which seemed like novels at the time) describing where the shrapnel had come from, the sounds of bombs, the fear, handwritten on Miss Piggy stationary.

Then there was Tara, another classmate of mine, the grandson of Errol Flynn. He definitely took after his grandfather in his way of romancing young, tender me with long letters from his country home in France depicting his summer escapades. At the time he hadn’t yet treated his dislexia so reading these involved a lot of confusion and patience on my part, but again, worth it–like a puzzle to be conquered (not just written there in a box on a computer screen with all of the glory of spotting a flabby, pasty naked body on a nude beach).

And then, a bit later there were the hoards of love letters sent to me from my then-boyfriend, bassist of The Descendents/All who was touring the Nation and the World at the time. He would send Mardi Gras beads from New Orleans, romantic water colors that he’d painted of me and pages of carefully scrawled descriptions of the landscapes–from Bruges to Boise. One thing missing from his painfully soulbaring missives, naturally: tales of debauchery with groupies on the road–but who wants to receive a letter with that kind of soulbaring?

The last handwritten letter I received was, believe it or not, not that long ago. I had written a piece on Charles Manson cohort/murderer Bobby Beausoleil and the legacy of the dark side of the sixties and communicated with Beausoleil via phone and then briefly by snail mail. When his letter from the East Oregon Correctional Institute arrived I was sent back to the early days of letter writing (the reverie was of course accompanied by a slightly morose and grisly overtone in light of the sender’s crime). I had a field day playing amateur handwriting analyst and trying to figure out where-In those sweeping T bars? In those serpentine S’s?–a hint of the primdordial animal within might dwell.

So ultimately I find myself craving the handwritten word–a more visceral, genuine experience for both writer and recipient–someone creating tangible art from calligraphy from well-thought out words. I guess the options are few in this blatent and lackluster Information Age. Either try to recapture the thrill, or feign excitement and (anti-) climax when I hear that “ding” on my computer or see that little mail icon pop up on my desk top…Or, write letters to lifers in the joint. Nobody said Millennium era life was easy or particularly savory.

I was reading an article in this week’s Business Week about how consumers decide which companies to support based on the corporations’ politics (i.e., if you’re liberal: Ben & Jerry’s, yes! Walmart, no! If you’re conservative…as if I’m really going to spend my time rattling off their b.s…)

Anyway, there was talk of one ice cream company–the Neo-Cons’ alternative to Ben & Jerry’s with its unusual flavors (I thought those were geared towards, and taste-tested on pot-smoking hippies; why would a sanctimonious, drug-free Neo-Con be interested in the Heath Bar Crunch equivalent? Oh yeah, to get all porky as they tend to do in those Red States).

Anyhow, this company’s VP was describing their demographic: “We’re trying to appeal to conservatives, red states, and Nascar dads who like Ben & Jerry’s ice cream but can’t [swallow] their politics.” Well, the conservatives, quite frankly leave a bad taste in my mouth, but you’ve got to love the term this guy came up with: “Nascar dads.” I mean, just when you thought “soccer moms” was as gross and armpit-of-the-Nation pedestrian as it got, there comes this even better, even more specific term to describe the guys that the TNT Network is geared towards–the dudes who only cried once in their lives, when Dale Earnhardt died (and it was an “Iron Eyes Cody/Keep America Beautiful” tear).

I’m always appreciative when the ‘enemy’ provides me with insight into his/her team. Can’t wait for this to become a category in the raunchy Craig’s List gay personals: “Lonely peace-loving bottom seeks strapping Nascar Daddy for wild ride.”

Image: Tazio Tecchiaroli, the prototypical “Paparazzo” in Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita”

Ok, so maybe I was asking for it in my last BLOG when I suggested that my new mental health diet exclude porn and violence. That was probably a cosmic invitation to the traumatizing climax of the latest Matthew Barney film, “Drawing Restraint 9.” The day after I blogged, I went to the screening, enjoyed most of the unusual film co-starring Barney’s g.f. Bjork until the crescendo–Barney and Bjork in maritime kabuki attire, steeped to their waists in water embracing and then, ya know, after foreplay getting down to the meat of the matter…quite literally carving each other’s legs up and then, hey, why let fresh flesh go to waste–cannibalistically feeding each other. Now that’s a level of romance you don’t find everyday–worthy of the good old dark days of the Brothers Grimm and mythic tales of the Black Forest and its creepy inhabitants. Let it suffice to say, the film left an impression. I’ll be sending Barney my therapy bill next week.

…which somehow, miraculously segues perfectly into the next night…Was at a small private LACMA opening and spotted none other than French artist Orlan. You remember her for her famed work in the 80s when she got plastic surgery to look like the Mona Lisa. Yours truly had dinner with her in France a couple of years back at L’Art Biotech. At LACMA, I bent her ear for a moment and she told me that she would follow her (young) lover anywhere as he stood by her side. She had indeed followed him, to L.A. where a special residency at the Getty awaited. The Getty + Orlan = an odd mix that I’m intent on uncovering at a later date. I say odd because when I think Getty, I think of classical bronze statues. When I think Orlan, I think of her latest project, turning herself into a Black person by having the melanin of a Black person injected into her body.

