Event Alert: You Belong to Me (Riverside, February 13-16 + 20-21)

Stumped for something truly sexy to do in the I.E. this Valentine's weekend? Like every good Imperial subject, I'm a big fan of celebrating special occasions at le Market Broiler (a hot spot for prom kids and the AARP set). But this February 13-16--and again from February 20-21--denizens of the empire have a unique opportunity to get down and dirty with some high art as YOU BELONG TO ME: Art & the Ethics of Presence launches its first among a series of public events at Riverside's own queer cafe and salon, Back to the Grind.













Celebrating artists who make their audiences into more than spectators, events include a musical concert featuring internationally renowned Luiseño performance artist James Luna, feminist spoken word artist and hip hop musician Ursula Rucker; a week-long workshop and evening of queer performance featuring the I.E.'s very own art star, Ron Athey; and an afternoon of conversations between the artists, UCR faculty, and audience members.

This weekend (Feb 13-16) kicks off a seminar on performance led by art legend, Ron Athey & UCR Professor, writer, and soccer aficionado Jennifer Doyle. Parts of the seminar will be open to the public, including evening, salon-style screenings of performance video curated by Athey & Doyle

Downstairs at Back to the Grind (3575 University Ave) 5:30pm-7:30pm Friday Feb 13 & Saturday Feb 14.
Join our seminar’s evening session for an eclectic program of performance “classics” and oddball cinematic texts representing Athey’s performance & filmic archive. Expect lots of nudity, explicitness, and creepy investigations of art & intimacy. Intended to be a relaxed and social gathering - discussion and talking back to the screen encouraged.

The screenings will follow two public lectures by Doyle:

“Critical Limits: Difficulty and Contemporary Art” Friday Feb. 13 2:00pm-4:30pm 2212 Humanities Building, UC Riverside
What happens when we encounter our limits as critics, as spectators – and why should we spend time unpacking them?

“My Bloody Valentine: When Sex & Performance Meet and Queer & Liberal Feminism Part” Saturday Feb. 14, 2:00pm-4:30pm Downstairs at Back to the Grind (3575 University Ave)
In the spring of 2008, the artist Aliza Shvarts found herself in the middle of a national controversy about a conceptual performance that engages with the possibilities of abortion. This talk maps the nature of that controversy.

Parts 2, 3 and 4 round out next week on Friday Feb 20th, with Ursula Rucker & James Luna in CONCERT@ 8:00pm 3787 Main (corner of 6th & Main); on Saturday morning, Feb 21, with Luna, Athey, and Rucker in dialogue with Professors Michelle Raheja, Jennifer Doyle, and Erica Edwards (respectively)11:00am-2:30pm @ Back to the Grind.

Public events conclude on Saturday evening, February 21, with an I.E reboot of Resonate/Obliterate, called (appropriately enough) Resonate/Obliterate I.E.: A Night of Queer Performance featuring Ron Athey, Julie Tolentino, Heather Cassils, and Zachary Drucker @ 8:00pm. 3787 Main (corner of 6th & Main).

All in the Family | Benefit Big Band Concert + No More Blues CD

When Kangagi and I hit up the Riverside Pride Festival in White Park last month (mentioned in my previous post), my mom and dad decided to join us. Much to my surprise--totally embarrassing, actually--my folks knew more queers at the festival than I did, from a would-be Project Runway contestant who made it deep into the casting rounds, to the middle-aged dyke who ruled the hand stamp check. We were the wallflowers, and they were the ones ass-bumping, cheek-kissing and saying howdy to every queer in town. [Left: Mom, Dad and me, ca. 1979].

For a minute I wondered if it was all due to the fact that their last name is DYKES (yes--that is my stepfather's real last name), but as Kangagi and I quickly realized, their inroads to the scene actually come from their church, the Riverside Community Center for Spiritual Living in Fairmont Park near downtown. This queer positive, predominantly African-American church (which hosted a booth at the pride festival), is where my dad has been the musical director for nearly a decade. And it's the community that nurtured my mom through her recent battle with cancer, from surgery to chemo to recovery. Even as I was frantically driving east on the 60 FWY in the morning hours of my mom's epic surgery, Rev. Lee was there with my dad and grandmother to pray with mom and soothe her nerves as she went under, and to help bolster our collective hope that everything would be OK.

