Plusle and Minum - I Choose You!

I'm a little obsessed with these two little Pokemon ever since I saw plush dolls of them at The Nintendo World Store in Rockefeller Center.

OMG - look at them! They're so cute!

I wonder what the connection between mouse Pokemon and electricity is? Are mice particularly electric?

Explic/Sublim -Ation

Granite and Rainbow

I finished the Virginia Woolf biography this past weekend (the one that got me all obsessed with lying in journals and other writings). While I still think it made some preposterous assumptions regarding the connections between what she was thinking and what she wrote, the book also had great literary/scholarly insight about her work and set it well within the context of her life. So while I imagine there must be a better biography out there, it ended up heing a satisfying read.

VW's life and some of the plays I've been seeing lately have really gotten me thinking about the personal gains writers reap from their work. It seems to me that everything I write has a question at it's center, whether I'm conscious of it or not. For the most part, I explicate that question, fictionalize all kinds of possible outcomes, and just explore, explore, explore it, never necessarily finding an "answer." It just becomes a playground for possibilities.

But I feel like there are some writers that do the opposite. Instead of examining the questions inside them, they sublimate them. So the work seems to be coming from some other place either deeply fictional or deeply factual, and whenever the question comes up it's deeply encoded maybe in the structure of the work, often in the content, and often without the writer themselves knowing they've done it. I'm thinking here of many playwrights I know who are sweet as hell, but then write plays with racist and misogynist undertones (or overtones!) that are unexpected and frightening. Are such writers not only not conscious of the question, but also not even conscious that there is a question being asked? Or, is this just another process?

I'm sure all work contains a little of both. But I feel heavily weighted in one direction, and I know folks on the other.

As for VW, I feel like Mrs. Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, and The Waves are good examples of novels wrestling with their questions by explicating them and The Years and Between the Acts wrestle via sublimation.

Just some random thoughts...anyone out there have thoughts of their own on the subject?

Nightmare: Kitten Skinning

Last night I dreamt that Alex and I had a splotchy black and brown kitten laying on a pale, blond wooden table. Alex had anesthisized it, but it was still conscious - it had it's big kitten eyes open (I think this part of the dream was inspired by this episode of Nature we saw where toad, fish, and scorpion toxins attacked their victims nervous systems and left them paralyzed but aware of their surroundings).

Alex then took out a knife and started to skin the kitten alive. Actually, that's not entirely accurate, because he was scraping all of the meat from the bone. He inserted a small knife into the kitten's leg and started to surgically cut the meat, skin, and fur off.

I kept protesting, asking what the hell he was doing. He just kept saying that he was going to eat it.

He didn't even finish the leg he was working on before I woke up, terrified.

Photo courtesy of CuteOverload.com

Daniel Zaitchik finishes a Day full of Ds

Have you noticed that every post title I used today started with the letter D? What's that about?

I've plugged Daniel before and personally enjoyed his Ars Nova concert. Check him out: he rocks and he's hot. He's a hot rocker. A rockin' hottie. And an all around nice guy.

I'll be there. You be, too.

Do Not Miss This!

Last Thursday, I went to The Culture Project to see colleague Qui Nguyen's play Trial by Water, presented by Ma-Yi Theatre Company and based on the experiences of two of Qui's cousins. You may recall that Qui is also the guy behind Vampire Cowboys, whose show I saw last November.

I can't even tell you how much it kicked my ass. The play is an intense account of two young men - boys, really - ecaping communist Vietnam in the bottom of a boat. Doesn't sound too surprising, does it? Well, trust me, the play sets up several inevitabilities that just hurtle toward an insane climax. It's like someone slowly slicing you open, grabbing your innards, gently twisting...twisting...twisting...and then YANK!

Here's a review from NYTheatre.com and a here's a feature on Qui and the inspiration behind the play from The Broolyn Rail. Before you read either, though, it might be more fun to just take me at my word and see it. There are several spoilers throughout both pieces.

The play was both inspiring and jealousy-inducing. Seriously: do not miss out!

Dream: Irregularities

This one was from Saturday night/Sunday morning.

I dreamt that I was dropping Alex off somewhere and then taking a walk in the city. But the city was weird looking. It was kind of hilly and the buildings on the side of the street weren't lined up perfectly - some stuck out, some were elevated, some had signs that jutted out. It was kind of like Toronto, New York, and San Francisco all at once plus a little bit of that cartoon city in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?.

I walked down the street and came to this kind of plaza. It was bordered by streets and shaped like some kind of uneven quadrilateral. There were some trees and the plaza was red brick. The sun was so bright that the asphalt in the streets reflected back hot spots of white instead of black, and color in general was washed out of the surroundings. There were some kids playing - about four - it looked like their bodies were made of thin sticks or something.

