Tarhearted.

FOUR THINGS.

Thanksgiving was beautiful and I'm back to work and feeling renewed. The Boyfriend and I had ten people over and managed to throw together a lovely Thanksgiving meal. Now, here are four things I'd like to bring your attention to:

1. I watched the beautiful french musical, Love Songs, or Les chansons d'amour if you're so inclined. It made miss miss Paris so hard. It's still my fantasy to live there somehow. Too bad it's near impossible. Anyhow, it's a beautiful film with hot boy-on-boy action and it stars this hot piece:

The music is stunning and at a lot of moments it really reminded me of one of my favorite films of all time, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

Here is the trailer:

2. I'm so in love with this San Francisco band, Girls, and their single "Lust for Life."

"The Girls" was always one of my band names on reserve, in case I ever had one. I won't, so I'm glad to gift it to them, sans "the."

The video is also adorable. The dude with the short hair who mouths the lyric "maybe if I really try with all of my heart..." is super cute.

I love New York a lot, but I'm a West Coast boy at heart. I would love to live in San Francisco, but I'm afraid that I wouldn't be able to find a job there.

3. I wrote an episode of Hooray! Confidence. This is a web series that my friend Nikole and I want to make about two alcoholic, hateful, loser shut-ins who embark on a journey of self-improvement. It'll be kind of a ghetto Absolutely Fabulous. Or something? Anyway, fun stuff! details to come.

4. Episode One of my soap opera, Sinking Hearts, is finished. I don't want to say much about it yet, but inspirations include Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and The Metamorphasis by Kafka.

HOORAY FOR HUMANISM.

This weekend The Boyfriend and I were coming home from an Upper east Side High School production of Romeo and Juliet (which was surprisingly good, by the way) when we saw this ad on the subway:

More like this please.

MARY WORONOV INTERVIEW.

Swoon.

This interview only cements Mary Woronov's place as one of my favorite people of all time. It's also nice to see somebody else who feels the same way I do about acting.

Read it.

"Bouncy Bouncy?" Hilarious.

Also, she's not kidding. She is a really good painter:

THE END OF AN ERA.

I'm really sad that this decade is almost over. As much as I like aspects of the 1990's now, I really hated them at the time. I like the 80's much, much more in terms of music, so when my friends were listening to Pearl Jam, I was listening to the Psychadelic Furs or whatever. (They'd all be sorry for making fun of me a decade later when their music went out of style and mine came back in though.)

Anyway, this nameless decade (seriously... is it the aughts?), on the other hand, was a lot more up my alley in terms of music and fashion, Uggs and tights-as-pants notwithstanding.

To wrap up, here are some of my favorite albums of the last decade. Yes, I know some of them are obvious, but don't try to act like you weren't retarded for that first Strokes' album. In no particular order, the albums that mattered to me:

 

FannyPack- So Stylisic

This was one of the first albums I bought when I moved to New York, and one of my first "walk around Brooklyn like you own the damn place" albums. FannyPack is bound to be one of those forgotten novelties that'll come back at gay parties in another ten years. THANK GOD.

 

Yeah Yeah Yeahs- Fever to Tell

What can I say? One of the best bands of the decade, hands down, and it all started here.

 

The Strokes- Is This It?

They started the whole obnoxious hipster thing, but this is a really good album. So shut up.

 

The Pippettes- We Are The...

Cutesy 60's throw backs from England. i really loved this album.

 

Junior Senior- Move Your Feet

Queer rock with eclectic roots that you can dance to. Another favorite from my early New York days.

 

The Gossip- Standing in the Way of Control

Beth Ditto is cooler than you.

 

Interpol- Turn on the Bright Lights

Hello, college! Swoon. The emotions! The drama! Living in Seattle! Living in poverty! My college boyfriend. (Hi, Keehnan!)

The Libertines- Up the Bracket

One of the best rock albums of all times. Too bad Pete Doherty blew it.

Annie- Anniemal

Why are the Swedish so good at pop music? (see Junior Senior, The Sounds) I never liked her other albums as much as this one.

 

White Williams- Smoke

His low-fi New wave sound and cute, cute style give me a boner.

 

The Sounds- Living in America

Another Swedish favorite from early New York days. This was on repeat when I was first dating The Boyfriend, going out every night with hipsters, andl doing a lot of blow with my old roommate in Williamsburg (a story for another time.)

