#The Los Angeles Review

[that-butch-archivist]

"Tess was a performance artist and part-time jewelry maker who now worked as a set designer. [...] The first night we spent together, I taught her to knit — my classic seduction technique (High Femme Camp Antics, or HFCA) — and about frisson, that carbonated feeling that accompanies a crush. We stared at each other for a long time, unblinking. Because I knew that this otherwise might take forever (lesbians!), I finally asked Tess point-blank if she felt a frisson for me (HFCA). In response, Tess kissed me hard, with teeth. I knew she wanted to fuck, but I pushed her hands away dramatically when they crept under my skirt (HFCA). I told her that I didn’t typically sleep with people so soon (HFCA), which was true not for any real reason but because I was privately humiliated by my body (HFCA). Instead of letting her fuck me, I scratched Tess’s entire torso with my long, pink fingernails (HFCA). “Her fingernails drifted down my neck, across my shoulders,” Jess Goldberg, the butch narrator of Stone Butch Blues, says of a high femme whose camp antics thrill her. “I’d forgotten the sheer pleasure of a high femme tease.” “Your fingernails are full of frisson,” Tess said as morning light began to stream in through the window above her bed. “I know,” I said. I recently read a collection of funny stories by Lesléa Newman, high-femme chronicler of dyke life in the 1990s (the materialistic, shopping-addicted Golden Age of HFCA). In one story, a butch named Flash arrives to pick Lesléa up and take her out to dinner. Flash politely tells Lesléa that she looks nice. “The average femme would have taken that to be a compliment,” Lesléa dishes. “But this high-maintenance femme hadn’t spent the last two weeks shopping for the perfect outfit and the last seven hours bathing, shaving, bleaching, filing, polishing, combing, brushing, drying, moussing, spritzing, spraying, and applying five pounds of makeup to have all her efforts summed up in one little four-letter word.” Flash’s flimsy compliment doesn’t satisfy Lesléa’s desires to be seen, appreciated, and worshiped, and so Lesléa starts from the bottom and works her way up, prompting Flash to compliment her shoes, her miniskirt, and finally her hair in a grand, shimmering pyramid of HFCA. But even as she performs satiation, Lesléa is insatiable. Her antics fail at getting her precisely what she wants from Flash, because there’s always something unsatisfying about getting what you want by asking for it. Lesléa’s desire glows from within the frame of her HFCA, distilled and exposed and unmet. Can I Come Inside, my high-femme sex game, deals primarily with unmet, outsourced, and circumnavigated desire. In Females (2019), trans lesbian critic Andrea Long Chu argues that femaleness is a universal, existential condition rather than a gender or a sex — a condition of being and of consciousness that involves letting others do our desiring for us. At stake in Can I Come Inside, as well as in HFCA at large, is a femaleness that both craves and rebels against its tendency to outsource desire. In playing Can I Come Inside, I, like Lesléa, ask Tess to do my desiring for me, and Tess in turn defers her desire to me: the game is strictly my desire, one that she insists she does not share. Even though it mandates a performance of aggressive desire from Tess, there’s no doubt that Can I Come Inside is about my desire; it’s my game; I make the rules."

-- An excerpt from "High Femme Camp Antics," an essay written by Jenny Fran Davis. (Emphasis in bold my own.)

[freshthoughts2020]

[justagirlllsworld]

the last book store- los angeles, california

[carcarrot]

OH MY GOD A YEAR AGO TODAY .

[tilbageidanmark]

"I had one cultural advantage. I owned a 1955 Ford Fairlane, which I had bought for $100. Gas was twenty cents a gallon. Jim and I drove all over Southern California, which is admittedly something teenage boys don’t mind doing, to attend free concerts and performances. It was the age of high print-culture, each Sunday the Los Angeles Times listed every forthcoming concert in Southern California. Any concert within a hundred-mile radius was fair game..."

