Tarhearted.

I SMELL SHITTY PANTIES.

Oh, happy day! They've finally made a sequel to Jiz and the Mammograms, a youtube favorite amongst my friends. Its predecessor is comedy genius, so make sure to watch it first.

This is super NSFW or for life.

FAKE IT 'TIL YOU MAKE IT.

This is an entry about theater, elitism, and the great class divide, so if you came here to read about fake nails or forgotten New Wave bands, come back in a bit or read the archives. I know, I know... writing about theater is boring. My photo essay on Witchboard should be coming later today, or first thing tomorrow, so come back then.

That said...

The Boyfriend and I were walking to a friend's house in Williamsburg last night when we started talking about a certain theater "opportunity" I've applied to, but haven't heard back from. I apply to it every year, and although it's supposedly for emerging artists, it's really for already biggish names and anybody willing to suck a few dicks (figuratively speaking).

But I'm not bitter. I prefer the dick suckers to the rich kids. At least I can compete against them.

I've also been thinking a lot about this stuff in regards to the O' Neill and fake submission opportunities in general. Further, I've been toying with the idea of applying to graduate school. I'm not even sure I actually want to go to graduate school. It's just that sometimes it seems to me that one has to have an Ivy league MFA to be a working playwright.

I'm not against education, but I think it's a problem that theaters use the MFA programs like NBC uses the up fronts: as a preview of what's to come. The training programs are supposed to be training programs, aren't they? I'm okay with fancy pants Ivy Leaguers doing well too, but it would be nice if those Lit Managers and Artistic Directors were also going to see Off Off shows and researching scripts from out of town as well, wouldn't it? That way, some of us lower class writers would have a shot. At least then we'd have some different voices.

It seems to me that plays are always about rich white people, written by rich white people, to be performed exclusively for rich white people. I wonder how much of that is because of the MFA programs? Contrary to popular belief, these programs aren't exclusively merit based. Most of them are cost prohibitory for working class or middle class students. The free programs only take a couple of students a year, and what are the chances that a nobody from Kentucky is going to get in over somebody who went the best private schools, an Ivy undergrad, and whose parents' financial support enabled them to not work so they could complete impressive internships?

I guess it's probably just under dog-ism, and I'm not sure how much of it is real or imagined, but it's a miracle I've even gotten as far as I have. I sometimes feel as if I started crawling to New York as a baby. It's been a long and painful journey. Until I moved here with $150 in 2003, I'd never even met somebody who went to an Ivy league school or had a trust fund. My mother is a secretary and my father is in the Navy, for God's sake. I was the first person in my family to ever go to college, and it was by way of heavy loans, scholarships, and sheer ingenuity. In order to get through college, move to New York, and make self produce my first few plays I had to do things that would make your average Harvard freshman cry. Seriously, like, whoa. 

I don't mean to sound all "poor me". I've come a long way and done a lot of awesome stuff. I'm also deceptively scrappy and tough (seriously, there were days when I would have pushed you in front of a train in exchange for a Big Mac), so I hate to seem whiny or weak. It' s just frustrating because I feel caught between two classes, and I struggle with anger when I see people who aren't necessarily any more talented than me getting opportunities I wanted because they have more pedigree. 

So I was discussing this with The Boyfriend when I joked that i should just put "MFA, Yale" on resume. Without thinking, he said, "Why don't you?"

It's so obvious! I don't know why I hadn't thought of it before, especially since I have an obsession with the old fashioned Dandies: working class or middle class men who broke into high society by impersonating it and then, like Oscar Wilde, doing it better than them.

This is a lesson I've already learned a number of times. The last time I learned it I was 21 and had just moved to New York. I learned that if you could manage to look stylish and rich then the stylish and rich will let you in anywhere. You can easily accomplish this by shoplifting, maxing out credit cards, borrowing clothes from rich kids, and convincing horny old men to take you shopping. Why, to this day I still call restaurants as my imaginary assistant, Marco, when I want a hard-to-get reservation. You'd be surprised how much it helps.

