Opportunity's A-Knockin'

Lately some really cool things have been floating my way as a result of being on the Board of the GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender) group at Disney. We had our monthly event on Tuesday night which has been picking up steam throughout the year. I’m always approached by various members who want to introduce themselves. Usually they thank me for keeping the group active, which is always appreciated. This time though I was asked by a director at PFLAG if I would be interested in speaking at an upcoming PFLAG (Parents and Family of Lesbians and Gays) meeting. Me! Wow! What an honor! I didn’t think twice about it. He explained that I was a rare and sought after candidate to speak to those who are in the process of coming out and to their parents. Apparently there aren’t all that many professional, ethnic women who are out and very visible working at a Fortune 500 company. Even writing this brings back that great feeling. I didn’t come out until I was 28 and my life was turned upside down for a number of years following that. What I can say though, is that once I was able to accept myself as a lesbian there was no turning back, ever. While I did attend a few coming out chat sessions at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center as well as started seeing a therapist one-on-one, I have never to this day attended a PFLAG meeting. It’s not that I steered clear, I just never looked into it. Maybe if I had, I would have been able to deal with the difficulties I faced with my Mom a bit more easily. Anyway, I cannot think of a better way to give back to the community than to allow them to look at me as an example of someone who has ‘made it to the other side’. Ten years ago and long before that, I would have never dreamed I would be asked to do something like this. I am really looking forward to this. The PFLAG director said I should actually look into speaking at high schools in LA. He said he gets contacted frequently and asked for someone with my background to speak. Who knows, maybe I’ll be tapping back into those public speaking skills once again. The other opportunity lies on the promoting end of things and also could potentially open doors in that arena for me. I’ll go into that another time. Good things coming my way. It’s nice and I’m appreciating it.

Empty Nest Syndrome

I’ve known of the possibility but found out last night that it is definite – my dogs will be moving to Redding, California soon. I have emotions all over the gamut right now but I don’t think it’s even truly hit me yet. They’re not supposed to be gone for good, just temporarily. I have to hold on to that. My ex and I have shared custody of our two dogs since we parted ways over 5 years ago. It’s worked out well for both of us, especially considering that almost the entire time we lived one block away from each other. Now she’s moving up north, way, way up north and is taking them with her. I can’t debate this. She isn’t working right now and has all the time in the world to spend with them. They’ll get her constant attention, a great big yard, and will be cared for very well. I can’t give them all of this so it would be selfish to try and keep them. She needs to come back to LA from time to time because of her business ties but that won’t be very often. Her goal is to move back as soon as she can. Circumstances are such that this move isn’t really what she wants but more so what she has to do at the moment. She loves LA at least as much as I do and I have to remind myself of that. Meanwhile, my dogs are 9 and 11 years old. They’re very healthy for their age but nonetheless, they aren’t young dogs. If something were to happen to them and I couldn’t be there it would kill me. I’ve known Jez since she was months old and Halen laid in the palm of my hand minutes after his birth. The exact date of the move isn’t set yet but I will be spending as much time with them while I can right now. I’m sure I’ll be writing more about this.