On one side of the plaza was a comic book store. I went inside, excited to buy some comics to pass the time. When I got inside, though, the store was mostly empty. I wondered whether they were closing or something. There were barely any comics - nothing I wanted to read or buy - but there were these weird pieces of black leather and vinyl. They might have been S/M clothing that I just didn't know how to use or wear, but they also might have just been irregular pieces of material. Someone was behind the counter, a large, round man. He was helping a white blonde woman with a transaction.

I went to the front of the store to leave and saw to my left this closet filled with random pairs of shoes. I thought, "Well, maybe I can at least get some shoes." They were pretty boring, though. A couple of black pairs, a green one, and an orange and beige pair. I didn't like any of them, so I left.

Dream: New and Old-ish

I had a dream two nights ago that consisted of two images. They were however a single dream.

The first image was a computer screen of some kind, but it had no borders. There were three lines of text that were hyperlink blue on it, so that it looked like an e-mail client or something. The first and fourth line said the same thing I don't remember what it was except that there were the letters L, N, and E interspersed in about two words. The third line was a forward of the same message, so it said "FW:" and then had the L, N, and E words. The second line was a whole other message, with a word that had the letters R, M, and V in it.

I don't remember what any of the messages were for, but I knew some of them were from my friend Jenny. Behind the lines of text was a white background and since the screen had no borders, the bright white stretched into infinity.

The second image was of Jenny laying on a stone slab. There was a fireplace in the background and she was sleeping, not dead. At the head of the slab were three people in robes - marroon, deep purple, and forest green. They were each holding something - maybe candles? or weapons? or some other kind of phallus? - and threir skin was gray. I don't know their gender. She wasn't in any danger, though. She was just laying and they were just standing.

I'm not sure how they're connected, but I do like how one of the images is so now, and the other is so Dungeons and Dragons. Neato keen.

The Pen is Mightier than The Chainsaw-wielding Maniac

And my ego, too. Although if you leave my ego in a room with a chainsaw-wielding maniac, all bets are off.

So the good thing about not writing for a month is that pretty much everything you've done ceases to be precious. There is so much red pen on the first 16 pages of my script that it looks like an eff-ing Leatherface Slasher fest - each page a different hacked up teen fashion statement to be. Suddenly I get to a line that was always cringe-worthy, and the cringiness finally outweighs it's necessity and - SLASH! - and then somehow I just write another line to take it's place.

I think the month off has also made my brain click into that, "Oh, wait. I don't have a deadline anymore. Anything I change is for me, on my time." And that's a good feeling.

I felt very refreshed this morning.

Some of the biggest changes have been in the beginning. I have realized with distance that I can't just cut out all of the direct address stuff. But I do have to make it more specific. Make it truly about the people to whom our four main folks are speaking. Plus, I realized that the play starts with this enormous sequence of time ruptures. It starts near the end of the play (chronologically), goes back to the middle of the first act, returns to the near end of the play, goes to the end of the first act, and then gets to the beginning. And identifying that made me realize that I could take some of these direct address lines and repeat them in context, when those parts of the play actually happen, spoken to the characters in actual time. It gives me a nice, tight way of holding the play together.

Anyway, what do you care? I'll let you know when it's done.

My Girl Wants To...

Party all the time.

So last night Alex and I hit a couple of friends' launch party. Check out Jon's and Diana's business at their most excellent switchFX website.

It was largely a business affair, a little something nice to be done for their clients with friends and freelancers popping in as intriguing, artistic color. Lovely drinks, tasty pizzettes, nice people. It seemed all good and very adult.

The weird thing about these parties, though, is being the artist in the room. It's odd to see your friends be all grown up and to think that I spend all my time slaving unprofitably at play after play after play. It starts to make me think: wow - these people have a real life. I have this entirely constructed reality that only stands up because I'm holding it up. Once I stop dreaming it all, it'll just slip quietly away...

By the end of the party (actually very near the middle), Alex and I ended up in a room with our friend Greg (a composer) and two other gay artists Donny (collage) and Christophe (photographer). I won't pretend to think they were feeling disconnected from the event in the same ways I was, but I have a sneaking suspicion.

Louisville Round-Up - YEE-HAW!

Louisville, KY - the land of Derby Pie, hand care specialists, and the Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival for New American Plays.

I have to say, LV was a whole lot of fun! I got to visit my friends Adrien and Jess. I got to see The Scene by Theresa Rebeck (a mixed blessing as you will read soon). I got to see a rehearsal of Neon Mirage - this year's Humana Festival Anthology project. I got to eat a whole hell of a lot of really good vegetarian and vegan food that I just didn't expect to find in a state halfway between the Midwest and South.

As for theatre and stuff...