In that spirit, I am adding the following to my resume. Let me know of any other cool things you think I should add. Also, it should be said that some of these aren't crazy elitist, but just things I would have liked to have accomplished, but haven't, so I'm just going to skip ahead and pretend I did:

MFA, Yale

The O' Neill

Humana Festival

SoHo Writer/Director Lab

Ars Nova Playgroup

P73

TARHEARTED READERS HAVE ADDED:

SPF

McCarthy Genius Award

I know there must be others.

Hearts,

Joshua Conkel of the Hansville, Washington Conkels

P.S. After I posted this I came up with an idea: why doesn't somebody in an MFA program post all of their assignements and readings on an anonymous blog so that everybody can get an MFA vicariously? VicariousMasters.blogspot.com. Come on.... make it happen!

DIE QUICKLY.

Rep. Alan Grayson, of Florida, used an after hours speech last night to mockingly describe the Republicans health care position:

"If you get sick, America, the Republican health care plan is this: die quickly. That's right -- the Republicans want you to die quickly if you get sick."

"Remember, the Republican plan: Don't get sick. And if you do get sick, die quickly."

You can read more here. The Republicans are angry and already comparing it to Joe Wilson's "you lie" outburst. I'd like to point out a couple of crucial difference though.

1. Joe Wilson's outburst was during a Presidential speech. Alan Grayson's was during an after hours format designed for speakers to discuss the topic of their choice.

2. Grayson's speech was funny and not racist.

Doesn't it feel good to tell the truth? For all of their nay saying, Republicans have no alternative to Democratic health care proposals becuase- wait for it- they don't want health care to be reformed at all. I'll lump those so-called "blue dog" Democrats in there as well.

Yesterdays failure to pas seither bill with a public option is a clear indicator that the people's will doesn't matter anymore and that we live in a country run by corporations. Those not in favor of a public option state that it would unfairly run private insurance companies out of business.

Excuse me?

Not fair to insurance companies?

A recent stufy showed that 45,000 were going to die this year from a lack of health insurance. that's more than one 9/11 a month. What about what's fair to them? I'm almost afraid to ask, but do profits matter more than people to Republicans and fake Democrats?

SOAP OPERAS.

I've recently fallen in love with soap operas, thanks to the greatest show of all time, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. I mean, I kind of already loved them because of Twin Peaks and Passions and Dark Shadows. I'm also loving True Blood, which has become much more of a soap opera this season as well as having improved a hell of a lot since season one.

I started writing my own gothic soap opera for the stage, entitled Sinking Hearts, which i dream of some day producing for an audience full of adoring alcoholic fags who will actually want to come back for each installment.

Major spoiler alerts, but who knows if this will ever see the light of day so feel free to read on or skip:

The first episode of "Sinking Hearts" takes place on July 3rd. Sailor Chuck Nagel is relocating his family to the Thomas Hartman Submarine Base from San Diego, which is apparently top security and hidden deep in the pine forests of Washington State. His wife, Misty, who is a little bit psychic and has an interest in the occult, has a nightmare on the drive up in which a strange woman with hair like Kate Gosselin tells her to turn around and a naked man covered in water tries to communicate with her. Misty wakes up from her nightmare screaming, which causes Chuck to swerve off the road, nearly killing both of them and their tar hearted and slutty daughter, twelve-year-old Madysin.

As luck would have it, they have crashed right at the isolated Navy base, where the guard informs them that their new house is on Tullabee Street, a secluded section of the base way back in the woods by itself.

As Chuck and Madysin unpack inside the house, Misty burns sage in the backyard to clear the house of its evil spirits. Her alcoholic neighbor, Crystal Firbee, comes over to introduce herself. Crystal is the woman from Misty's dream. Before shel passes out in her own vomit, we learn that:

1. Most people don't stay on Tullabee Street for very long. It seems they mostly asked to be transferred because the quiet and isolation gets to them.

