My answer is, I only wish I'd been that styling. The fad, I believe, was "Afro-Chasidic" and it only lasted for like a few moments in the late '80's/early-'90's in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. Mazel tov, bruthuh.

August 19, 2003 12:19 am - "Fellatio Park"
On my ten-minute walk back to the subway at the end of the workday, I often pass through a pleasant green oasis that I call Fellatio Park.
Fellatio Park is a pretty little park attached to the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, downtown LA's one-stop shop for those who like to gawk at delicately beautiful Asian students. But, unfuckingbeliveably fine as the students are, they are not what makes the park so special.
The most shocking thing you'll first notice about Fellatio Park is the utter absence of bums. Your mind will go through the typical downtown-LA drill: "Oh, look at that; a quaint little park! I can't believe I've never noticed it before... charming wooden benches and everything...
--Wait a minute, why are they not covered with bums? Why are there regular people sitting on them? How weird! --Oh, what a perfect, green lawn. --Hold on, no turds? And where's the ubiquitous scent of urine? My mind cannot wrap itself around this information. Is someone playing a joke? Is this like that Twilight Zone episode where the young couple are in that perfect little town where there's no people and it all turns out to be fake 'cause it's a little girl's doll house? Or is this park just a trap designed by the U.S. Army to lure innocent civilians into an evil cancer experiment, 'cause they covered the pretty little park with cancer? What the hell is going on here?"
Once your mind gets over that initial shock, your eyes will adjust to the landscape of ordinary, middle-aged rank-and-file men and women from the nearby office buildings, clamped together on the grass like copulating earthworms. Sometimes they spread a blanket underneath. Today I witnessed a couple reverently laying down a lurid, Angelyne-pink bedsheet. But often they just lie on the bare grass. They'll stain their clothes, but who gives a shit? They certainly don't. They've got other things to think about. Like getting it on.
And they do. They go about their business silently, in evenly-spaced clumps, spread out over an acre. If it were dark, they'd even seem discreet. Besides frontal spooning, here are the most common positions: man with head buried in woman's boobs. Man with chin buried in woman's mons. Woman with head resting on man's groin. Woman on top of man/man on top of woman. Hands clutching everywhere.
But the positions are not so striking as the crackling energy that you feel as you pass each couple. The snakey, deliberate movements: heads moving downward from belly towards pelvis, crushing into bosoms, asses.
I'll admit, I was shocked by these sights the first time I passed through. How could people be carrying on with such lack of shame right in the corporate stranglehold of downtown -- moreover, fresh from their jobs, still clad in their corporate attire? Weren't they afraid that someone from work might see them?
Their lack of fear and restraint is so striking that I find myself obsessing over their amorality. How do these people let themselves get so carried away? Don't they feel ashamed later? It's so appalling that I now have to walk through Fellatio Park every day, just to see for myself how feral our society has become. I have to burn the images into my brain to be able to report back with the following evidence that all is not right with the world: Heads moving down to feminine triangles, cheekbones resting on family jewels, lips near nips. The breakdown must be observed and faithfully recorded. I am not enjoying this. And damn you if you thought so. Nay, I am on a mission. I must never deviate from my path through Fellatio Park. There's just too much work to be done. But I'm all worked up now. I need to lay down with my "massage wand" and relax for a while, before I'm hospitalized for Nerves.

August 18, 2003 11:03 pm
Smoking G-ma (the Original) and I are going to Spain in November, where we're finally gonna be treated like the International Subterranean Superstars that we really are. We will stay with our patrons at Popular1, the greatest rock-n-roll/pop culture magazine on the planet besides the Weekly World News, whose headline this week is Women's Hot Flashes Cause Global Warming! I missed my dream gig there. But anyway - me & G-ma are changing our panties 20 times a day 'cause we can't stop peeing in them from sheer excitement. Our hosts will be Mickey Ribera, writer, and Cesar Martin, editor, of the Popu (as they call it in Spain), whose parents started the magazine in the '70s and knew Salvador Dali. Why are we so excited to visit these people? A recent quote from Cesar (used with permission):