The Scene

Before I start, many of you know or have seen that I really just don't like cynical playwriting. Or most cynical entertainment. For example, I think that Alan Ball, Sam Mendes and company should pay me money for making me sit through American Beauty. I don't want to watch therapy sessions wherein you work out your revenge fantasies to no real end. It's just selfish art.

So I'm not sure that The Scene was the best first Theresa Rebeck play for me to see. It was immediately clear that the playwright had no sympathy for the characters of Clea and Charlie, and that her real interest was in punishing them. It was also clear that the two characters for whom she did have sympathy - Stella and Lewis - were not destined to be in the spotlight. And so I had to spend two hours just hating two people and watching them get theirs...YAWN!

Unless you're going to offer some insight on how they ended up becoming such shits or on how they ceased to be such shits there's just no point. These two additional dimensions give an audience something to work with when they leave - either an instructive warning or a way out. Instead I left with a bad taste in my mouth, feeling miserable, with no real tools for combatting such meanness should I ever encounter it.

Plus, the thematic ideas that were speechified in the end were not significantly connected to the overdone heterosexual infidelity plot. And everyone was straight. Do we even care about boilerplate straight infidelity anymore? Don't we see that everyday on every formulaic Lifetime TV movie? And do we really need to see more women existing along the dumb, insane whore/self-sacrificing saint (read: virgin) axis? And do we need to see more emotionally-stunted infantile men? If you want these people to stop existing give the audience some models of how people can be. In the end, you may be punishing them, but you're making another story in which the assholes you hate are central. You are writing their story, spreading their hate, and not offering any remedy or excape from it. What does that achieve?

So go to therapy and work this all out. Or pay me at least $140 an hour to listen to and to endure it.

Neon Mirage

The funny thing about Las Vegas is how very, very straight it is. I really enjoyed this program of work that included short plays by Liz Duffy Adams, Dan Dietz, Julie Jensen, Lisa Kron, Tracey Scott Wilson, and Chay Yew, and musical parts by Rick Hip-Flores. It really did remind me of my impressions of Vegas (Alex and I went in April 03).

The funniest thing about Vegas - aside from the desperation, which actually is not funny - is that it is the epitome of the wildest dreams, fantasies, and vices for straight people. Gay people just have the sex and the extravagance and the fun along with their regular lives. That was the weirdest part about visiting the city of sin.

I did wonder why no one wrote about the environmental impact resulting from building an oasis in the middle of the desert. But I guess that's for my version of the project at another time.

Other Stuff

The game Blokus ROCKS! Going to have to buy that one soon.

Also, Derby Pie is better than I thought it would be. I'm not a huge fan of nut pies - especially when the nuts are floating on a custard of egg whites and sugar. But somehow the Bourbon and chocolate mix it all up quite well. Plus, it's a rather thing slice, not like those ridiculous deep dish pecan pies I hate. So all in all a B+. It'll never beat a good fruit pie (I also had a slice of Strawberry-Rhubarb while I was there...mmmmm...), but it was a good local experience.

I'm thirty! Three-Oh! 30!

Happy birthday to me! I'd like to thank my mother and father for doing the deed (EWWW!), and everyone that has managed to keep me alive and kicking (and crazy) over the past thirty years, and myself. I couldn't have done it without me.

I would not like to thank the Academy. They would prefer not to let me turn 30, because I am gay.

All kinds of wacky things happened on March 20, many of them relatable to my life and identity. On the specific day of my birth, Patty Hearst was found guilty of robbing that bank for the Symbionese Liberation Army. In 1987 (when I turned eleven) the FDA approved AZT. While I was turning fourteen in 1990, Imelda Marcos was put on trial for her (and her husband's) embezzlement of the Philippines government. Gloria Estefan broke her back on the same day in a bus accident. In 1996 the Menendez brothers were found guilty of matricide/parricide while I blew out twenty birthday candles (two years later I'd start my play on the House of Atreus). And, of course, in 2003 when I was twenty-seven, the United States of America under President George W. Stupid-head began military operations in Iraq.

Other events of note, before my birth: March 20, 1852 Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe is published; March 20, 1914 the first international figure-skating championship is held in New Haven, Connecticut; March 20, 1916 Albert Einstein's theory of relativity is published; March 20, 1933 Giuseppe Zangara is executed after attempting to assassinate Franklin Delano Roosevelt; March 20, 1942 General Douglas MacArthur makes a speech about the fall of the Philippines in which he says, "I came out of Bataan and I shall return;" and on March 20, 1969 John and Yoko got married. Today would have been their thirty-seventh anniversary.

Look up your own date of birth on Wikipedia. I guarantee it's a whole lot of fun.

On Wednesday (Yes) I Saw (Yes) A Play (Yes)

Points of Departure

Zzzzz...huh? Oh, what? There's a play going on? Oh...zzzzz...