2. Crystal's husband Gus has been missing for days, which has also been happening on Tullabee Street lately.

The next day, July 4th, Madysin is sunbathing in the yard when she meets Crystal's fifteen-year-old son, Alisdair, and they take an interest in each other. Alisdair is an aspiring rock star and offers to show Madysin his black light posters. Madysin agrees to go up to his room, but not before revealing a plan to murder her mother and letting Alisdair know that she is saving herself for marriage, but that he can "put it in her butt" if he wants to.

Meanwhile, Chuck has to leave for his first day of duty aboard the submarine. He grills his new coworker, a swarthy sailor named Claude who is perpetually shirtless and doing crunches. Claude insists there is nothing unusual about Tullabee Street or the Thomas Hartman Submarine Base. Chuck admires Claude's abs.

Meanwhile, Misty is left alone to watch the fireworks until Crystal shows up with a magnum bottle of "apology wine". Crystal, it seems, has a drinking problem due to the stresses of having an asshole husband who has up and disappeared. Misty confesses to Crystal that she had a dream about her before she ever met her and that she feels that something is strange about Tullabee Street.

Just as Crystal goes into her own house to get another bottle of wine, a strange naked man crawls onto Misty's lawn, dazed. He is the man from Misty's dream and he is drenched. He opens his mouth to say something, but seaweed comes out. Crystal approaches with the wine and her best jelly jars (for drinking out of) and stops dead in her tracks. The man is Gus, her missing husband. They all stare at each other, stunned. Fireworks.

It's a lot funnier than it sounds. I really want to play Mist myself and I feel like she's the kind of housewife that always wears sweat pants with oversized t-shirts that have Looney Tunes characters on them. She also probably has hair that looks wet when its actually crunchy to the test. In a perfect world, my friend Michael Cyril Creighton (from MilkMilkLemonade) would play Crystal.

I don't know what's coming next but I do know that I want to incorpate the following:

1. Nuclear power

2. Crystal going to rehab.

3. A coma.

4. A gay love affair between sailors.

5. An unwanted and dangerous prgnancy.

6. Body invasions.

7. Killer insects.

P.S. I just found out that Tim Burton is planning on a film version of Dark Shadows with Johnny Depp as Barnabas. Why is Tim Burton always ruining my life?

QUEER HUMOUR

The Boyfriend sent me this video, which is pretty much the most hilarious thing I've seen this week. (WARNING: super not safe for work.)

Sometimes I feel like it's wrong to laugh at things like this. My writing too, contains dialogue and themes that some would find unbelievably offensive. I suppose I'm too inside of it, because I'm always sincerely shocked- SHOCKED- that anybody would find my sense of humor offensive.

I was catching a train with a heterosexual and super liberal friend once and we were discussing different neighborhoods in the city when i said I wouldn't go to a certain neighborhood for fear of being "Matthew Shepherd-ed." Okay, it's not guffaw funny, but I don't think it's hideously offensive either. I was making light of a very real and legitimate fear I felt. My immediate thought was "oops, I've offended my friend," but then that gave way to something else. "Wait a minute, " I thought, "I'm the one who's fearful. I'm the one without my civil rights here." And then I thought, "Fuck it. I can say whatever I feel like saying."

As another example, I was with a group of friends discussing what their nicknames were in high school. When it got to me, without missing a beat, I responded "faggot". Nobody laughed. I thought it was funny.

I guess my question is this: is offensive humour a part of queer culture? Do queer people become funny as a defense mechanism or a survival tactic? Is the collective queer threshold for dark comedy wider because of a lifetime full of abuses? If you consider the popularity of John Waters, Margaret Cho, Absolutely Fabulous, Charles Busch, and Sarah Silverman, I would say that it is. Because if it isn't, well... then I'm just an asshole.

Hopefully though I'm just carrying on a tradition.

