Photo by Jack GouldWhen last I went to the opera, there was an extraordinarily disconcerting moment amid the arias. It happened, as disconcerting moments often do, when Tosca did herself in by throwing herself off a building. The soprano, who was a little uncomfortable in her own skin (she never moved her arms), hopped to the hereafter. And oh, how I laughed! Ha ha ha hahahahaha!
Luckily, no one dies in the LA Opera's production of Rossini's Cinderella story, La Cenerentola (that's the one with all the notes; Rossini was crazy about notes and never used one when 27 would do). Well, no one died unless you count what must have happened to Jennifer Larmore's dignity when the costume designer put her in a boxy satin jacket and a fattening white tulle skirt for the ballroom scenes. Larmore is a big girl, but she is in fact not a house. She has a bust, waist and hips, which can and should be shown off appropriately. The costume designer (who otherwise did a gorgeous job, especially when costuming the lovelies who decorate the stage in nonsinging roles, which are usually given out as rewards for heavy donating; at OCPAC, these little plums usually go to the charming cooking vixen/laughing hyena Barbara Venezia) made pretty Larmore look like Refrigerator Perry.
Other than that, the opera was fucking excellent, and New York and San Francisco can now officially shut the hell up about how backwards LA—and by extension, our pathetic little backwater—is. You hear me, New York and San Fran? It was fucking excellent!
Look how patiently you've waited for the hot teen action! You guys are the best readers in the whole world! But, my friends, be patient, for you get to wait some more. Let's see: What would bore you little dears more than opera talk? How about public relations?
I skipped into the PNCG ROCKS! party Sept. 21 in Irvine's Park Plaza—a trs Honolulu business park with grand palms and lush islands of green. Thank you, Owens Valley!
Porter Novelli Convergence Group is a PR firm focusing on high tech, so I thought maybe I'd run into Henrys Nicholas and Samueli and could ask them for you, my concerned readers, why they shut down Broadband Interactive Group last week and threw a few dozen extreme! editors and writers out on the street, thereby imperiling my fat 3-percent unemployment paycheck. But then I remembered: they have flacks in-house to explain why exactly I can't get an interview with OC's brashest billionaires, so they don't need to outsource the job to PNCG.
Everyone, of course, was very nice: if you're in public relations and you can't manufacture a little sugar when you're relating publicly, then you're in the wrong line of work. You know who you are. Oh, and nice PNCG folks? Sorry about the “PR bunny” crack in the art column this week. Rest assured I'm just borrowing it from someone far pithier and more trenchant than I.
Let's see, what else? Well, I threw a lovely little house party for Green Party presidential nooge Ralph Nader the night of Sept. 23 that netted his campaign $275 and a couple of pounds of fresh shrimp. But Woody the Campaign Guy got noticeably annoyed every time I interrupted his talk, which just proves that (a) $275 only gets you so much access, even when it's the Greens, and (b) Woody doesn't understand just how things work at my house, or in fact anyone's house if I happen to be in it. But when he was finished speaking, he had a beer and loosened up, staying in the front yard to argue regulation with everyone's favorite wacky Libertarians, Doug Scribner and Mark Hilgenberg (they latch on to all the Green events) even after I'd kicked everyone out so I could go dancing.
And now the moment you've all been waiting for: I kidnapped Chesney the Que Sera Barmaid and Lefty political consultant/Loretta Sanchez blackballee/John Denver stunt-double Mike Kaspar and made them go with me to Anaheim's The Boogie for hot teen action! (Speaking of which, we should spam people this column and see how many click-throughs we get.)
It was your typical night of horny teens in hot pants! grinding away on the shelves surrounding the DJ booth and ugly guys with acne! grabbing your hip as you walked on by. In other words: it was fucking excellent!
A cutie li'l stripper girl with platinum hair and a 12-inch waist grabbed an embarrassed (or was it ecstatic?) Kaspar and forced him to shake that ass with her, while Chesney kept shaking her ass on me (in between bouts of pointing at her ass) and knocking me over with it. Goddamn it, Chesney! Shake that ass, but watch yourself!
Meanwhile, out on the smoking patio, a group of girls was heading back inside when an ugly guy with acne shouted something witty and urbane like, “Ho's in a line! Seven ho's in a line!” To which one of the aforementioned ho's said, “Fuck you! We're not ho's!” Her girlfriend stopped the ho-line to tell him, “That's why you're alone! Because you call girls ho's!”
It may not have been Oscar Wilde, but it was too much for one poor little acned ugly guy to bear, unless he forgot it right away, which—let's face it—he probably did. There are some people you just can't help.
Correction: The OC Metro's indefatigable mooch Kedric Francis did not stay at Brian and Elizabeth Langston's charming Tustin-area house until last Saturday night after sleeping over on Friday, as reported in last week's Commie Girl. He stayed until Sunday night. “I don't have TV,” he explained when pressed about the activities of the weekend in question. “There were movies on.”
Tell Schoenkopf what's fucking excellent (!) at Co**********@ho*****.com.
