I'm kinda feeling just like the weather, but mostly because I'm a little tired and the ride won't be over for several more days yet... so, onward.

Tonight's Film Festival events should be cool. Mom and I are attending the first one:

1. "Pageant" + drag @ Axis; 8pm, 775 N. High Street (Short North); Admission $7 at the door; "Pageant" follows fifty men as they compete for the 34th Miss Gay America®.  Following the film is a drag show (the Festival's first!).

2. Student Division Winners @ CCAD; 8pm; 60 Cleveland Ave.; Admission free for students, $5 for others; parking free in CCAD lots; Join us for an evening of award-winning student films from around the world.

And midday today:

3. Who needs to work on a Thursday afternoon?  Instead, drop by for a free talk by Irish director Mark Mahon.  His film Strength and Honour is screening at CCAD on Friday night, but on Thurs. he is graciously going straight from plane to presentation at CCAD.  DETAILS:  Thursday, Nov. 13, at 3:30 PM in Kinny Hall rm. 301. Kinny Hall is located on Gay St. directly behind the Columbus Museum of Art. This is a free event and is open to the general public.

Other nifty stuff of interest (to me, anyway; hopefully, to you, as well):

From Welsh Art Now: We are pleased to announce the publication of issue 1 of WelshArtNow (WAN).  WAN is the new quarterly art magazine that discusses art with a Welsh connection.  Wales can now claim to have its own dedicated art magazine. WAN is A4 sized and contains 48 pages, printed in full colour on high quality art paper. WAN will ride on the crest of positive change and the sense of optimism that defines modern Wales ; there would not seem a better time to launch a new and dynamic cultural arts magazine.  Welsh art, now has its own platform and can take centre stage.  A wide range of art is featured, ranging from cartoons to gallery art; there will even be an art 'centre fold' each issue! As far as we are concerned it's all art and is interesting in its own way. It would seem to make perfect sense to feature different types of art side by side.  Although about 'now' the magazine is interested in the rich and varied history of Wales and its people.  Apart from talking about art the magazine will feature lots of original art specific to a magazine format (think of it as a gallery within a magazine).

For more details, visit the site.

And...

From today's Women & Hollywood blog, I ran into this cool new interview with Rachel Maddow in The Advocate.

And in today's indieWIRE, tehre was this cool interview with GLBT Isaraeli filmmaker Yair Hochner about his new film Antartica.

(Apparently, I'm heavy on the gay stuff today!)

Also on IndieWIRE but not gay, there was a review of the film version of one of my favorite books of all time, House of the Sleeping Beauties. The book was written by Yasunari Kawabata, and it is a classic about youth, aging, death, bittersweet sorrow and eroticism. The film version was made by German filmmaker Vadim Glowna, but if the review's title "Yawn of the Dead" tells you anything... well, you get the picture, I'm sure. I'm sad to see that, though, because the book is such a treasure.

Now, if someone would be willing to voluntarily wash that mound of pots & pans in the sink, that would be great, gang! (Thanking you in advance, whoever you are!)

The bread came out great; it's beer bread -- so why wouldn't it? I want to eat the entire loaf, like, now, all by myself! But I won't. I'll focus less on the bread and more on the soup, which is vegetarian squash soup, and organic, to boot.

Okay. Michael Crichton has passed, due to cancer. That was sad. I didn't know he was sick and/or even mortal. Maxim Jakubowski had a nice piece about it in the Guardian today.

Michael Moore had a very uplifting thought to ponder re: Obama's win Tuesday night. I quote him in part:

"...today we celebrate this triumph of decency over personal attack, of peace over war, of intelligence over a belief that Adam and Eve rode around on dinosaurs just 6,000 years ago. What will it be like to have a smart president? Science, banished for eight years, will return. Imagine supporting our country's greatest minds as they seek to cure illness, discover new forms of energy, and work to save the planet. I know, pinch me.