DULL.

My double life as a marketer and a playwright has been combined. I desperately want to write a play about the branding and launching of L'eggs egg. From Wikipedia:

In the 1970s, L'eggs introduced a unique trade dress by placing its product in white plastic chicken egg-shaped containers egg (albeit much larger) and garnering shelf space in grocery stores. Parent company HanesBrands Inc. has ceased packaging the hosiery in the hard plastic shells. Notwithstanding the secondary uses for the eggs by crafters, artists, and hobbyists, the plastic eggs were seen as an example of wastefulness. ^[1]

The L'eggs naming, package and logo were created by designer Roger Ferriter, working in the design studio of Herb Lubalin Associates in New York City in 1969. On the morning of the scheduled presentation to the Hanes Corporation of the marketing and packaging ideas for the new low cost pantyhose launch, Ferriter was not satisfied that the work was sufficiently creative. In an effort to revisit the name and packaging one last time, he attempted to "experience" the product in some new way, hoping that the exercise would suggest a new creative direction for the branding. Among his efforts, he attempted to compress a pair of pantyhose in his fist, wondering how compact the product could become. Staring at his clenched fist with the pantyhose inside he was struck with the possibility that the package could be an egg. Just as quickly, he realized that egg rhymes with leg, and then adding the popular mid century marketing boost of giving a product name some French sounding twist, he incorporated the l' (french for "the" when followed by a vowel such as the "e" of eggs) and arrived at L'eggs. Some sketches were prepared in time for the presentation, including a logo that incorporated two egg-influenced letter "g"s and thus was born one of the most successful product launches in history.

I suppose I can't though, can I? I mean, Leggs is still a company and Herb was a real dude. I don't know why the mundane and forgotten fascinates me so much, but it does. Perhaps this could be my play (finally) about women who commute in white sneakers and then change into heels. (Another one of my obsessions.) I wonder what percentage of these women own cats and, further, how many of these women have tasted cat food in a private, lonely moment.

Holla, Cathy!

P.S. I still think it would be a really good idea to blow up black and white Cathy comics, frame them, and your decorating scheme be "Cathy".

GOODBYE LES LYE. HEAVEN HAS ANOTHER ANGEL.

My childhood just got smashed into itty bitty pieces.

An internet friend pointed out that Les Lye, most famous as the only adult man on You Can't Do That On Television, has passed away. A quick IMDB search also tells me that Les also did some voice acting: Care Bears, The Raccoons, Teddy Ruxpin. That's quite an impressive career.



Nobody could play a sleazy, untrustworthy adult like Les could, and he played them often on You Can't Do That On Television. I was particularly fond of Barth, the proprietor of Barth's Burgers, whose sketches always ending with "what do you think's in the burgers?"



Bye, Les. You will be missed.

You Can't Do That On Television was my absolute favorite show as a kid, though my parents hated it. The reruns came on Nickelodeon at 5:30, right after Out of Control (a show I remember virtually nothing about except for the title, the fact that Dave Coulier hosted, and a punk girl who talked really fast).

(Here she is. Apparently her name was Diz.)

It was my dream to be a cast member, though I guess I really couldn't have been since I think it was in syndication and also Canadian. I mostly wanted to hang out with Moose and fawn over Alisdair (see below). I also wanted to be on Kids Incorporated, so there you have it.

You Can't Do That On Television was a whip smart, funny kids show and Les was great on it, as was the other adult actor, Abby Hagyard, who played all the adult female parts.



Also, just as a creepy closing that now makes me feel like a pedophile, my first crush on a boy was on You Can't Do That On Television's Alisdair Gillis, a total canadian fox.



But whatever. He's actulally older than me, so there...

UP AND COMING: MilkMilkLemonade

I invoked the powers of Mary Hartman to lift me from my depression fog, and am excited to tell you about this upcoming project:

MilkMilkLemonade is a play about gay children, a parasitic twin, an antagonistic grandmother, one very depressed chicken, and our changing bodies. Bring the kids!