Intermission? Thank, god. (Let's leave.)

Truth on Fiction

From VW's diary, Sunday, June 23, 1929:

"What a born melancholic I am! The only way to keep afloat is by wokring. A note for the summer; I must take more work than I can possibly get done...Directly I stop working I feel that I am sinking down, down...I feel that if I sink further I shall reach the truth...that there is nothing - nothing for any of us. Work, reaing, writing are all disguises; and relations with people. Yes, even having children would be useless."

I'm starting to get disturbed. I feel like the hypochondriac whose gotten his hands on a medical dictionary. I know she used to lie in her diary all the time, but for some reason I don't think this is one of those times.

Later on the same day, she wrote some notes on my favorite book of hers, The Waves:

"I think it will begin like this: dawn; the shells on a beach...then all the children at a long table - lessons...this shall be childhood...the sense of children; unreality...there must be great freedom from 'reality.'"

Zzzzzzzzzz...huh?

So I wrote yesterday morning. I'm going to try and type it up this morning.

Has the slumbering giant finally awoken?

Fingers crossed...

Seven Year (Old) Itch

I heard a story on New York 1 this morning about a seven-year-old poet named Autum who has been censored at her school. She apparently recited a poem that compared Columbus and Darwin to vampires and pirates!

I've been combing the web and the blogosphere for more info on this girl (who has apparently performed at the Apollo) but nothing is coming up - even on the New York 1 website. I wish I at least had her last name.

Can anyone out there get me a lead? Anyone know what I'm talking about?

Comic courtesy of A. Joseph Rheaume at Pirate Jesus)

Me In Woolf's Clothing

I read a lot of Virginia Woolf (this we know). I do not read very much about Virginia Woolf, mostly because Prof. Deakins wouldn't let me take the Virginia Woolf Colloquim when I was in undergrad even though I was dropping my English Minor. That and I sometimes get annoyed with thinking about thinking.

Anyway, so this biography I've been reading is really one of the first things I've read about reading Virginia Woolf. And what's been really odd about the whole experience is that I never realized how influenced my playwriting is by VW's writing. Some of the things Leaska says about the development of VW's work are disturbingly similar to what some directors and dramaturgs say about the development of my work.

Take a look at these excerpts from Granite and Rainbow: The Hidden Life of Virginia Woolf by Mitchell Leaska...

If Virginia Woolf could join the separate technical methods utilized in each of her three pieces [Kew Gardens, The Mark on the Wall, and An Unwritten Novel], she would achieve the freedom of mental association and interior monologue, the freedom of shifting narrative points of view, and finally the freedom to create fictional worlds built on pure narrative invention which did not promise the "Truths" of omniscient storytelling....Truth would now be both relative and contingent upon the reader's subjective perception of the world. Equally important was the notion that all the fragmentation and discordance and splintering of an ordinary day could be made to come together under the controlling hand of the writer...(pgs. 212 - 213)

...Virginia Woolf spoke of the reader's participation in the reading event...If readers were not prepared for this kind of reflexive reading and missed the connections, then there would be a good deal of frustration and confusion. Many readers would dismiss her highly fragmented, overly elliptical scenes [and] altogether miss her point. For Virginia Woolf was now creating a text that reverberated with deliberate, calculated ambiguities which could be interpreted or resolved (or tolerated) only in accordance with the individual reader and all the past experience that reader brough to the reading act...Virginia Woolf's "tunnelling process" and handling of mind time made it possible for her to express her characters' values and feeling states; and by creating multiple sequences of idea- and image-clusters, she might dramatize those feeling states and the values they implied. But only with the help of the reader. (pgs. 237 - 239)

Weird, huh?

I always knew I loved and was inspired by Virginia Woolf. I had no idea how closely matched her obsessions and experiments in fiction were to my obsessions and experiments in plays. In fact, I'm a little weirded out. Feeling both unoriginal and excited that I study in similar ways the same things one of my heroes studied.

I think, though, that I am much more giving than VW. I throw people who watch my plays a bone - let them have something they can piece together if they only want to watch it once. All of the association, multiple view points, and idea- and image-clusters in my plays are more like rewards or bonuses for people who read or see them several times.

Anyway - it's pretty cool.

Purple and Paradise

At around 9:40 this morning I saw a woman in a purple nightgown and fuzzy turquoise house slippers cross 8th Avenue on the north side of 43rd Street. Her hair was a wild and wavy mess of white almost the same color as her skin - you might forget she had a face if not for her red plastic framed eyeglasses. From her wrist dangled a ring of keys so full she looked like a jailer. If jailers wore purple nightgowns and fuzzy turquoise slippers, that is.