Dali was hilarious. My dad used to go to his home in the 70's, and he can tell you lots of weird stories about him. He called to our home once, my dad answered the phone, and Dali said he had a problem, cause his room was dark and he wasn't able to see anything (try to imagine him saying this with his weird voice). My dad told him to just open the lights, but he said it wasn't possible and asked my dad to do it for him (he lived hours away from our home!). My dad didn't go, but can't you imagine if he decided to go there?
Dali was very funny. Another time, when my dad visited him, he told him he needed a lemon to put it inside the vagina of the model who was working with him. There are lots of crazy stories. Once my mom went with my dad to a party at Dali's home, and Gala (Dali's wife) throw my mom to the floor and they had a fight, cause she thought my mom went there to seduce Dali.
I'm sick of Art, cause my dad is a painter and there are paintings everywhere at the studio, the house, etc., and he's always talking about Art. But I can understand why some people love Art so much.

I think I've made my case. Anyone who knew Salvador Dali yet is "sick of Art", yet can find it within himself to understand "why some people love Art so much" is a dear friend of mine. And now, equal time: a quote from Mickey (used without permission):

BU BU BU BU BU BUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH, BUAAAAAAAAAH, BUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, I´M SO SO SO BUUUUUUUU HAPPY BUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH :-)

That's what they say in Spain when they're excited you're coming to visit. Mickey, whose emails always start with the salutation, Hello SuperRachole!, also taught me how to type a kiss in Castilian: Múa, múa, múa! or muaks.
Spain rules.

I'm sick & going to bed now. Fantastic D-town last night with a great crowd & a lovely couple from Spain, whose butts I kept kissing by cradling my life-size plastic lobster & purring, "Mmm. Paella." After the show, at midnight, Smoking G-ma the Second, Victor Varnado, shot a horror movie with me & some other actors in a strip mall in Koreatown 'til 5 in the morning. It was for Channel 101, a live movie screening where every week you present a short film and the audience votes on it whether they want it to be continued, and if so, then you have to come back next week with a new episode. Pretty cool, huh? And that's why I'm sick now. So I'm going to bed. Múa, múa! BU BU BU BU BUAAAAAAAAAAH!

August 17, 2003 10:55 am
I knew if I just threw the empty General's Noodle takeout containers in the kitchen trash, instead of heaving them into the alleyway, spraying them with DDT or incinerating them, there'd be hell to pay in the A.M. And thus this morning I entered my kitchen with my Morning Mantra:

At least they're not roaches.

At least they're not rats.

At least they're not the biting kind like in Texas.

At least they don't carry disease.

At least they force you to clean regularly. Cleaning is good.

At least they're not in my coffee maker -- what the fuck are they doing in my coffee maker?!!!!

At least they're interesting creatures whose intelligence you admire.

At least they're not bigger.

At least you can crush them individually between your fingers, which gives you pleasure.

At least there's not thousands of 'em in your fridge and freezer like last year.

At least you're not crying.

I recited this as I murdered them en masse with Lysol^TM Kitchen Cleaner -- spraying down the trash, sink, counter, floor, and walls, killing tens with each blast. Then I wiped them up prepared my coffee. As I stirred delicious genuine half-and-half and genetically modified no-calorie "sugar" Splenda^TM into the steaming cup, I spotted a tiny, twisted corpse spinning in the whirlpool. I picked it out with my fingers and took a luxurious sip. Nothing like a good cup of coffee to start the day off right.

August 17, 2003 1:32 am - A Complicated Eve
Let's break out the old bottle of wine, shall we? I shouldn't, 'cause I want to recover quickly from my cold, and I always want to get up early, and drinking red wine will guarantee that neither of those things'll happen. But I want to sip some luxurious $2.99 grape for good reason.
Some evenings are just so complicated, you know what I mean? For instance, there's duck grease all over the bottom of my feet. I don't know why. I ordered General's Noodles to go from Samnamluang in Thai Town. I brought 'em home & dumped 'em in a big bowl over the sink. So why are my feet slippery with duck grease? I know it's duck grease, because I've tasted it. Indeed: delicious duck. And now I'm just "going with it." I'll let it wear off into the carpet as I walk back and forth. The ants will love it.

