Love Bites
Best (and the rest) of 2007
BY Sasha
The late comedian Bill Hicks has been on my mind lately. It would have been his 46th birthday on Dec. 16 and I’ve been reading his essays in preparation for a show. A quote from Love All the People lingers: “I believe the audience seeing that one person can be free to express his thoughts, however strange they may seem, inspires the audience to feel that perhaps they too can freely express their innermost thoughts with impunity, joy and release, and perhaps discover our common bond — unique yet similar — with each other.”
Some pretty cool things happened to me and my vagina in 2007 (and I do mean my vagina, not my vulva) but the one I’m most excited about is that I finally, after having my period for 25 friggin’ years, bought a menstrual cup. Just like when I quit smoking butts, this decision has brought out the raging lefty in me. No more giving my hard-earned money to The Man! No more polluting the environment with my leftover filters and applicators! I won’t shut up about my Diva Cup and I’m beseeching you girls, please consider it or another long-term option like the Keeper as your new method for 2008. Remember when we were all up in arms that tampons were deemed non-essential in the GST debate? Guess what? THEY ARE.
The Spiegeltent in all its art nouveau glory at Harbourfront was divine — and I do mean the Spiegeltent itself. The entertainment? Well, cabaret is not predominantly a series of passably talented circus acts, in case you’re interested in its history, and if you are given the opportunity to shake your ass in a venue that once hosted Marlene Dietrich, the very least you can do is get a proper pair of satin tap shorts rather than pulling some American Apparel panties over fishnets. And come on, an advertisement for Fido done up as a burlesque number? What a travesty to this form of entertainment, which emerged as a reaction to respectable culture, not as an endorsement of it. “You don’t bring cabaret to the bourgeoisie,” I slurred to my booth-mate David after about five double vodka sodas, “The bourgeoisie has to find cabaret.”
After being shushed by a table of couples (out for what can only be described as a night of meta-slumming) for heckling (I know, right? Why couldn’t I just shut up and enjoy the MC in fagface like everyone else?), I huffed off to Filmores, where I ended my evening in the company of a heroically inebriated accountant from Scarborough who kept trying to put his fingers in my knickers while we got lap dances from a girl named Barbarella. “Fuck this,” he said after about 45 minutes of me slapping him, “Let’s just go get a tranny and a hotel room.” That’s more like it.
On that note, Goodhandy’s proved to be the scene of many a consensual crime. I’m so happy that a club that welcomes all perversions has finally opened in our city.
One of those link fiestas that began at 10am on Peter Bagge’s page at Reason.com and ended with me still in my pyjamas at 4:30pm with nothing but a cup of coffee and a few spoonfuls of mayonnaise in me, revealed a fantastic new item: a condom embossed with the mug of Bagge’s deadbeat legend Buddy Bradley. I just love arty, serviceable sex gear and the line, by Condomania, also includes J.R. “Bob” Dobbs from the Church of the Subgenius and his girl counterpart Connie — perfect icebreaking paraphernalia for apprehensive Gen-Xers on the scene after their first divorce.
Of course, I read a slew of books on the big topic here at Love Bites this year but one I especially liked was Black and White and Blue by Dave Thompson. It’s an exhaustive history of adult films. Thompson’s a bit of a litigator for the genre — it often comes across as his harangued client rather than his subject — but film geeks will love his ferreting style and I was all over his early-porn-as-punk analogies: “Punk was constructed around excitement, spontaneity, immediacy — if a song couldn’t make its point in three minutes flat, it was dead. Stag films had around 10 minutes but the immediacy was the same.” And for porn itself, I’m digging Anna Span at the moment.
You all know I have a great fondness for comics, adult and otherwise. One artist I recently discovered thanks to my boyfriend brigade over at the Beguiling and their Toronto Comic Arts Festival — bravo Chris and Peter — was Steve MacIsaac. Steve has a few qualities that endear him to me: one, he’s from Nova Scotia; two, he’s a bear. Like he needed to be talented on top of it, but his comics Sticky and Shirtlifter are terrific and feature my favourite gay subculture doin’ it as well as being complex, emotional fellows.
As for sexy tunes, on heavy rotation in the Van Bon Bon boudoir in 2007 were Sound of Silver by LCD Soundsystem, Boxer by the National, The Stage Names by Okkervil River, The Reminder by Feist and Andorra by Caribou.
Those of you who made it to Hysteria at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre this year couldn’t have missed the Walk-In Clinic conceived by festival director Moynan King with Trixie & Beever. I was enraptured with this installation piece, which took all the trauma so many women have had in health clinics and turned it into an empowering experience: genuinely interested, courteous treatment from compassionate “doctors,” and a studiously sour-faced receptionist just to make sure things didn’t get too lesbionic.
Enjoy the rest of your holidays, friends. And if you’re feeling a little blue, have a listen to Werewolves and Lollipops by Patton Oswalt, especially the monologue “I Tell a Story About Birth Control and Deal with a Retarded Heckler.”
EMAIL SASHA AT SASHA@EYEWEEKLY.COM OR SEND YOUR QUESTIONS TO SASHA C/O EYE WEEKLY, 625 CHURCH ST, 6TH FL, TORONTO M4Y 2G1.
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