One of the walls of opera recordings in my brother’s home, from Cruising for Classical Music in LA

[aesthetic-solar-space]

Icebreaker - UCMH #1 by Hannah Grace, 447 pages, published November 22nd 2022 - 🌟🌟🌟🌟 I will openly admit I had one main issue with this book, and thinking on it now I think it was probably the only issue I had with the book. That issue being it was too long, in a weird way. So I loved every scene I wanted to read all of it. But there was definitely a minimum of five chapters at least that just weren’t needed and could have been extra stuff, my thing is these are directly in the middle of the story as a bunch of stuff is going on - we get this lull of happy fluff that in my opinion could have just waited and would have helped with my feelings of feeling like I was being dragged along. All of that said I want to say I did really really like this book and all of the characters within it. There are so many potential paths I can see the following books possibly going down and all of them excite me. Cheers to our Olympic gold medalist Anastasia Allen!! You maybe have started your story in some bad relationships both with people, planners, and food. But by the end you were flourishing and being the best you that there ever could be by surrounding yourself with people who love you (The Boys, Lola, Nathan), working on yourself when it came to food and emotions, and just overall making time to enjoy the moment!! If you haven’t picked up Icebreaker by Hannah Grace yet - I 100% recommended it as an amazing holiday break relaxation read! Also if anyone has anymore ice skating romance books I need them yesterday!! Please and thank you. 💕⛸️

[invincible-selfxmade-punk]

All it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing.

If there is a theme to this book that has to be it. This was the longest slog of a book. More than you would ever want to know about Charles manson, bungled Police investigations, the fact that Charles Manson was let go Time After Time After Time to commit rape murder and absolute chaos in California, and yet with no reasoning behind it. The Sheriff's Office had him caught, had him in custody, SO many times before the Sharon Tate murders. And yet, every time they let him go. And the reasons are still unknown.

The man who penned Helter Skelter was a monster. He was a woman beater, blow hard of the highest order and a bully who threatened everyone around him in order to protect his secrets and get his way. Helter Skelter should be taken with a grain of salt because of all of this because the man who wrote it was simply evil to the core.

Polanski was a predator and a rapist long before Tate was ever murdered. He raped and exploited her and filmed a lot of it. It seems that the few people who were decent in this novel kept their mouths shut while the rest of the people just rained Terror on everyone around them for decades.

Because they were allowed to. Because good people did nothing.

It is not a happy book. It will not give you closure. It will not give you a happy ending. But if you're ready to dive into the nastiest, slimiest underbelly of America and learn what people get away with on a daily basis, be my guest.

[cinematvns]

(via VMP Films: Awaken to Love and Transformation | Dostoyevsky Reimagined: Blogs)

✨ Discover the Magic of Timeless Stories Reimagined ✨

Dive into the world of VMP Films, where classic literature meets modern cinema. 🌟 Their latest blog, "Awaken to Love and Transformation", explores how they breathe new life into Dostoevsky's timeless themes of love, struggle, and redemption.

🎥 From thought-provoking storytelling to visually stunning narratives, VMP Films connects the past to the present, bringing universal emotions to life in a way that resonates with today’s audiences. If you’re a fan of independent films or literary adaptations, this is your chance to see creativity at its finest!

🖋️ Read the full blog here: Awaken to Love and Transformation

🔗 Follow @VMPFilms for more behind-the-scenes looks, updates on new projects, and insights into the art of blending literature with film.

💡 Let’s celebrate the beauty of storytelling! Share your thoughts or tag a friend who loves cinema and literature. ❤️🎬

[filmcourage]

This Is What's Missing From Hollywood Movies Today - Jesse Harris

Watch the video interview on YouTube here.

[tyra-atm]

close 2 you

[thejoyofviolentmovement]

New Video: JOVM Mainstay TR/ST Shares Brooding and Uneasy "Performance"

New Video: JOVM Mainstay TR/ST Shares Brooding and Uneasy "Performance" @daisrecords @another__side__

Toronto-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and producer Robert Alfons is the creative mastermind behind the acclaimed JOVM mainstay project TR/ST. For well over a decade, Alfons has captivated audiences with a unique blend of dynamic vocals, emotive lyrics and late night sensuality.  Alfons’ fifth TR/ST album, the TR/ST and Nightfeelings co-produced Performance is slated for a Friday…

