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Whatever You Do, Don't Think About Gangsters [Mar. 14th, 2008|09:46 pm]
[Tags|, , ]
[Current Location |Victorian Splendor, 11215]
[mood | good]
[music |Air Conditioner]

I attended a deeply unironic Tupperware Party in The Bronx last Saturday, where I welcomed Diane back from her recent trip abroad; she and The Republican had gone to Hong Kong and Thailand for a couple of weeks. Now she was in a room full of gay men, Italian moms, babies and burpable cocktail shakers--nothing like being reincorporated into your host society at an event that's at least as disorienting as international travel.

* * *

Diane was able to visit Hong Kong Disneyland during her trip, and she tells me that their Space Mountain kicks our Space Mountain's ass. Indeed, the majority of our post-trip discussion related to this portion of her visit.

It's true, in my family we fetishize every potential travel destination in terms of its proximity to theme parks.

* * *

Last week, I had one of those awful days where the book was the only thing in my brain. Story ideas were bouncing around my skull like Lotto balls, but there was no winning number in sight—I finally forced myself to engage in a purgative screening of BLADE RUNNER, and take some time off from writing. Not for long, just a week. Even that was easier said than done: My choice of “leisure reads” included a book about organized crime in Hell's Kitchen, a book about criminal societies in Polish prisons, and a book about an NBA coach...who once worked undercover in the Mafia.

Still, I did what I could to get clear for a few days. I read BARRYMORE. I started reading some social anthropology books that, for once, had nothing to do with gangsters. Thankfully, I also had some brand-new writing assignments at work, not the least among them will become my first published book! Don't get too excited—it's a kids' guidebook to an online community for virtual pets. But it's money.

And if I play my cards right, pretty soon I'll be writing guidebooks for thirtysomething geeks who think they're Orcs.

You know, my people.

* * *

Tomorrow night the Brooklyn Family Theatre closes for good, with a little farewell show that Phill has been putting together. It's going to be serious. If I don't glue my contacts in, they will surely wash away.
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You Are My Country Now [Sep. 23rd, 2007|07:54 pm]
[Tags|, , , ]
[Current Location |Victorian Splendor, 11215]
[mood | good]
[music |Ethan & Phill Rehearsing EDGAR]

Diane and I visited my mother and her boyfriend Peter over in Massachusetts last weekend. A night drive from The Bronx to Rhode Island, followed by a day of visits to Boston and Providence. Two new cities in one afternoon was a bit like being in a high-budget science fiction film, where every twenty minutes you're in a different world.

Boston: Planet of college students! We pahked the cah in an Italian neighborhood that makes New York's Little Italy look way too little and not all that Italian. The architecture was so untouched, I felt out of place without a pistol wrapped in hand towels. We trolled around a historic area that, like South Street Seaport in Manhattan, had long ago morphed into an outdoor mall. (How can the CHEERS bar not have Boddingtons?!) Then we used a trolley map to take an informal tour of the city in our vehicle.

Finally, it was off to get our Indiana Jones on at an attraction called TOMB, over near Fenway Stadium--a cross between a haunted house and a PC adventure game. You get "sealed" in an Egyptian crypt, and have to find your way out by solving these neato giant puzzles, some of which are actually mighty challenging. Diane at TOMB...


Diane complained that we made it through too quickly, on account of our entire expedition being comprised of nerds. "I looked around at the top of the game, and it was like, all your classmates from Bronx Science." We validated our parking at Best Buy, where we waited on line with the cutest bruiser geek ever. Then we hopped in the car, blasted Yoko Ono, and headed off to...

Providence: Planet of romance! Every year, Providence hosts this installation called The Water Fire, where equidistant fire bowls get mounted in a line along the middle of this river that runs through town. The thing draws kissy couples like flies, and Diane and I felt significantly peer-pressured into feigning significant otherhood. Forget Valentine's Day--this was the ultimate "make singles feel like losers" event.

I feel like I have to come back with Phill next year, or the torches win.

* * *

Next day, we visited The Big E, New England's answer to the State Fair. We paid a buck to see a hog the size of a sofa. We toured funhouses so uninsurable it's a wonder we still have toes. Here is Diane looking confused outside our favorite one of them:


Here I am, enjoying a ride on a giant tilting tugboat:


And here the spirit of the Old West lives on in curly fry form:

As a vegetarian, Diane had a lot of contempt for the people watching the chicks hatch, and we both had a lot of contempt for the people buying all the confederate merch. I had nothing but love, however, for the old guy in the stovepipe hat who talked for what felt like an hour about the history of the wood plane, over in the crafts pavilion. He knew more about that fricking wood plane than any of us will ever know about anything. Gina was similarly smitten with the music of the resident harpist.

This promotional Marine inflatable is missing his legs below the knees:


So many memories: The guy selling the stacking toys, on drugs. Me, mistaking a giant fuzzy toy for a severely deformed child. The vents at the back of the restroom, making it sound like the salsa band was in there with you. Farmer Dave, enthusiastically singing rock songs about cows and chickens...with glassy eyes, and not from crying either.

* * *

When I returned to work on Monday, I felt like I'd left a piece of me back in Massachusetts. I'd go back and get it but the giant hog has surely eaten the thing by now.

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We Have Never Lived in The Castle [Sep. 12th, 2007|01:36 pm]
[Tags|, , , , ]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood | good]
[music |OCEANS by The Format]

I am in a great mood, and it’s a miracle.

I will tell you all the reasons I am in a great mood before I enumerate the reasons I should not be in one, in case they convince me to change my mind. 

* * *

First off, this is a fantastic day at my job. The authors of SEND came in to do a presentation for my department on email etiquette, touching on the major points of their terrific book. It was a thrill to meet them, I got to make a ‘guest appearance’, and the whole shebang was a huge hit with my people here.

Toward the end of it, I had to run upstairs to get another big meeting going, and I got to experience one thing that I love about my work: It’s really, really hard. On days like today, when I am juggling 100 things and have multiple overlapping responsibilities…well it feels just like World Eight of SUPER MARIO BROTHERS, and I kinda love that. (Sealing the metaphoric deal, my cel phone went off in the elevator with another important meeting I had to tend to—and I realized, appropriately enough, that its current ring is the in-game music to CASTLEVANIA.)

Add to all this, Diane and I are driving up to Rhode Island on Friday night. My mother wants us to visit her and Peter up there, but we can sense that she just wants to say we came, and then run off with Peter alone. This is fine by me: It means that Diane and I can really spend the weekend together driving around an unfamiliar place, which is awesome.

* * *

Diane, for the record, has this new boyfriend that she really likes. She made it a point of telling me how glad she is that they are dating…and the very next day, everyone she has either dated or had a crush on in the last two years contacted her to get back in touch.

We surmise that this proves all men are psychic…but they are psychic the same way Diane is psychic.

* * *

Now, on to the reasons I should not be happy, which I will keep brief, lest I get unhappy again, like I have been lately:

First, the world is a phantasmagorical nightmare of violence, horror and strategic inadequacy. While I am thankful to live in one of its designated cool zones, I keep thinking of my little world like that city in Ken Russel’s THE DEVILS—a tiny bastion of pseudosanity, fringed by a borderless landscape of psychotics, and liberally peppered with the kooks besides.

Second, this novel I am writing, which feels totally do-able now and seems like it could be brilliant…feels more often than not like an impossible dream. Last night, I was ready to cry. I have to finish this book soon or I will bite my fingers off. The only good thing is that it won’t go away.

Third, Phill had a lousy weekend, and we are a team, so I did too. This weekend he had to deal with a lot of socializing, which he hates.  He has also quit smoking, if you didn’t know that.  It does not make it easier on him.  He fels like crap, he feels bad for burdening me, I feel bad for him feeling bad...

Fourth and finally, there’s The Castle. 

* * *

The title of this post, aside from its loving reference to Shirley (Miss Jackson if you’re nasty) refers to Victor's favorite club. We'll call it The Castle, both because I probably shouldn't tell you its actual name, and because I've decided that, well, it should really be called The Castle. 

I’ve been there twice now.

The first time I visited, it was an after-party on the day of The Gotham Knights' boot camp. There were drinking games and singalongs, the latter activity marrying the "yo ho ho" quality of traditional rugby songs with references to queer sex and PROJECT RUNWAY.

