The daily newspaper in the Coachella Valley, "The Desert Sun," (click here) published a fabulously paranoid and inflammatory letter to the editor on April 4th from Palm Springs resident Patrick Phelps.
Patrick writes, in part:
"It seems the only things that matter and get approved are gay and lesbian projects. How are they getting away with it? Now they want another gay/lesbian gala called the Diversity Festival. And the taxpayers will foot that bill, too...
Palm Springs used to be a nice place, but sadly with the Rainbow Gestapo trying to dictate protocol and resident procedures, they are chasing the hetero population away. But then, maybe that is their master plan...
I, for one, will not drown in this rising rainbow ocean. I have rights, too. Maybe I'll run for City Council. I couldn't be any worse than the current members."
There have been many outraged letters printed over the course of the week decrying the bigotry of Mr. Phelps and though I should be filled with indignation too, "The Rainbow Gestapo" phrase instead just gives me the giggles. In fact, I want to design the T-shirt.
This local controversy arrives just in time for Easter Weekend which marks the annual return of The Palm Springs White Party, where 20,000 guppies in the rainbow ocean wriggle in from all over the world to strut their gym bodies at a series of huge parties set to terrible disco music for 72 straight hours.
It was started in 1989 by a Los Angeles queen named Jeffrey Sanker (above), who has become the production-meister of gay circuit parties around the world from Provincetown to Rio de Janeiro (click here for his website, complete with frightening music).
The main headquarters for The White Party is a large, corporate Wyndham Hotel complex and the pool is quite a scene. In fact, I may return on Saturday afternoon to capture the full weirdness of The Rainbow Gestapo in action.
Fleeing the bicyclists versus suburban motorists war in San Francisco, we flew to Palm Springs for some peace and quiet.
There are ten units in The Four Seasons, a pretty little complex one block away from the San Jacinto Mountains, where my partner Tony (above) bought a one-bedroom condo last summer. The place is pretty evenly divided between those who rent out their places to visitors and those who live in their apartments year-round.
The vast majority of people living here and staying as guests are charming and the communal living arrangement seems to work well, except when it doesn't. This winter, a right-wing couple from Southern Oregon rented out one of the units for three months, and have been acting as if they own the entire place. It was when they invited another couple from Oregon to join them for the month of April that tensions finally boiled over, because their friends arrived in a monster honking recreational vehicle which they proceeded to park under the 51 palm trees in the front yard, blocking everyone's view.
"We pay a lot of money to live in a beautiful place with a beautiful view," the association President explained to them, "and we're proud of it. Now please move that hunk of metal somewhere else because we're sick of looking at it." Call me elitist, but it was a proud moment standing in solidarity with my fellow owner, and after threats that "there would be consequences," they moved the ugly heap to the street around the corner. Now, if we could just figure out how to keep self-righteous Redwood City mothers in their SUVs from ever leaving the suburbs, the world would be an even more beautiful place.
The strange little Grand Guignol theatre tucked underneath a freeway near Bryant and Tenth called the Hypnodrome...
...is performing a new show through the spring called "Hypnodrome Head Trips," which is a rotating series of playlets that are insanely eclectic and uneven (click here to get to their website).
My partner hated the show because of the hammy acting style but I ended up enjoying most of it thoroughly.
Possibly the most interesting piece is the curtain raiser, an improvisatory "new music" composition by composer John Zorn which consists of any number of players, instrumentalists and vocalists being led through a "game" where the conductor holds up a series of flash cards that start and end sounds, or asks for a crescendo/diminumendo and other musical instructions. It felt like we were at the Other Minds Music Festival, but hipper.
The pianist from Mills College (above on the left) learned the complex "game" in about fifteen minutes right in front of us, and performed the ten-minute composition along with a soprano and a saxophone player.
The conductor, Jamie Moore, above was a complete delight as he crouched, suddenly straightened his long frame, whipped flash cards around and beamed in maniacal delight at the sounds that were coming forth. The performance and performers are different every night, and they are worth the price of admission.
The remainder of the first half of the program were two installments of a five-part serial by Jonathan Horton about a mad scientist, his frustrated protege daughter, and a severed head. Russell Blackwood (above on the left), who is the guiding spirit behind the theater troupe, was as usual the highlight of the piece as he channeled Vincent Price at his most maniacal. There was also an intervening slide show of a hell-and-damnation Chick pamphlet cartoon, but the piece needs to be rethought because it's not all that amusing.
The second half starts with a 1950s sex-and-violence piece from the Parisian Grand Guignol called "Orgy in The Lighthouse" by Alfred Marchand. It's adapted by Eddie Muller (above), the founder and guiding spirit of the annual Film Noir Festival in San Francisco, and though it wasn't scary enough, it certainly was sexy.
Much of the sexiness was due to Eric Tyson Wertz (above) who is obscenely good-looking with his clothes off. The fact that his day job is as a physicist in a Silicon Valley lab only makes his exposure that much more titillating.
The final playlet is an original by Rob Keefe called "The Empress of Colma" about a trio of insane drag queens in grandma's basement in Colma who are delusional about their sublime beauty. It was jarringly out of tune with the rest of the evening, but I found it very funny, and this time Russell Blackwood channeled Vincent Price at his queeniest. It's something to see. (A few of these photos are publicity stills by David Allen. Thanks, David.)
