Dave White Knows

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we never miss a meal, cuz we love our ce-ree-eel
i have no idea what the thursday green thing is supposed to be about. and none of my shirts are that color.

Nursing home semifinals
I've narrowed it down to two nursing homes. Three if you count the extravagant place that's like a fogey Fantasy Island and doesn't take MediCal and costs a bare-bones minimum of $6,000 a month, the one that will require some rich person to come along and be my mother's benefactor or cause

moroccomole and me to enter into a real life "Wings of The Dove" scenario with the heir to some shipping concern. Or heiress. I'll do what it takes. I'm not kidding.

Nursing Home "A" is the first one I visited. Somewhat old, somewhat worn, but still warm and friendly. Nursing Home "B" is newly renovated, efficient-seeming and a little cold on first impression.

I went back to Nursing Home "A" this afternoon for a follow-up visit with their admissions woman. Somehow, though, she either forgot about our appointment or got called away on an emergency. Or something. I left her a note to call me (and I'd really like there to be a good explanation) and instead I spoke to a kind of flustered assistant nursing director whose English was the kind learned in adult ESL classes at night and whose personality has been shaped by nearly 30 years of employment in this one location, dealing with old not always alert people who don't ask complicated questions one after the other in expectant, no-bullshit-please tones of voice. When I do this at home to the man I love, I am frequently rebuffed with: HOLY BALLS DAVE WHITE, STOP PEPPERING ME WITH QUESTIONS. YOU'RE BEING JUST LIKE MY FATHER. But in this particular scenario I think my insistence is warranted, and I don't care how limited your English. I expect answers.

And since I'm a former ESL teacher this kind of thing doesn't really present a communication challenge to me anyway. I restate, I rephrase, I repeat. Then I wait for the response.

I got almost all my questions answered by the guy, with only a few "I don't know what you mean" answers and I will get the rest of them checked off my list by the lady I was supposed to talk to in the first place. If she doesn't call me by 4:00 pm, I plan to nag her voice mail until I get her on the line. Then it's back to Nursing Home "B" for their turn to be peppered.

HP + the H-B P
my review is here. click that face.

http://www.movies.com/

The Pop Art Anti-War Nun
Now that I've expelled the ranting portion of my Sunday night's activities, I can show you more about why I was at Cinefamily.

Like I said, I went to see the three short documentaries about Sister Corita

"Become a Microscope" (2009) by Aaron Rose
"Sister Corita: Mary’s Day" (1964) by Baylis Glascock
"Survival With Style" (1966) by Cal Bernstein, Alex Singer and Haskell Wexler

The first one is a new film that uses bits and pieces of the archival footage in the second two movies and provides a nice contemporary explanation of who she was, what she did, why she was important and just how cool and inspirational she was.

Here's a YouTube clip about her from "Become a Microscope" director Aaron Rose that was on German TV.

More information about her here:
http://www.corita.org/

As for Cinefamily, if you're local you really should go see something here because everything they do is great. This link will tell you all you need to know about why there are no ushers to scold people who text during the movie.
http://www.silentmovietheatre.com/

My husband, moroccomole, has some stuff to tell you...
If you're local or around Los Angeles in the upcoming weeks, he's hosting some things and you should know what they are. The following text was written by him. I'm posting it here for him because I stand by my man. Usually.

Hope you're enjoying the summer and avoiding the heat. Here are some upcoming events that promise to be lots of fun as well as FULLY AIR-CONDITIONED:

* I'm moderating a discussion with the gay creators of BIG LOVE on Sunday, July 19, at 5pm at the DGA. Special guests include actors Mary Kay Place, Matt Ross (who plays closeted conniver Alby) and Sandy Martin (who's never anything but riveting as the nefarious Selma Green), among others. It promises to be a lively discussion, with lots of great clips from the addictive HBO series; tickets can still be purchased online from Outfest at http://www.outfest.org/tixSYS/2009/search/big%20love/AL (And if you haven't already, check out all of this week's Outfest schedule -- there are lots of great features, docs and shorts you won't want to miss.)