Looking Up This Summer

Awesome weekend. I’m exhausted today but for once it’s not because of work. I had Friday night all the way to Saturday evening alone in my place with my dogs. I napped! Me! Thinking about it brings a tear to my eye. Ok, enough. Saturday night Laura and I went to our friend’s house where we had dinner and played Playstation 2. Kicked each other’s asses as Lil’ Kim, Carmen Electra and some other hot women with sassy lines and a mean stiletto kick. Fun! Sunday was THE day though. Early morning Laura, Bill and I caught the Metro all the way down to Long Beach and went to the Scuba Diving Convention. Not as impressive as I envisioned it but still lots of freebies and an entire convention center full of my ocean-lovin’ peeps. I even took a picture with a shark! Yep, he was furry and walking the floor along with his pal, Polar Bear. I’m now more than ever determined to do the shark dive I’ve been dying to do. Looks like Honduras is back in the not-too-far distance for vacation destinations. There I can do one of many shark dives. Those are uncaged. Beginning in September through to November is Great White Shark diving season. Of course those dives are caged. I finally convinced someone to do it with me, Bill. I want to do both but it looks like the local one will happen first. The only thing I don’t like is the idea that we’ll be up near San Francisco and the water is colder than shit! I never used to even put my toes in at the beaches up there in the summer. Now I have to dive in October??? Oh well. I guess if my goal is to dive Alaska before I’m 50, I have to start somewhere, right? Brrrr. So, we returned from a great time in the LBC only to turn around and go to the Hollywood Bowl, well Bill and me that is. Sergio Mendes had his 40th anniversary/reunion with Brazil ’66. I’ve been to quite a few shows there now but this one is way up there on my list of favorites. My Mom used to listen to this band when I was a kid. I loved them then. Last night was incredible. To help celebrate, a few performers did a song or two with them – India Arie, John Legend, Q Tip. Of course Herb Alpert was there but what I didn’t know was that one of the women was his wife. They’ve been married for 35 years. These people are all pushing 70 but that didn’t stop the sound from being nothing less than great. Bill packed this great picnic basket with more goodies than we could finish. As I expected, everything perfectly matched both wines he brought. The white was chilled, crisp and uplifting as we settled in before the sun set. The red? Lord! The red. One of the best I’ve had and definitely the best I’ve had at the Bowl. It was a blend of 5 or 6 different types, Merlot, 2 types of Cab, Grenache, Viognier. Just this full bodied taste that had to be savored. We definitely got our money’s worth out of that All Day Metro pass. I never realized how easy it is to get to the Bowl that way, not to mention the Long Beach Convention Center. I will be riding a lot more now that I live so damn close to the station. I didn’t even touch anything work-related until this morning! Unbelievable! I’m hoping now that work is beginning to become a little less chaotic, I can go back to having a more consistent pattern of blog entries. My mind is going constantly but I just haven’t had the time to sit down and write. This weekend was probably my best this year. It’s about time.