 

The New Pornogrpahers- Electric Version

This was the album, along with The Postal Service, that transitioned me from Seattle to New York in the summer of 2003.

 

Amy Winehouse- Back to Black

Please don't blow it, Amy. (See Pete Doherty.)

Gravy Train!!!!- Hello Doctor

Remember Electroclash? God, what a blast I had. I never thought explicitly queer hip hop would happen until this.

Santogold

A great album by a cute girl. People who compare her to M.I.A. are lazy or deaf.

 

Peaches- The Teaches of Peaches

Again, remember electroclash?

 

The Postal Service- Give Up

I know this has been co opted by car commercials, but it really meant a lot to me when it came out. "such Great Heights" was my walking-around-Seattle-and-feeling-emotional-'cause-I'm-about-to-move-to-New-York song.

M.I.A.- Kala

She's awesome, has great style, and we had the same hair stylist.

So, what we're your favortie albums? Politics and the economy aside, I hope the next ten years are as awesome as these were. I hope, because I'll be in my thrities (Jesus Christ!) that I'm a little happier and a little more grounded, while still being hip and fun.

AESTHETIC CANDY: SOMETHING PRETTY, SOMETHING PRACTICAL.

THE MANHATTAN DECLARATION IS ROTTEN.

Wow. Just... wow.

I might make fun of people's clothes from time to time, but one needn't look too hard to see who the truly tarhearted Americans are. They're the ones pretending to be the most pious, though if they spent half of the time and resources helping the poor or healing the broken ecosystem as they do stripping civil rights from fellow Americans and tormenting women, America wouldn't be the hell hole of primitive minded lardos that it is today.

The radical "christian" right has released their so-called "Manhattan Declaration." (It makes me shiver that this is named after my fair city, by the way.) Here it is in its rotten entirety. The emphasis on particularly cruel or bigoted sections and the most salacious lies are mine.

Let this be a reminder to progressives that the Christian right cannot be given an inch. They seek to create a theocracy by destroying the separation of church and state. They ought have no seat at the national table.

Read it if you can do so without vomiting or crying.

AN OPEN LETTER.

Dear Women of New York,

How are you? Well, I hope. I know, right? I'm super busy too.

You look great though. Thank God you stopped wearing ponchos and Uggs, right? (You stopped wearing Uggs, RIGHT?)

Phew.

One quick thought... how about we all agree to put the kibosh on furry vests? I know, I know... Rachel Zoe told you to wear them, but Rachel Zoe says a lot of crazy things, despite having a really sexy assistant*. Besides, she said that, like, two years ago.

The thing is, the furry vests make you look like a crazy The Hills Have Eyes cave person, and not in a good way. You know which vests I'm talking about, right? I mean these ones:

I know you want to look like a powerful woman, but not so powerful that you fought a yeti and won though, right? Right.

Love you!

Best,

Me

P.S. Oh yeah. Stop tying string around your head too. Thanks again! See you at Whole Foods!

*Hi, Brad Goreski! I kind of have a boner for you!

*

JULIE BROWN RETROSPECTIVE.

I'm not talking about that annoying English "downtown" Julie Brown with a face like a foot. I'm talking about red headed Julie Brown of Just Say Julie, the greatest MTV show ever, and of hit films such as Earth Girls Are Easy. This one:

I don't know why, but I've been missing Julie a lot lately. I was obsessed with her as a little boy, and even had her record, Trapped in the Body of a White Girl, which contained instant hits like "I Like 'Em Big and Stupid" and "The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun."

Apparently, the real Miss Julie got her start in gay clubs. No surprise there. The ego maniacal valley girl character she created for herself was practically a drag queen. And everybody knows the gays are early arbiters of cool (except for approximately half of Americans, who are retarded and don't matter anyway.)

Julie is now on a Canadian soap opera, but it's my new dream to write a play for her. She would be PERFECT for my writing. The above picture feels like a production shot from a Conkel play already. Maybe she could star in the Broadway production of my new play, The Sluts of Sutton Drive.

Let's revisit the magic of Just Say Julie. Shall we?

DON'T ASK, DON'T GIVE.

I am joining the Don't Ask, Don't Give Boycott of the DNC and I would encourage you all to do the same. The Democrats have a long history of making promises to the LGBT community, only to swiftly forget said promises once they've secured our funds and/or votes.