She stopped at the deli on the northwest corner of the intersection and bought a single bird of paradise flower. With it's orange, yellow, and green completing her rainbow, she turned around and headed back across 8th Avenue.

HA! HA! HA! Big Mouth Has a Big Laugh

So perhaps you remember my post on Big Queer in which I question the logic in a Times UK article by Christopher Ayres (which connected the Hollywood-in-crisis ticket slump to the gays):

I've Got a Secret

Well, my pal Morry found this article by the same Mr. Ayres this morning (published in the Times on 2/7/06):

Hazards of being a columnist: a virtual custard pie in the face every week

That was fun! I might come up with something official to post on Big Queer - see if a dialogue can begin. But for now I just thought I'd share this.

And if, Mr. Ayres is reading this: take cold comfort in the fact that most of us anonymous bloggers allow the anonymous masses to comment directly and publicly to the things we say. Often the pies we throw come flying right back.

Caged!

As Mary Cherry of Popular once said: "Oh my god, y'all! We've been CAGED!"

I've figured it out: there is some nefarious individual who has turned my apartment into a trap. Somehow someone has figured out everything I would ever want and put it into a couple of rooms. Why would anyone ever want to get out of here? Two cute kitties. All these DVDs and comic books. Yummy food. Porn. And I hear some hot Cuban guy will be here sometime around 7 tonight...

I wonder who it was that put all this stuff here. Every time I think about leaving or working, I just get distracted by another Pokemon figurine...

Who is this nefarious genius? Will I never leave? Do I care?

Barely Bearable

I was on the train yesterday afternoon on the way to a lunch meeting with my friend and director Pat. The weather was really nice in New York, so the tourists were out in FULL FORCE, giddy and crazy and even more inconsiderate than usual seeing as Spring Fever had seized control of their brains.

A whole crew of teenage boys came on the train at 53rd Street and 5th Avenue. They all had that kind of psuedo-skater thing going on mixed with a fair amount of Hollister/Abercrombie action - floppy to moppy hair, thinish, pale-ish, slightly oversized clothes but not so oversized as to be hip-hop-ish, beads-ish, and Vans-ish footwear...ish. You know what I'm saying.

So I got to thinking...why in the hell are gay men so obsessed with this look? They were annoying. I don't get why people have such desire for young men/boys. Just thinking about the clumsy sexual encounter that would result from messing around with a barely legal teen made me want to smack these kids. I wanted to hit them for being so lame in the sack. How is it fun? How is naivete and innocence and inexperience interesting? Or erotic?

I know straight men have the same thing - that whole teen girl, school girl, whatever the hell. So this isn't a self-loathing thing. And I know all those Demis are after all those Ashtons, too. I just don't get what the hell it's all about. It just seems like dealing with the whole sexual encounter part of it would be gross and kind of exhausting.

I've always gone for guys older than me, and I used to wonder if that would reverse as I aged. So far, no. In fact, not only am I more attracted to men my own age now, but I'm even more repulsed by young men, and my upper age boundary keeps expanding (see my post on silver foxes...mmmm, John Slattery - oh, and let's not forget Anderson). What's that about? And what's the stupid youth thing about? Someone please explain.

Leaving Home Is Over-Rated

Okay, so I've gone from being really tired and wanting to sleep every second that I'm home to not really wanting to leave home at all. I like it there. And there's books and TV and my computer and all manner of things that help me avoid writing, work, and interacting with people.

I'm kind of joking, but I'm mostly not.

I have two birthday celebrations to go to tonight, and while I love all the people celebrating I would just rather be by myself at home in bed or watching Angel Season 5. I think going right from DEVIANT to Beautiful Day was just too much. I feel like an empty shell. All I can do is sit and stare at the world, and it makes me not want to engage it. I just want to sit. At home.

Someone please tell me when I've officially gone nuts and be sure that I go and get help, yah?

When? When when when?

Live and Let Lie

So aside from ol' Virginia Woolf lying in her journal, it appears that she was just a liar in general.

After her brother died of typhoid fever, VW sent daily letters to her friend Violet Dickinson who was also sick with typhoid at the time. In the letters, she would describe Thoby's health, his recovery from the fever, what he ate, what he did. She kept this up for a month following his death, and the only reason Violet found her out was that a book about the writings and letters of Virginia and Thoby's father was reviewed. In the review, it was mentioned that Thoby's death coincided with the books publication.

I guess I can understand the motive behind it all - why worry Violet with news that someone she knew had succumbed to the same illness she had? Still, the lies were elaborate. They must have been more for VW than they were for Violet.

You Are What You Eat

Some terrible lowest common denominator legislation.