This Sunday, October 26 at 7pm, mom and dad, my uncle, smooth Jazz dude Boy Katindig, and all of their musical colleagues and friends will "pay it forward" (if you will) by performing at a major fundraiser for the church. The "Raise the Roof Benefit Big Band Concert" will help raise funds for structural repairs to the building, as well help continue funding programs like the center's PFLAG meetings, youth choir, spiritual retreats and day to day operations. Many friends and family are already coming to participate in the festivities, which include fine dining at Mario's downtown, a silent auction, etc. The fam and I are profoundly moved by the generosity of our friends and colleagues, not only with their dollaz in this time of economic uncertainty, but also with their time. Join us if you can!

Mom's new CD (with the I.E. Based Skipper Productions jazz label curated by jazz bass legend, Henry Franklin), will also be available at the concert in advance of its official release date on October 30th. Titled NO MORE BLUES, it features some of my folks' favorite bossa nova and straight-ahead jazz standards. If you can't make it to the show and would like to buy a CD, just email mom at mariadykes@earthlink.net. I'll also post here when the disc is available on iTunes and other sites like Rhapsody and Last FM. Here's a little preview of their first single, the Antonio Carlos Jobim classic, "Triste":



Otherwise, we hope to see you at the show!
Biggest Love,
The Inland Emperor

Raise the Roof II - A Benefit Big Band Concert
Sunday, October 26, 2008 - 7pm
General Admission, $25
3891 Ridge Road | Riverside, CA 92501 | Tickets: 951.683.2343

Calendar Alert! | Riverside Pride '08 (September 13)

Polish your rainbow bling, and buy an ample stash of Mac's "twig and fetish" lipstick--RuPaul is one of the featured performers at Riverside's first local pride festival on September 13, 2008! If memory serves, there have been local pride parades and protests in the past, but none have been as ambitious as this year's program of performances, activities and an "art walk" in downtown's White Park (located right next door to ye olde Le Sex Shoppe and the all-you-can-eat Cabin Sushi--aka "porno sushi"--beloved by Media Sheep).

In my adolescence, White Park was the classic downtown wino park (like the one where Cornelius Hackl in Hello Dolly sings "It Only Takes a Moment"). But all the civic-led gentrification has seen it turn in to a more respectable picnic spot--proximity to Le Sex and all. [Above R: Cabin Sushi, photographed by Yelper Jan G. || Below L:White Park now]

The event is organized by the Jeffrey Owens Community Center, an Inland support and advocacy group that came together after the 2002 murder of a local AIDS activist and North High School Alum. Jeffrey Owens was stabbed to death in the parking lot behind The Menagerie (the I.E.'s oldest queer club). Unlike most corporate pride events that tend only to benefit the unholy triumverate of light beers (Bud, Coors and Miller), as well as other opportunists, Riverside Pride is being staged to increase awareness and raise money for local charities and local non-profit LGBTIQ organizations like JOCC. Click the poster below for a link to the Riverside Pride myspace page with more info about how to participate as a Volunteer, Vendor or Performer. Tickets are $10.

The Imperial Accent

It's been forever since I found a sliver of time to actually post something here. I even failed at the simple tenets of self promotion (no prefatory blast about the LACE Listening Party this March, for example--see flier to the left). What finally pushed me into posting today is a shout out from my Oh! Industry sistah, CBB, about a piece I read at the listening party that actually followed up on some of my previous remarks here at IEmperor about the Riversidian love affair with British pop bands. A girl I knew in high school (who shall remain nameless), spoke in a British accent our entire freshman year to try and convince us she helped choreograph some dance routines for Wham! Riverside has a long history of collective fascination with all things British (i.e. the annual Riverside "Dickens Fest")--which might explain a few things about my twisted career path. But for me it's always been about the music. I never would've memorized Shelley's poetry when I was 14 if I hadn't heard about him in pop songs...

||Excerpted from my SUBURBS listening party at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions||

BRITISH is the other accent I always have in mind, when I think about the music that maps the empires of my familiar. The Inland Empire to me was never a homogeneous conglomeration of little boxes, but truly the crossroads of empire. [Right: the "Riverside Enterprise," 1931 - from UCR's Asian American Riverside Archive]

Despite the region’s much maligned name, I’ve come retrospectively to understand that it is all too fitting: from the defense industries that once resided there "making America strong," to the re-creations of Spanish missionary culture in its downtown revivalisms, to the more genteel, Citrus-era Victorianism affirming, even now, a Brit stranglehold on “Culture” as well as "Anarchy," long after the sun has set beyond the British empire.