[divdevdump]

CHILDREN’S FICTION often belongs to children in name alone. After all, narratives of childhood are largely written by adults, usually to reinforce what Henry Jenkins has called “the myth of childhood innocence”—an ideal that envisions the child as somehow universal, apolitical, and sacred. “Too often,” Jenkins writes,

our culture imagines childhood as a utopian space, separate from adult cares and worries, free from sexuality, outside social divisions, closer to nature and the primitive world, more fluid in its identity and its access to the realms of imagination, beyond historical change, more just, pure, and innocent, and in the end, waiting to be corrupted or protected by adults.

Bound by the contradiction of being vulnerable to politics and at the same time magically beyond its purview, the figure of the child in popular culture does not reflect material realities. Instead, as Lee Edelman says in his 2004 book No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, the image is of a “fantasmatic Child”: a repository of utopian hopes and dreams but also a battleground of deep-seated and incoherent cultural anxieties.

Two examples of popular media from this year, the viral Max/Investigation Discovery docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV and the A24 sci-fi/horror film I Saw the TV Glow, reveal the limits of the childhood innocence myth. They both also happen to draw attention to two major cultural forces so often blamed for corrupting the innocent child: television and queerness. Interestingly, both texts link these two forces together, albeit in distinct ways and to different ends. In Quiet on Set, viewers witness the toxic treatment of child actors working for the popular kids’ cable network Nickelodeon in the 1990s and early 2000s. The majority of the docuseries attributes the on-set abuses to a handful of “bad apples”—including two queer Nickelodeon employees—and each episode unpacks in detail the specific nature of their transgressions. By compiling and displaying evidence of Nickelodeon’s mishandling of child stars in the making of its shows, Quiet on Set proposes that television for children comes at a significant cost to children. As the title suggests, the making of kids’ TV must involve a “dark side”—one that includes but is not limited to the suppression, abuse, and manipulation of vulnerable young stars by adults who may care more about the business of “kids’ TV” than they do about actual kids.

I Saw the TV Glow, written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun, also links queerness and television. Rather than present television as threatening in the “bogeyman” sense, the film suggests that TV is a disruptive force to the status quo; in the film, it threatens both the imaginary separateness of kids’ TV from other types of media and the myth that childhood is somehow devoid of or separate from queer and trans ways of life. The film centers on a different kind of youth-focused television that emerged in the same historical moment as Nickelodeon: the meteoric rise of the WB and UPN networks in the year 1995 and the “youth market” that became their demographic targets. The two main characters, teenagers Owen (Justice Smith) and Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), share an obsession with a coming-of-age, supernatural horror series called The Pink Opaque that airs on the “Young Adult Network,” a fictionalized WB/UPN counterpart. When both Owen and Maddy become hyper-identified with the two teen protagonists at center of the program (whose mission is to slay villains sent by the “big bad” Mr. Melancholy week after week), their existence as suburban teenagers—and their desire to eventually lead normal lives as adults—is thrown into doubt.

Described by the director as an allegory for the experience of coming out as trans, I Saw the TV Glow constructs an analogy between the fantasy worlds that television may provide us and the not-so-distant fantasy of creating a queer life outside of the norms often prescribed for children. The choice between what is queer and what is normative materializes when The Pink Opaque eventually impels one of the teens, Maddy, to reject the reality of suburban life in favor of a different universe, while Owen is left with the choice to remain in his current reality—despite knowing there might be a challenging but fulfilling alternative—or to follow Maddy to an unknown plane of existence.