If you like to know what you're putting in your body - whether it's organic, genetically-modified, contains ingredients that might trigger your allergies, or is kosher/vegetarian/vegan - then you'll want to follow this link to The Center for Food Safety. It explains a terrible bill that just passed the House of Representatives despite widespread opposition that denies states the right to pass food safety laws that go above and beyond FDA standards. The site also allows you an easy way to take action.

I really hate people today.

Speaking of Being a Do-Gooder

Which Superhero am I?

You are Spider-Man

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.



Click here to take the "Which Superhero am I?" quiz...

I'm glad I'm a Marvel character, but I was hoping for something more X-Men-ish. Oh, well, Spider-Man will do.

Art for Who's Sake?

So why are we doing what we do? Writing and painting and scuplting and book-binding and new media?

I don't know if this is out of left field, but I've been feeling rather impotent lately. What's the point of writing things no one is going to see? I have been thinking that I should be pursuing something more substantive. If I'm going to keep writing, should I turn to journalism?

And then, of course, there's the whole not writing anymore thing. In these fantasies I become someone that will actually have an immediate impact on the world around me. A queer activist. A nutritionist. An employee of a not-for-profit that actually helps people with career counseling or substance abuse or something meaningful. Even working at a place that brings art to schools and children seems more necessary now than another guy writing plays.

Has culture in America gotten so close to the brink that making art isn't enough to save it? Wouldn't we all be better off getting more people to make art or appreciate the work that's already there? My voice is such a fringe voice. What good comes out of screaming from the fringes?

I'd Like to Spank the Academy...

So I spent a few days in shock regarding the Brokeback Mountain Oscar snub, and I am just now coming out of it. Unfortunately, my anger about it all has already been kind of spent. It has also been articulated in a more thorough and interesting way by other folks. So check out this post on the snub on fastlad's blog (and check out the comments - there's a nice discussion going on), and on the bright side check out this post about Ang Lee's acceptance speech that I wrote as Big Mouth on Big Queer Blog.

I'm Such a Geek

Elektra

So I liked it. Like you didn't know I was a geek already.

Fine - Jennifer Garner looks about as Greek as I do. And I only read the Elektra comic book for five seconds, and that was only because Peter Milligan wrote it, and I still couldn't stick with it despite loving pretty much everything else he writes. But this movie was kind of pretty with a tight plot and some cool villains. Dialogue was standard comic book movie cliches, and (like the Daredevil movie that preceded it) Elektra didn't really have a heart - by which I mean, I didn't feel like there was some kind of central theme or motivation except making a movie about Elektra. But I didn't have a bad time watching it. And Alex - who was supposed to be working - actually found it compelling enough to stop and watch it with me. Or was he just procrastinating...

Anyway, don't run out and rent it, but if you've ever got that comic book movie itch, Elektra will definitely scratch.

Purr, Purr Theatre

Indoor/Outdoor

Last Friday, Alex and I went to the DR2 to catch this play by Kenny Finkle. It played last year at SPF, and I heard good things about it, but never had a chance to see it.

As a cat lover, you have to love this play. It's about this cat Samantha finding herself. Of course, the cat is played by a person, but so are the people. And this interesting casting idea creates a lot of awkward and hilarious situations. Like when the cat and the man get in bed together, but really it's a man and a woman. A little weird. And then she starts licking his hair. Weird and funny. And then she speaks English, but really she's meowing, so he doesn't get what she's saying - hilarious.

If you're not a cat lover, I don't know that you'll like the show. It was the cat/human moments that I responded to the most, because the coming of age stuff was pretty boilerplate. It was fun, though, just seeing a funny play. I feel like nothing has made me genuinely chuckle in a long time.

Feeling Violated

So I've been a little down on New York lately, and after a horrible incident yesterday my anger and frustration has been exacerbated.

I got out of work and went into the 42nd Street and 8th Avenue entrance to the Subway - the one on the Northwest corner next to the pretzel place. I had to use this entrance instead of the unmanned one on 43rd and 8th Avenue, because I needed to buy a new MetroCard. When I entered, a police officer told me to stop by the table and have my bag searched. I passed him by, proceeded to purchase my MetroCard, and then went to the turnstile.

At this point, a second police man yelled at me, "He told you to get your bag searched!" I stopped inside the turnstile - did not pass through it - and said, "No. It is a violation of my civil liberties."

At this point, about two more police men joined the first two and surrounded me. Bear in mind, they were all about 6 ft. tall, in uniform, and armed. I was a queer, Asian-American guy with a puffy red jacket, a powder blue bag, and a Virginia Woolf biography under my arm. Clearly the only solution for this dangerous situation was for one of the police men (the one who yelled at me) to grab me by the shoulders, pull me out of the turnstile (even though I had already stopped and turned to speak with them), and then push me toward the Subway stairs.

Which is exactly what he did.

"Then, you'll have to exit the station," he said as the big wall on thugs in blue struck threatening poses.

