Tarhearted.

JOSHUA CONKEL'S SHORT SHORTS.

My new short play, Save Yourself for You, premieres Sunday at this event:

Go here for more information. Reservations are essential! The brunches always sell out.

This brunch is wedding themed, obviously. Not knowing this would be the theme, I wrote a really sweet play about gay marriage for the December brunch (I don't care about straight people getting married). Rather than try to cover this theme again, I went a different way.

Save Yourself for You is a dark comedy about a Christian Literalist couple who catch their teenage daughter giving a hand job at the family barbecue and decide to stone her to death. It's funny! It was inspired by the ever glamorous Duggar family (photo below).

I love writing these ten-minute plays. I hope one day they publish them all in an anthology entitled Joshua Conkel's Short Shorts.

GOD BLESS EUGENE MIRMAN AND HIS ANTI-GAY PHONE.

MAYOR SAM ADAMS IS A SILVER FOX.

There seems to be a big kerfuffle about silver fox (and Portland Mayor) Sam Adams getting it on with this piece:

Am I missing something?

It would be one thing if Adams were a closet case anti-gay type like Larry Craig. Americans rightfully hate hypocrisy.

It would be one thing also if this was an affair a la Bill Clinton. As was proven in California, we're fond of our "traditional marriages".

As it stands though, Adams is an openly gay (and super hot) Mayor who got it on with a hot 18 year-old. Sex is with an 18 year-old is considered consentual, no? I fail to see the big deal.

This may come as a surprise to some, but dudes like to get laid. One of the perks of being a gay dude is that other dudes like to get laid too. This enables gay dudes to pretty much get laid whenever they feel like it and with whomever they feel like doing it. When I was 18, I was doing it with older men all the time. Seriously, like, a lot.

Let's face it, our beauty standard holds youth up as the gold standard. You can't really fault Harris for getting a boner for Breedlove. That said, Beau isn't really my type. A speedo? Just no. I'd give Sam my consent any day though.

TODDLERS IN TIARAS.

TLC is officially the network of Tarhearted. They gave us Little People, Big World and another show about my favorite family, those French braid loving Duggars.

Now (OMG! I'm shivering with excitement as I write this) they've gone and created a show about a subject I'm intensely passionate about: little girl beauty pageants.

Enter Toddlers and Tiaras.

What beautiful little angels.

I know some of you might say it's wrong to spray tan, paint up, and bewig little girls. Well, I say YOU'RE wrong. All children, boys and girls, should have deep golden tans and access to wiggery. Every time I go to a child's birthday party I bring them a gift certificate to Hollywood Tans and a box of Crest Whitening Strips, because I'm a child advocate, thank you very much.

HARD HITTING POLITICS.

Well done, America.

Like Madonna or David Bowie, you have updated your image. Kudos for progress! Snaps for staying hip!

And this is the last word I'll write of Rick Warren (probably): barf.

There.

That's it.

UPDATE: Okay, I lied. To the apparent 91% of Americons who did NOT object to Rick Warren's inclusion in the inauguration, I ask:

"Seriously?

What the fuck?

DICKS."

PATIENCE AND PRUDENCE.

I haven't been blogging much this week because I don't want to, but I did want to quickly give a shout out to Precious and Prudence, who recorded some of the hottest tracks ever.

I'm obsessed with these bitches right now.

You can hear my favorite song, "A Smile and a Ribbon" set to this weird footage somebody took of, like, donkeys or something:

I'm hoping to use this as the curtian call to my February Youngblood Brunch ten-minute play. It's about a suburban couple who decide to stone their teenage daughter to death during a family barbecue. Cute!

THE POTATOES OF AUGUST.

I'm loathe to call this a theater review. This is due in part to how badly it stings when somebody, even a nobody blogger like myself, says shitty things about my plays. Also, who the fuck am I, right? Somebody totally inarticulate about what he likes and dislikes about contemporary theater, that's who. That's why I've decided to only write about plays that I like.

I liked Sybil Kempson's The Potatoes of August. A lot.

From their own press, Potatoes is:
A theatricalist fugue wherein 4 retirees encounter a sack of sentient potatoes, and find their outworn belief systems forcibly confronted by the challenges of a highly integrated, enlightened metaphysics.
Amazing.

If only you could have seen it (you can if you make it to Dixon Place by noon today!) It was one of the most entertaining shows I've seen in a while, and totally appealing to my aesthetic. All four retirees are played brilliantly by actresses in their thirties, including the lovely Kristen Kosmas, whose play The Scandal! my theater company just produced. All four are dressed in monochromatic khaki. The two women wear silk scarves, the two men (including the playwright herself) wear red beanies.

The brilliantly deadpan performances, coupled with an absurdist plot about potatoes plotting to take over the Earth, really made for an evening of experimental theater that's actually enjoyable. Who would have thought?

Not to go on a rant, but I find that most theater I see falls into one of two categories. On one hand you have dusty traditionalist plays about rich/white/straight people in their living rooms, discussing at length their neurosis and how difficult it is to be privileged (I'm looking at you LaBute). On the other, totally unaccessible and boring "experimental" theater that feels like banging your head against a wall of art.

That said, it's nice to see a play that both experiments boldly and manages to be, um, entertainment.

These are artists to watch: Sibyl Kempson, Kristen Kosmas, Laura Berlin Stinger, Anna Foss Wilson & Greg Zuccolo (whose totally hot, by the way).

*I should mention that this is not the press approved image for the show and is, in fact, the result of a google image search. I just liked it, is all.

IMPORTANT UPDATE.

I saw my first New York apartment on the news this morning. It was a story about a young woman who abandoned her two hour old newborn.

This, of course, means I'm not longer able to poke fun of people in flyover states who abandon their babies at, like, Walmart or wherever.

Thanks for nothing, trendy Brooklyn neighborhood!

I WANT TO GO TO ICE PROM.

Married to the Sea is my favorite thing ever.

POP FOR PEDOPHILIACS.

My love for 1960's "teenage tragedy" pop music is well documented. I adore The Shangri-Las, whose entire career was based on car crashes, runaways and delinquency. But I'm starting to think that the 1960's were also golden era for pop songs celebrating pedophilia. I started to suspect this when my friend brought up Young Girl by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap.

The lyrics:

"Young girl, get out of my mind
My love for you is way out of line
Better run, girl,
You're much too young, girl
With all the charms of a woman
You've kept the secret of your youth
You led me to believe
You're old enough
To give me Love
And now it hurts to know the truth, Oh,
Beneath your perfume and make-up
You're just a baby in disguise
And though you know
That it is wrong to be
Alone with me
That come on look is in your eyes, Oh,
So hurry home to your mama
I'm sure she wonders where you are
Get out of here
Before I have the time
To change my mind
'Cause I'm afraid we'll go too far, Oh,
Young girl"

I immediately felt in my bones that this was true, though I can't think of a lot of examples. All that is coming to mind is Come Back When You Grow Up Girl by Bobby Vee. You know...

"Come back when you  grow up girl,
You're still living in a paper doll world."

There's also My Sharona, but that's the 70's. Please, won't you help me think of more so that I might make a sock hop mix for Pedopheliacs?