Both Quiet on Set and I Saw the TV Glow explore anxieties around television, gender, sexuality, and queerness, but both also confront the impossibility of “kids’ TV.” Each text, in its respective style and subject matter, points to the potential hazards of seeing both kids’ media and children themselves as existing in a vacuum, apart from the realities of adulthood. Both texts also suggest the inevitable damage that results from adults’ investment in producing certain ideas of the child—harm that ranges from the literal and physical to the figural and symbolic—and in pushing on children ideas of the good life grounded in financial and commercial success, rather than other metrics of happiness and fulfillment. The medium of television at the center of Quiet on Set and I Saw the TV Glow becomes an interesting zone to challenge the tensions at the heart of what we consider “good” for kids, in part because television itself is so often assumed to be “bad” for them. Quiet on Set and I Saw the TV Glow suggest that it is not television itself that is inherently good or bad; instead, they illustrate how TV becomes imbued with specific values to different and sometimes disparate ends. If both I Saw the TV Glow and Quiet on Set show the figure of the child under threat, the former locates that threat not in television but in the surrounding culture. By contrast, Quiet on Set seems to hold out on the promise of television’s “good” (consumer) influence on children, if only it can be saved from a few “big bad” executives and crew members. ... (click link to read full Article)

[freshthoughts2020]

[book51ut]

Review of Open Throat by Henry Hoke

excellent! this book, which is essentially a long form poem, was so creatively and smartly written that it is hard to say anything besides - read it! I’m so impressed how the tone and language was able to fully encapsulate what the thoughts of a lion might be. The reader can feel the apathy, the bloodlust, and the sleepiness of an animal through Hoke’s words. I also personally loved that the spelling and the words the author chose mimicked what would make sense for a lion, who can’t read, would interpret those things as. I also think the reflections about the problems with human nature and the effect that humans are having on the earth from the perspective of a predator is a great choice. The lion is both a victim of human interaction with land and also sees themself within humankind.

i loved it- it was a great, relatively quick read and i recommend it for anyone looking for something a little weird.

[medeecine]

arctic monkeys @ the kia forum 9/29 🖤

i saw my favorite band and i will never ever be over it. 10+ years of listening and here we are! truly an incredible show and i was completely in awe of the energy in that beautiful room.

had an amazing view, and an even better experience. alex turner ily. this healed my inner 2013 alt tumblr girlie 🖤🫶🏽✨

- body paint extended outro 🖤✨

[popentertainmentconcertreviews]

The Breeders – The Wiltern – Los Angeles, CA – October 19, 2023

Alternative rock band The Breeders exemplified their timeless appeal as they took the stage in front of a roaring sold out crowd at The Wiltern.

It’s a special privilege to experience the band on tour, currently for the 30th anniversary of their hit album Last Splash and witness the show’s love letter to fans as the band played the album in its entirety — and in sequential order.

The tour also stays true to Last Splash with its lineup of band members who recorded the album, including lead vocalist and guitarist Kim Deal, lead guitarist Kelley Deal, drummer Jim Macpherson, and bassist Josephine Wiggs.

The Breeders were initially formed in 1989 by Kim Deal and Tanya Donelly as a side project, branching out from their bands Pixies and Throwing Muses, respectively. Over the next few years, Josephine Wiggs was recruited as a bassist and Kim’s twin sister Kelley Deal joined on lead guitar. It was when Pixies broke up in 1993 that The Breeders turned into a full-time pursuit with drummer Jim Macpherson on board to cement the well-known lineup as it stands today.

The commercially and critically acclaimed album Last Splash was released in 1993 and the single “Cannonball” rose to prominence on numerous Billboard charts, including peaking at #2 for US Alternative Airplay and appearing on the Billboard Hot 100 list.

As the renowned distortion blasted through the venue to commence their biggest hit, “Cannonball,” the energetic crowd’s cheers increasingly grew as they heard the iconic bass line and sang along to the catchy “oohs.”

Each song continued to be met with buzzing excitement as the band performed with the same grungy passion and musicianship that made everyone fall in love with them 30 years ago, including the famous slide guitar in “No Aloha,” the pristine guitar beat in “Do You Love Me Now?” and the beautiful harmonies from the Deal sisters during “Saint.”

The Breeders have released the 30th Anniversary Edition album of Last Splash with a newly unearthed B-Side called “Go Man Go.” They can be seen delivering exhilarating performances next year in Australia as well as supporting the Foo Fighters and Olivia Rodrigo on tour.

Larisa Jiao

Copyright ©2023 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: October 20, 2023.

Photos by Larisa Jiao © 2023. All rights reserved.