It was like being adrift on a gay pirate ship.  There was one guy who had a tattoo of Jesus on his back (that he has no idea how he got). Another guy was a former contestant on SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE. (“Can you?” a Captain asked him. “Apparently not,” he admitted. He was challenged to a dance-off anyway.)

Colorful characters aside, The Gotham Knights are decent enough, even by my somewhat-socially-conservative-yet-somehow-also-gay standards.  I hate to break hearts here, but when these guys refer to rugby as a brotherhood, they mean one without incest.

* * *

That party was in the afternoon, when only the first floor of the club was open.  As such, The Castle was in low gear. 

The second time I went to The Castle was with Victor, and it was this past Friday night, which was, so help me, Fetish Night.  Altogether now, folks:

NEVER AGAIN!

* * *

All three floors were open for business this time.  Each had a theme, and a couple of activities/businesses besides, like a pervy Renfair: Erotic dancing on the first floor, fetish gear for sale on the second, and on the third floor, barbers. 

The barbers confuse me most. What’s next, a green grocer? Dry cleaning? Travel agency?  Cel phone providers?  Why barbers, anyway? Is a fresh buzzcut somehow sexier? Or does a haircut count as a souvenir, like the scratch I got from Fetish Night’s overzealous nipple-pinching pseudo-Teutonic drag emcee, that one with the too-long fingernails?  (TB test to follow.)

Sports Bar flatscreens everywhere show hardcore porn in place of football, red lighting occurs with Forest-of-Fear-frequency, and all the chain link and exposed brick made me think less of HELLRAISER than actual hell.  Would-be sex-sandwichers, Satanist go-go-dancers in jockstraps, people getting beltwhipped in cages...

I know, I know, it sounds like fun--but after an evening of that kind of party, I felt sick and out of place.  I wanted to go invisible, like when I used to watch UNREAL TOURNAMENT.  The German drag queen taunted me, "You're zo bohring!"

"I am boring!" I said, confidently even.

I don't belong everywhere, and I didn't belong there.  As the weekend wore on, I felt like I had a hangover that spread to my very soul.  I bought a gospel record.  I tried airborne, not to mention antibiotic ointment.

Nothing worked...except coming back here to my job.  Isn't that absurd?  I was actually looking forward to Monday.

I guess it's because of my workaholism.  I've become a very "homework before cartoons" type of person.  Getting back to my desk on Monday morning is like starting up that hill again, toward a weekend that I hope will not kick off with anything remotely resembling the first fifteen minutes of IRREVERSIBLE.

* * *

Later, Victor called to tell me what a nice time he'd had.
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First Chicago [Sep. 3rd, 2007|01:41 am]
[Tags|, , , , ]
[Current Location |Victorian Splendor, 11215]
[mood | amused]
[music |UNGUIDED by The New Pornographers]

I visited my friend Val in Chicago last week.   The drive to the airport Friday morning, gliding down the Belt Parkway through a mist worthy of Silent Hill, was well worth the price of the entire trip.  Such a surreal start. 

Then again, I love going places.  Getting places sure, fine...but a favorite fantasy of Diane and mine has always been the notion of renting a car and just GOING, with no destination in mind.  

After renting the van for the Cohan trip this past May, for instance, Diane and I wandered into The Jersey Gardens Mall for burgers, and I got into a tug-of-war with a manicurist who insisted on repairing her bloody hangnail. (He lost.) I still remember that aimless detour as a highlight of the trip.

A trip that's ALL detours? Sounds like paradise.

* * * 

Chicago lived-up to its strong opening: Double-decker streets, a river ploughing through downtown, elevated train tracks that maintain eye-contact with the architecture, and a clear blue lake that was, when we visited, positively infested with sailboats.   The guide on the trolley tour told us that the weather doesn't get any better in The Windy City, and I could believe him. Everyone was acting like they were in the afterlife.

One thing I appreciated immediately was that everything seemed to be its proper size. New York City all looks so compact to me now. Our restaurants, even our pubs, are all so tiny and hovel-like...I almost don't think we should be allowed to use vowels in their names.

I also appreciate the way the style of Chicago's buildings looks relatively homogenous, like there's an art director on staff--or even, dare I say it, a city council?

* * *

Val was a perfect host, though she stopped talking almost entirely by the second day, which made me stop talking almost entirely, making us fall into behavior patterns reminiscent of aged married couples. Sunday night, I kid you not, we sat in bed with the TV on, me reading a book, she doing a crossword.

We got out enough, though. Saw Magnolia Electric Company at The Empty Bottle (incredible), Chris Knight at Schuba's (delightful), and TOO MUCH LIGHT MAKES THE BABY GO BLIND (hilarious this week) at The Neo Futurists.

We also caught the film PRIVATE PROPERTY at The Music Box, a movie theatre that looks like Disney's TWILIGHT ZONE TOWER OF TERROR. The film was about the perils of homeownership and overparenting, and it carried the Isabelle Huppert "totally fucked-up" seal of approval. 

* * *

PRIVATE PROPERTY gave me a panic attic about my home with Phill in The Dacks, and all it represented: This embodiment of our relationship that needs maintaining in the tricky world of financing, home improvement, insurance claims, nosy neighbors, kudzu, silverfish and mold.

It may seem sci-fi of me, but I hate the thought of something in the 'real world' potentially affecting our inner lives. Sure, I know we're (sigh) real, and I know that human beings have expiration dates.  But the very notion of A HOUSE possibly mucking things up?  It just seems unfair to me, as well as borderline absurdist. Like being backstabbed by an armoire...in the soul.

* * *

I was itching to babble about all this after the movie, but Val was too pissed off at its protagonists to talk, so we went shopping instead. 

One thing's for sure: HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG is coming off the Netflix cue.
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Close One [Aug. 19th, 2007|08:34 pm]
[Tags|, , ]
[Current Location |Victorian Splendor, 11215]
[mood | scared]
[music |MIDSUMMER NEW YORK by Yoko Ono (so help me)]

Marie narrowly avoided a car wreck last night, swerving away from an out-of-control tow truck that ran a stop, coming straight at her. The tow truck still totalled her car, but all she wound up getting treated for was a badly bruised leg. She may have whiplash, too.

Hey, she's alive, and she wasn't seriously injured, so whiplash is like a slap on the wrist. Still, we are all very freaked-out right now, and the "what-ifs" are torturing Marie, who has basically saved her own life.

* * *

Diane, the very moment before receiving the phonecall about the accident, was dreaming that she and Marie were picking out a new car together, cue emphatic violins.

This makes Diane a psychic, albeit a pretty useless one...
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Zombie Reunion [Aug. 17th, 2007|10:35 am]
[Tags|, , , ]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood | confused]
[music |WOMAN POWER by Yoko Ono (so help me)]

You may have noticed that suddenly everybody’s names have changed on my blog. This is because I googled one of my relatives the other day, and found that my reference to her messy breakup with a law enforcement officer was the top hit. Not the first thing I’d want someone else to find upon surfing my sib.
 
So here is the new “key” for my close family and friends who have been, or are in the process of being, re-named on this blog…
 
Nu Metal Fan Sister Engaged to Brandon = Marie
 
David Bowie / Swedish Pop Fan Sister Who Dated Cop = Diane
 
6’8” Dutch Ex-Boyfriend = Gunther
 
* * *
 
The family reunion in Connecticut was wonderful.  Like being in a photograph. Lots of people we hadn’t seen for years, at this huge yellow house on a hill, the home of a man who is related to me…in some way that I would need a degree in quantum physics to comprehend.
 
My uncle Dave was there, and it’s always nice to see him, since he and my father are so similar, both in looks and behavior. He’s like half an apparition.  My cousin Chris was also there, visiting from California with his wife and his one-year-old son, whose birthday we were celebrating along with Dave's.

Chris talked with Brandon and Marie and I about zombie movies--pretty much the only safe place to talk about such fare among the CT clan, who I’m realizing are generally more conservative than I thought.  Chris explained that his father had never approved of his zombie movie fandom, but that it went way back, before the current resurgence.