Why Neil Young Is Wrong

I just finished reading this incredible article on artist David Poe's blog and had to re-post: From my friend Stephan Smith Said, a protest singer who's written many topical songs, including a duet with Patti Smith called "The Bell." Why Neil Young Is Wrong By Stephan Smith-Said July 2006, The Progressive magazine On Sunday, May 14, the San Francisco Chronicle published my open letter to Neil Young, "Hey, Neil Young, We Young Singers Are Hog-tied, Too." I tried to explain how the corporatized music industry has censored protest music in the past several years. The letter went viral on the Internet, and I was flooded with enthusiastic responses from all kinds of people. Even Neil and his team posted it front and center on his blog for the entire week. What prompted my letter and the outpouring was Young's comment about why he felt compelled to write his new anti-Bush album, Living with War. I was waiting for someone to come along, some young singer eighteen-to-twenty-two years old, to write these songs and stand up, he told the Los Angeles Times. I waited a long time. Then I decided that maybe the generation that has to do this is still the 60's generation. We're still here. As the first protest singer to rise from the streets of anti-war and WTO protests and get a major worldwide distribution deal, I felt compelled to explain that todays Dylans, Ochses, and Neil Youngs are here, but they're being silenced by an industry that has for years derived its profits from kiddy porn and dreamy boys. Just two days after my article came out, MTV, which has refused to play anti-war videos even by the biggest stars, published an article addressing the need for political consciousness in mainstream music. In a flourish of Bush-like hubris, one of the country's chief purveyors of military recruitment ads to youth posted the article, Where Is the Voice of Protest in Todays Music? The webpage boasted an Army video game in the bottom right corner. (MTV, by the way, refuses to air anti-war ads produced by organizations like Not In Our Name and Win Without War.) Where's the voice of protest? It's in MTV's trash can. Where are today's protest singers? They're on the don't add list at corporate radio stations, where they've increasingly been placed since FCC deregulation paved the way for the monopolization of the industry. Just ask Scott Goodstein. He heads the great music/political advocacy group PunkVoter, which, with Fat Wreck Chords, released the Rock Against Bush compilation CDs. Those CDs, which included songs from Anti-Flag and Green Day, sold 650,000 copies combined. When Goodstein approached MTV about getting airtime for Rock Against Bush, they rebuffed him. They told us, Your projects not relevant. Or, it's not mainstreamy enough, he says. And Rolling Stones no better. Meanwhile, Green Days current anti-Bush album, American Idiot, has sold five million copies. Finally waking up, MTV has the nerve to extol Green Day and include Anti-Flag in its story on political bands! PunkVoter immediately posted a retort titled, "MTV, Still Completely Worthless", stating that political bands will be there, waiting, when MTV is ready to start covering some protest music. Not that they're gonna. Pete Seeger told me that the floodgates to freedom of expression were opened in the 1960's when the Broadway and Hollywood monopoly over the music industry was broken by Rock and Roll, Motown, and Nashville. Now, the subsequent monopoly that Rock and Roll, Motown, and Nashville constructed is being broken by the Internet, where artists and organizations are creating networks that transcend corporate genres. Most corporate industry professionals just don't understand it, says Molly Neitzel, executive director of Music for America, a nonprofit organization that engages music audiences in political issues. We're a generation who doesn't fit into boxes, she says. We listen to all kinds of music, and that just doesn't fit into the old corporate model of selling records to kids this age, that color, this demographic. Considering how damaging target marketing has been for our democracy, it's great that today's protest singers span all genres: from the anti-cool subtlety of indie-rockers like Death Cab for Cutie and Bright Eyes, to in-your-face hip-hop artists like the Coup, Mr. Lif, and Immortal Technique; from punk bands like Anti-Flag and NOFX, to country and folk artists like Liza Gilkyson and Merle Haggard; from rally regulars like David Rovics, Pat Humphries, and Chris Chandler, to genre-bending artists like Thievery Corporation and Manu Chao. Some labels are already picking up on the pulse. Andy Kaulkin, who runs a label called Anti- for Epitaph, tells me hes become fascinated by the civil rights movement and contemplates what we could do with music to create such a movement today. Accordingly, he has signed artists across corporate music genres that converge instead in political consciousness and spirituality. The labels roster now includes Billy Bragg, the Coup, Tom Waits, and Spearhead. Speaking with Billy Bragg after my article came out, we agreed that the modern broadside the protest song that actually has political effect because of its timely ability to affect public opinionis the free mp3. In the corporate model, it's all based on sales, not on social consciousness, and even the Internet releases are exploited as promo for upcoming releases, so singles are still held up in this four-month lag time the record industry requires for printing, publicity, distribution, he says. In today's sound-bite world, no one wants to write a song about a war that might be over by the time the album comes out. My conversations with Goodstein and Neitzel inevitably veered toward the idea of a nationwide tour of a diverse selection of artists to bring together a raucous, mixed, and attentive audience. But we also spoke of how to expand the kind of touring I and a few other artists have been doing. We use our shows to support local peace and global justice groups. Kind of like what SNCC and SDS did in their day, except for the global, Internet generation. Where's protest music today? It's here, it's on the Internet, and it may soon be coming to your town to build an international movement for peace, civil rights, and equality. Stephan Smith-Said is an Iraqi American songwriter whose fathers family lives under the daily threat of bombing in Baghdad and Mosul. His newest single, Another World Is Possible, has been released for free at his website www.stephansmith.com. http://www.stephansmith.com http:///www.progressive.org http://progressive.org/mag_smith0706 If you haven't heard David Poe's music, you need to: http://www.myspace.com/davidpoe. I had the pleasure of hearing him perform at the Henry Ford Ampitheatre last year when I went to see Duncan Sheik.

I'm Amazed

The Drifter You Took Me Like A Drifter Takes A Friend I’ll Never Be That Honest Again When It Seems Like Nothing’s Going To Change Then Your World Comes Crashing Down Friends Accommodate Your Darker Phase Then You Find It’s Been 100 Days When’s The Last Time You Remember Feeling Safe You’re Surrounded By Assassins In This Place But You Wanted To Be Here And I’m Amazed If I Appear In Every Story That You Tell, That You Tell How Can You Say That I Don’t Know You Well Wasn’t I The One Who Caught You When You Fell, When You Fell How Can You Say That I Don’t Treat You Well When I’m Ringing Out Your Name Like A Bell, Like A Bell How Can You Say That I Don’t Wish You Well I Wish You Well Get That Lonely Feeling At The Door Even Though You’ve Left This Place Before ‘Cause The Truth Is You Won’t Care Anymore Till Your World Comes Crashing Down Again Copyright 2002 by David Poe.