Let's go back to earlier in the eve. I did a guest spot on the marvelous Lampshades show. Standup and then I sang "Have A Baby" karaoke style, to my own instrumental tracks on a CD, where I could dance around as I sang... except the boa was giving me all sorts of trouble. I wrapped it around my neck, then a feather got caught in my mouth, then when I jumped the boa unwound, dragged in a long, useless stream on the floor, got caught in the mike stand, and just found a way to hinder every damn movement I made. I was trying to sing about babies but ended up struggling with a boa. I am so not a natural-born drag queen. Adding insult to injury was discovering afterward that Barry Shils, the maker of Wigstock, was in the audience! I met him in the bar after the show. A nice man who totally witnessed my incompetence with props.

Not a big deal any of this, just complicated. Then my friend Kate and I went to a taco stand down the street. We're sitting at this counter facing the window and she's eating tacos and talking about this weird internet dating experience she had. Right on the other side of the glass is this shriveled-up, near-midget man in a shawl, also eating tacos, with two streaks of blood running down his face. He's looking straight at us and yelling with his mouth stuffed full of lettuce & tortilla. Then I realize it's not a near-midget but a tiny, witchy woman. I turn away and try to focus harder on what Kate's saying. But the taco lady's come around to the front. She's finished her tacos and is now ready for some real fun. She plants herself in the doorway next to us and starts screaming obscenities at everyone inside. The cooks just ignore her. Everyone's uncomfortable and tries to avoid looking at her, hoping she'll go away. She doesn't. I'm trying to talk to Kate. I'm trying to say, "This dude sent me a fan email, and then an hour later he sent me the same email, but twice as long, 'cause he'd punched it up." But what comes out is, "This crazy lady was yelling at everyone to suck her dick." The Taco Lady's clearly winning. Everyone's on edge. A petite Mexican man receives his enchiladas and promptly accidentally flings his fork to the floor. It makes a very loud tinging noise. Embarrassed, his eyes dart around to see if anyone noticed before he reaches down from his bar stool to pick it up. On his way back up, he jostles the stool on the other side of him and it crashes to the floor. Everyone jumps. His mortified eyes lock with mine. I can't help but laugh and he laughs too. The Taco Lady definitely won that round. When we crossed the street, she was on the other side, taunting the crowds of tourists. There was dried blood smeared down her pants.

Complicated. I stop in Thai Town to get some noodles to go and on my walk to the restaurant, I pass a black station wagon waiting to exit a parking lot, and smell the reek of marijuana. I make sure not to look. You make sure not to look at anything when walking down Hollywood Blvd. at night, and if you don't already understand why, then you probably live with Dorothy's family in Kansas. Exactly when I'm in front of the car, a man's husky voice cuts through the air like a fart: "Want a riiiide?"
Now this is where I admit I made it more complicated. I whirled around and out of my mouth dripped, "Suuuure! That sounds great!... No thanks." I whipped back around and kept walking. I've wanted to do that for a while, every time some creepy peabrained perv offers me a ride. Which, believe it or not, happens rather regularly, even on my way to work.
The voice said, decidedly unfriendly, "Wanna friend?" I turned around again...and stalked toward the car. Rage boiled up inside me. "Oh, yeah! That's a great idea. I'm sure you're a great friend." The man was in his 40s and balding, with a tan, handsome face and flat eyes. He brazenly sucked a joint while leaning out the driver's side window. He was alone. "I can give you a ride," he repeated. "Wanna get high?" "ABSOLUTELY!" I was loud. "I mean, there's nothing I'd like better than to get in a car with a total stranger. And then get high with him. Let's do it!" His eyes flickered. "I'm not so sure now," he said. I walked away again, quickly. His voice came right back at me. "You're beautiful, but you have a real shitty attitude." Wow. I had to think about that. Coming from this guy, who obviously just wanted the best for me, it really meant a lot. He tore into the street as another car passed in the opposite direction and a different voice screamed, "WANNA FUCK!!!" Complicated.

I picked up my noodles without incident and got home without being stalked, murdered, or yelled at. So overall I deem the evening, though complicated, a success.
The boa thing still really bugs me when I think about it, though.