Hearing this, I realized that it must have been Chris who, decades ago, had first told me about NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. All I know is that I heard about it at one of these very reunions, when I was way too young to comprehend the entertainment value of flesh-eating undead. It would be years before I could get over even the idea of such a film existing, let alone work up the courage to watch one.

(RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD was my first, and I only saw it at the urging of my father, who told me it was hilarious.  And it was.)

Marie and I are comforted by this strain of horror movie fandom that clearly pervades our family.  I can't speak for our Italian-American relatives, but the Connecticut Lithuanians seem to have a secret strain of it.  We stand around and talk about horror movies at yard parties.  We trade opinions, argue semantics.

It is our baseball.

* * *
 
Oh, and I seem to have this other cousin who was in the navy, and who I swear I have never met before. Why don’t I remember ever talking to this guy? What is he, The Key?
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Schlumpy and Carmilla [Aug. 10th, 2007|10:14 am]
[Tags|, ]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood | cynical]
[music |THE CON by Tegen and Sara]

Tara and I had this talk at the office, about cutting friends loose. Exactly when do you do it? When do you turn off the empathy-output, shut down the excuse-intake, and accept that “the good person down on their luck who is trying their best” is actually “the total douche”?
 
We had this talk last Friday, and like the beginning of a poorly-written television drama, the theme carried through my weekend.
 
* * *
 
For instance, when I arrived home last Friday night, I found an incendiary email in my inbox from an old college pal, declaring our friendship dead. News to me! Apparently the guy had been upset with me for upwards of two years (?!) and never thought to say a thing about it…before sending me the postmortem.
 
I decided to hear the man out, so we had a long talk. Over the phone, natch. (Wusspuss!) The conversation threatened to go monologue, what with me ranting and raving about his starving our friendship to death behind my back. He countered by claiming that it had been zombie-walking for years.  That my calling or emailing him to hang out was merely the convivial death rattle of a headless social chicken.
 
Dammit!  He was right about that, in a way. I hadn’t written him off as a friend, but I’m realizing now I'd long ago given up on respecting him.  I got exasperated, I guess.  He’d whine about hating his entry-level IT job, but never do anything about hating it. (He finally got fired, after over six years.)  He’d talk incessantly about opening a theatre, how much he wanted to start his own theatre, gee it would be great to start a theatre... (He never started a theatre, never even tried.)  In fact, his shoving me away remains the first proactive thing I’ve ever seen him do.

But what do I say now? “Keep up the good work?”

* * *
 
Diane’s friend M is in a different kind of trouble with herself.  She was going to come to my family reunion in Connecticut with Diane and me last weekend, but that plan came to a screeching halt once M staggered off the train, having emptied a medium bottle of vodka on the way to New York City.  There's no doubt that some little gremlin deep in her mind knew that making a bad first impression on the big brother would be an effective way to sabotage herself.

Mission accomplished.

Diane and I had to hold the girl up just to get her out of Grand Central Station.  We propped her up against a construction barrier and spent two hours asking, then begging, then bullying her into rehydrating (two bottles of water, four of Gatorade and a large iced coffee before she could walk on her own) while she berated us and found bizarre Regan-McNeil-esque ways to make Diane cry, using several varieties of emotional blackmail.

M seems fond of that "contemporary drama" trick where you intentionally fuck things up to test the limits of your friends.  I guess the idea is, with a little luck, you can finally push them away for good.
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Washrooms [Jul. 27th, 2007|04:51 pm]
[Tags|, , , ]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood | blank]
[music |RING RING by Mika]

Saw Spottiswoode and His Enemies the other night with deliciouscalista, Perry and Victor. A powerful band, like Tindersticks with a gospel edge--bass player, keyboards, trumpet, saxophone, three back-up singers, and this amazing instrumentalist who handled just about everything else. As for the lead vocalist, I felt like I was going to find myself living in a film noir after the show, transported there by his scorched-velvet tones. (Though his new beard makes him look disturbingly similar to Andrew Carver, the fictional Vegas headliner/sex-criminal of SHOWGIRLS.)

My phone started buzzing immediately after the show, and I picked it up to find it was Diane, who had just broken with her cop boyfriend. Considering that this was a man who had qualms about ever admitting they were actually dating, the break-up was not exactly bad news. Still, she was upset, and should have been. I walked around downtown while we caught up and ragged on him. 

Diane knows what she did to scare the guy off, but she's also aware that it's better to screw up an already-screwed-up relationship than make the same mistakes on one that's heading somewhere special.

I'm not judging.  As Camille Paglia once said, there's "no law in the arena".

* * *

When we got off the phone, I realized our conversation had distracted me from the fact that I needed to visit the loo...immediately.  So I ducked into the nearest place, which happened to be one of those hole-in-the-wall gay bars where the bathroom is only secondarily, or even tertiarily, about the plumbing.

I wasn't too worried about that--even the sleaziest members of the "cruising community" are generally decorous, even in places like that one, where urinals practically have footlights. I'm sure that being 6'5" has worked to my advantage toward proof of the forthcoming theory, but my feeling is that, if you send the signal that you're there for traditional purposes, you'll get in and out ungroped. (Though I did notice upon exiting the club that my pants were covered with glitter. When did that happen?!)

Victor was less successful staying out of trouble that night, since he's either unskilled at blocking his "grope" signal, or too attuned to everyone else's transmissions. Indeed, after Diane's call broke the gang up, he went to a certain club whose name shall remain unmentioned in these pages, for fear the gay mafia would accuse me of breaking Omerta.

He called me when he got out of there, at 2am.  Apparently, he'd lost a sock in their bathroom to a toe freak who insisted on keeping it as a fetish.
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Ringside [Jun. 29th, 2007|04:40 pm]
[Tags|, , , ]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood | adrift]
[music |OUTSIDE BLASTS by Circulatory System]

Our bathroom at Victorian Splendor had been due for an overhaul for some time--mold behind the tiles was actually beginning to creep straight through to the hallway, and you don't have to be Bianca Jagger to get worked-up about something like that. Unfortunately, when Phill and I got back from the COHAN tour (during which major work was supposed to have been completed) we found that the room wasn't renovated at all...just missing.   It looked like a padded cell without the pads, and the rest of the apartment? Like one or more of Russel Mulcahy's videos for Duran Duran--sheets of plastic hanging everywhere, plaster dust everywhere else.

This made unpacking seem futile, so we didn't unpack...which made dishwashing seem vaguely unnecessary, so we stopped doing dishes...which made laundry seem like plain old overkill. Soon enough, we were a Thunderdome shy of MAD MAX 3, but seldom around long enough to develop an allergy to our own domestic inertia.  (My last weeks of rehearsal with 31 Down's UNIVERSAL ROBOTS began the night after we got back, as did major work on Phill's final project with his special ed school in Harlem.)

Only now are we clawing our way out of the mess, going into impromptu cleaning/organizing “fits” during the last week, each in our respective bailiwicks.

* * *

Phill's project with the school was originally planned as a theatrical event, based on MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. Scheduling proved to be an issue, as did orchestrating bilingual pseudoShakespeare, so Phill decided to go a different route, working with the students to put together a silent film. They took turns shooting it in a nearby park, and spent the last couple of weeks editing it together with them, and adding special effects. Kids in wheelchairs wielding lightning, what's not to love?

As for UNIVERSAL ROBOTS, we eked past the ‘opening night’ finish line last night…sans air conditioning.  I’m going to urge the directors to reconsider their decision to perform without it. I mean, it’s not exactly all-singing all-dancing entertainment, more like enforced meditation.  Something that’s easier to achieve, for audience and actor alike, when your body is not basted with sweat.

My favorite scene involves a watering can, mounted on a hacked Roomba, tying a naked actor to a pole with a long piece of string. It’s one of those “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” moments: Am I really seeing this?

My scene requires no such exposure, but does see me acting with an extra knuckle on each finger--extensions that I purchased from Tannen's Magic Shop on 34th Street. (After gradually depleting the store entirely of the things, I'm now known among their sales staff as "The Finger Guy".)

I’m told I look tres Tim Burton.

* * *

After an unexpected argument at Rory Dolan's about Diane's policeman boyfriend (and yes, I started it…let's just say they named the personification of totalitarianism ‘Big Brother’ for a very good reason) we cooled my "Hyde side" down over bananaritas and caught the all-girl rollerderby at City College.