* As a longtime fan of the American Cinematheque, I was thrilled when they asked me and Stephen Rebello—whom I consider to be one of my literary mentors—to curate a bad-movie series for them. (Stephen is, of course, the co-author of the landmark BAD MOVIES WE LOVE, and I've seen THE APPLE more times than is considered healthy, so we both bring a lot of experience to the table.) I hope you'll join us for some or all of these delectably awful cinematic stinkers in a series we call SO BAD THEY'RE BRILLIANT:

Thursday, August 13, 7:30pm: KITTEN WITH A WHIP & THE LONELY LADY

Friday, August 14, 7:30pm: XANADU & STAYING ALIVE

Saturday, August 15, 7:30pm: MAHOGANY & A NEW KIND OF LOVE
(Dig out your wildest frocks for our "More is More" fashion show and competition at 7pm!)

Sunday, August 16, 7:30pm: LOST HORIZON

Wednesday, August 19, 7:30pm: GLITTER & FROM JUSTIN TO KELLY

All screenings will take place at the historic Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Blvd.; as guests and other details get confirmed closer to showtime, I'll send out some follow-up info.

Wishing you all Otter Pops and frosty mugs,
Alonso

P.S. My friend Dennis Hensley is hosting another hilarious round of The Mismatch Game on the weekend of July 24; for tickets and more information, visit http://www.lagaycenter.org/site/PageServer?pagename=TE_ON_OUR_STAGES or http://www.dennishensley.com

Okay, now it's me, Dave, again, with my personal plug for this stuff. You may have avoided "Glitter" and "From Justin to Kelly" because of sanity or good taste or because it all just seemed too faggy.

And if you avoided them then what you missed was two brain-scrambling buckets of awful awesomeness. For example:

Food lines are for Russia in 1975. Thanks for finding me that food line, Phone.
I hate your phone.

I also hate my own phone but that's because I can't figure out how to text. I also hate my own phone because I lose it a lot. Or maybe I lose it a lot because I hate it. I also hate my own phone because I never wanted a phone to begin with;

moroccomole forced me to get one so that he could contact me in case of emergency. The world conspired with him by eliminating pay phones. I never used pay phones anyway because of gnarly germs waiting on them to give me ear diseases, but they existed in case I was ever that crazy desperate. Now they don't. Except for that red booth one outside of that fake British pub on the west side over near Santa Monica. So MM forced a phone on me. Then he bought an iPhone and forced a new Motorola Razor on me. I hate all these phones.

But mostly I hate the phone of the rude fucking woman who sat next to me at Cinefamily the other night. I went to see the three short Sister Corita documentaries ("Become a Microscope" (2009) by Aaron Rose, "Sister Corita: Mary’s Day" (1964) by Baylis Glascock, and "Survival With Style" (1966) by Cal Bernstein, Alex Singer and Haskell Wexler, and I'll post more about those later because they were RAD) and during the last of the films, the rude fucking woman breezed up to the couch where I was sitting, (they have fancy leather couches in the front at Cinefamily. Why haven't you been there yet? I'll explain more about that place later too.) sat down and...

...IMMEDIATELY BEGAN TEXTING through the entire 30 minute-long short. Shining her texts like a little blue flashlight all over the place. And because it seemed inappropriate and is sort of not awesome to harsh on people in the live-and-let-live-everybody-hang-loose environment of the Cinefamily where they allow you to bring your own beer to the movie if you feel like it, and because I was so stunned by her nasty antics, I remained silent and thought about these questions:

1. Why are you doing this?
2. Why are you even here?
3. Why aren't you down the block at the nasty Grove multiplex watching something as ridiculous as you are?
4. How did you even find this place? Did you simply stumble in? Did your gigantic purse act as a navigational system? Is your gigantic purse smarter than you?
5. Can I not get away from the creepy assholes of Los Angeles for even 90 minutes at a weird little repertory cinema where they show short documentaries about art-nuns from the mid-1960s? Are you people like a ubiquitous poison gas that just seeps into every single fucking corner of life now?
6. When will you die?