I left the station, bumped into a friend in the street who kindly talked me down and redirected my anger to the Brokeback Mountain Oscar snub, and then went into the unmanned 43rd Street and 8th Avenue entrance and swiped on through.

New Yorkers - these searches are illegal! They violate your constitutional rights as detailed in the Fourth Amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." Moreover, these searches do not work in preventing people from bringing weapons or explosives into the Transit system, so we are basically being illegally searched, by people whose salaries we pay, under a policy that has no substantive effect.

On top of all that, I did everything right. I didn't pass through the turnstile, I stated why I would not have my bag searched, and I did not threaten the police officers. What's the reason for the manhandling?

Check out this page so you can learn to properly refuse to have your bag searched. It's something we should all do to prevent the United States from further becoming a police state.

Also, here is information about the NYCLU's case against the Police Department and an update on their December appeal. You can donate money to support NYCLU's bag search challenge by clicking here.

Rest and Stuff

So this whole "resting" thing - gotta say, I never gave it a fair shake.

I can't believe how much more clearly I think and how much more rested I feel. And how much easier it is to go to the gym and eat well. And all I've been doing is taking a little time to live my life and sleep. It's pretty cool.

Now I just have to figure out a vacation or something. Alex and I are spending a three-day weekend in Louisville, which will be fun. But I think I might want to escape a little more on top of that. Maybe even taking a few days off and just vegging out at home or around the city.

Still haven't been motivated to write anything real, but I have a March 23 date for bringing some revisions of Beautiful Day in to the Ma-Yi Writer's Lab, so I'm sure I'll get going again sometime this week. I have actually been having ideas about the play finally. Things regarding Felicia and Kat mostly. I think I need to tweak their stuff so that they both start divulging stories about their past - make a clearer/stronger connection to Felicia rejecting Port Huron and Kat accepting Port Huron from the sudden truth-telling that happens from their rekindled friendship.

I think they're going to be drawing together at some point. That'll be nice.

Celebrity Closets and Safety Deposit Boxes

So I wrote something as Big Mouth on Big Queer Blog of which I'm just pretty darn proud. I know we're never supposed to say things like that, but I'm often told that I'm never supposed to say many of the things I say.

I think that it is just successfully silly enough and funny enough and vulgar enough to get the point across without seeming too preachy. And that's always a hard balance for me to strike.

Check it out by clicking here.

I dreamt that you passed over me last night in sleep, Part 3

Third Dream

I dreamt that my friend Kate (who frequent readers will remember is my playwright friend and colleague who wrote Victoria Martin, Teen Math Queen) was decorating a hospital bed while one of our mentors, Constance Congdon, and I looked on. Connie and I were at the foot of the bed. Kate was at the head of it stringing this multicolored yarn all over it. She was sort of tying it together into this mosquito net kind of thing that hung from above. It didn't have the strict grid-like structure of a mosquito net, though. Her net had all kinds of haphazard diagonals and you could see all the places where the yarn had been knotted together.

There was really bright, late afternoon sunlight coming in through the windows - you know the kind, with the yellowy-orange tones. It was really beautiful. The yarn was a mix of purples, pinks, and reds, with a few flecks of very saturated blue twisted into it as well.

I dreamt that you passed over me last night in sleep, Part 2

Often I dream of objects with no narrative attached to them. For almost five years I dreamed this way exclusively. I only started dreaming narratively again after taking a photography class in graduate school. I think my brain wrapped itself around the narrative that can be found in still objects or tableaus, re-opening that part of my subconscious. Or else something less tangible happened.

Whatever the case I dreamed of an object.

Second Dream

I dreamed that the Museum of Modern Art had published a book that was a portfolio of photographs of my cat, Yucky. It was meant to illustrate the ways that cats communicated with people through gesture, body language, and meowing. It had a yellow cover with red type. Most of the pictures were extreme close-ups. There was one strange picture of Yucky's profile with a big bay window in the background. You could see the blue sky through it and two or three clouds - the puffy cotton candy kind.

I dreamt that you passed over me last night in sleep, Part 1

I've been dreaming a lot lately, which is rare for me. I think all of this relaxing and slowing down and not working has reawakened my subconscious. Before we get into my dreams, though, let's read this sexy Frank O'Hara poem to put us in the mood, yeah?

At Kamin's Dance Bookshop

Gotta love Frank.

First Dream

I dreamt that our landlord had this other apartment up for rent, and he was offering it to Alex and I before contacting the broker, in case we just wanted to move to nicer digs. We figured we should at least check it out.