I WANNA BE SEDATED starting blaring from the loudspeakers, echoing through the gymnasium rafters. “When The Ramones come out it’s usually time to start…” one fan explained, and so it began: The Brooklyn Bombshells vs. the Manhattan Mayhem, in a fight-to-the-finish that we witnessed ringside. (Well, in the seats closest to ringside, anyway…if we’d sat ringside for real, on the floor of the rink itself, we’d have run the risk of getting hit by a stray skater…a risk offset only partially by the derby management's offer of a free t-shirt to any onlooker involved in a crash.)

The game of rollerderby is relatively easy to follow.  I’m still at a loss comprehending how the penalties are tallied, but the rules are certainly simpler than those of rugby.  One thing I was not prepared for, however, was how slow the movement was.  Somehow you expect the players to move lightning-fast, but there’s low maneuverability at high speeds, so the entire competition occurs as if it’s in instant replay. You get used to it, yet it’s odd at first, as though someone’s slipped you a NyQuil mickey.

The costumes and pageantry are the other half of the experience, recalling drag for their playfulness, with women who are very real, however surreal their personas.  (Captain Sweet Sherry Pie, Bitchie Slambora, Gogo Baibai…you get the idea.) Hard Anya, a favorite player of ours, entered at the top of the game waving a pirate flag. Other favorites: Sweet Sherry Pie, the captain of the Manhattan Mayhem, who scored points for game prowess and style to spare.  And Fisti Cuffs, a transfer from Tucson rollerderby, who has a potent rivalry with fellow-Arizonian Hard Anya.

I competed in the halftime air guitar show, and thought I did pretty well—especially since the song, Danzig’s MOTHER, is the only one I’ve ever played on GUITAR HERO. I had all my fake chords down!

Still, I didn’t even make it to the final three, and two of the guys who did make it there were so lousy, I started to wish that the judges were trying to get in their pants, knowing that any dude as bad at air guitar as these sots couldn’t possibly be worth much in the kip.

* * *

Speaking of the kip…or at least the dungeon...

I love infamous books, and I recently scored myself a copy of the especially infamous MR. BENSON, known among the initiated as the gay STORY OF O. Alas, I found it so hilariously funny that I couldn't get past page two, which certainly puts me in alignment with its author (who says he wrote it as a joke) but puts me way out-of-step with most of the people who enjoyed it.

Geting a copy of this book was not easy, so I couldn't just toss the thing...and it's not entirely appropriate for leaving on the stoop in Windsor Terrace. So I decided to give the book to someone I knew would appreciate it more than me: Victor. He likes dirty movies, why not dirty books? Plus, he's a huge fan of another unintentionally funny writer: Dan Brown.  It was Victor's birthday anyway. I got him a Pierce Brosnan movie, and threw in the copy of MR. BENSON as a bonus track.

A week later, Victor calls me from a cruise to tell me he can't believe how much he's...ahem...enjoying the book. And barely a month later he tells me he's just spent his evening at the infamous leather bar THE EAGLE. During pride day, where should Victor wind up? THE BOOTS & SADDLE.

"It's because you got me THAT BOOK!" he said in a conversation later that evening.

Reading: It's fundamental, people.
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The One [May. 25th, 2007|02:08 pm]
[Tags|, , ]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood | happy]
[music |FACES IN THE HALL by Gym Class Heroes]

Phill was upstate most of this week putting a kids' workshop together, a curtain-raiser for the Cohan show in June. He was out of the picture just long enough for Rufus to start treating me like The Man, though it was hardly an automatic transition.

Phill brought Rufus home in the first place, three years ago--and he’s certainly around the apartment (and thereby the dog) a hell of a lot more than me. So naturally, when I returned on the first night of Phill's absence, Rufus ran directly past my ankles to look for his de-facto master. When the dog gave up a few minutes later, he came back to the bedroom, and took one long look at my face.

Then he hung his head down low, and barfed. It was like he was explaining his feelings for me right there, in puke.

* * *

The second night I made sure to come home earlier than I had the evening prior. I even tried bribery: A squeaky cat, a pack of fresh rawhide chews…forgetting, as I often do, that collies aren’t big on change. He looked at the toy like it might pull a switchblade.  As for the fresh rawhide chews, they merely left him unimpressed.  Even after I chewed one myself and left it on the bed, to pique his curiosity in human culture. (Rufus is notoriously homo-sapien-curious…)

Finally, last night, I got the welcome I expected.  Rufus didn’t stop playing with me to watch the door, like he had the previous evenings. He sat in my lap while I read a book about email etiquette on the deck, and remained in place for petting. By now I guess he assumed Phill had been eaten by a predator.

Then, barely an hour into my Alpha stint, Phill was back and Rufus acted like he'd seen a resurrection. Within five minutes, all my work was undone. My commands turned back into suggestions. My lap, briefly prime real estate, was a shack in the sticks again.

I had returned to being what I’ve always been to Rufus these three years: The Other Dog.

* * *

During May, a month in which rehearsals for UNIVERSAL ROBOTS commenced while rehearsals for the Cohan show increased, I still found a lot of time to play hooky.

Diane and I drove with her pal Kelly to the LI Rugby Tournament to catch The Gotham Knights in action, and listened to the new Bjork album on the way. With its dense beats and recurring nautical themes, it soon felt like we weren’t just driving to Long Beach, but driving into the music.

While there, we play-tested a Nerf dueling game I’m working on…just like those duels in BARRY LYNDON, with a few adjustments--most notably, players being allowed to shoot each other multiple times. Like the zombie film, Nerf has perfected carnage by introducing a matrix where a target can be killed over and over again. A new reason to eliminate death from our entertainment: It stops violence.

As does having your leg twisted, which Diane and I learned firsthand at the rugby game, where players were dragged off the field repeatedly, one via ambulance.  The Orthopedist team was there, and this time around the Knights beat them.

Though when you're talking rugby, I guess in one sense the Orthopedists always win...

* * *

The amount of fun Diane and I have had during our time with The Knights has been absurd. Part of it is, we’re at last able to enjoy watching a competitive game outside of the video arcade.  We finally ‘get’ why competition sports are an international institution.

Then there’s the game of rugby itself, which has truly captured our admittedly twisted imaginations…we can’t even believe it’s legal to do this!  It's like European football, mixed with a European football riot.

Finally, there’s the cultish community that surrounds the game. And the fact that the gay team seems to fit rather naturally into it. There’s no sense of ‘oh jeez here come the fags’ among the guys on the other teams.

Well, to be totally honest, Diane and I did overhear one really young Island rugger wigging out about The Knights to a friend in a whispered rant--one that became faintly hilarious to listen to, since he refused to say the word 'gay' or use any of its many synonyms. Instead he'd just mute the word out entirely, the way they used to mute expletives on the Big Apple Movie: “You mean they’re _____?! We gotta play a team that’s frickin ____ ?!?!" That particular moron needn't have worried; his team didn’t last the morning.

As for The Knights, they did well in their first two games, but finally went up against a team of brick shithouse butterflies: They moved like the hippos in FANTASIA, with comparable BMIs. “What’s the score?” somebody asked a Gotham Knight spectator halfway through the game. “Zero to something enormous.”

The Knights weren’t fazed. They finished the game and celebrated the same way they would have had they taken the title, another rugby tradition.

* * *

I found this stuck to a pole on the corner of Spring and Broadway:

It says, "LOST!  HELP!!  This little bear, very precious to a 3-year-old little girl has been lost the 25 of April.  If you have any information please contact 917-XXX-XXXX.  REWARD!  And yes he is THE ONE!!!  Thank you for your help."

Here's a close-up of the bear:

And yes, in case you were wondering, he is THE ONE!!!
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Gotham Days [Apr. 30th, 2007|05:41 pm]
[Tags|, , , , , ]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood | nervous]
[music |TRY by Michael Penn]

"I'm feeling a bit down," I told Diane in a phonecall last Monday night.

"Is it about The Guy?" she asked.

The Guy in question is not who you'd think; that is, it's not MY guy. Rather, it's an as-yet-undefeated boss from RESIDENT EVIL 4, one who looks like a cross between a centipede and Matthew Barney. Last time Diane and I played RE4, not only did he kick my ass, he literally separated it from my torso with pincers.