I thought about getting up and moving. Then I turned around to look for an empty seat. Turns out that Sister Corita was so popular that it was a nearly full house. So I stayed put and seethed. I know some of you would have bitched at her and done some kind of verbal assault. And on a short-temper day I would have, too. But I'm trying to be a different person with that shit. I have been told, by MM and others, that I do, on occasion, terrify. That I bark loudly and angrily and it makes people scared. And because I'm currently sort of on the fence about whether or not scolding strangers in public is even a good idea in the first place, first because it's Los Angeles and they could be a superloco and have a gun and also because philosophically it may make more sense to be the manners you wish to see in the world instead of the person screaming about those manners, I just sat there, annoyed.

But I hate your phone. And I'm not so fond of you, either.

Last night the phones helped us find Diddy Riese, the cookie store where you stand in a half-mile line to enjoy the cookies. This was after seeing "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" over in Westwood. I ate one cookie that was admittedly delicious even if the line for it was like Pinks without the promise of a chili-cheese dog and grape soda at the end of it. But MM and

xtreem_aaron and Our Tom Ford were down for the line. So again, phones suck a moose. I was standing in a line for a cookie at 10 o'clock at night.

Just as we reached the front of the line, two cute young women of UCLA walked up to us and asked if we'd buy them cookies so that they didn't have to wait in the superline. Under normal circumstances, if someone was in an actual hurry and needed me to help them and there was a line that was going to prevent them from getting to the really urgent thing they needed to do and I was in a spot in that line that would allow me to give them the kind of assistance they truly required, I would help.

But.

Here's another list:

1. These were cookies.
2. They just wanted to make their movie on time. (There are several theaters in the area.)
3. They had an air about them, a confidence in their own adorability, that said, louder than their request, "We're so hot that if we ask these big doofussy looking guys to do something for us that they're going to jump at the chance because sexy girls like us never talk to them. They'll feel honored and connected to us in some small way just for the privilege of helping."
4. But being a bunch of gays, this shit was not going to work. I said nothing. Our Tom Ford said, "No."
5. They looked shocked and walked away.

"HP + TH-BP" is good.

Time to begin plugging this until you're all sick of hearing about it.
A couple of weeks ago, someone here on LJ asked very innocently, "You wrote a book?"

I was stunned, of course, because I think I talk about it way too much here and assumed I had already annoyed most of you with it. My close friends goof on me with some frequency about my need to move copies and willingness to self-promote.

And now, IT'S TIME TO START THAT SHIT UP ALL OVER AGAIN!

This month an anthology called "Love is a Four-Letter Word" comes out from Plume. It's a collection of first-person true unlove stories. The editor contacted me about two years ago to be a part of it and at first I thought he was lying when he told me the other names of actual famous writers who would also be taking part. Accomplished people with writing awards like Pulitzers and PEN/Faulker awards and other fancy recognitions. But he wasn't kidding and now I get to be one of the nobodies in a book full of somebodies, which is pretty rad and continues to feel shocking to me.

If you live in the New York City area there will be a reading with Dan Kennedy, Jennifer Finney Boylan, and Josh Kilmer-Purcell on July 30, 7:00pm at Barnes & Noble on 82nd & Bway. I will be there--in fact, I will be there that entire last week of July--even though I will not be reading. But you should come out and say hey to me because I never go to New York and it would be great to meet you. At least I think it would be great to meet you. Maybe after I meet you I'll think differently. But won't it be nice to find out? Oh and if you need your copy signed I can do that too.

