Movies were the theme this weekend. And quite a contrast of them. Friday night, Stephen and I met up at the swanky little Chelsea gallery where our friend Abbey works, and then took off for another one of our “Teen Nights,” to go see Final Destination. We were supposed to meet up with the members of sixteen gay soccer teams after that, but apparently we missed them. Their loss.
Saturday night, after an afternoon watching all of More Tales of the City (not all it was cracked up to be) while curled up on the couch in my underwear and under a blanket, I went to go see the breathtakinlgly beautiful 70s-gay-art-porn classic, Pink Narcissus. Beforehand, after checking out the very addictive star Links site, where you can see how any two actors are connected (usually through work with veteran character actors like Shelley Winters that have made movies with almost everyone), we launched into our own Celebrity six Degrees obsession. some of our triumphs include linking Ingrid Bergman to Don Knotts, and Peter Lorre to Casper van Dien.
While we were listening to Simon’s rare vinyl copy of the soundtrack to Liquid sky (sunday’s couch-and-blanket feature), we talked about how wild it would have been to be urbane adults back in the early 80s in New York. I have a very pop-kitsch fondness for the West Coast 80s (as distilled in the classic Valley Girl), but a real fascination with the arty, New Wave, hedonistic, pre-Giuliani New York of that era. John made a good point, though: if the three of us had been around through all that, we’d surely be dead now, considering what we would have been doing to entertain ourselves. A chilling thought, but very true.
Tonight I’ll finally see All About my Mother with a couple of new hipster pals from North Williamsburg. (A neighborhood I love and loathe at the same time. Dori’s journal at Saran Warp illustrates the dilemma perfectly.)
My ambivalence about life in New York grows and grows, but that’s a rant for another day…