To my straight friends and family, I'm especially talking to you. We need your advocacy really badly. Frankly, I'm not convinced that most of you ever even consider what it's like for gay and lesbian folks. Here's one hint: it's really painful for some of us to sit through your weddings. And that's just a start.

And to those of you who say that equal rights aren't a priority in these difficult economical times when we have two wars going on, I say "so?" Until I have full and equal citizenship in my own country, I couldn't care less what happens to it. I'm not budging. Or voting for Democrats either.

To those who worry that if the gays and their allies' withdrawal of support from the DNC could lead to Republican victories I say, "Yep. That's true." Guess you should work harder for equality now, then. 

Oh, and to the Catholics of Washington D.C. who seek to deny equal treatment of your fellow citizens by threatening to cease charity work, you are truly evil and wouldn't know charity if it raped your children. Hell, you didn't even know it when your priests were doing it.

YOU. SUCK.

IN DEFENSE OF QUIRKINESS.

The Boyfriend and I caught Sarah Ruhl's new play, In The Next Room or the vibrator play this weekend. It's extremely rare that I get to see a Broadway show because I refuse to pay more than $20 for a play and I'm allergic to the elderly, but we had free tickets so we went.

I was really excited. I'd read two of Sarah's plays and admired them very much but had never had the pleasure of seeing one. There's been a teensy Sarah Ruhl backlash in some parts lately, due to people who don't care for "quirky" theater. God, I hate that word.

It seems like the pendulum goes back and forth, with people saying theater should be this way or that way, only to have it swing in the other direction a few years. Lately I've noticed that there's been a lot of writers on theater blogs moaning about "quirky" plays. As a writer of plays that would almost definitely fall into that category, I feel compelled to defend them. 

While I agree that writers can be too clever for their own good, sending their plays into smug precociousness or annoying cuteness. I also think though that highly theatrical work, when executed well, taps into an audience's imagination in really unique ways.

To me, one of the things that is interesting about theater is how fakey-fakey it is, at least when you're working within my budgets. I can't hope to recreate reality, the way the television and film often attempts to do, so I tend to go the other way. I call attention to the theatricality, to the presentation of a play, and the artificiality of it all. I like it. I don't want to hide it.

The same goes for the audience and actor connection. Everybody is in a room together, so why pretend otherwise? In my play, The Chalk Boy, the main character turns to the audience in the last scene and says, "Sorry I've been ignoring you," before she goes into a speech about the ghost of a boy she loves. It's too embarrassing or difficult for her to tell the other characters, so she tells us and now we're simpatico. Characters don't need to speak to the audience, and lately they haven't been in what I've been writing, but audiences shouldn't be made to feel like the play could be happening in the room without them, should they? These are just two things I've done in my plays that could be considered "quirky" maybe. Except none of this is particularly "quirky." Brecht created the former trick and the Greeks used the latter. Why is it "quirky" now?

Is it the plots that people think are "quirky?" Strange stories with random plot turns and over-the-top characters? Because the Greeks, Brecht, Shakespeare, Moliere... those stories seem pretty "quirky" to me. And Angels in America is about as "quirky" as it gets.

Maybe I misunderstand what people mean by "quirky?" A lot of times it just feels like "those kids and their crazy rock n' roll" syndrome. A college professor of mine complained that younger playwrights were writing plays with quick scenes, lots of locations, clipped dialogue, and plays that were more visual than language based. My response? Um... so? People always adapt the form to suit their times. That's a good thing.

Which brings me to In The Next Room or the vibrator play. It was nice. We liked it a lot. It didn't seem at all "quirky" to me, and significantly less "quirky" than her other two plays I'd read. Frankly, I thought a play about vibrators could have stood a lot more boldness and "quirkiness." The play takes place in 1888, and at many points it felt like it was written 1880 too. It felt extremely conventional to me, which isn't a bad thing at all. Like I said, we liked the play. I like representational theater a lot too, because I have sophisticated tastes (ha!) and I can like different things all at once. I happen to think there's room in the theater for all kinds of writers, or should be, which seems to be an unpopular opinion these days.

I just worried because I thought, if people hate this for it's "quirkiness" then i don't stand a fucking chance.

P.S. The set was really pretty. And it snowed onstage! I love Broadway!