Here's the website for the book. If you click on "Excerpts" you can read a tiny chunk of my piece. It's called "This Guy Who Was My Boyfriend For Like Three Weeks."

http://www.loveisa4letterword.com/

A belated birthday gift from my best pal, Michel Gondry

moroccomole knew about this thing that I didn't. And what he knew was that if you send Michel Gondry some money and a jpeg he will paint a little watercolor version of that picture.

So MM sent Michel Gondry a picture of us from the day we got married last summer.

The wedding happened at the La Brea Tar Pits and the reception at the Farmer's Market in front of Bob's Coffee & Doughnuts. This is a picture that was snapped of us then, turned into a bizarre little painting by Mr. Gondry.

I appear to be the hulk-bodied, peanut-headed, red lady-lipped outcome of the time when the guy from "The Hills Have Eyes" put a baby into Sloth from "The Goonies." MM has had his head squeezed in a vise, stolen the cat-eyes glasses from Lynda Barry's cartoon mother and traded in his teeth for four white fangs.

In other words, I LOVE IT A LOT. LIKE A LOT A LOT. Thanks, Michel Gondry.

Attn: NYC people. I must find the customized trail-mix store.
Oh and also this:

http://www.advocate.com/exclusive_detail_ektid97136.asp

It's my latest Advocate.com TV column. This week I get real deep into real human truths about "NYC PREP" AND "MIAMI SOCIAL" Y'ALL!

And regarding my title of this post: I am coming to New York the last week of July for a book launch. A book I'm in. So while I don't want any actual customized trail mix, I do want delicious treats. Begin pointing me in their direction now, please. More details about this trip later...

me = arm candy, me = will die
*

moroccomole has this thing where he wants me to actually accompany him out to events. This conflicts with my own disinterest in going to these events. So occasionally we compromise and I go with him. Last night we went to the opening night of Outfest, which is the Los Angeles queer film festival. He was one of the film programmers this year so his job is to go to the opening night and closing night and the parties and to introduce screenings and whatnot.

So I went. But it was noisy and I couldn't ever really hear what anyone was saying to me because big crowd sounds are sufficient enough to make me deaf. Normal voice decibels are just drowned out. So I nod and go "Oh, hey, it is so good to see you again" and then I just look around and notice things like how insane the light sconces and giant chandeliers are at the Orpheum Theater. And complain about the seats in the balcony, which were designed when people were not so large. And I'm not even talking about fatness. I mean they had shorter legs. And smaller thighs and butts. Those seats must have fit someone back then. Just not me, not now.

One good thing about giant crowds: If you have to fart you can do it and nobody will know it was you. You can just make a face like, "Eww, who did that?" and walk away. Not that I did that. I'm too polite.

Other topic: I had my first appointment with the new therapist to help me get over my fear of flying. If you're new to reading this journal, I am terrified to fly. I do it but I freak out hard and need drugs to get through it. I went to a therapist for this in 2002, then to a horrible phobia group that didn't help me. Then I decided to tough it out for the next seven years. But MM made me promise I'd go back to try to deal with it again.

I found a good guy. His office is in my neighborhood so I can just walk there. He's all quiet and gentle like therapists are. You sit on the couch and bark out your anxieties and they just nod and then softly tell you shit you don't want to hear. Shit like, "You have to decide that you're going to be a different person regarding your fear of flying. No one can take that step for you. You have to be the one to start this in your own mind. You could very well die in a plane crash. Or in a car accident. Or by falling down the stairs. Or by having a heart attack. Short of taking your own life or learning that you have exactly five months to live from a brain tumor, you don't get to control when you're going to die. But you will die. And part of getting over this fear is coming to accept that fact. See you next Wednesday."

So I'll see him next Wednesday.

I don't love Beth Cooper or Humpday or Blood or Bruno.
My reviews are now up on Movies.com for "Bruno, "Humpday," "I Love You, Beth Cooper," and "Blood: The Last Vampire."

http://www.movies.com/

Nursing home inspection # 4
There may already be a winner in the nursing home competition now called "Which Los Angeles Facility Gets to Enjoy My Mother?"