So naturally, after this I was just famished. So it was off to Real Food Daily where I ran into Dan Kapelovitz a writer who is known for his work in Hustler. We briefly discussed his former boss’ new book. The 20-year Hustler editor Allan Macdonell just wrote a memoir about “The Life,” entitled, “Prisoner of X,” which comes out next month. I’m currently reading the galley in preparation for an interview and truly pleasantly surprised by his natural knack for subtly penned and entertaining pop culture writing.

Funny because that train of thought led me to check out some of Kapelovitz’ salacious writing clips. I particularly enjoyed the one on self-sucking–something that honestly I’ve always wondered about and hey, now I know. The author also had some cool celeb shots on his site…must have been from a Hustler party, I’ll have to inquire. Shannon Doherty, and Bill Maher–who I will have the pleasure of interviewing this week–were among them. Oddly enough, most included comedian Andy Dick, who I believe is the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” of the bisexual L.A. comedian variety.

…which leads me into today, running off last minute to interview Elodie Bouchez at a cafe in West Hollywood and who do I see but Andy Dick? I feel like I keep seeing this guy. He’s my “millennium Fabio.” You see, in the early 90’s, I thought the Fabster was following me, so often would I see him–notable appearance spots including the O.J.-doomed MezzaLuna and the once brilliant wheatgrass joint The Source.

Then it was off for a chat with my friends Dave and Tina Payne who showed me their “little shop of horrors.” They make horror movies, including the upcoming soon-to-be-classic “Reeker” (you’ve got to love the name! And I’m dying to see it, if that’s the appropriate lingo.)

All in all enjoyable encounters. Only one piece of news marred my day. I was saddened to see that my old gossip scribe friend Jared Paul Stern who was always at the head of our “Algonquin Roundtable” in late 90’s New York is under investigation by the FBI for charges of extortion related to alleged dirt on a wealthy supermarket magnet implicating the New York Post by association. I really hope that it isn’t true because I would hate to think otherwise. He was always so supportive of my writing and an all around good guy. I guess time and an investigation will tell the whole story.

Lately, I’ve been mulling over the concept behind ‘exposure therapy.’ For those of you unfamiliar with the term, I’m not talking about a flasher with a trenchcoat lying on a leather couch in a shrink’s office self-satisfying. Or am I?

The official term comes from cognitive behaviorial psychology (not to be confused with the warm and fuzzy, blame-it-on-mom, “how are you feeling?” branch of the field). They believe that constant exposure to something that you deeply fear or that illicits some sort of negative or difficult emotional reaction gradually minimizes the damage. Eventually, the fear and phobia are gone..or more clearly, the level of importance attached to the subject.

The Cog B’s are not the only folks who believe in this principle. The brilliant and infinitely creative director, actor, comic book writer and occult afficionado Alejandro Jodorowsky has his own version: Psycho Magic. He asks ‘patients’ to describe their fear and then prescribes a treatment that involves acting them out–complete with makeup and costumes. One client of his feared aging so Jodo had her dress up in full theatrical garb as an old person to experience and ultimately cast aside her fear.

I have to admit that I’m a die-hard adherent of this method. It has worked for me like a charm. As someone prone to dramatic realization, I often take people and situations and attribute massive value to them that simply isn’t there. My mind powerfully concocts a world for myself filled with demons, heroes and untouchable superstars–everyone from ex-boyfriends to intellects like Leonard Shlain, Joan Didion, Bill Maher and Maureen Dowd are part of my roster. The truth is that I (and I would venture to guess, some of you readers as well) am acting as the best publicist in my own personal universe. All of us, we create larger-than-life images, reputations and buzz for individuals within (and beyond) our social sphere.

Situations too fall prey to this treatment: public speaking, a date, an interview, etc. Suddenly the scenario becomes the Royal frickin’ wedding or “Geraldo interviews Charlie Manson”. The truth is that it’s just not that big of a deal and we realize this when faced with repeated exposure. Once we get in the situation, it’s like, hey, a Royal separation is possible, hey no matter how many threats you make or chairs you throw at me, I will survive (with a little rhinoplastic tweaking).

We should all be familiar with exposure therapy because we live it every day in our culture. Unfortunately, en-masse we use it in a negative way. Via the media (the evil giant, the media, ya know Rupert Murdoch, Viacom…) we over-expose ourselves to sex and violence so that at the end of the day, as a culture, we Americans need really kinky over-the-top-sex to get off and think nothing of some guy’s head being blown to smithereens. In the end, it all becomes so normal.

So, from now on I’m treating myself to a diet of demons and detractors–who are gradually shrinking down to their original action figure size and are no more of a threat than Barbie–or should I say Ken, in his penis-free days. On the list of “cannots” for my own personal South Bitch diet are porn addiction and excessive violence. Now I’m not trying to get all Tipper Gore on your asses…I’m just fantasizing about how nice it would be to actually react accordingly and appropriately to the news when a segment on the endless bloody Iraq War comes on….And to re-aclimatize myself to the subtle titillation of catching a peek at a man’s muscular upper arm or a trace of “je-ne-sais quoi” below his waist. Miss Scarlett’s fading now…