Tarhearted.

DISPATCHES FROM THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST.

Sorry I went away. I went on vacation to visit my family in rural Washington State. It was strange, but ultimately pretty relaxing. It was strange because I haven't been home in years. Seriously, it's been years. I'm also one of those people that feels anxious when I leave New York, so I didn't actually calm down until right before I left Washington. Things about the Northwest I'd forgotten or just plain missed include:

-Rain. Good god, it didn't stop.

-Wolves. Wolves on everything. Every tee shirt, coffee mug, etc. Wolves or Native American women with earthen pots. Oh, or salmon art. Lots of salmon art.

-My childhood was much more blue collar and less suburban than i remember.

-When the ferry isn't your main source for getting around, it's really lovely and relaxing. I now see why tourists like the trip to Bainbridge Island. It beats the hell out of a subway ride.

-At some point in any conversation with my dad he will inevitably tell me that he's proud of me and that I'm his "greatest work of art."

-Seattle is an awesome city that i miss dearly. I wish I'd gotten more than one afternoon there. I toured the new Cornish College of the Arts campus, which is amazing, and got to talk with my old mentor who is the Theater Department Chair there.

-Riding in a car with my chain smoking mother is like being inside of a smoker's lung. All of my belongings have to be Febreezed.

-My nieces Karma and Amelia are the cutest, sweetest set of twinsies since Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny Devito.

-People get a lot older while you're not paying attention.

-Crazy Native American "S" towns: Suquamish, Snoqualmie, S'klallum, Sequim (pronounced "squim", Snohomish etc.

-People in rural Washington only decorate with brown.

-Dream catchers, dream catchers, dream catchers!

I didn't get to write as much as I would have liked. I worked on my soap opera a little and wrote two scenes of the play I'm writing for Playwriting Month. Its title is alternating between Hooray for Hot Dogs and The Sluts of Sutton Drive, and it's about two women in a small Washington town who take a stip-ercise course that changes their lives.

I'm glad to be back in New York, but missing home again.

FAG OUT ON SWIM WEAR!

I'm going to the country this weekend with Youngblood. Yes, the honest-to-god country! Don't ask me where. The Catskills or something. Anyway, a Youngblood member who'd been to said cabin chimed in that the location offered "good swimming". It was then I realized that I don't own a pair of swim trunks and suddenly, out of nowhere, I really, really wanted them.

A quick internet search confirmed my suspicions: in general, swim trunks are made for ugly and/or stupid dudes. Everything they're making is so, so ugly unless its designer and costs $200 or more. Being that i can't wear swim trunks to the bar I refuse to spend more than, say, $50. This is a problem. Also, the cut they're using right now is so blech.

I decided to go vintage. Look at these cute vintage dior trunks:

I love the button detail. These are so, so me and I want them really hard. Too bad these are a large instead of a medium. Boo!

I also found a designer I liked for under $100. I really, really like this pair they sell and will probably be buying them this week:

 

The same designer also does a swim set inspired by the 1920's men's suit. God, I want this so hard. I'd grow a mustache and lift weights on the boardwalk.

 

This might be more my speed anyway, being that I hate my body. I'd wear a turtle neck in the shower if I could.

The problem is that i won't be able to get any of these suits before the weekend, which means I'm just going to have to go to American Apparel or something like all the other shit bags. It's bad enough I have to expose my untanned flesh to my peers. FASHION FAIL.

I was looking at all of this on ebay when I came across the hottest swim set ever:

I was just about to hit "bid" when I realized that it was too small. Way too small. In fact it was Ken's original swim set. No fair! That plastic faggot gets all the good clothes.

I wish I were this dude. His suit is the hotness:

UPDATE.

It's been far too long since I've posted here and for that I apologize. I've had a lot going on, both personally and professionally.

In theater:

-Caitlin and the Swan closed to unanimous reviews (except for one dick bag) and sold out shows. It was the number one grossing show for Horse Trade Theatre Group so far this season! The Management rules!