A Decade Plus One in LA

Last Friday I read a blogger’s post that spoke about his living in Los Angeles for 10 years. Last Cinco de Mayo was my 11th year anniversary in LA, the vast majority (about 8 years) was spent in West Hollywood. If there’s one thing that can be said about life in LA it’s that nothing really truly stays the same. I thought about this over the weekend and it reminded me of why I so loved ‘my beach’. No matter what else was going on in my life or how much my surroundings changed, my beach was always a familiar fill for my senses. It grounded me and put life into perspective. May seem strange but it is my little spiritual oasis, which is why I have taken very, very few people there over the past decade. Even though it really doesn’t seem like it’s been that long, so much has changed. I thought I would recognize some of the changes I’ve seen in my 11 years today, obviously most of them I witnessed in WeHo. In 1995:

• There were no Starbucks, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf’s or Jamba Juice’s on Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood. If you wanted coffee, there was a small place across the street from the Palms (I think there’s a restaurant there now) or there was the Abbey. Yes, I said the Abbey!
• The Abbey was a place you went to BEFORE YOU STARTED your night out. We’d meet there in the quiet patio or inside where there were a few mismatched chairs and couches, wait for our friends to show up and then head across the street to Girl Bar.
• Girl Bar was celebrating its 5th year and was open on Friday and Saturday nights, with live music on Saturday before the big crowds got there. I remember seeing Jill Sobule, Melissa Ferrick and Jennifer Corday & The Curious.
• The spot where Fiesta Cantina is now was a little quiet and quaint restaurant that had awesome Sunday brunches up on the second floor. Between then and now I’m sure it’s been at least 3 or 4 other places.
• Smoking was allowed in bars and you would inevitably come home every weekend with clove-smelling clothes.
• Santa Monica Blvd had train tracks running down the middle of it so there was just one big, wide street for Halloween and the Pride parade.
• My half of the rent in my two bedroom, two bath apartment on Croft Ave. (with underground parking and security gates) was $500.
• I commuted to work via MTA to the big high-rise Bank of America building (not sad about that being in the past!) in Downtown LA and my company reimbursed me for my monthly pass. It was $50.
• Speaking of MTA, the Metro was ‘trying’ to be built but kept caving in in Hollywood. Seemed like about every month there’d be another story about what little progress was being made. There was constant construction where Hollywood and Highland is now. It was piles and piles of dirt. Nothing glamorous at all.
• Another not so glamorous place was The Farmer’s Market minus The Grove. Basically it was a dumpy old Farmer’s Market. Don’t get me wrong though, it had its own charm and it’s a little sad that the history has in a sense been altered by building the ‘hip’ shops and restaurants that now surround it. On Friday nights it was easy to get a parking spot there, be entertained by the wanna-be-stars performing Karaoke and drink lots of cheap pitchers of beer. I think that part of it is still there, but it’s just not the same anymore.
• Koo Koo Roo at Santa Monica and West Knoll didn’t exist yet and was an empty unofficial parking lot where you’d park to go to the Palms.
• The Palms had a weekly schedule that would pack them in. Wednesday night was “Cheap Drink Night”. All well drinks and tap beer was $1.00. Thursday night was “Cheaper Drink Night” with the same drinks being 50 cents! On Sundays they had a true Beer Bust, as did Mickey’s and Rage. At the Palms you would pay $5.00 for all the beer and food you could consume between 3:00 PM and 8:00 PM.
• Towards the end of that year on the corner of Santa Monica and Huntley a little corner coffee shop for women opened. It was called Little Frieda’s. Everyone wanted to be seen there. Ellen even taped an episode in the place during the season after she came out.
• On the other end of Huntley, at Melrose, was Sloan's. It was a "Cheers" like bar that was for all intents and purposes straight but always had gay people in it too. I loved that place because it SO didn't fit in among the rest of the bars in WeHo. Totally casual, cheap drinks and lots of men, women, straight, gay but I never saw any pettiness, discrimination or any other type of ridiculousness that I have witnessed at some of the other bars in town.
• The interesting building where the Sav-on is at La Cienega and Santa Monica was completely vacant and people would talk about how cool it would be if it was a club.
• There was no left turn allowed traveling west on Santa Monica at La Cienega. You would have to veer up to Holloway, turn left there and back track it down past that intersection again.

I’m sure there’s quite a bit more that isn’t coming to mind right away. If I think of more I’ll add it. Mainly it’s just interesting and a little nice to kind of suddenly realize how long I’ve been living in LA. I can’t really say that I ever really appreciated anywhere else I’ve lived; including North Hollywood which is where I now call home. I’m working on that though.