"No, it's not about The Guy," I explained. "It's about everybody moving away."

Diane and Marie and I had spent the better part of the Sunday prior together: We ate at a German/Mexican (?!) place just shy of the waterfront down on Pennyfield, caught a screening of VACANCY at New Roc City, and rounded out the evening with a drive-by tour of the reception hall where Christina plans to host her Halloween wedding in 2008.

Then, as we headed back to The Throgg, Marie mentioned her plans to move to Florida with Brandon's family once they were married. This created a domino-effect of sad news, leading us to discuss Mom's impending departure for Rhode Island (to live with Peter) and Diane's possible move to Albany (where her friend M lives).

I hadn't heard about any of this, and I was kinda stunned, but not surprised--in fact, I'd just that morning been coming in on the subway, thinking about how weird and cool it was to live such a short ride away from my family, and wondering how much longer it could last. Forever, I supposed.

Nope.

On the bright side, Diane has since assured me that, speculation aside, she's more likely to resist the siren song of relocation, and stay within screaming distance of me. Otherwise she doubts she could maintain her sanity.

The feeling, as she's likely noticed by now, is mutual.

As for that Barneypede, there’s always next time.

* * *

This Sunday, Diane and I joined forced with Joshua Gee for an afternoon of rugby spectatorship on Randall's Island. The team was Gotham Knights, a local gay team, playing against a couple of straight teams...one sponsored, I shit you not, by Columbia Presbyterian Orthopedics.

The experience of watching these games, and hanging out with these teams, was a riot and a revelation.

For one, rugby itself is absurd, the most violent thing out there, like a demolition derby without cars. Its action makes football on both sides of the pond seem plodding by comparison, and American football in particular seem downright bureaucratic, not to mention timid. (Padding? Helmets? Please! The most these guys do is wrap their heads in duct tape to fend off cauliflower-ear.) Following the action made me feel like a paparazzi, as I ran from one end of the field to the other just keeping up.

As for Gotham Knights, I was kinda fascinated by them. From their behavior on the field, you would never know it, but quite a few of them aren’t just gay: They’re fags.

Oh sure, you had your ‘straight-acting’ guys on the team, but I was particularly inspired by the floppy duck-walkers, when they got out there and just transformed into these honest-to-God rugger monsters. It was the next best thing to lycanthropy, and though I still don’t know for sure if these guys were dropping something from their personality or donning it when they got on that field, smart money is on the former.

In fact, when I think about how everyone in that game, straight or gay, seemed to become so alike in competition, it’s those transitions back to whoever they were before the game…whether into a gay nonprofit webtech or a heterosexual ER intern…that seemed the most like dress-up.

This inspiring little revelation opened up a range of bizarre and hilarious possibilities to me, not the least of which was that of my joining in the carnage myself, just for S&G.

We’ll see: I frankly don’t think a guy who dances as badly as I do has any business playing a competitive sport.

Then again, I’ve always admired werewolves.

Still to come:

What’s with the two straight-as-an-arrow Australian guys who act as rugby gurus and team leaders for the Knights? The ladies loved them, and I sense a complex strategy at work here. Not on the field, either!

And WHO IN HELL were the pipe-smoking guys in zoot suits that picked up the muttonchop dude in that used car after the B game?

With a pilot like this, I have to say we’re picking up the series. So stay tuned for more news about the Gotham Knights.

* * *

I finished the evening on a rooftop in Bushwick watching Josh Briggs' play EQUAL TO OR LESS THAN TWO PERSONS PER SQUARE MILE, about a young couple in New York City whose roommate is a cowboy. And not just some schlub from Rocking Horse Ranch, either. I mean an archetypical cowboy from the communal unconscious. Like The Marlboro Man.

Here is a crappy does-not-do-it-justice picture of what I saw on the roof when I first sat down, taken with a phone: 


The cowboy started the show with his back to us, and then, when he turned to face the audience, I realized he was being played by somebody I knew from Brooklyn Family Theatre. Small world…?

As the evening continued, the sun went down entirely, and that city skyline became a holistic cyclorama.

* * *

Cool aside, it was really something special to see work this personal from someone I know well. It had a way of reinforcing my friendship with Mr. Briggs in that Michel Gondry way, where you see into someone’s subconscious and recognize you have the same cerebral decorator. I wanted to hold a lighter over my head in solidarity with everything his play had to say.

In fact, EQUAL TO explored similar themes to the ones I'd been thinking about all day, even all month: Perhaps oversimply put, it dealt with living your life as an individual when the world expects you to live it as a gender…or worse, when you expect you to.

So, between the rugby and the performance, that most awesome Saturday was not only singularly fun…it actually held up as being ‘well-crafted’, right down to the play within the play.

When your experience transcends expectation and possibility, you refuse to admit it’s even part of this world—you say instead that it’s unreal.

This was that and then some.

A great day.
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Sin City, Second Tier [Mar. 15th, 2007|10:36 pm]
[Tags|, , , , , , , , ]
[Current Location |Victorian Splendor, 11215]
[mood | good]
[music |DANCEFLOORS by My Morning Jacket]

Went to Comicon, nearly a month ago now.

Lots of guys who looked like out-of-shape Vikings.

Some Dads who were raising their sons in the geek tradition, shopping for comics and action figures. (How will these kids rebel? Pro football?)

A guy in a Superman costume who was wearing real briefs sans codpiece as his covering...leaving little doubt about some things that would have been better left to the imagination.

A lady in a reasonable facsimile of Mila Jovovich's famous FIFTH ELEMENT outfit (white fabric strips crossing her otherwise-naked body with nary a 'criss' in sight) who insisted on carrying a baggy faux-leather purse along with her. She looked like she was late for Mah Jongg night at the Jupiter JCC.

* * *

More recently, went to Atlantic City for Mom's birthday, along with her new boyfriend Peter. Also there were Diane, Marie, Brandon and (drumroll please) Phill.

Peter and Mom are serious, and it's a good thing, since her previous boyfriend (for around eight years) was a total dickwad, while Peter is a nice enough guy. (Mom claims that the first time she and Peter spent the night together, she felt my father's ghost slap her across the face, no joke. Dad, I hope this isn't true.)

We had drinks at Tropicana's "Cuban Quarter", where the failed idealism of the communist experiment is forever immortalized by a swank pseudo-Soviet bar with a Lenin statue outside its doorway, carrying a martini. I accidentally ordered a drink that mixed champagne and peach vodka, called the Bolshevik Bellini. A better name might have been the Instapuke. Then off to an Italian restaurant at Harrah's.

Brandon works for a cable company, and he told us about his latest claim to fame, shutting down the cable at Washington Irving's house. Irving, for the uninitiated, was an American writer, most famous for his LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW.

When Brandon went to cut service, a neighbor tried to intercede. "That's Washington Irving's house," they told Brandon. "Well, Washington Irving didn't pay his bill," Brandon returned. Snip. Dead writers: Keep your accounts current, this may happen to you.

* * *

It was Mom's dream-come-true for us to go to Atlantic City together as a family. As for me, I think it's one of the creepiest places on earth. Still, you could tell it made Mom overjoyed for us to be together, in her favorite place on earth, so good for her. If I can drag her to ANGEL HEART and NAKED LUNCH, she can drag me there.

We didn't catch The Who, who had played The Borgata that evening, but I did catch the Decemberists performing OH VALENCIA on a re-run of the Conan O'Brien show. (The song I once used to time chicken, before we got our kitchen stopwatch...you'd flip the cutlet the moment Valencia got shot, and then start the track again to cook the other side.)

The next day, Phill and I took in a famous Atlantic City buffet and walked the Boardwalk. He spent a lot of time taking pictures of the underdeveloped slums and abandoned architectural treasures. Afterward, we designated-drove Brandon and my sisters back to New York, while they slept off an afternoon beerfest they'd attended.

Upon touchdown in Brooklyn, it was off to Ramona's 30th birthday bash, where she instituted that get-to-know-you game, the one where you get some famous person's name stuck to your back--you have to ask yes or no questions of strangers, to find out who you are. Jennifer was there too. She was Madame de Pompadour, and absolutely nobody, including me, including Jennifer, had any idea who that was.

