Seriously y’all. Someone named Zimmerman needs to, like, cure cancer or something ASAP because that surname is just full of awful these days. So today in “news of neocon dipshits outing themselves as hella creepy”, Austin, Texas District 6 City Council member Don Zimmerman publicly compared gay marriage to pedophilia. This is not news, or even new or surprising, but get a load of how dedicated he is about the subject, the lengths he goes to argue what should be a throwaway point.
Before we get to the screencaps, it’s worth noting this man lost custody of his child over abuse allegations. So, you know, keep that in the back of your mind when you see him desperately opining for tolerance about his alleged desire to marry a child.
(For what it’s worth, I’m not a fan of the argument in the original post either; I don’t think gay rights are comparable to the Civil Rights movement or the continuing fight against white supremacy. /caveat)
Technically, I guess I could say I’m officially one of those professional trans women actresses that everyone claims don’t exist when they write trans characters now. I wound up earning a few bucks last year spending an afternoon glaring at Fred Armisen. This was in the course the shooting of what became my blink-and-you-miss-it cameo on the television show Portlandia. The episode (Season 5, Ep 8), first airing Feb 26, 2015, is called “House For Sale”, and the sketch I appear in (SPOILERS) was based on a creepy as hell true story.
ALSO A TRUE STORY: The belt dangling out of my mouth in that scene is the cameraman’s, and the idea to have it in my mouth was director Steve Buscemi’s. This makes my Bacon Number officially 2.
The closest I was allowed to get to Steve Buscemi with my phone camera.
It was pretty cool watching them set up the place. They packed all sorts of doodads and fake graffiti and junk; too many for the camera to even catch at once. I was actually surprised and disappointed that the “perpetually flaming shopping cart” barely wound up on-screen at all.
And here’s some fake drug plants that were scattered all over the front yard, yet barely visible in the final scene.
This dude showed up thinking his sweet yo-yo juggling tricks were gonna get some screentime. They did not.
The shoot took about eight hours, and I was in front of the camera for maybe 20 minutes. Getting direction from Steve Buscemi left me kind of starstruck, but he was really sweet and down-to-earth the whole time, as was the rest of the cast. It was a pretty cool experience overall and I had a lot of fun.
“We’re in this glass and brass go-go cage dance party to the stars. Going up, I want to hear hypo-allergenic Telestar music, untouched by human hands. Anything computer-generated and played on a Moog synthesizer. I want to dance the frug on a TWA commuter flight go-go dance party to the moon where cool dudes and chicks do the mash potato under zero gravity and eat delicious snack pills. I want this.” – Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters
I have a problem, a fetish, an obsession really. One that goes well beyond my typically GenX compulsive attraction to 60s/70s hyper-kitsch. I just have this thing for retro-futurism. Specifically, 21st century lifestyle by way of 1960s speculation as aesthetic. Straight up fucking Jetsons shit; but sexy Jetsons if that makes any sense. I know that totally doesn’t; I don’t care.
So, like, I sigh audibly when I stumble across images of the Futuro Houses, a Finnish-designed miniature home originally issued in 1968 and designed specifically for vacation lodging. In the interest of full disclosure I also have a thing for, like, campers and other compact-designed lodging, so this just hits all sort of buttons. It’s just so impossibly perfect and orderly.
This shag carpet and tasteful art deco space future was alas not in the cards. Shortly after mass-production began, the oil embargo (and subsequent increase in the cost of plastic and polyester) instantly tripled the cost of the home, driving away customers. Fewer than 100 were purchased, most of which are currently in various states of tastefully dystopian decrepitude.
Whether relegated to roadside attraction, novelty diner, or hobby projects for the similarly obsessed (some are currently for sale!), they still capture the imagination. Even abandoned they remain in dignified tribute; a wistful milestone marker for when the future went from being a exciting colorful adventure to a grimly bleak eventuality.
In June, three skulls turned up in a donation bin at a Goodwill in Bellevue Washington and one wound up in a Goodwill in Austin, Texas. Of the ones in Bellevue, two were obviously prepared for medical classrooms; bleached and wired together. The third turned out to likely be of a Native American child from over 100 years ago. Authorities are still trying to find information that could aid them returning the child’s skull back to the tribe of origin for proper burial. Authorities in Austin believe the skull that showed up there was from a private collection. Foul play is not suspected in any of the cases.
Incidentally, if you wanted to buy or sell a human skull, Goodwill is not the place to go obviously.
“That stereotype about transsexuals being all wild and criminal and bold and outside the norm and, like, engendering in the townsfolk the courage to break free from the smothering constraints of conformity? That stereotype is about drag queens. Maria is a transsexual and she is so meek she might disappear.” – NEVADA, Imogen Binnie
So, about a month ago I signed a thing about a thing. A couple weeks later it turned into this entirely other thing. I’ll have more to say about that in another blog. In any case, I had a lot on my mind about crossdressing and drag performance and how it relates to myself as a trans woman (who’s had a previous history with crossdressing and drag performance). With this in mind, I found myself heading to a “red dress”-themed party.
