Moana
Holy fuck, Moana, I did not see that coming.
How did no one tell me? The one thing the straight moms and dads knew that I didn’t. It came out I don’t know how many years ago but Moana is a fucking miracle. My head is spinning, I watched it at home alone, shaking, then watched right away again and then ultimately a third time. I wish I’d paid the extra five dollars and just bought it. Trust me, I will.
Spoiler Alerts, ok? Don’t read on if you haven’t seen it and want to. In a nutshell it’s a story of a warrior, a woman warrior who believes in herself and her past and says fuck off to the men that are trying to tell her what to do and saves the planet. There are so many moments but the best is at the end when after all she’s been through and becomes the fierce and powerful hero that she becomes, she finds her pink vagina on the beach in the form of a seashell and she puts it on TOP of the pile of accomplishments that all her mancestors have piled up before her. Moana is like, take THAT, patriarch! What happens next in her story, only Moana II knows.
All I truly need is some rough waters and an island and a child. My favorite movie used to be The Black Stallion. Before that was Swiss Family Robinson. That Tom Hanks one too… Outcast? What’s it called? Overboard? I could go on and on about Moana. I won’t. It’s provocative of me and what I grew up doing, sorry, it’s in my blood. I’m honestly not here just to push buttons, I truly love that movie.
One thing though, Disney. Moana never eats. Obviously she doesn’t poop or pee but glaringly weird to me is that she never eats. In the beginning of the movie she takes a nibble of some pork which is weird cause her best friend is a pig but beyond that, like one small bite of a banana is all that happens. That part was weird but I guess she was just wholly and tunnelvisionedly focussed on her task.
The resonance and shine of lil Moana brings up the powerful women in my life and I’m grateful for her and for them.
Cecilia from Frightwig played drums and stripped in her off hours but her stripping performance was that she’d go onstage naked and then…. dress. Put on her clothes. She overcame a nasty meth habit and was a force of nature.
Mary from White Horse Inn in Provincetown wears sometimes a cockeyed kinda bucket hat on her bike. She swims in the ocean every day and sees sharks and also plays the ukulele. She has a radio show and had me as a guest once when we’d first met, not knowing I was a musician. She just liked talking to me.
Kim Gordon put out a record this year that got two Grammy nominations and her solo record before this one was fucking just as insane and profound. Her performance at the Dior show last year proved for the millionth time why fashion needs cool, how it’s nothing without it. She’s smart and gorgeous and compassionate and I get to call her a friend.
Alex Auder I met last year, she’s a little bit my favorite new best friend. She survived growing up in the Chelsea Hotel and developed her savvy and smarts and insane sense of humor on the streets of NYC in an era we all covet. She wrote a book about it last year that is perfectly and wildly inappropriate. What she writes next is gonna shake shit up. We’re gonna read together in January in NYC.
Courtney is undeniable and there is no one like her. She is honestly the exact same now as she was when we met in 1982. She taught me to smell the floss after flossing and is so much funnier than anyone realizes. She’s never had house keys and she still doesn’t know how to drive. She figures prominently in my upcoming memoir and stories of her are my favorites.
Blanche was a basset hound we gave my mother for her birthday. My sister and I spoiled her rotten. We dressed her up and painted her nails and slept with her. She loved to wear her bonnet that tied under her chin. Later when my sister and I moved away Blanche wouldn’t stop barking and my parents (trigger warning) had Blanche’s vocal cords removed. I know. Blanche went on howling.
My mother played piano at the LA County Jail every Sunday for years. She played for their Catholic mass. One time there was a riot amongst the prisoners and she kept playing as the prisoners fought and cheered her on. She was flashed once by one of the prisoners at the sign of peace and it didn’t really phase her.
Charlotte, my niece, had a run of being an actress when she was like 10. I was scoring an ABC sitcom and she got cast in it randomly. At one point (as they do) they told her she wouldn’t be able to go to her end of middle school camping trip in Joshua Tree that she’d had cleared with the network for months. They said, ‘Yeah, sorry, we need to do reshoots, if you went we’d have to recast your part.’ She did and they did. I love her for this.
Jone who plays bass in Imperial Teen was in the Wrecks when she was 14. They were an all girl punk rock band from Reno. She’s hilarious and badass and one time when we lived in San Francisco she made elaborate chocolate eclairs for her work party at a hair salon in Union Square and filled them with creamed corn. She thought that was funny. It is so funny.
My sisters are all witches.
I’m just lucky I didn’t have a lot of men in my life. I’m pretty sure I know what I’m saying, just see Moana.
Love you all,
RB
You are the best.
"She’s never had house keys and she still doesn’t know how to drive." I love this sentence. I wish I knew someone I could ascribe it to.