"We may, just possibly, also see a time of refreshing openness, enlightenment and creativity. The arts and the artists will not be seen as the enemy. Perhaps art will be explored in order to discover the greater truths..."

Okay, not that any President is ever perfect. It's just the promise of change that is so refreshing, isn't it gang? Conservatives (racists?) around my neck of the woods insist Obama is going to turn our country Socialist. Who knows at this point? But are they saying they prefer Fascism over Socialism? Probably! In all the sad, honest truth of it.

At this point, all I am praying for is for that inexplicable war in Iraq to be over (don't really know what to think about Afghanistan), and for Obama to not be killed. 

Now a word about the artist as the enemy... In case you don't know me personally, it might come as a surprise to you to learn that I have one of those Irish tempers. I can go from zero to plate throwing in 60 seconds. Mike, the ex love of my life, happened to be at the polling place at that wee bonnie hour when I was voting on Tuesday morning (6:40 AM). He did come to my assistance rather gallantly when they were denying me my right to vote, but he also very patiently pointed out to the poll workers, "Do you know you're getting her really pissed off? I'd watch that, if I were you." Everyone started to look really worried, but I knew it wasn't their fault that this was happening to me. So I tried my 115% best to not totally lose it in the polling place.

After all, what the fuck are you going to accomplish at that point, right? After everything we've all been through for the past 8 years that the media has refused to acknowledge...

For those of you who don't know what voter caging is, this is from Wikipedia: "Voter caging is a form of voter suppression... Typically what will happen is a party will send out non-forwardable, first class mail to voters or particular voters they want to target. They will compile a list of all the voters where they've had their mail come back undelivered, this list is called a caging list. In some cases mail can be returned at a rate of 1 in every 15 letters sent out, this was shown in Ohio this year when the Board of Elections had 600,000 letters of confirmation returned as undeliverable. The party will use caging lists created by themselves or from the Board of Elections to purge voters off the voting rolls. When the voter turns out to vote, they will be challenged and forced to cast provisionally but because they are not on the voting rolls their provisional ballot is not counted. Even if the provisional ballots are cast, because they don't count for 7-10 days, they are essentially irrelevant unless there is a recount."

Many of you loyal readers of this lofty blog know what I've gone through just dealing with my yard for the last two years of living in Ohio, so you know as well as I do that I haven't moved anywhere. In fact, I'm a 5 minute walk from where I vote and my driver's license had the correct address printed right on it.

However, as Mike pointed out when we were leaving the polling place and I was so angry that I was crying, he said, "You know, you probably shouldn't be blogging about Bush being guilty of war crimes, Marilyn."

But it comes down to that, right? The most awesome election in our history, and my vote once again didn't count because I'm not willing to keep my mouth shut about things that we shouldn't keep our mouths shut about in this country.

It is so easy to know which side of the line I'm on, isn't it, gang? Remember me in October of 2006, testifying in  ACLU vs. Ashcroft in Federal Court in Philadelphia? Fighting for the rights of pornographers everywhere???(And an interview with my mom appearing on nerve.com!) Crap. You are face to face with them at that point; you're in Federal Court and they're reading your work out loud.

Some of you may recall that I've also had situations with alleged pedophiles circulating my work "underground," as it were. That was a ticket to FBI's-ville in a nano-second. That was very refreshing.

What I don't usually talk about, since I want this blog to be less about day-to-day angsting in my private world, is that my market has been squeezed, and squeezed, and squeezed over the last 7 years until most of the money for literary erotica has pretty much evaporated. I went from supporting myself with my art, to really having to scrape together enough to get by. These days, I eat: peanut butter, spaghetti, soup, cereal, fruit, salad. That's it. The same darn menu every day. Thank god, though, that we're still exploiting a bunch of people somewhere and so coffee is dirt cheap. But, seriously; I can't even buy wine!My raison d'etre! 

