Bryan Jackson

Nobody Walks in Osage

People in Kansas cling to delusional folklore about who they are and what makes being a midwesterner great. They must think they are still pioneers on the Santa Fe Trail - why else would the wagon wheel motif pervade the decorative landscape? They deride densely-populated cities as traps - How can you breathe sandwiched like that between neighbors? They like to think they love the great outdoors, but as soon as a nature trail on a decommissioned rail road track is announced, everyone was up in arms. Nature, fresh air and walking are socialist! If so, then their festering, toxin-leeching-wall-to-wall-carpeted houses the embodiment of true liberty? When did fear-based privacy obsession create the need for year-round window treatments to blot out the beautiful big blue skies, fantasic sunsets, and the moon and the stars? Or maybe it was the sight of the crumbling streets and the weed-choked sidewalks they couldn't take?

On this trip, I've made a point of walking the portion of the Flint Hills Nature Trail that runs through Osage City every other day or so. You vote with your feet, right? I've been joined on most walks by family members. Everyone loves being out on the trail. However we have all been disappointed with the poor condition of the trail in Osage. It speaks volumes that a town filled with people with a multitude of chainsaws and garden implements can't gather enough civic-minded let's-build-a-barn-muster to clean up a three mile section of a trail. And why do some people use the trail as a toxic dumping ground?

On the trail there are no trash cans, no benches, no wayfinding signage, and worst of all, no people. Nobody. I haven't met a single person on the trail. We've seen a few solitary kids cruising side streets on bikes but no other hikers.

Today we headed out west of town for 2.5 miles. It was a beautiful walk.

Going to the Getty Supergraphics

 

Tonight I attended the Opening Celebration for Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980 at The Getty Center.  To open the evening there was a Cocktail Reception culminating in "The Reveal" that was at once massive and limp.  Actually, the best part was right before the supergraphic show started, when every single light at the Getty went out and it was just champagne, the night sky and a fingernail moon.  But then the music swelled and a movie trailer style voiceover began leading the audience thru pedestrian summations of each decade that the show covers, along with clipart-quality graphics and more overwraught underscoring. When you add in the corny catering it became all very Disney Themepark and... let's just say I don't think I will ever forget it.

I was however very interested in the show in the Getty Research Institute Exhibition Gallery, Greetings from L.A.: Artists and Publics, 1950-1980 curated by John Tain.   As someone who wasn't in California at the time, the social/polictical period is quite interesting.  I will be sure to return to take my time with the video interviews and emphemera.

World Order | Machine Civilization

World Order | Music by Genki Sudo /Takashi Watanabe, Words by Genki Sudo

Message in the YouTube video description, translated by the awesome Pink Tentacle:

The unprecedented disasters unfolding in Japan; earthquakes, tsunami, and nuclear explosions, will somehow change things to come. And to send my message about this, I have expressed it here with WORLD ORDER.These disasters can be interpreted as a turning point for civilization. I think that we have arrived at a time of revolution, shared with all the people of the world, in today's society, economy, and political systems.Incidents themselves are neutral. I believe that every single one of us, wandering through this deep darkness, can overcome anything, if only we let go of our fear, and face the it all in a positive light.The world is not going to change. Each one of us will change. And if we do, then yes, the world will be changed. It is darkest right before the dawn. Let's all rise up to welcome the morning that will be so very bright for mankind.

Little Taiko Boy | online!

Little Taiko Boy リトル太鼓ボーイ from All Out Attack on Vimeo.

PRESS RELEASE:

‘LITTLE TAIKO BOY’ SAFER-SEX MUSIC VIDEO PROMOTES A SPECIAL WAY OF WRAPPING GIFTS FOR LOVE ONES

In his new music video, Little Taiko Boy, filmmaker Bryan Jackson combines Western holiday traditions, Shinto mythology and Japanese gay culture to advocate a very different way of wrapping gifts for a loved one.

Little Taiko Boy's soundtrack is a safer-sex parody of the American Christmas carol "The Little Drummer Boy" interspersed with the slow rumble of a traditional Japanese taiko drum that sounds like a massive throbbing heart beat. Against this backdrop, several men meet in Tokyo's bathhouses, love hotels and cruising spots for intimate encounters, watched over by a glamorous drag version of Amaterasu Omikami, the Shinto goddess of the Sun played by Japanese activist and artist MADAME BONJOUR JOHNJ. Like a queer Santa Claus, the goddess leaves each couple a condom in a bejeweled wrapper as a gift and blessing for the night.

While Little Taiko Boy's setting is local to Tokyo, the contrasting elements woven together within the video emphasize how universal its issues are: the music brings together the modern and the traditional, the East and the West; the images depict the carnal and the spiritual, and ancient deities take up new roles in the modern world. And despite the urgency of its safer-sex message, the video not only embraces sensuality wholeheartedly, but does so with humor; after all, there is nothing "little" about either the Taiko drummer or the drum he beats.

Jackson made several trips to Japan in the course of developing Little Taiko Boy, working closely with AKIRA THE HUSTLER and Madame Bonjour JohnJ at Rainbow Ring’s COMMUNITY CENTER AKTA. The LGBT center and gallery takes an innovative, localized approach to community work that includes condom "Delivery Boys" who have done outreach and condom distribution in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ni-Chome district since 2003. The ‘Goddess Edition’ condom cases that Amaterasu Omikami gifts in Little Taiko Boy are inspired by the artist designed series produced by Community Center AKTA. Jackson made the video with a grant from ART MATTERS, a foundation created to assist artists who make work intending to break ground aesthetically and socially.

Little Taiko Boy on Facebook

 

Kitty Lambert Says It All

Kitty Lambert delivers the most essentialized refutation of marriage discrimination in 72 seconds that I could possibly imagine; gutting, visceral, fierce. Serious props to her stalwart partner and to the lovely stranger, Ed. If this is what it is gonna take, then let's get out and do the work people.