As for me, I was able to narrow myself down to being French, dead, infamous and pre-19th-century. Finally, Jenn gave me one last clue: "This guy is right up your alley," she said.

"Oh! Marquis de Sade!"

Bingo.

* * *

Went to lunch with my boss today. The first time we've had lunch in five years of working together, and the first time I've had lunch with an employer in nearly ten.

That I could have such a nice time with her gave me a really good feeling. It was like a lunch I'd have with a good friend, and toward the end I realized that, oh yeah, it was.

Not since my gay ex-Jesuit mentor at Fordham introduced me to the McLean Avenue pub scene have I felt this way about a boss.
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Birthday 2007 [Feb. 21st, 2007|02:14 pm]
[Tags|, , , , ]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood | intimidated]
[music |ON by Bloc Party]

I usually celebrate my birthday as a week (or more) of separate events, thereby creating a larger 'surface area' for partying, gifting and the gradual easement of growing pains.  I've just turned 32.

So, this past Friday, Phill and I got together for dinner at Outback Steakhouse.  We didn't get the Bloomin' Onion, because Phill doesn't eat it...a controversial omission, but I stand by our choice.  This was followed by a late-night showing of EL LABERINTO DEL FAUNO, which marks my second favorite film, of three, in which a man's face is bashed-in on screen.  (#1 is IRREVERSIBLE, #3 is A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE.)  This is a fast-growing genre, nipping at the heels of films in which a person's head explodes.  (RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK is probably the best of those, but it's pretty inarguable that the best head explosion of all time is in featured toward the beginning of SCANNERS...and yet who could forget Anne Ramsey's head being popped and smeared up a wall by the basketball in DEADLY FRIEND?)

Phill was planning to get us proper wedding rings as my birthday gift, or else a digital projector, but I asked him to keep it relatively inexpensive, so I got a nice sweater, a nice shirt and chocolate.  For myself, I got the one thing nobody would suspect I wanted, because I've never mentioned it:  A solar-powered zen bobblehead.

Saturday was spent with my family at The Palisades Mall.  Our journey began at Chevy's, continued to Build-A-Bear Workshop and finished at my mother's place in The Bronx.  A short chronology of the afternoon is presented here in pictures.  The sombrero came with my ice cream.  The scarf (courtesy palomapicassob) matching the hat was purely coincidental...but serendipitous accessorization is as good an excuse to wear a sombrero as any, so I continued to wear both for the rest of the day.

Is it cheating to build a cow at the Build A Bear workshop?  At any rate, my cow is named Roscoe, and he is wearing nothing but a pair of leather boots.  This makes him a pervert and a cannibal.  His catch phrase is: "I'm wearin' my cousin!"

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The Vapors [Feb. 5th, 2007|06:03 pm]
[Tags|, , , ]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood | scared]
[music |THE GOOD THE BAD & THE QUEEN by TGTB&TQ]

THE REVOLT OF THE BEAVERS was to be Brooklyn Family Theatre's Spring production. It's a bit of an artifact: A communist-sympathetic children's musical from the 1930s, with writing that's like a cross between The Bowery Boys and a post-apoc movie starring Charlton Heston. Both for historical interest, and for its strangeness, we thought BEAVERS would be a terrific choice for BFT. Plus, our community in Park Slope is very liberal, so there's more interest than outrage for a pinko musical about unionized beavers holding a revolution.
 
Long story short, Thursday night Phill announced to me that he didn't want to do the show. He cited plenty of reasons, all of them valid. There just aren't enough people on our board, and there's not enough money to make our shows worthwhile financially. We've done nearly every one pro-bono for five years now, and with a house upstate to think of, and Phill trying to live healthier, running himself ragged for free has ceased to be attractive. Besides, he's working on our next touring show, so it's not as if he has an empty plate. (And THAT show he's getting paid for.)
 
I fought Phill on the point of BEAVERS' cancellation, mostly because I was (for once) very excited about the content of one of our shows--as were many of my friends. I suggested that I direct the production in Phill's place, but that soon started looking like a recipe for a nervous breakdown, since I'm not really good at musical staging, and would additionally need to find a musical director, costumer and prop designer. (Phill normally does all of this, no joke.) Finally, after an hour of arguing and puzzling, we agreed to tentatively shelve the production until the Fall.
 
We'll see, though. The dismantling of Brooklyn Family Theatre will need to happen eventually, what with Phill's life and mine complicating handily with the addition of our upstate property. I also hate arguing with someone I love over something I merely like.
 
Either way we're feeling mighty free right now...which is a rare and blessed thing.
 
I am working in earnest on my moderately depraved novel.
 
* * *
 
One of the main reasons I didn't push Phill to direct BEAVERS, besides my respecting his emotional health (and my dogged knowledge that he won't do anything he doesn't want to) is the fact that he's only recently quit smoking...and is looking for an excuse to start again, as anybody would. "I'm going to direct the show, and I'm going to buy a pack of cigarettes right now," he actually demanded/threatened at one point.
 
The funny thing about ridding our schedules of BEAVERS, though, is that it's resulted in the white noise of his cold turkeydom rushing in to fill the silence. He barely said five words to me all of Saturday, other than "I don't feel so good." Though to be fair, he repeated those words all afternoon...
 
* * *
 
Friday night I caught the raucous Irish band Shilelagh Law in midtown with a gaggle of close friends, including Diane and Erin. As usual, it was a continuum of drunken madness, and everybody ended up dancing with strange men at one point...even me, though I made no attempt to determine if my guy was homocurios, or merely exhibiting Irish cameraderie.
 
Danger-prone Diane stumbled on the way out of the show, landing squarely on her tailbone, and sending a sharp jolt of pain straight up her back. She got up and laughed it off, but severe pain (or any increase in adrenaline) makes Diane faint you see--it's a condition known, I kid you not, as 'common fainting'.  So when Erin and I exited the pub with her onto 45th Street, Diane fell again, this time unconscious.

Not thinking to connect the blackout with my sister's Victorian constitution, and peer-pressured into action by all the exiting pub-goers, I dialed 911, assuming, because she is 22, that Diane must have gotten some kind of alcohol poisoning.  In fact, she'd had just three drinks in four hours--which is barely keeping pace for a Shilelagh Law show.  (Or a 22-year-old.)
 
Needless to say, by the time the ambulance got there Diane was 'with us' again, and by the time the vehicle pulled away (with us in it), she was laughing and joking about the whole thing. Yet none of us were quite ballsy enough to say, "Can we turn this thing around?", so Diane got a rather expensive chance to sleep off her cranberry-and-vodkas at midtown hospital, while Erin and I got to watch PBS documentaries with irate homeless in the hospital waiting room, well into the morning. When Erin left, I headed over to a local diner to while away some time writing, but the place was full of catty young Chelsea boys.

Feeling myself fast approaching the perpetration of my first hate crime, I decided that my best course of action would be the aggressive pursuit of unconsciousness.  I returned to the hospital, asked the nurse on duty "You got a bed for ME?"

They didn't have a bed for me. They had a chair. But a chair is something.
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A Boy And His Dog [Dec. 19th, 2006|11:04 pm]
[Tags|, , , ]
[Current Location |Victorian Splendor, 11215]
[mood | cool]
[music |HEAVEN OR LAS VEGAS by Cocteau Twins]

Phill’s desire to live ‘off the grid’ has resulted in a marked dearth of identifying materials—he has no driver’s license, no social security card, etc. He’s also in no hurry to get any of these things, especially the driver’s license.

Cars go on fire when he drives them, he says.

So, between Phill not driving, and Phill not technically existing, I tend to be the one who travels...

* * *

This week represents a break with that tradition: Phill’s out of town until Sunday, and I’m minding the dog.

It’s a bigger deal than it seems--he and I moved in almost immediately after meeting (adopting the dating rituals of our lesbian comrades) and this will mark the first time I’ve spent an evening alone in our apartment in five years!

It’s all for a good cause. Phill has bussed himself up to The Dacks, where he will be playing piano for our sister theatre.

The accompanyist for their Holiday musical ‘flaked’ after a botched attempt to drive Route 87 in the rain...