I SMELL CRAZY.

I had an incredibly stressful day yesterday and (like a lady) I decided to take a piping hot bath, give myself a facial, and go to bed with a book. All that was missing was the candlelight and Feist album!

Anyway, I was lying there in the bath when I noticed that my hippie soap bottle was covered in craziness. Actually, that's not quite true. I'm sensitive to aesthetics and I work in Marketing for a living, so if an ad is chock full of copy to the point where it's jumbled or "busy" it's as if I don't see it. It's a sort of willful ignorance. I guess the warm water relaxed me enough to actually give the bottle a look-see though, because I spent a full five minutes wondering what the fuck I was reading. "The earth is god's spaceship." Say what? This is some heaven's gate shit. I could have spent ten or twenty minutes reading it.

Today I followed up with some research. Who is the Dr. Bronner and how does he make his magical soap? The Straight Dope clears it up:

Bronner is an 85-year old (as of 1993) German immigrant who hangs out in Escondido, California. He's not an MD or strictly speaking a rabbi, but claims he's got the equivalent of a PhD in chemistry, which I guess makes him a master chemist. He's also not your average soap maker. Whereas Messrs. Procter and Gamble dream (well, dreamt) of enzymes and long-chain fatty acids, Bronner dreams of world peace.

Bronner wants to convince mankind of the virtues of the "All-One-God-Faith," which, together with the "Moral ABC," his answer to the Ten Commandments, will unite the human race. The details of this can be a bit hard to follow. For example: "Replace half-true Socialist-fluoride poison & tax-slavery with full-truth, work-speech-press & profitsharing Socialaction! All-One! So, help build 4 billion Hannibal wind-power plants, charging 96 billion battery-banks, powering every car-factory-farm-home-monorail & pump, watering Babylon-roof-gardens & 800 billion Israel-Milorganite fruit trees, guarded by Swiss 6000 year Universal Military Training," etc.

Talking to the doc on the phone is the audio equivalent of reading one of his labels. He can be pretty linear when he wants to be, but eventually always veers off into a rap about the Essene rabbis and whatnot, delivered in a nutty-professor German accent. Believe me, it's an experience.

Bronner has had an eventful life. The son of a Jewish German soap maker, he emigrated to the U.S. and pleaded with his father to do the same when the Nazis came to power. The old man refused. One day Bronner got a postcard with the words, "You were right. --Your loving father." He never heard from his parents again.

Initially settling in the midwest, Bronner married the illegitimate daughter of a nun, who eventually became suicidal and died in a mental hospital. (He says she was tortured by the hospital guards.) He also began devising his plan for world peace. Fittingly, he took to the soapbox to promote it. One of his listeners, Fred Walcher, was so inspired that in 1945 he had himself crucified in Chicago in order to publicize the plan. (He survived.)

Later Bronner was arrested while trying to promote his plan at the University of Chicago and was committed to a mental hospital. He escaped three times, finally fleeing to California in 1947. He's been there cranking out soap and soap labels ever since.

Despite his eccentricities, Dr. Bronner has built his soap company into a prosperous concern, mostly by sheer force of personality. In the early days he would set up a table at health food conventions. If a dealer strayed within ten feet, Bronner would pounce and not let go until he'd gotten an order.

But things didn't really take off until he was discovered by the counterculture during the 60s. With the aid of his sons Jim and Ralph, who handle production and sales, he currently sells some 400,000 gallons of liquid soap and 600,000 pounds of bar soap a year. He says he's now worth $6 million--not bad, he notes drily, for somebody who's supposedly nuts.

Amazing. Dr. Bronner also has his own birth control method for you lady readers:

Bronner's birth control method involves using lemon juice and Vaseline as a spermicide.

I love you, Dr. Bronner!

CHECKING IN.

Only have time to say a quick "hey".

Thanks, Katie!