But I still write -- feverishly, as I am wont to say. And people are still reading what I write -- THANK YOU, GOD. Although I barely get paid for much of what they read. (And, yes, more and more cats still find their way into my world! Remember that poor old black cat who got killed by a car right in front of my house at the start of the summer? Another one who looks exactly like him appeared in my backyard at the end of the summer, and it looks like he's here to stay, gang. He's gorgeous.) However, I also thank my friends overseas this year who have enthusiastically bought some of my work recently and EUROS turn into fantastic dollars these days! Yay!

Well, so. Even though my vote didn't count, Obama still won and I am idealistic enough to hope that my market will open up a little more once again, gang. As Micheal Moore said above:"We may, just possibly, also see a time of refreshing openness, enlightenment and creativity. The arts and the artists will not be seen as the enemy. Perhaps art will be explored in order to discover the greater truths."

We can only hope, we can only keep working, and then we shall see!

Not only did they snag me through caging and force me to cast a provisional ballot, which is less likely to EVER be counted, the Obama hotline to report voter suppression or irregularities in my area IS NOT WORKING!!!

1-877-US-4-OBAMA  (1-877-874-6226)

It is no secret to anybody on Earth that I am hopelessly corny and, in certain ways, very naive and childlike. So it probably comes as no surprise that one of the scariest movies I ever saw in my life was the very first A Nightmare on Elm Street.

I was about 24 or 25 when I saw that movie and it scared the bejeezus out of me. Plus, I really loved how it played with the elements of thought, of dreams, of the mind and its relation to how we perceive reality. I really thought it was a brilliant movie all the way around.

Well, here it is Halloween time once again, and last night, yes, I re-watched A Nightmare On Elm Street (or tried to!). It was the first time I'd seen it in over 20 years. Because, honestly, the first time I saw it, I was just too scared to feel as if I could ever watch it again.

But I am almost 50 years old now, gang. My panic disorder aside, it is not that easy to scare me anymore. I mean, think of all the scary movies that have come out in the last 20 years. (Fuck! The Grudge certainly jumps to mind!) So last night, in very high spirits and with Bunny snuggled on the bed beside me, I proceeded to watch A Nightmare On Elm Street for the second time in twenty years, and I wasn't even halfway into it; it was only about 8:26 PM and I finally screamed at Bunny, "Holy fucking crap! This is too fucking scary!!" And I had to turn it off. 

I think I will only attempt to watch that movie in broad daylight from now on, gang.

Next in line is one of my all-time favorite Halloween movies, Bram Stoker's Dracula, by Coppola. It is so not at all scary and yet it does astound! Some of the most inexplicable acting I have ever seen in my life is in that film! Mouth agape, it is nearly impossible to stop watching it once it really gets going... it is a movie that is just made for copious amounts of red wine and sex (neither of which are actually on my agenda this Halloween, but oh well. On we go. Hey, thanks for visiting, gang!)

Please come if you can!

Murder, Spies, and Voting Lies: The Clint Curtis Story
A film by Patty Sharaf, 67 minutes
on Tuesday, October 28 at 7:30 PM at the Drexel East
2254 Main Street
Bexley, Ohio
Admission is free.

Will your vote be counted this November?

How can you be certain if you vote on a computer whose software is owned by a private corporation and which leaves no paper record? In Murder, Spies, and Voting Lies, Clint Curtis, a computer programmer, recounts how Congressman Tom Feeney, (R-FL) asked him to create vote-rigging software for electronic voting machines, way back in 2000. Adding credibility to Curtis's story is another whistleblower, Mavis Georgalis, who worked with Curtis at the Florida Department of Transportation, and had her own run-ins with Tom Feeney, giving an insider's view of how political influence can operate outside public scrutiny. This provocative and timely new documentary, profiles the seamiest side of our democracy: the creation of vote-rigging software and the wholesale transfer of control over local, state, and national elections to the Republican-dominated Diebold Corporation.

Look for cameos from Bob Fitrakis, Gore Vidal, Cynthia McKinney and Diebold hacker Harri Hursti. Guaranteed to have you running for paper ballots.