* * *

Predictably, I’ve tried to stay as social as possible to distract myself from The Missing Man.

Yesterday I visited The Throgg, where Marie showed me her new tattoo (an image of a stone angel dripping in blood...currently dripping real blood since it's a new tattoo). Later on, Diane and I revisited RESIDENT EVIL 4 until the bearded spinal-column-mantis creeped us out.

Tonight I visited my other family (Amy, Alan, Max, Annie & Casey) and we shared a game night of our own, playing RUMIS, SNORTA and ZEUS ON THE LOOSE. Blogging isn’t exactly anti-social, either!

Still, I’m gradually learning to enjoy solitude, or at least getting better at it. I spent a lonely Sunday at the office, soliloquizing like a Shakespearean secretary while preparing a charity gift-wrapping in the empty conference rooms…blasting Tony Bennett, Judy Garland and that Twisted Sister Christmas album all the while.

After dancing on and off in front of the windows on the second floor, I realized that the sun had gone down, and that my jig was plainly visible to all the shoppers below me on Broadway…as well to any members of the Paul Taylor Dance Company who cared to watch from their windows directly across the street.

I also noticed about that same time I was having a great time.

I’m in a similar mood now, here at home. I have an awful tendency to ‘identity shift’ when I get too far away from familiar surroundings--I start wondering, wait, was all that Brooklyn stuff a dream? Finally having this place to myself, I realize I’ve been getting the short end of the stick by leaving town so often.

Though being alone here is easier, of course, knowing that Phill is out there. We talk every night after rehearsal; I've started to think of him like Orson on MORK & MINDY, wrapping things up at the end of the episode.
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Potemkin Village of the Damned [Oct. 12th, 2006|02:30 pm]
[Tags|, , , , ]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood | weird]
[music |BLING (CONFESSION OF A KING) by The Killers]

For years now, Brooklyn Family Theatre has laughed in the face of W. C. Fields’ admonition to “never work with animals or children.”

As for working with puppets, they are a first for us…and, I think it’s safe to say, a last. Kids and canines can be reasoned with. Puppets, meanwhile, just dangle at you and glare with their horrible dead eyes.

Bottom line: We can’t seem to make the flying marionettes look like they are flying.

They either look like they have been hanged from the neck until dead, or like the jettisoning bodies of collision victims on a planet where gravity is unusually low. Phill has to reconfigure the harnessing on the puppets over and over, and every time he adds or removes material, he comes a step closer to smashing their plaster faces...accidentally or otherwise.

Lightly salt that wound with the following: Phill is being interviewed by a prominent Manhattan magazine, about his groundbreaking production of PETER PAN.

I’m just thankful Phill’s list of vices begins and ends with a weakness for Marlboro Lights.

Hell, even I’m smoking them this week.

* * *

I had such a good time on Saturday's annual haunted house tour that I have been in a state of ‘fun withdrawal’ ever since. Not that my life is an uphill battle of unspeakable toil and hardship--it’s just, when you have such a great night, everything else pales. 

Diane and I drove around Portchester and Rye blasting the new Killers CD, which we enjoyed in defiance of our nation’s music critics. We pooled our financial resources and hit a discount store, where I got an INCREDIBLES Viewmaster (so that I can stare at Mr. Incredible in 3D whenever the mood takes me) and an awful $1 spoken word CD for kids called, so help me, FROM THE MOUTHS OF MONSTERS. Then it was off to the haunted houses, where the line between reality and cheesy horror movie became irrevocably blurred in the most luxurious way. 

* * *

For my family, our favorite places have elements of fakery to them. Theme parks, theme restaurants--anyplace with a heavy emphasis on fabricated reality scores high. As such, Disney World is like heaven-on-earth to us, and since we’re all devoted horror fans, haunted house attractions just blow our minds. (The Haunted Mansion at Disney being our Shangri-la.)

So here are Diane and myself at SCARED BY THE SOUND, the first stop on Saturday's haunted house tour.  SCARED BY THE SOUND is pretty high-budget--a real class act compared to just about every other haunted house we’ve been to in the past few years.  A hidden camera shot this endearingly humiliating picture of us while we exited:

Then we jaunted up to Tuxedo's THE FOREST OF FEAR, where we were joined by Marie, Brandon and their posse. The evening morphed into a Halloween-themed National Lampoon movie: We became inexplicably lost in a maze with killer clowns, horsed around on poorly-supervised carnival rides, and of course sampled THE FOREST's big attraction, The Slaughterhouse. 

Later, it was off to Mt. Fuji, the most popular Jersey restaurant in New York, where the dude with the giant dragon head sang a very premature Happy Birthday to Diane--as is tradition.

* * *

The evening finished with a sampling of RESIDENT EVIL 4, which was the perfect nostalgic chaser.  One of my first 'real' dates (read: with a guy) was spent in Raccoon City, so all things RESIDENT EVIL are very close to my heart.

The latest installment marks Capcom's attempt to shake the 'survival horror' series up a bit, this time by replacing its zombies with...Spanish farmers?

Mierda!
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Puppet Schemes [Sep. 23rd, 2006|05:48 pm]
[Tags|, , , , ]
[Current Location |Victorian Splendor 11215]
[mood | contemplative]
[music |Caribbean Talk Radio]

A much-beloved editor at my job was taken out of commission by kidney stones this week. He's doing okay, but his unexpected admission to St. Vincent’s (around lunchtime on Thursday) furthers my theory that there is an invisible conspiracy to rough-up everyone I like--and now it’s clear that not even the ‘work friends’ are safe.

Or Rufus, apparently--he started limping today.

Invisible conspirators: Leave the dog out of it.

* * *

Victor has continued to assist The Other Victor at the flower shop, well into his continued re-relationship with Pesky.

This working arrangement has not been easy for either of the Victors, and tiffs are not uncommon--a recent one resulted in the original Victor throttling his counterpart, and throwing a chair across the shop. Police officers were actually drawn to the premises by the sounds of struggle.

No charges were pressed, but The Other Victor found another way to respond to the incident: He posted naked pictures of Pesky on the flower shop computer.

Victor confronted him about it, but he only stared at Victor and gently asked, “What’s the matter? Don’t you like seeing pictures of your boyfriend?”

For some men, High School never ends…it just gets bigger and bloodier.

* * *

PETER PAN has auditioned, and we’re only missing actors for two roles--thankfully, neither of them Peter or Hook. The cast seems pretty cool, and very talented. Some amazing voices, with some seriously gifted kids.

Now Phill is starting to construct the flying apparatus for our puppet ‘dopplegangers’ (we perform in a church, so ain’t nobody getting hoisted--puppet doubles will replace the actors during the flying sequences).

We spent the day buying supplies on Manhattan island, including five extra-long sticks of bamboo in the ‘flower district’. The idea is to attach the puppets to the bamboo so that their limbs move around when they fly.

Our first prototype was attached to the bamboo by the throat, and this of course made him look like a flying dead boy. Now we’re looking for a good way to ‘neck brace’ the puppets so that we can hoist them from the head instead. Our second prototype has already lost the zombie look, and I’m sure Phill’s puppet schemes will start paying off soon.

Now he’s cutting apart a Gund sheep dog doll on our bed so that you can stick your hand through its body, into its head. Once the grotesquerie is finished, it will be our Nanna.

* * *

My sister Diane dumped her boyfriend. She’d been putting it off for a while now. Push came to shove after the tray incident: Since Diane can’t drink for three months while she recovers from the liver damage, her chances of faking ‘happy’ while with him have been drastically reduced. So she cried uncle and just broke up with the guy.

She’s back at home in The Throg now, living la vida incapacitada.
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Let's Get Dangerous [Sep. 18th, 2006|12:33 pm]
[Tags|, , , ]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood | paranoid]
[music |GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT by Jason Molina]

My sister Diane was walking through the lunchroom at work, tray held out in front of her, not really looking where she was going…and this is how she walked into the cafeteria wall.

You’re probably picturing a moment out of SAVED BY THE BELL, with the tray tipping chocolate milk and taco salad onto her brand-new blouse. But Diane was moving so fast that she didn’t tilt the tray. Instead, it stayed horizontal--jabbing her under the ribs in a sharp chop, like David Carradine on KUNG FU.

