Tricia's Wedding

Great news. Turns out nearly all of my coworkers in the department I now work in are almost as liberal as I am. We spent a good portion of yesterday unabashedly discussing our disgust with the coronation. Bad news - I learned from the same coworkers that our company ceo hosted republican fundraisers on his big glitzy boat. It's not a surprise really, but I guess it would be safe to say that I had my head in the sand about the company's political ties. What the hell am I doing working for a big corporation anyway? If I figure it out I'll you know. It certainly qualifies as a stain on my soul given that I've been doing it for 5+ years.

On a much lighter note, I finally had the opportunity to see the Cockettes' infamous film Tricia's Wedding. It was a special showing in honor of the coronation and was shown alongside Jack Smith's No President (which was boring, radical, and amusing in equal measure). The premise is delicious - Eartha Kitt shows up at the pomp-and-circumstance wedding of Nixon's daughter Tricia and, disgusted with the company she finds herself among, pours a bottle of LSD in the punchbowl. Among the more memorable moments: Mick Jagger making out with both Prince Charles and Richard Nixon - and the latter giving the well-endowed Mick a handjob.

The amateurish acting suited the content perfectly. None of the Cockettes even pretended to make a serious attempt to look like the character they played (many of the women had beards and at one point an incoherent Tricia lifts her dress to reveal that she is, in fact, a man in drag). Somehow, though, this made the satire all the more vicious. By playing their openly and happily (and sexually) decadent selves playing miserably (and violently) decadent politicians, they transformed the images of those politicians into precisely what those politicians most loathe (thereby, of course, revealing the politicians' true selves). The sexual and comedic orgy becomes a reverse sublimation of the tragic orgy of power, violence, and greed over which Nixon and friends preside.