My suburban adolescence constantly toggled between the accented stylings of soft rock balladry—the esmooth sounds of Pinoy culture I return to over and over again in my work, and the slinky, synthy sounds of an Imperial New Wave--that much heralded second British Invasion sold to the So. Cal kids by Richard Blade (actually Richard Shepphard of Torquay, England. He changed his name to “Blade” when he moved to L.A. in 1982 as an homage to the film Blade Runner).



In many ways, Richard Blade--on shows like Video One on channel 9, Video Beat on KTLA, and of course as a DJ on KROQ, "Roq of the 80s"-- curated the “remote intimacies” of my youth. "Remote intimacy" is a phrase I’ve borrowed from queer studies legend, Jennifer Terry. While she's used it to describe, literally, some of the circuits of affect generated by certain war games and surveillance technologies, I personally imagine “remote intimacies” describing the fan communities for whom intimacies cohere across virtual networks of desire (through the radio, music and television, on the internet, and now online through social/friendship networks). Remote intimacies account, both technically and affectively, for the symbiosis that can happen between disparate subjects---between Latin@s and Morrissey, for example, or between suburban queers of color and anglophilic ear-candy in general.

For me “remote intimacies” means imagining our own spaces in correspondence with others. It's something akin to, but not as official as “sister cities” or "town twinning" (like Cannes and Beverly Hills). Unlike most urbanites who assume the sub-urban is always oriented towards its closest city, I like to think that these imaginary correspondences sometimes have to happen across greater distances, both conceptually and topographically with other ethnicities, accents, nations... even other empires that feel more benevolent (though they surely aren’t), simply owing to the fact that they aren’t ours.

I loved Duran Duran because nothing seemed more exotic to me than Birmingham, England. Out here where we’re so far West we were almost touching East again, my adolescent mind didn’t quite process the fact that all the locales in their videos had little to do with the Birmingham of my fantasies. Instead, they recaptured the colonial imaginaries of a British empire re-styled by Vivienne Westwood: “some new Romantic looking for the TV sound” on a re-drawn Planet Earth.

Little did I know that that Birmingham in all of its gritty, working class industrial glory might’ve actually been closer to Riverside, CA than I thought.

There's more to say on this subject, but for now I'll leave you with a song that was never a single, yet remains one of my favorites from Duran Duran's watershed RIO album. Maybe then you’ll understand why I didn’t so much let myself get captured by another empire, but made "my own way" towards something else by walking tall and jaunty like John Taylor’s bassline.

Media Alert: Mt. Rubidoux on Bravo's RHWOC

The sacred place where every troubled teen of Riverside has learned to drink, make out or both (successively), recently made a cameo in The Real Housewives of Orange County. Yes my friends, that imposing dirt hill of big boulders and an even bigger cross, Mt. Rubidoux (pictured left during Easter Sunrise service way back in There Will be Blood times) has finally had its close-up. Quinn, RHWOC's new Christian housewife, and the self-professed "cougar" of Coto de Caza, visited her born-again mom in Riverside before the season finale. During an awkward scene on mom's patio with a view of the Rubidoux cross, Quinn processes her very un-Christian urges to ravage, pre-maritally, a golf pro she's been dating named Billy. She pauses first to notice however, that "wow this is pretty for Riverside. Totally surprising!"

Girl, you know it's true.