The one I went to yesterday afternoon has just undergone a fancy renovation. Everything looks fresh and new. It's the largest place I've seen so far, about 140 beds. Lots of activities, people were up and out of bed, I was greeted by smiling staff several times, greeted by smiling residents too. I know that sounds silly, but I've learned that it really matters. If both the staff and the residents feel like they're in some kind of prison it shows on their faces.

No crazy smells, two large activity/dining rooms, two patio areas. A large physical/occupational/speech therapy room with full time therapists. Some group brings in animals for people to pet every week. The admissions lady told me that sometimes they bring pigs. I think that's kind of rad.

The only drawbacks I could see are:

1. It's not walking distance from our house like the first place I went to. To see her would always be a drive.
2. The neighborhood, while nice and mostly residential, has nothing to do once you leave the front door. Every trip out would involve a car instead of just a roll around the neighborhood. The first place has a great neighborhood with a lot of stuff for her to see and do.
3. The atmosphere is somewhat less "warm" than the first place.
4. Almost all the rooms are three beds. She can get on a waiting list for their limited number of 2-bed rooms. She will absolutely want a 2-bed room. She likes her space.

Anyone with any experience or expertise or opinions?

Let his death be on your head...
Once upon a time there was this guy in San Francisco named

funtarded and he had only enough muscles to do things like walk and sit and move a fork and put out this zine that one time. Then, because he's a gross pervert, he started going to an S&M fetish dungeon he calls "the gym" and the muscles got so big that they began crushing his lungs and making him cough.

Now he is dying of this. Yes, it's his own fault. He called it a lifestyle when it fact it was a deathstyle.

But you can help.

He is video-blogging his descent into the grave and he has to have 20 comments on each of them and a lot more Brokencyde videos to look at or else he's going to die. Or maybe he will keep on making video-blogs. Neither of these options are good to think about. Some of these videos are shirtless and maybe you have a thing for sick guys and their nude shoulders. Why not go be his LJ friend and give him the support he needs.

We've already lost so many people, people who are so much more important than him but that's not the issue. We can save him with internet comments. If you don't do this we'll be losing a person who've given absolutely nothing to the community. But if you save him then he might start tomorrow. He already has big plans to turn Prop 8 into a light saber.

Current obsession # 3
Artist named Tala Madani. The images I posted are small, but if you go looking for more you can find them bigger. And clicking the link will show you larger images too...

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/tala_madani.htm

In e_ticket's convertible you will enjoy Captain EO
What happened yesterday, in order:

*Went to Jinky's for breakfast with

moroccomole and Gary Cotti. I had corn flake-encrusted french toast with blueberries and chicken apple sausage. The trick to eating Sunday breakfast out is to go really early before the people who refer to it as "brunch" show up.

*Dropped MM off at the house. Gary Cotti and I were on a Michael Mission. I was assigned a piece about tomorrow's memorial at Staples Center and, in the anticipation of being one of the 18,000 people to actually get a ticket (out of the 1.6 million who signed up for one) I felt I needed to go see the mini-shrine erected outside the Jackson family house in Encino.

*GC had the big idea of going to MJ's star on Hollywood Boulevard first. We did that. Along with the flowers, homemade signs and balloons, here is a list of things left at the star:

1. homemade four-foot-tall raffia-constructed giraffe
2. a globe, like the kind that sits on a table in an elementary school classroom
3. a balloon animal, variety of animal undetermined
4. a "Little Mermaid" activity book
5. some Matchbox cars
6. a face made out of Play-Doh
7. several dirty stuffed animals

* Drove out to Sherman Oaks to bang on

e_ticket's door. We'd tried calling him from Jinky's but he didn't pick up. GC had keys to their place so we let ourselves in the gate and knocked on the door. No answer.
We knocked louder. No answer.