It was a 4 bedroom triplex apartment here in Queens! It was insane - there was a living room, dining room, a family room, two and a half bathrooms, and a sun room that could be opened in beautiful weather and closed up in the winter. The current tenants hadn't moved out yet, so their furniture and entertainment system and everything were still there. Including little seasonal theme towels in the bathroom (I don't remember the theme, just that they were blue and that one of them had a word starting with the letters "FE" or maybe "EV" embroidered on them).

Of course, I told Alex we had to take it, but since it was two to three times our current rent, we had to find roommates. We talked about making our friend Jami move back from LA or getting Morry and Dennis to move or even our newer friends, fastlad and his beautiful boy. I woke up before anything was resolved.

The dream makes me laugh, but it also makes me a little sad. I've had a lot of trouble reconciling my quality of life with my current location these days. And the fact that I imagined a little Midwestern-ish home in the middle of NYC that I wanted to fill with a new - albeit alternative - family really gives me pause. Will I ever find everything I want in New York? Will I be able to retain the things I have or am used to outside of it?

And when exactly are we going to start thinking about a family of our own?

I'm Never Gonna Dance Again

Without doubt the funniest caption fastlad has ever written. Click here.

Train Mama

My boyfriend Alex (often mentioned on my blog, and the person I'm always referring to when I say "we" - I know, I know, some of you thought I had multiple personalities, but I don't) has started a blog of his own!

Jesus - that was a long parenthetical.

Check out Train Mama! Those who are not only children and who live outside of New York might not think a blog about NYC Transit experiences and your mom is enough material for a blog, but believe me: it is. Actually, both things could probably be their own blog depending on how often you take the train and who your mom is.

Silver Fox Stud

How could I forget that gorgeous brainiac of a man Anderson Cooper? I have had a crush on him ever since I saw him tear it up on Jeopardy. And after the Katrina breakdown? I mean...we're approaching love sweet love here.

Hot.

All the Crap I've Been Watching

Been in a kind of serious media intake mode, so I haven't really given updates here on that side of things. Here's the quickie rundown...

Roger & Me

I love that the state I was born and raised in produced such diverse and interesting people as Michael Moore, Madonna, Eminem, Terry McMillan (from my hometwon, yo), Frances Ford Coppola, Gilda Radner, W.K. Kellogg, and Leon Csolgosz (President McKinley's assassin). It was really interesting to watch this after having completed the draft of Beautiful Day, especially the part where they were trying to attract tourism to Flint and re-vitalize the city. What can those industry towns do now that there is no industry?

The Manchurian Candidate (2004)

I liked this a lot more than most people, I think. It wasn't exactly ground-breaking, although it was fun to think about in light of our business obsessed government and the current Iraq war/civil war/revolution/whatever the hell. Anyway, good but unremarkable.

Night Watch

Yawn.

Dodgeball

Yawn - huh? Oh, ha ha. That Ben Stiller's kinda funny, but... Yawn. Zzzzz...

Angel, Season 4

You know what? Everyone was wrong. This season is so much better than Season 5 it's ridiculous. It's an epic, ginormous, cosmic soap opera of apocalyptic proportions, whereas Season 5 is a supernatural lawyer show. The rain of fire, the Beast, Angelus, dark Wesley, evil Cordy, the return of Faith, Connor gone crazy, a visit by Willow, Darla speaking form the beyond, and the Jasmine season ender...it doesn't get much better than this. This is what I miss in contemporary story-telling when I read and/or try to emulate Shakespeare's late romances. This season rocked the house!

I appreciate what the Angel crew were trying to do with Season 5, but the show was better when it was a bunch of ragtag freelancing demon hunters.

Real constructions of Constructed Realities

Geo-Web and Her Shadows

So the last Mabou Mines presentation was an art installation by Leonora Loeb. Frankly, as much as I like to look at art, I'm not too knowledgeable in terms of art criticism and its vocabulary, so let me just describe the piece.

It was a sculptural installation that you enter from a "backstage" area (Leonora acknowledges the influence of working with so many people examining performance). There's a scaffolding with all kinds of diorama-like objects constructed from cardboard, plastic bottles, wire, and other materials. Lights are hung all around and project shadows on to a wall of muslin (or perhaps thin canvas?) that separate you from the "onstage" side of the installation.

Once you walk through the backstage and into the onstage installation, you see that the shadows cast on the wall on the other side, take different almost organiz seeming shapes on this side. In additon there is a web high in the air of backlit hanging objects that look like pieces of flayed and dried flesh. They're leathery, but treated, so they seem dry and tough, but are still flesh colored. On the ground are darkly colored objects echoing the shapes above.

To me, the piece was playing with ideas of aritificiality and reality - the constructed appearing real or casting shadows that appear real. It was really neat - like an organic but still alien landscape. And the flesh pieces, while beautiful (and acknowledged by most as beautiful) were really kind of creepy to me. In a good way. I like creepy.