Please go to Gawker and vote for my beloved Kari Ferrell, the hipster grifter, as Hipster of the Decade. Kari deserves to win. She is the hipste rto end all hipsters, and super glamorous to boot. This is important!
Also, I'm sad to say that I used to semi hang out with TWO of the people on this list in my wilder, more glamorous early twenties.
I can't shake the feeling that I'm behind everybody else my age and that I should be more settled and secure. Is that normal? I would like to be the kind of person with a family and a 401k. Instead, I'm the kind of person who accidentally overdrafts their checking account buying jeans. I have a really terrible day job that pays me no money and my apartment looks like a set from a John Waters movie. (I have the only New York apartment that actually feels like a mobile home inside.) In short, my life is a big mess.
29 is also too old to be a wunderkind playwright. Not that those exist, really. It's still on the young side, though, right? I'm trying to tell myself that. The one bright spot is that I'm still on the young end for my art, though that's because the industry is warped and totally messed up. (Only one more season of Youngblood though.) And, anyway, I can't actually make a living at playwriting. It's kind of a fake career. People with MFAs can kind of do it, but usually only by teaching or writing for television. (I could never teach because I'd be terrible at it but, god, I'd love to write for television. Call me, Gossip Girl!)
Thank the gods for They Boyfriend. If it weren't for him I'd probably stick my head in an oven. Speaking of The Boyfriend, he got me a massage and a pedicure at Nickel, so at least for two hours today I'll get to feel like somebody fancy. It's these little things that I'll remain grateful for.
I'm just listing the things I'm grateful for: The Boyfriend, my friends and family, my cat Augustus (Gus), The Management, my beloved theater bloggers, The Whitney, skinny jeans, soap operas, old pop songs about teenagers dying in car accidents, punk, teh gays, Paris, bad movies, Williamsburg and really just Brooklyn in general, my record collection, the hipster grifter, Youngblood, burritos, blow jobs, New Wave, French things, AA, the color purple (the actual color, not the book), F. Scott Fitzgerald, poorly conceived musicals, striped shirts and cardigans, steak.
And I'm grateful for Altered Images singing "Happy Birthday":
Okay, I'll stop being such an asshole about it now.
Also, gray area bigotry like this is the most frightening. it basically says: "Gosh, I hate fags too, but the death penalty seems too extreme. I feel uncomfortable when my own aggressive ignorance comes to its natural conclusion before my thoughtless eyes." Call me crazy, but I like my bigots out in the open where I can see them.
You'll have to excuse me, but I don't particularly feel like writing about obscure 80's New Wave or fashion atrocities right now. I'm still reeling from the piss poor decision the cowards of the New York Senate made this week.
I stumbled upon a really great blog written by one half of a married gay couple in California (one of the 18,000 that got legally married before Proposition 8 passed and gets to stay married.) He writes about gay rights in the context of America's history of affording rights to other minorities, and far more eloquently than I have been. Hell, I've just been writing "I hate America."
The whole post, and really the whole blog, is worth reading, but here's is what I loved so much:
We
are rightly known for our great freedoms and opportunity, but we guard
those benefits jealously; we do not like to share them. We shut our
borders to the needy who ask would come to us, we turn our backs on the
starving and the sick in faraway parts of the world, we ignore those in
our own cities who are so poor and downtrodden that they can no longer
even dream of the better life which the rest of us believe is our
birthright.
Really, is it any wonder that, when handed the
opportunity to shut down someone else’s dream at no cost to themselves,
our lawmakers jump at the chance? Is it any wonder that, offered the
chance to make themselves feel better by pushing down another group and
curtailing its rights, the majority of voters across the country do not
behave according to their best impulses, but immediately fall back into
their most shallow, fearful, selfish selves and vote against us?
For
the record, no group has ever been awarded rights by popular vote.
That’s right: the majority of us, no matter what we say in polls or
after the fact, has never once, in 234 years, willingly shared our
freedoms with any minority group. If Emancipation had been put to the
popular vote, do you think we would have given up buying and selling
human beings? Of course not — we love to have power over one another,
and besides, slavery was a great economic engine.
If mixed-race
marriage had needed the approval of the staid white masses, do you
think they'd have given it? Don’t be ridiculous. The same arguments
which are levied against gay marriage now were used for interracial
couples in just a few decades ago: against God's law, a redefinition
that betrays tradition, and — our ultimate bugaboo — bad for the
children. Sorry folks! Stick to your own color or stay single!
So
when it comes right down to it, getting upset over the New York Senate
vote against gay marriage this week just seems pointless. They behaved
callously, selfishly, and foolishly. But the truth is that all too
often such bad behavior is — no matter how many glowing, hopeful
patriotic speeches we make — the American Way.
I won't put words into his mouth, because he seems much more patriotic than I am and a hell of a lot nicer. It just reflects what i've been thinking about over the past year or so. Bill Maher has talked about it a lot on his show as well. To paraphrase: maybe America has the governemnt it deserves because when you get right down to it, we're just not a good people, plain and simple.
I briefly attended the incredibly frustrating rally in Time Square last night. I stayed for as long as I could take it, but honestly I'm sick to death of these prescribed and police accepted forms of protest. They have accomplished nothing. What good did it do to march around in a police approved circle last night? Also, tourists kept coming up to us and taking our picture.
People were laughing at us. That is how effective the protest was.
I'd really like to engage in guerrilla tactics and civil disobedience, but I'm not sure how or what to do. Quite frankly, I was in the mood to riot, not chant cute slogans like, "2-4-6-8! All these tourists can't be straight!" I know that some people feel that this behavior would hurt our cause, but our movement started with a riot. And, frankly, if the gays had torn up Manhattan last night, Manhattan had it coming.
I did contact the eight democratic senators who voted no on Marriage Equality, including Monseerate who slashes girls faces with broken bottles, and Joseph Addabbo, whose no vote was of particular annoyance being that gay money put him in office.
What should we do? Start targeting people's weddings? Chelsea Clinton's upcoming wedding would be a good place to start.
What would happen if The Boyfriend and I had a ceremony and just started calling each other husbands? What would be the legal ramifications of us filinbg our taxes as married, and then maybe not paying them if they made a problem for us? What if we filled out all paperwork as married? And then what if lots of gay couples in New York did the same?
There is another rally in Union Square tonight at 6:00. I'll be there. As frustrating as they are, it's better to go then to do nothing.
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.
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!
A few weeks ago The Boyfriend was walking to the subway when he ran across Michael Douglas and Shia Labeouf. A quick glance at IMDB informed him they were filming Wall Street 2: Money Never Dies.
That would be my answer if you asked me, "What did you buy while you were out this weekend?"
A few years ago I was known as quite the snappy dresser. Then, without getting too personal, my financial life came crumbling down and I had to worry about stupid, ugly things like eating. Things are getting slightly better, so I decided to treat myself to a pair of much needed boots and got two pair instead.
Exhibit A. These cute Florsheim boots.
Exhibit B. These Frye-esque boots (I totally can't afford the real thing right now.)
Hooray for beautiful things!
That said, it's really hard to be a pinko socialist and root for the fall of capitalism and the redistibution of wealth when shopping for cute stuff is SO MUCH FUN. At least if the revolution comes I'll look adorable and have great boots for kicking in windows.