Diane said she was fine, mostly to get her co-workers to forget that they had just seen her walk into a wall. She left work early as planned, to visit a friend in Albany. But she was hurting bad from the tray incident, and the pain was getting worse every hour.

By the time she arrived at her friend’s apartment, it was too intense to ignore. They drove to a nearby emergency room, where the two of them placed smart money on this being a big hunk of nothing, and long odds on it being anything serious, like a broken rib.

Well, would you believe that Diane has…A LACERATED LIVER?

She was admitted immediately, and remains in Albany as I write this. They have to keep watching her in case it starts bleeding, or she could die.

Thankfully, Amy has assured me that injuries to the liver have a good chance of healing completely, since it’s such a regenerative organ.  And this is good news, because Diane is still pretty embarrassed about this whole ordeal, and nobody wants to meet their maker with egg on their face.

But wait, there's more...

Jennifer Palumbo arrived home Friday night to find that her apartment stank of gas, and mentioned it to the landlord. The landlord said that work had been done on the boiler that afternoon, and that this was the likely cause of the odor.

It made sense, so Jennifer returned to her apartment, where the smell persisted. She didn’t want to leave her window open all night, so when she went to sleep, she shut the french doors outside her bedroom instead.

She woke up to the smell of gas in her room, and opened the french doors to find that her apartment was now full of the stuff.  The pilot light in her stove had gone out, and gas had been leaking into her apartment all night, filling up the living room while she slept.

She had inhaled some of it, but only as much as could seep past the bedroom doors. Still, Jenn was woozy and nauseous all Saturday afternoon, and when last we spoke she was pretty sure she'd lost most of her memories of High School.

I am not sure what to make of either incident. I have theories--involving an accidental death quota that needs to be filled by the end of September, a revolution being enacted by inanimate objects, or the possibility that my friends and I may actually be in a FINAL DESTINATION movie.

All I know is this, people: The universe is playing dirty.

* * *

Near-deaths aside, the weekend went well.  Jennifer was able to attend the farewell performance of her FAIRY TALE ACADEMY at The Old Stone House on 5th Avenue, and here is a terrific picture of the cast during the 'drag Rapunzel' moment.  From the left are Marshall York (GRIM), Sean Toohey (ANDERSEN) and Jonathan Foss (AESOP):

 



Our GAMESHOW SPECTACULAR at the Brooklyn Family Theatre also went well, but was sparsely attended.  We're actually going to stop doing these season-opener benefits, we've decided.  Fewer and fewer mailing list people come every year--too much work for too little moola.  Still, playing a full episode each of FAMILY FEUD and WIN LOSE OR DRAW with a group of very funny people was a great way to bid farewell to the tradition.

PETER PAN auditions this week.  After that Phill and I will cease to focus on worldly things.  Conesequently, the apartment will start looking like a post-kegger fraternity, and I want to get ahead of the schlubbery.

So I spent Sunday ridding the home of Rufus' doggie aura (i.e. stink).  The dog of honor was thoroughly shampooed, rugs were carpet-freshened, floors were urine-gone'd.  We even used a blacklight to seek out pee stains, like on CSI. 

I'm also trying to labor-proof the apartment while I can.  Buying paper plates and disposable utensils, since I'll shortly be too busy to clean dishes.  Bought a bag of doggie food the size of Edinburgh.  It's like preparing for a natural disaster.

While all of this is going on, the apartment is slowly filling with puppets and skeletons, which are set-pieces and 'characters' in the show.  Whenever I enter the living room I come face-to-face with either a Czech marionette dangling off a coathook, or a giant plastic skeleton grinning under the chandelier.  I jump out of my skin every time, and I do mean EVERY TIME: I will come into the living room, see the skeleton, jump. Then I go to get a DVD, come back to the living room, see the skeleton, jump. Then I go to get some ginger-ale, back to the living room, skeleton…
 
I am beginning to relate to Rufus.

* * *

Back at work now.  May take off tomorrow.

Diane and I are looking forward to the possibility of a drive back from Albany with her moaning in the backseat--just like the time in February when she got alcohol poisoning at the Shilelagh Law show in Philly.

Those were the days.
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Wedding(s) of the Decade [Sep. 4th, 2006|05:19 pm]
[Tags|, , , ]
[Current Location |Victorian Splendor, 11215]
[mood | scared]
[music |MAN ON THE MOON by Sugar]

Marie’s wedding is set for Halloween night of 2008. I’m the “Dad” for ceremonial purposes, which means I get to wear a kilt and walk my sister down the aisle. I hope we can keep it together.

Every couple I know seems to be getting married these days: Ben and Ramona. Josh and Rebecca. Calista and Perry. Adam and Rachel. Now Christina and Brandon. Diane says it’s because the 30’s are the real-world equivalent of the 'designated marriage space' in THE GAME OF LIFE.

The three of us, my sisters and I, used to play THE GAME OF LIFE all the time when we still lived together.  Though the rules always seemed unrealistically 'pat' to us--so we’d have the white car move backward, from the end of the board to the beginning, after every round. When it passed any of the other cars, it would take a passenger out of it: It was Death.

* * *

Us three sibs had breakfast at a Dunkin Donuts to discuss basic details of the far-off day. It emerged that Diane would be the maid of honor, and as such, would have to plan the shower. Her eyes got as wide as saucers when she learned that, so I agreed to do some off-stage organizing with her, and take some of the pressure off.

I’m so excited to be a part of this. It’s tremendous to be involved in the wedding of someone you’re so close with--like preparing for space travel, somehow. And me, I’ve had wedding-party-envy for three marriages in a row now, so I’m just jazzed to be an intimate part of anybody’s big day, let alone Marie’s.

In fact, when it rains it pours, because I’ve actually been invited to participate in yet another upcoming wedding (beside my sister's) in a similarly hefty capacity.

But that one will require a bit more explanation…

* * *

You may remember from our last Victor update that both he and The Other Victor had decided to make a clean break from their not-so-boyish boy-toy, Pesky--on grounds of deception and compound two-timing.

At the time, TOV and Pesky were still living together, and also working in the same flower shop, which TOV owns. News of the aforementioned infidelity did not improve either of those situations, and after a very physical altercation between TOV and Pesky, the former was kicked out of the apartment by the latter, while the latter found himself fired by the former.  (Still with me?)

Homeless, loveless, and wage-slaveless, TOV spent most of the summer crashing at Victor’s apartment, the two of them forming a united front against Pesky. Victor even lent a hand behind the scenes at TOV’s flower shop, fitting the extra work into his already busy schedule of showings, inspections and open houses.

But like the seasons themselves, the situation changed, as you no doubt guessed it would: Somewhere along the way, Victor and Pesky started sleeping together again.

* * *

This week I visited with Victor in New Jersey to hear it all from ‘the ogre’s mouth’. We met over dinner, and he insisted that we eat at the Thai restaurant where Pesky currently works as a waiter.

If you think ordinary table conversation quiets down when the waiter comes to the table, try seeing what happens when you're having a conversation about the waiter.  It's an exciting new kind of awkward.

Still, according to Victor, things have been going well for him and Pesky--and when The Other Victor moved out of Victor’s place a few weeks ago, the lovebirds even began part-time cohabitation, with an eye toward moving-in together on a permanent basis and getting hitched next year.

I repeat for clarity: Victor and Pesky are getting married.  In 2007.  To each other.

* * *

Pesky is Buddhist and Victor doesn’t believe in anything, so I guess the ceremony will be interfaith.  (Badoom-ching!)  But seriously, while the chances of the wedding actually happening are already a matter of some debate to insiders, you have to admit, if it does happen, it could easily be the wedding of the decade. Plus, I haven’t even told you the best part…

“I couldn’t resist,” Victor said to Pesky as he delivered the curry chicken to our table. “I told Jonathan about our plans.” Pesky just smiled politely and nodded. “And it’s the damnedest thing,” Victor grinned, leaning conspiratorially toward Pesky, “He’s insisted on being the best man!”  I came close to doing a spit-take.

* * *

I told my sibs all of this at the Dunkin Donuts. “You realize,” Marie said, “that this means you’re planning the bachelor party?”

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Sleeping Around [Jul. 17th, 2006|10:01 am]
[Tags|, , , ]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood