"I could tell by your expression that the pain down in your soul... was the same as the one down in mine"

Today at lunch I was reading the synopses of films at the upcoming Hollywood Film Festival. I was really happy (and surprised) to see that one of my favorite actor/directors, John Cameron Mitchell, has a new one coming up called 'Rabbit Hole'.

I became enthralled with JCM (as I like to call him) when I saw 'Hedwig and the Angry Inch' at the theatre. Hedwig is a rock musical with as much glam and as many crazy followers as 'Rocky Horror Picture Show'. The story of Hedwig is an interesting one. It goes something like this:

Hedwig grew up in communist East Berlin as a boy named Hansel. He wanted to go west toward freedom, but the only way out (around that pesky Berlin wall) was to marry an American soldier named Luther. By law, the marriage must consist of a man and a woman, so Hansel had an operation to become Hedwig. His sex change operation got botched. His guardian angel fell asleep on the watch. Now all he has is a Barbie doll crotch. Oops! Those are lyrics from the movie. Yeah, anyway, Hedwig and his 'angry inch' end up in America and he and his band of Eastern Europeans play night after night of dive bars. The theatrics are hilarious and campy and the songs are so catchy that you'll be running out to get the soundtrack in no time.

There's a really good message in the movie about love. It's nicely summed up in this song called "The Origin of Love". It's one of a few ballads in the film. Here's a little tidbit that not many people know about me. If I were ever to get a tattoo --and I'm not saying I am going to anytime soon-- the design on the top of my list would be to get the cartoon version of the two halves of a face that make a whole, which represents finding your true love/other half. If you've been following my blog for any period of time, you would know that I've often had the debate with myself about whether or not there is The One out there for me or not. Or, perhaps maybe it's just a bunch of hogwash that sells at the box office in greeting card stores.

Anyway, not to digress. But since I already am digressing, if you agree with the message in the Hedwig song, then everyone has their own soul mate that you have to search for. As soon as you find that certain person, you'll know they are in fact your other half. I like how it also includes same sex couples in the storytelling. Because I mean really, why rule out 50% of the population? Am I right? Who's with me?

So back to this tattoo thingy. I've thought about this for a pretty long time. What I've come up with are basically two different options. Option 1 would be to get the tattoo as is with the two halves just as shown below on my hip. Option 2 would be to get one half and then wait until I met the right person and then they would get the matching half on their hip and then when we're um, yeah, then the two halves would match up. Not that we would even be able to see them unless there were like mirrors on the ceiling or maybe like a video camera. WAIT what??

So is that really lame and sappy or what? There, now you know.

Here's the Origin of Love song.


All the songs for the musical were written by Stephen Trask. He's an amazing musician and plays guitar in Hedwig's band in the movie. This is another of my favorites and you get to see the tattoo morph to it's final state at the end.