AND

Who Does She Think She Is?
A film by Pamela Tanner Boll

In a half-changed world, women often feel they need to choose. Who Does She Think She Is?, a documentary by Academy Award-winning producer Pamela Tanner Boll, features five bold women (including local sculptor Janis Wunderlich) who navigate some of the most problematic intersections of our time: parenting and creativity, partnering and independence, economics and art. Admission is free.

Date: Wed. Oct. 29th
Time: 7 pm

Location:
First Unitarian Universalist Church
93 W. Weisheimer Rd.
Columbus OH 43214
(614) 267-4946
(614) 267-4924 fax

Room: Worship Center

A huge part of yesterday sucked, but oh well, on we go. Although the night ended sweetly: Two, yes two, of those Miller High Life long necks that I don't even really like but at this point, so what? And I watched Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow in bed. And I actually watched it, the entire thing, without even getting close to falling asleep. Bunny hung out in bed with me the entire time, and that's always fun. Even at age 7 (in people years), she is still my big, sweet baby. Fluffy was off to sleep in her own room (yes, she has her own room all to herself; it used to be my office until she completely took it over & I moved my office into the living room. Perhaps she's read, and was carried away by, my copy of Virginia Woolfe's A Room of One's Own? Who knows?) Anyway, due to that bright Full Moon last night, Buster was dashing about like, yes, a "lunatic", all over the house, apparently having a grand time. He had no interest in hanging out in bed with us and watching a movie that's, like, almost ten years old already.

Even while I am a well-documentedly huge Tim Burton fan, Sleepy Hollow was never one of my favorites. Mostly because I love the original Washington Irving story so much and there were a lot less Goth-girl type blood-worshipping sexual undertones in Washington Irving's version of the story. (Go figure!) But hey. This time, I enjoyed the movie a little more. Although it did have me wondering where the hell time flies to. It was only a "wink of an eye" ago that the movie opened in New York City and I was still reasonably happily married to Wayne and we went to the movie together one cold gray fall afternoon, at a movie theater on Broadway that was only a stone's throw from our really beautiful 2 bedroom apartment in our doorman building on the Upper West Side.

I've seen the movie many times since then, but last night, I could only remember the first time I'd seen it; how that had felt, and what it was like being married to Wayne and being such a New Yorker. I never dreamed that was going to end. Seriously. I cannot imagine not being a New Yorker at heart -- double negatives and all.

And nowadays, I feel like life here is "never going to end" and I don't mean that in a really good way. Not that it's terrible. I'm not stuck in a mental institution anymore, and I always hold that up as the absolute worst experience of my life against which all other "worst things" seriously pale in comparison. So it isn't "mental institution" terrible around here. But it does seem endless and, often, a little pointless.  (Though I am seriously glad for the Film Festival involvement because it comes closest to feeling like I have a life again around here.)

Oh well. Onward. As we have just noted above, time flies. Before too long, this, too, will have passed. And in the meantime, I've got movies to watch and re-watch, and cats that I totally love. And a novel to write, to finish writing, I should say. So let me get back at that.

And one nice thing that occurred to me yesterday is that my first book, Neptune & Surf, has been in print now for almost ten years, gang. (Thanks to loyal readers like you, for sure.) It was first published in tradepaper by a hastily re-organized Masquerade Books before it folded; then in hardcover by one of those DoubleDay book clubs before it, too, folded; then in French by Editions Blanche in Paris; then in massmarket paperback by Blue Moon Books, and it has since been picked up by Running Press now that Blue Moon has also gone under. It never once has gone out of print. And when I very first sold that book, I prayed to "God, the Universe, and Everything" that it would somehow stay in print. I labored (lovingly) over the writing of Neptune & Surf for 4 years. And all the while, well-meaning friends said that I was crazy, and said, "Who is ever going to publish a book like that, Marilyn? It's pornography!" But, yes: I persevered. And now it has been in print for almost 10 uninterrupted years.

