Photo by Jack GouldCall us a humorless feminist—you know you want to—but we're totally over strippers and porn stars and the Huntington Beach idiots who've made them the '90s rebel yell. Yes, of course we're jealous: we mend our slutty ways just in time for slut to become haute couture. Always ahead of our time!
And in this scenario, really, we hate everyone. We hate the stupid sleeved guys walking their pit bulls who think women are just three-holed fuck dolls—Kid Rock and Mark McGrath come to mind, though really, we wish they wouldn't. And we hate the girls who invest thousands of dollars in their noses, pump-up tits and bleach because they wanna pay back Mommy and Daddy for having showered them with everything they wanted. The only ones we don't hate are ill-educated women with children and those who are a little bit crazy because their parents were fundies who zapped them with cattle prods (which apparently is a lot of you, and we say, honey, dance those demons away in your 6-inch platforms just as much as you please). The rest of you are just partners in your own denigration. And please, don't tell us you're being empowered. When you're 40, and your silicone has slithered around to form a lump on your lumbar, and your teeth are gone from all the meth (or maybe you loosened them yourself so the dentist would give you some codeine), and nobody wants to pay you to fuck, you'll know just how empowered you were.
But maybe that's just us. Nah.
We've been thinking about this lately because we just saw a rough cut of Togetherment, a film on Orange County as the center of youth culture at the turn of the century by Anyone's Riz Story. Now, Story is all about peace and love and, hell, togetherment, and he's really a neat, interesting guy who'd tell you he's the last person in the world to denigrate women. The women in his film are all dear friends of his, and it's obvious that he thinks they—and their muffs—are things of great beauty, and he's right. Every one of them is lovely.
And every one of them is also squeezing her breasts or baring her bush in slo-mo, while men get interviewed to find out what they actually think. Only one woman is asked any questions whatsoever, and what she has to say is—and we quote—”How you look is basically what you are.” The rest are very pretty nude set dressing. The next section, on expanding one's horizons past OC, is far more effective. The movie boasts the best approximation of being high we've ever seen on film—better than that scene in Easy Rider in which Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper stumble around like walk-ons in a DARE film. It even captures the effect of being able to see through one's skin. We'd imagine Story will eventually edit out the clearly identifiable guy doing a line. But while Story says he's got “every perspective” in here from having interviewed all these people—people like the guys from Korn, Social D's John Maurer, Black Flys' Jack Martinez—in fact it looks like one perspective: that of a Huntington Beach Stepfordaddict. They say so themselves: they're all rich kids with nothing better to do. You can't beat OC because it's got the mountains right there and the ocean right there (three people say so in two minutes of film). You can't beat it because it's got the strippers. And as a guy from Korn says about the government tying us up: “Too many people are doing things for selfish reasons rather than the betterment of the people.” Story then cuts away to a nude woman in thigh-highs who is tied up and preening. It's symbolism, Story maintains. (It's also symbolism when he sings a ballad to a black-pantied, reclining crotch, with a red rosebud also in the frame. Damn it, it's art!)
Don't get us wrong: we like Story. We just hate him, too.
So we popped into the Royal Hawaiian in Laguna Beach Saturday, and they advised us there were strippers to be had, though whether they were gay strippers dressed as firemen or firemen waiting for girl strippers remained unclear. We simply couldn't wait, though, as the Gotcha party for the U.S. Open at Club Buzz (ne Warehouse) in Newport Beach was “going off,” and our ticket in—Surfing Magazine executive editor Jamie Brisick—was on his way. Upon arrival, we discovered it was indeed “going off,” with more pretty peeps than you could shake a Gap ad at. “Do you find yourself sexually attracted to many of the people here?” Brisick asked politely, as if asking whether we'd like one lump or two—really more of a well-mannered scientific inquiry than a prurient one.
“Why, yes,” we answered, scanning the far-too-handsome, clean-cut brunets. “Though, really, we wouldn't have a thing to say to them, and no one's trying to rub up against us.”
And really, it was a shame. It was one of the few clubs we've been to where men are at a premium and can afford to look down their Roman noses at the pretty, pre-melanoma girls, and the women are playing the role of supplicant. We figure every man who rode a board that day—anywhere—would be getting plenty, and we suspect we'll have to begin hating everyone. Meanwhile, out on the smoking patio, the conversation turned to fluffing. If you don't know what fluffing is, ask your dad.
Finally, we hit the grand opening of Club X at Tustin's The Barn. Iman, the promoter and president of Club X Records, had asked us to stop by and listen to the new single, “Y2K.” Here is an excerpt from the message he left on our voice mail: “It's going to be huge; it could be on the level of Ricky Martin. . . . It's called 'Y2K,' so it will get a lot of publicity and a lot of promotion with all the news coverage of Y2K.” Now, why didn't we think of that?
The coolest part of Club X is that it is all Persian, all the time. When's the last time you were surrounded by 300 Persian peeps? We never had been—and it's a testament to how subtly we self-segregate that it never even occurred to us to wonder where Persian people go on their off time. We talked to a group of nice young guys—Human, Human, Reza and Patrick—who said they came down from the Valley to represent and show some support, but then they asked, “What the hell is Y2K?” The answer, per the single, is”Y2K: It's okay!” And then they laughed and laughed. And though we saw several Porsches, we saw no porn stars. Or fluffers. We highly recommend Club X. Go out and mix it up, party people.
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