The Beautiful People

I got my oil changed today.  While I was waiting for Scott (the butch boy who changes the oil) to do what it is that he does, to my car, I struck up a conversation with some of the other gas station attendants.    During the conversation one of them made a reference to "the beautiful people", and nodded towards the expensive waterfront Condos in the Marina.

I was a little bit insulted because I am one of the beautiful people.   No, I am not rich, no, I don't have an expensive ocean front home, and if America's Next Top Model tries to recruit me, somebody's medication needs adjusting.   My point is this.  Beauty, like most estates in this life are fleeting.   We're all beautiful and we're all ugly as hell, just as we're all intelligent, and we're all dense as a brick, depending on the given moment.

Mel Gibson has classic features, money, and a house on the water, is he beautiful?   Not recently.   One time, I was sitting next to Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman at this HORRIBLE, cramped, tiny, trendy over-priced restaurant in Brentwood, and I looked at them very closely. If I hadn't known who they were, I wouldn't have given them a second look--granted this is LA, and people take photo beauty to a different level here.   Still, what about the real beautiful traits, the kind hearts, the sage souls, the people who give until they cannot give anymore.  The balding, doctor who works hours upon hours to save a life, knowing that he's never going to get paid financially, the person in the supermarket line who pays the $5.00 the elderly person is short of on her grocery bill, so she doesn't have to put something back....  That is beautiful... in its purest form... Cause no matter how beautiful a person is on the outside, there's somebody somewhere who's tired of doing the horizontal bop with them.   That's just how it is... the power of cute... is very temporal... but true beauty, which is not physical, but spiritual, is permanent.

So the problem is not the people, who look a certain way, and arguably have advantages because of that.  It is the masses, who think that looking a certain way, and having certain things are beauty and wealth.   To that envious man I was talking to, I say this:  I'm beautiful goddammit, and so are you!  You never know what another person's life is like.   We all cry.  We all laugh.   We all serve some ugly Gods from time to time... and envy is one of the ugliest.   Holla back chirren!

Being in Love, or On Crack, Which is Worse?

Yesterday, a judge overturned the band on gay marriage in California.  Tomorrow is my 21^st wedding anniversary.   Considering I’m a man married to a man, and living in Los Angeles that’s like the 500 years of “wedded bliss.”    Here’s the funny thing.  You know what I want most for my anniversary?   I want my husband to forget it, so I can milk that guilt cow for a year.  What is wrong with this picture?  Love, that’s what’s wrong.

Love should be against the law.  It should be a felony.  It is FAR WORSE than any narcotic on the street.  In terms of achieving an end, crack whores pale in comparison to people in love.  When’s the last time you saw someone in a bad love affair nodded out peacefully in a doorway?  Never, that’s right, because a bad love will make you do anything, and everything, but sleep peacefully is not one of them.

Drugs don’t make people key people’s cars, call every number on somebody’s cellphone and pretend they’re from the census and ask questions like, “are you married”, “your height, weight, and age please…do you workout,”  My girlfriend Corinne, and her ex-husband, Jack, got into a fist fight over a kayak paddle, during their divorce, and they don’t even own a kayak, or like kayaking.  You tell me that aint love.  Love will make black folks eat watercress sandwiches, and white folks fry chitlins.  It’s  a terrible thing.  It destroys the mind.   It will make you believe some ridiculous lies.  My girlfriend’s old man told her that the reason he had so many women’s phone numbers was because he knew she wanted to have more female friends and he was trying to help her—and she believed the Negro—yes, she did.  

So, my wanting my husband to forget our anniversary so I can guilt trip him for a year is nothing—compared to what goes on with people in love—not to mention people who are married for a long time.  It’s a terrible thing, and there’s only one thing worse than being in love—and that’s not being in love, because as Janis Joplin put it, “one good man—it ain’t much it’s only every little thing.”

The T on Movie Reviews

Once upon a time I used to be a movie reviewer for K-Earth 101 in Los Angeles, until I was fired because I refused to review some Jennifer Love-Hewitt movie  and instead reviewed Eve's Bayou...  I remembering telling K-Earth's 2 million listeners  that Eve's Bayou was so good it would make their draw's drop down to their knees and pop back up to their necks... (IF they were wearing draw's, which I doubt, because LA is the shallow end of the pool.  Botox and weaves are not cheap here doll.   And aint nobody got a job, so its beauty on a budget... and people don't spend money on nothing they can't smoke, snort, or use to help raise the rent.)

Anyway,  during my tenure as the movie reviewer for K-Earth. there was the time that I said a love sick Gerbel opening up a can of furry wop-ass on Richard Gere was the only good thing in Red October... and I said one of Bridget Fonda's films was so bad my eyes ran out of the theatre... All of those, in my opinion, were accurate reviews... Infinity Broadcasting had a different opinion... but you know I'm not one to be mistaken for someone who cares what people think... which brings me to todays topic... Movie Reviewers... and specifically, those people reviewing Spoken Word.

 I, personally, don't like movies that me or Diana Ross are not in, so I have some issues with Spoken Word.  But let's move beyond my feelings, which are arguably sociopathic.  Lets look at the mainstream opinion.   I find it curious that the New York Times was ready to drink the Director and Stars of Spoken Word's bath water, and the LA Times was ready to have them all shot at dawn... And all the other Spoken Word reviews were like that... they loved it... or they hated it.... which brings me to this point... who asked them...  and who cares what any of then think?   Talk about a racket... it's worse than when Winchell's was selling the LAPD Cheerios and telling them they were donut seeds.

Think about it.  These movie reviewers, bust up in these movies, don't wait in line, park their hams up in the best seats and do absolutely nothing but come out the theatre with "complimentary" Juju Bees and popcorn on their breath, talking out of their behinds, smelling up the press.   Your mamma didn't raise no fools.  You're either going to like the movie or you're not.  You don't need nobody to tell you what you think.  Its bad enough all these people telling you what you cannot do, but I digress.  Nothing or nobody, can be everything to everybody... So the take home message from the Spoken Word reviews...is people had extreme  reactions... which means that it is an artistic success, because art is supposed to provoke a reaction in people... '

The approach you have to take, is the same approach you have to take in rating a man's love lobster.. one girl says "honey... that thugalicious Inca Bull God put a killing on me last night... It sho' was good!  And another girl says...child doing that man was like eating a gherkin in the Patent Library... my panties fell asleep it was so boring!"  So who's right?  Obviously, you have to go over and test it out for yourself... And that's what you have to do with Spoken Word, and all movies... Test them out for yourself... and tell these movie reviewers you were born in the morning, but not this one... so get out my face!     And that mon dieu, it the T on movie reviews, and movie reviewers.