BTW, I too have been up Mt. Rubidoux multiple times for Easter Sunrise service--an obligatory gig on a rotating basis for every High School choir/chamber singers group in the Riverside Unified School District. Most of my time on the mount was spent violating everything on the sign posted at the entry:

Home-o for the Holidaze || A Photo Essay

The fuzzy little fella under the tree is my parents' very cuddly, very effeminate boy dog, Yukon. For all intents and purposes "Yuki" is my younger sibling. Like all bullying older sibs, I'm having the little one do the dirty work for me--soften up the crowd with those shiny button eyes for what will be a quick and dirty post on this night of the 23rd...the eve of Christmas Eve.

To get to Riverside today I took the Metrolink, So. Cal's commuter train system and a distant cousin to something like the LIRR. On weekends the Metrolink goes the roundabout way (the only way available to the Empire from L.A.'s Union Station on weekends), through San Bernardino, Riverside's scrappier and scruffier neighbor to the Northeast. What is usually about a 50 minute drive on the 60FWY door-to-door from my place to my folks' took about an hour and 45 on the Sunday San Berdoo line that chugs alongside the 10 past El Monte, Baldwin Park, Covina, Northern Pomona, Claremont, Montclair, Upland, Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana, Rialto and downtown San Bernardino before docking in downtown Riverside. The train was filled with holiday travelers, mostly Latino and African-American teens heading into the I.E. to see the cousins, aunts and uncles who re-lo'ed to the 'burbs in the 80s or 90s (see Next Friday, which was set in one of my scenic station stops today, Rancho Cucamonga).

The Metrolink ride yields plenty of stories, especially because the route provides picture-window glimpses at the backyards, freight doors and storage dumps that families, businesses and cities like to keep tucked out of view. I too will keep these stories close to the vest for now and let a few pictures do the talking. Part II of this post closes with a tableau of what the holidays look like at the parental abode on Santee place. In the meantime, this is how we enter the Empire...

1. Union Station














2. L.A. River














3. Three














4. Mobile Home Park














5. Montclair Station (Mt. Baldy, Hinterground)














6. Yellow 1.0














7. Yellow 2.0














8. Boxcars near Rialto















9. Yellow 3.0 (between San Bernardino and Riverside)














10. End Stop














11. Raincross














PART II: Santee Place
We all know the holidaze are chaotic, but they feel especially tumultuous for a Virgo like me when I schlep out to the parental hoarding pit. My folks have got to be the worst pack-rats EVER. I know they look sweet, well groomed and tidy on the outside, but at their very core they can't resist squirreling away every soy sauce packet* or spork in the event of the apocalypse (or "The Big One"--the latter being more immanent). I think their Bohemianism crossed with some of their "Fisher King" tendencies account for my unbearable Virgoan obsessiveness and minimalism now. [Left: Graveyard of craft books, hall closet]. When I arrived this late afternoon, I had my annual hissy fit about all the stuff crammed into every nook and cranny of the house: an assortment of catalogues for things like dog visors and Kleenex cozies; unread Rodale's "Organic Gardening" magazines from 1989 onward; DVD's from Columbia House that they forgot to reject through the monthly mailer; ceramic dolphin clocks gifted to them by acquaintances from the church of Religious Science; coupons from Dr. Butchko, I.E. Vet. It's all still here. Clearly I need therapy to work through all the residual immigrante and class shame triggered by all my parents' stuff. [L: Santas and Friends]. This time, I just decided to take pictures.

I know this might sound a bit too "American Beauty," but taking pictures of all of the oddities chez Mom and Dad really helped me see things differently. It made me actually appreciate some of the accidental beauty behind their otherwise chaotic accumulation. It helped me breathe. So in the spirit of Christmas sharing, here's something from my family to yours...Maligayang Pasko! Mele Kalikimaka! Frohe Weihnachten! And all that jazz...

a. Beethoven and Friends














b. Everything but the kitchen sink














c. The kitchen sink















d. Crown Rib Roast














e. Capicolla fr. D'Elia's














f. Gallery














g. Nativity Scene + Buddha Guest Stars














h. Notes














i. Screen, Elephants and Rudolph














j. Bongos || Romy Katindig Model














k. Hip-Swaying Outdoor Santa














l. Santa's Sleigh + Great Ideas Book Series, 1961-1974














m. Mom














n. Dad w. Sick Puppy














o. Tannenbaum





















* The genotype "soy sauce saver" isn't mine, but belongs to the venerable HN Lukes.