Hey everyone,

Thank you for your very nice email responses. That was a lovely wakeup.

I've changed it so you can comment, but I can't figure out how to make it private, so you don't comment to everybody (if that's not your style). Well, here's what. If ya feel like commenting out loud, now you can. If ya wanna be private, you know how to reach me.


Last night I went out to a fun club called Wildness with my friend Marcus, who I met at the blues bar last week. According to its Google blurb, WILDNESS is a queer dance party and performance series happening every Tuesday in MacArthur park. Which it is. Except there wasn't a performance this night, because it was the co-founder Wu (Woo?)'s birthday. I heard there was supposed to be a stripper...but perhaps this bar was too shady...

So, there's this thing I'm noticing about L.A....it's a lot like Guatemala, weirdly. In that way in which people make do with the falling down buildings and amazing trash you find on the street -- WILDNESS is an example.

I don't mean that as a negative judgment, in case it's sounding that way. It's more surprise, since Guatemala is, well Guatemala...you know, ravaged by war and ethnic unrest and dollarization... which I guess you could say is true of L.A. in different ways. Clearly this is just my class upbringing showing. Well, that, and all the Latina transwomen at the bar. Such pretty ladies!!! So surprised by my Spanish! Soy el guerito!

Moving on...

Definitely a fun party. There were a bunch of queer filmmakers there, and Marcus kindly made introductions. Silas Howard I knew from auditioning for his movie; Jules Rosskam, who did that Transparent movie; and PJ Raval, who's new documentary, Trinidad, is out and about at the film fests. We stood out on the firetrap smoking porch (flattened boxes going soggy with the fog), looking through barbed wire over to the Wiltern building, which used to be L.A.'s first department store, but now houses a film school in its stretched out, art-deco facade. Everybody was genuinely friendly, and not scene-y at all. This place is what a scene wishes it could be! Or, I should say, what a scene seeks to emulate. Which probably makes it a scene in itself...but it didn't feel so.

Yknowwhatimean? I mean, they gave away free tamales all night, you know? Scenesters just take your money.

I parked my car by Granada Studios, which is where Charlie Chaplin used to live and work. It's kept up very well, Marcus said it's maybe creative office space now. I wonder what it was like before they built a parking lot all around it -- if there was grass, or if it was the same gritty city scene that lives there now.

It continues to be interesting, going out to bars while clean & sober. Marcus is my non-drinking buddy, so we had a good time supporting each other. I miss dancing -- I find myself all wooden now, aware of how dorky I look. I used to think I looked AWESOME!!! Well, I felt awesome. Once everybody else was good and shitfaced, I felt looser for sure, but it was house music and I've never enjoyed that anyway.

People there knew the words to the house music. What's that about?

And furthermore, how is it that I can spend a night at a nightclub NOT drinking, in fact, drinking more water than I usually ever do, and still wake up feeling hung over??? Is that some weird empathic thing I need to hear about in a meeting?


I gotta go. Marcus and my friend George (who shall now be known as REDCAT George) got me a gig this weekend at REDCAT. Marcus is going to interrupt the show, and I'm supposed to be his friend who gets up and tries to get them to stop. And they're paying me to do it! hahaha

I don't know anything about the play except that it has a live horse in it, and it's about Castrati. I'm so there.

Love,
Turner