-The Pavement Group, an awesome young theater company in Chicago, produced a workshop production of my new play MilkMilkLemonade. I flew out for a few days to see it and it was such an awesome experience. Not only is the city filled with adorable corn-fed indie boys, but the play is so much stronger than I thought it was and I hope to get a New York production at some point in the near future. I'm also totally stealing The Pavement Group's description of the play: A play about gay children, parasitic twins, and the lives of chickens. Yep. That about sums it up. I blogged about the experience here.

-My short play, Up With (Some) People, has been accepted to the Samuel French Festival! It will compete against forty other short plays this July for the grand prize: to be published in an anthology by Samuel French. Details to come!

-My short play, Save Yourself for You, was read by The Crown point Festival folks as part of their spring sampler and just got accepted to the EstroGenius festival. I'm an honorary chick! Details to come!

-I wrote a short play for a new theater company, The Drafts, and it ended up being totally lovely.

-I got rejected from the 11:11 Theater Company in Boston, FUSE Theater Comapny in Albuquerque, the HOT! Festival at Dixon Place, and a Pataphysics Worshop at The Flea. Ouch!

In on theater related news, I was crushed by the Supreme Court of California's decision regarding Prop 8 and attended the rally in New York. It was nice, but I'd like start seeing a little more civil disobediance. I don't really feel like begging or trying to "win over" dim wits and religious fools who don't feel I deserve equal rights. I'd rather just take them. This is part of the function of a Supreme Court; to protect minorities from the tyranny and stupidity of the masses. Civil rights are too important to ever be put up to a vote because they're just that. Rights. Something fixed that is not to be messed with. I know I'm probably being hyperbolic. I tend to get that way when I'm angry and hurt. But I couldn't help wishing the California GLBT would fucking riot. No. Instead we get another boring protest. And now it looks like we New York folks aren't getting our equality either.

Now I'm too angry and annoyed to even get to the racist and sexist retards attacking Sotomayor or the "pro-lifers" currently pretending they're just shocked -SHOCKED- by that American terrorist's murder of Dr. Tiller.

Those will have to wait until another post.

SEATTLE GAY BARS TARGETED.

Eleven gay bars in the Emerald City have been targeted with death threats. Full story here. Here is the letter that was sent to Re Bar, where this writer saw many an awesome gay show and where my first ever boyfriend (hi Freddy!) still hosts Frankenboot.

Fuck you. GAWD!

You didn't even put it on nice stationary.

See, I'm from the Seattle suburbs and I went to Cornish College of the Arts, which at the time was located right smack on Capitol Hill. Going to a small arts school on Capitol Hill for an eighteen year-old fag bohemian? BEST IDEA EVER.

If I know my Seattle queers, and I believe I do, this will do little to curb their appetite for going out dancing and boozing. In spite of what the retard author of this letter writes, it is because the gays love life that they go dancing/drinking/screwing, not the contrary, and no mouth breathing jerk off will keep them from it.

I, for one, would rather die than live in fear of my many inferiors.

VINDICATED!

This is pulled from a pretty mixed but fair review of The Scandal! over at Blog Critics, but I liked this part:

"The Management Company, one of the rising companies of the Horse Trade Theater Group, is establishing a distinct reputation for producing magical realist perspectives on broken pieces of Americana. More than any other company, The Management presents New York with theatrical visions of bleak American rural life. The cognitive dissonance of the two settings provided a minor controversy when The Management's last show, Joshua Conkel's The Chalk Boy, received universally positive reviews except for one particularly jaded review: the New York Times's. While The Management's reach is still small, the Times affair may have done more than anything else to catapult the Management to the status of one of New York's hottest hole-in-the-wall theater companies."

Hottest hole-in-the wall theater companies? Sounds like a glory hole, but I'll take the compliment.

Since it was first pointed out by The New York Times that I'm a totally contemptuous America-hater, I've given these issues a lot of thought. I mean, I can be a little contemptuous. I do run a blog called Tarhearted, for god's sake. Being snarky has been a raison d'etre since middle school or so. But do I hate small town America?

I still don't think I do. I passionately hate the corporatization the destroys the character of small town America. I've never met a Wal-Mart I liked! Anyway, when all this was being said about me there was a lot of discussion on this subject in general. Sarah Palin was giving speeches about the "real" America, as if my beloved New york was in Western Europe. The wingnuts at her rallies weren't helping to endear the "real" America to me, nor did the hideously cruel anti-gay ammendments in four states.