Well, okay. In order for the current novel to stay in print for 10 uninterrupted years, I have to finish writing the darn thing!! So I'm outta here.

But thanks for visiting, gang. It's always a pleasure to see you! Hope fall is gorgeous wherever you're at (on this side of the world, I mean. What is it, like, spring in Australia now?) Anyway, hope it's all gorgeous! See ya!

The Columbus International Film & Video Festival kicked off Friday night with its first screening, Free For All! -- a film about voter fraud in America in 2000, 2004, and 2006, by John Ennis.

It's a humorous, though deadly serious, documentary that you can actually watch free, in its entirety, online at:

http://www.freeforall.tv/

And after watching this movie, if you think your vote is going to count in 2008, guess again.

It didn't count in 2000 when Gore was elected president but was blocked from taking office (check your facts, gang, because Gore actually did win that election). It didn't count again in 2004, when Kerry won the election and was also blocked from taking office (check your facts, gang, because Kerry actually did win that election). Obama will most likely win in 2008 because McCain allegedly has a virulent, incurable skin cancer that will very quickly leave Sarah Palin, Karl Rove's current meat puppet, as our lofty President and who in the hell besides Karl Rove wants that?

Oops, wait, I forgot... all that matters is if Karl Rove does want that, and that's who gets to win the election!

So let's all sit back on election day after allegedly "voting" and watch thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of our ballots simply disappear again, gang.

Ain't this country great??? You can get away with anything here. It's almost like Russia! But with a more stable economy... Oops, wait! No, scratch that...

It's almost like Russia! But without the suppression of the Press... Oops, wrong again.

It's almost like Russia! Except without all that torture and illegal detainment, and intimidation of its citizens, etc., etc., -- you know, all that nifty junk Russia is famous for?

Okay, I give up. We are just like Russia! Yay! You can't beat that! [Insert bells, whistles, horns, happy hats, cocktails, etc., etc. ...]

(Hey, what I'm not understanding, and haven't understood for 8 years already, is why the Democrats in office refuse to admit that these elections are being stolen right out from under all of us? That illegal voter fraud and intimidation is happening all over the place? Not sure what it takes to get them to wake the fuck up there in Washington, D.C., but it'll sure be interesting to see it when it happens...)  (My biological father, who's been dead almost ten years now and I can really not believe that, gang, but he used to say that if something is going on that doesn't make any sense, then you can bet that somebody somewhere is making a ton of money off it. Go figure, gang, and have a great Sunday, wherever you are.)

Please visit memoirville.com for a feature on my latest antholgoy, Entangled Lives.

http://smithmag.net/memoirville/

And so the reviews begin! Brace yourselves as the reviews for my new anthology, Entangled Lives, start to come in.

Entangled Lives: Memoirs of 7 Top Erotica Writers, edited by Marilyn Jaye Lewis. Alyson Books, 234 pages, $15.95 paper.
 
Editor Lewis craves being bound and disciplined. Greg Wharton and Ian Philips savor a passionate sexual (and intellectual) three-way with another writer. Rachel Kramer Bussel is a spankaholic. Bill Brent weaves crystal addiction, abuse as a youth, and the challenging miracle of recovery through his sometimes dark sexual history. Amie M. Evans is addicted to sex in public. And Rob Stephenson writes of the disquieting disintegration of first love. This isn't a how-to manual by porn writers. This is an intelligent "our lives" memoir - and, it must be said, a sizzling treat for literary voyeurs. Each of the seven contributors (or eight, if the pseudonymous third man, "Adam Greenway" in "Threeway," by Wharton and Philips, is included) writes with astonishing intimacy about his or her sexual lives. How much real life do writers of erotica incorporate into their porn stories, and how much spills from smart imaginations? This confessional compendium gives glimpses of the sometimes vaporous boundary between the real life of a few writers, and their evocative writerly fantasies.

--Richard Labonte, Book Marks, August 27th, 2007