Passionate Words and Salient Thinking

There is so little discussion of anything anymore where substance wins over brevity. Watching Bill Browning from the Bilerico Project interviews with the legendary Cleave Jones was completely refreshing. Take time to watch both parts!

Day of Decision Rally in WeHo 2009

I attended an excellent rally tonight in West Hollywood. The rally was in response to the mixed ruling today from the California Supreme Court. The standout speaker had to be Lt. Daniel Choi. He spoke with conviction, determination, and heartfelt zeal - his leadership training & courage under fire could be a real asset as we take this back to the polls in 2010. Finally tonight, we heard voices from actual Gay families, and it was a such simple, powerful moment. It suddenly seemed so adult, so compelling in a very different way.

MORE PIX HERE

Time & Times for TINY

Both Time Magazine & the LA Times declare it's time for TINY HOUSES by Mimi Zeiger! Time Magazine features Zeiger's new book in the special The Green Design 100 bookshelf section. The LA Times features a big slide show covering the book and 15 of the great houses featured inside it. And of course, there is also TINY in Time Out New York as well. Way to score the press MZ!

the Big Fat Gay Anti-Hate Collaborate

You have to take 3 minutes to catch the latest in youth culture response to all the hate on the internet. This one is created by the ever-colorful, irrepressible StevieBeeBishop. Sometimes a little online disinhibition effect is a good thing. And a note for my Mom, I know it's an F-bomb attack, but just try to roll-with-it and laugh it off.

Tiny House Battle: Tiny VS. Luxury

It has been a crazy week - what with the twisted logic of anti-tax Right-wing Teabaggers, the sick Gathering Storm warnings (great parody here), and images of would-be-patriots calling for state succession while waving the American flag - a cultural shift is underway. 

Even on the studied displays of Hennessey + Ingalls Bookstore in Santa Monica, the battle is at it's tipping point. Will we question everything and choose quality over quantity? Will we continue with the unsustainable excess that leaves us all with decidedly less? Or can we design our way to a better tomorrow? Finally there's a book, and a message you can believe in, and it's Tiny Houses by Mimi Zeiger! 

Okay, maybe that was a bit overblown, but I can't help but think of Tiny Houses as the-little-book-that-could change some super-size-me minds. Each page of Tiny Houses offers compelling reminders to architects, developers, and would-be home owners alike to consider smaller, better, slower. Now listen up people! In this battle my money is on TINY!

The power of the word

Side-by-side comparison of the meaning of words and actions. It is worth your time to watch it just to be reminded - and disgusted all over again - at what we are up against.

Milk

I strongly encourage you to go see MILK. If you have seen it, why not go again, and this time take a lover, a friend, a parent, a cousin, an aunt? Support the movie, support the cause! It would make Harvey proud to see you get off your ass and do something. Plus, James Franco is a major lick!

Obama the Bigot

Here is a snippet from an excellent, succinct article by John Cloud from Time.com, about Obama's bigoted nature -- including the selection of Rick Warren. I strongly encourage you to read the whole article.

Gays and lesbians are angry that Barack Obama has honored Warren, but they shouldn't be surprised. Obama has proved himself repeatedly to be a very tolerant, very rational-sounding sort of bigot. He is far too careful and measured a man to say anything about body parts fitting together or marriage being reserved for the nonpedophilic, but all the same, he opposes equality for gay people when it comes to the basic recognition of their relationships. He did throughout his campaign, one that featured appearances by Donnie McClurkin, a Christian entertainer who preaches that homosexuals can become heterosexuals.

Obama reminds me a little bit of Richard Russell Jr., the longtime Senator from Georgia who — as historian Robert Caro has noted — cultivated a reputation as a thoughtful, tolerant politician even as he defended inequality and segregation for decades. Obama gave a wonderfully Russellian defense of Warren on Thursday at a press conference. Americans, he said, need to "come together" even when they disagree on social issues. "That dialogue is part of what my campaign is all about," he said. Russell would often use the same tactic to deflect criticism of his civil rights record. It was a distraction, Russell said, from the important business of the day uniting all Americans. Obama also said today that he is a "fierce advocate for equality" for gays, which is — given his opposition to equal marriage rights — simply a lie. It recalls the time Russell said, "I'm as interested in the Negro people of my state as anyone in the Senate. I love them."

Obama's Faulty Logic

^{A DISPATCH FROM UNDER THE BUS CALLED CHANGE}

Now we hear from Linda Douglass, Obama spokeswoman defending the choice of Warren for the Inauguration, "This is going to be the most inclusive, open, accessible inauguration in American history."

Um, Excuse me?

She continued, "The president-elect certainly disagrees with him on [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender] issues," Douglass said. 

He does? Um, let me see...how would you clearly establish you disagree with someone? Hmmm...

"But it has always been his goal to find common ground with people with whom you may disagree on some issues."

Common ground?

So Obama, invite a racist who you completely disagree with on discrimination, but agree with that recycling is good. Cause recycling the religious right and promoting the views and stature of hateful people you definitely are.

Obama tries to defend invitation to hatemonger Rick Warren

I find this completely disgusting that Obama is defending his completely political decision to have Rick Warren speak at his inauguration. If Obama is so happy to invite people who actively work against full equality for all Americans, why doesn't he also invite a racist minister? I get that we are being played. We are all used to it. We know it when we see it. I HOPE Obama will refund the donations from all the gay & lesbian people who worked tirelessly to get him elected. If you haven't seen the underside of the bus before, here is your chance!

Leave a message at CHANGE.GOV

EQCA Act now!

The HRC's Joe Solmonese tries to grow a pair with his letter to Obama.