I started to notice, and not just in the media but in my private life as well, that the idea of what the "real" America actually is ("real", of course, being code for "better") moves in both directions. I can understand why somebody who lives in a small town might feel a little raw about The Chalk Boy, because it hurts my feelings when people come to New York only to take advantage of our great clutural institutions and then leave a week later saying how rude we all are.

New Yorkers aren't rude. We're lovely, thank you.

While I'd never be so presumptive to say that New York is the "real" America (because, really, how could I?), I can say that New York is pretty fucking awesome America. So please don't dump on my America and I won't dump on yours.

(I'm looking at you, Sarah Palin. We may not be the "real" America, but we've got all the real stores, right?)

PANDA HORROR!

Who on god's green earth hasn't wanted to hug a panda?

Pandas are over it, y'all. They don't need you to patronize them anymore. The next tweaked out Asian that tries to hug a panda will get straight up chomped on the damn cheek, just like this fool was.

Word to the wise: now you are the one who is endangered.

You have been warned.

GOD BLESS AMERICA.

My friend Ingo brought this to my attention:

(click for full image)

Ha ha ha ha ha!

See, political and economical reasons aside, this is a prime example of why I would never shop at Wal-Mart. I mean, let's be honest... that burrito stood a 50/50 chance of actually being a newborn.

HOME AGAIN.

I'm back from Los Angeles where I spent a long weekend in order to catch a production of my play, The Chalk Boy. I saw some old friends, did some shopping on Rodeo Drive, drank at L.A. hipster dives, and avoided the people in costumes by Mann's Chinese Theater.

The production was really good. It felt like a different play than the production in New York and was somehow more depressing than the show here. It may have to do with the design, which was very spartan and bare. The actresses (Sarah Rosenberg, Amy Golden, Sonora Chase, Claire Bocking) were top notch in the show and really took care of me.

The theater is inside The Alexandria, a spooky old abandoned hotel downtown. I wish I had thought to bring my camera, as it is the coolest place I've ever seen. Full of twisting staircases, bricked up doors, and rotting velvet, The Alexandria only enhanced the creepiness of the show. I want to live there and dress up like a dead British child all the time.

Anyway, some highlights included:

1. The Chalk Boy, duh. Now that it's behind me I can safely say I'm really proud of it. I wrote a fucking good play.

2. Eavesdropping on a table full of flakey L.A. Reiki students, one of whom said this: "It's like, when somebody has a blockage you can just tell them to, like, ask their future self about it because their future self will know what's wrong.

3. Spending lots of time at Intelligentsia in Silver Lake where my old friends Deanna and Kyle are hipster royalty. That coffee is fucking good!

4. Vintage shopping on Rodeo Drive whereupon my L.A. friend, holding feathered earrings, remarked, "I love feathers. Maybe I'll sell my car and just buy some feathers."

5. Not being in New York for a weekend.

6. Returning to New York after a weekend away.

You still have two more weeks to see The Chalk Boy in L.A.! Don't miss out!

LA-LA LAND.

I leave my beloved New York behind to travel to wilds of Los Angeles. I can't wait to see the production of The Chalk Boy there, which is in an abandoned hotel from the early 1900's. Spooky glamor!

I'm also hoping to take a tour of celebrity graves while I'm there. Spooky glamor times two!

Los Angeles, here I come!

As an added bonus, please enjoy Mynx singing my favorite L.A. themed song (except for "Walking in L.A." by Missing Persons). Ladies and gentlefags, I give you "I'm So L.A.":

CAMEL SPIDERS.

We need to end the war in Iraq, like, now.

In addition to being in what I like to call a "cluster fuck of idiocy" and being unjust in general, they have really gross things in Iraq. Things like Camel Spiders. Are you familiar with Camel Spiders? Oh, here's one:

I can't believe our men and women in the armed services have to deal with this. I'm literally shaking with fear after watching this video.  The human psyche has limits, even at war time.

NO. MORE. WAR.

NO. MORE. CAMEL. SPIDERS.