I had to pee so we just let ourselves in. That's where we found Dave C. snoring away in the bedroom. I went to the bathroom while GC said, "DAVE!... DAVE!... DAVE!" over and over. I finished peeing and then I began saying "DAVE!... DAVE!... DAVE!..."

THIS CAT DOES NOT WAKE UP EVER.

So then we left. Then we drove around the block debating the merits of leaving him to sleep or returning to jump on his bed, wake him up and force him to come to Encino (five minutes away) with us. We returned and jumped on the bed. And here is the lesson I learned about

e_ticket: when awakened by unexpected guests, he does not startle at all. He sleepily bats his eyes and says, "What are you faggots doing here?" Then he feigns anger. Then he gets up and takes over and runs the show and puts us in his convertible and makes us listen to "Captain EO" songs while driving us to the house.

*You can't even turn onto the street where they live. It's all blocked off. We had to park behind the Barnes & Noble, got some Jamba Juice so that we could say we shopped at the plaza (I got green tea with pomegranate and lemonade, heavy on the lemonade), then we walked past the bootleg t-shirt vendors and the one million TV crews lounging under tents surrounded by one other million cops.

*The outside wall of the home was covered in flowers and balloons and signs. This location was free of the bizarre objects that dotted the Hollywood Blvd star. Instead it was very peaceful. No antics going on. There was a sweet child's drawing of MJ with E.T. and Peter Pan. There was an angry sign about Martin Bashir and "that evil child and his whore mother." I don't know to which evil child and which whore mother the sign was referring. But that person was pissed off and threatened "consequences" to all anti-MJ forces in the world. On the ground there was a sympathy card being trampled. So I picked it up and read it.

Click here for a video

e_ticket made of our short visit:

http://web.mac.com/davecobb/davecobb.com/Videos/Entries/2009/7/5_MICHAEL_JACKSON_MEMORIAL.html

I got home and found out that I did not get a ticket to tomorrow's thing. So no Advocate piece about it. Except for the TV column of course. I mean, I assume it'll all be on TV.

Expect that shirt to cost a lot and only come in medium.
First of all, it's Friday and now all my reviews of the week are up at:

http://www.movies.com/

Then, I just saw this on Towleroad

The Campana Brothers are the same men responsible for this stuff:

http://www.mossonline.com/product-exec/product_id/31681

and

http://www.mossonline.com/product-exec/product_id/38790

They also made chairs out of stuffed animals like pandas and, yes, alligators. I like them.

Wednesday movie openings...
Which means that my reviews of "Public Enemies" and "Ice Age 3: Dawn of The Dinosaurs" are up at Movies.com

Click my face.

http://www.movies.com/

Tons of SuperCash now, please.
When you are looking for a nursing home for your wheelchair-bound stroke-patient parent and you accidentally stumble upon the website of a fancy care facility that doesn't deal with Medicaid (Medi-Cal in this state), you realize what an annoyance it is not to be rich.

I just found a place nearby that looks like a paradise of happy old people. And it's expensive. I emailed them just now because I wanted to satisfy my curiosity about what's out there. I'm sure I'll be even grumpier when I find out exactly what it's going to cost.

My family was never financially stable as I was growing up. This is not me whining. It's just a fact. My parents weren't... what's the right way to say this... good with money and jobs and the things you have to do to make a secure life. We were never even what I'd call middle class. Alcoholism and Amway were some of the highlights of that era. At the time of my mother's stroke she was, in fact, unemployed, with no real assets or savings, and Medicaid has paid for basically everything. That's the kind of place I've been looking for here, a facility that deals with MediCal. I'm going to visit one such Medi-Cal place tomorrow over in Hancock Park. But now that I've seen what money can buy, I WANT THAT FOR HER.

Goal: Find one or more rich people from which to get an ongoing stream of cash. Or a winning Lotto ticket. Or quickly get my book onto the bestseller list and TV or film rights sold in a bidding war.

Note to commenters: All sex-related suggestions for making money will be laughed at and deleted. I got family reading this so behave.