Except in Texas, it’s too hot to wear a full dress.
In this case, I was invited out by my lovely friend Miranda:
Who is hilarious and wonderful and an absolute treasure to be around.
This of course meant shopping on my part, of course of the day of because I am literally the worst person ever. Which of course means I should take a moment to do another gratuitous dressing room post in the middle of this meditation, with my sad stringy rain-soaked hair.
So I show up at this party well past fashionably-late, more like to-the-point-where-my-date-was-sending-me-wtf-texts-late, and yeah we still managed to have a reasonably good time. We ate a *lot* of tiny sandwiches, that’s for sure. Thankfully I made up for being hella late by being hella cute.
So, like, I promise I had a serious point in here somewhere so I might as well get to it. Anyway, so here are this couple of trans chicks in this party that’s mostly cis gay dudes in dresses, and to say we stuck out would have been an understatement. Like, not even stuck out in the way you would expect a heavily tattooed and pierced transsexual and her date to stick out. Not even stick out in the way you would expect someone who refers to themselves as transsexual at a party full of mostly cis crossdressers to insist they stick out. Wait, what, you seriously thought I was gonna go that direction rhetorically? Even for a second?
You disappoint me, dear reader. Anyway, lets talk about costumes.
So, like, there are all sorts of busted theories and assumptions out there about why people like me (or maybe nothing like me) wear what we do. And, it’s like, I don’t get it. I’ve never gotten a boner from wearing panties or whatever. So, you know, let’s get that out of the way. There isn’t any escapism or anything to it, frankly I’d say it’s almost the opposite. I mean, in a lot of ways I dress *waaaaaaaaaaaaaay* less flamboyant now presenting feminine full time than I did when most people thought of me as a guy.
someone had to fuckin say it
But like, I don’t know, I’ve never been one that was up for using costumes, at least not in a sense that everyone else seemed to. It’s like, I spend so much of my life feeling like my body as the world saw it was just something I piloted, not inhabited. So I guess I’ve never seen the appeal of trying to take on a different personality or something for myself, because so little of my personality even felt like my own most of my life.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I faked my way through so much of my existence as a “man”, that I never really saw the appeal in dressing that “man” up as someone else to circumvent my inhibitions. For old me, dressing colorfully made me feel more authentic in a way because dressing as a “guy” made me feel like I’d disappear into thin air. In a ratty tshirt and jeans I wasn’t even a person, just a vehicle. An animatronic doll I controlled via a viewscreen buried so deep inside my skull noone could ever find me.
So like I’m at this party in my cute yet conservative Goodwill dress and Miranda is wearing the dress I met her in at the Against Me show a month before, and everyone around us is trashed and partying wearing these amazing outfits and stuff. And we’re just hiding in the back because people are literally stepping on us and we’re eating tiny sandwiches and wondering what we’re even doing here. *That* kind of sticking out like a sore thumb.
And like at one point some cute but very drunk guy with a spaghetti straps laying limp across his biceps and just sort of falling out of his sequined top leans into me to take a selfie kissing me on the cheek, which made me blush. He then tried to do the same to Miranda, and I thought she was gonna stab him in the kidney with her house keys.
And at that point we were just like fuck this lets get a cab.
Sorting through old photographs, I came across these strange, creepy beauties I’d taken maybe 10 years ago. They’re from an abandoned putt-putt golf course in Austin off of Pleasant Valley, a few blocks from where I used to live. I’d fallen in so much love with the sad little decomposing forgotten bastion of another generation’s happiness that I’d weaved it heavily into the plot/imagery of the most recent issue of Why I’m Not An Artist. Apparently, you can actually visit this place currently without tresspassing (which is probably what I was doing back then), but it looks like they painted over everything so it probably doesn’t hold the same charm.
Hi, I'm Rani. Pronounced "Rainy". I have a band called Destroyed For Comfort and I write smartass stuff on the internet. Maybe you've heard of me. If not, thanks for stopping by!
The closest I was allowed to get to Steve Buscemi with my phone camera.
“We’re in this glass and brass go-go cage dance party to the stars. Going up, I want to hear hypo-allergenic Telestar music, untouched by human hands. Anything computer-generated and played on a Moog synthesizer. I want to dance the frug on a TWA commuter flight go-go dance party to the moon where cool dudes and chicks do the mash potato under zero gravity and eat delicious snack pills. I want this.” – Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters
Except in Texas, it’s too hot to wear a full dress.
Who is hilarious and wonderful and an absolute treasure to be around.
someone had to fuckin say it
Rani Baker Digs You. 