I Want a Pre-Historic Man.
And then there's Ann Miller. Look at her go.
The Wolf-Children of Austin's Loisaida.
I got a sub assignment for today and tomorrow at a middle school not too far away. Poor neighborhood, downtown, mostly Latin kids. The teacher was there when I arrived; she was doing something in the building all day, just not in the classroom. She left a test for the kids and then they were to watch WALL-E and write down 10 things they noticed in the environment of the film. (It's a science class.) The test was fairly advanced stuff for 6th graders, stuff about cells and genes. I don't know how they did with it -- it's still very hard for me to gauge how much learning is actually going on amidst the chaos.
The teacher left seating charts, which helped, at least insofar as I could get the kids to sit in the seats assigned to them. Taking attendance is a minefield. All the Spanish names you'd think would be pretty straightforward but they're not. Some kids won't acknowledge you unless you roll that double R like Charo. And the next kid gets angry if you pronounce Gabriel with a long A. "It's Gay-briel!" I can't even begin to parse the politics going on there. And there's always a couple indigenous names with Xs that are never pronounced the same twice. It made me laugh that a black girl named Ty'quishia was delighted when I called her name -- she said, "You're the first sub to say my name right!"
It's so draining. I guess getting up at 5:30 is a factor. But the emotional exhaustion of being such a close witness to the mess of these kids' lives, it's heart-wrenching and it wears me out. It's like they've never had any socialization, any civilizing influences in their lives. They're like very smart 2-year-olds. Every now and then there's one who is hostile, but for the most part they're just clueless. They have no self-discipline; they literally cannot control themselves. It's like a nursery and an insane asylum and an animal shelter. They're adorable, hilarious, extremely manipulative, and sad as hell. They're feral is what they are.
The teacher left seating charts, which helped, at least insofar as I could get the kids to sit in the seats assigned to them. Taking attendance is a minefield. All the Spanish names you'd think would be pretty straightforward but they're not. Some kids won't acknowledge you unless you roll that double R like Charo. And the next kid gets angry if you pronounce Gabriel with a long A. "It's Gay-briel!" I can't even begin to parse the politics going on there. And there's always a couple indigenous names with Xs that are never pronounced the same twice. It made me laugh that a black girl named Ty'quishia was delighted when I called her name -- she said, "You're the first sub to say my name right!"
It's so draining. I guess getting up at 5:30 is a factor. But the emotional exhaustion of being such a close witness to the mess of these kids' lives, it's heart-wrenching and it wears me out. It's like they've never had any socialization, any civilizing influences in their lives. They're like very smart 2-year-olds. Every now and then there's one who is hostile, but for the most part they're just clueless. They have no self-discipline; they literally cannot control themselves. It's like a nursery and an insane asylum and an animal shelter. They're adorable, hilarious, extremely manipulative, and sad as hell. They're feral is what they are.
Snapshot.
The other thing is that I'm in a complicated, sort of rough patch in my personal life. Well, most everything is fine except for the fact that I am broke and have no income. And money trouble fucks everything else up. It's the baby on the bus that won't stop screaming so you can't read, you can't sleep, you can't have a conversation. So when I start to blog about my personal life, which I usually kind of enjoy doing, it just all sounds so depressing and I'm tired of talking about how hard life is lately.
Still, since that's what's going on, I decided to just write it down and post it. Maybe getting it down will help me to put things in perspective, and allow me to think about and write about and enjoy some other things besides the litany of woes.
I have about $600 left in the bank. My student loans ripened, or whatever it is they call it, this month, with the first payments due on the 15th, I think. I applied for a deferment on account of unemployment. I didn’t pay my credit card bills this month. I have about $18,000 in credit card debt. I say that it’s from my film, Life in a Box -- originally it was, but the balance has stayed the same for 5 years because I’ve reborrowed as much as I’ve paid back. Bank of America is already starting to call me several times a day to ask me what’s up with not making payments.
In the last few months, I’ve applied for maybe 25 teaching positions in the Austin public schools, high school and middle school English, history, social studies, and one art teacher position. I haven’t been called to interview for any of these positions. I check the job listings on their web site every day and fax resumes when there are any new positions I’m even remotely qualified for. I continue to sub in the Austin schools. I get about 2 or 3 days of work per month at $80 day.
I picked up an application at Bookpeople this week. I could enjoy working at a book store. The pay is $7.25/hour. I haven't had a job that paid that little since I worked at Pearl Paint in New York in 1982. I don’t think I could pay my bills and rent and groceries for that, even as simply and cheaply as I live. I applied for food stamps this week, too. If I am eligible, I’ll get about $200/month. That’ll help. MP, my housemate, told me last night that a friend, who is a nurse, might have a part-time job for me that pays $10/hour. It has something to do with paging doctors. She’s going to call me.
In about 10 days, I can start trying again to get into a drug study. (They won’t take you if you’ve been out of the country recently, so I have to wait 30 days from when I was in Mexico.)
I need about $1,000 to enroll in the July course in teaching English as a second language. I want to have that certification so I’ll have some chance of finding employment in Mexico City when M and I go there, which could be in about a year, depending on whether or not and when he gets a research fellowship. If I can get into one of the higher paying drug studies, it’s possible I could have enough money to get through the summer and pay for the course. The only drawback to the higher paying studies is that they often require you to stay in the facility for weeks, sometimes as much as a month. The advantage is that the facility is air-conditioned.
I was floundering like this when I first moved here, almost 4 years ago. I got the great idea to go back to school, thinking that might open up some possibility for income. I went to school for 2 1/2 years, got a B.A. Now I floundering again. And I have another $15,000 of debt. I’ve never been quite so much at a loss for how to make a living as I have been the last few months.
Work:Tomorrow is the cutoff date for fundraising for my film, Men & Boys, on Kickstarter. I didn’t even break $1,000 out of the $5,000 goal. So, Men & Boys is on the back burner for a while. I have another project that I’m inspired by, though. It doesn’t have a name yet. It’s a short video, composed of the text of my high school diary with photographs from that time. The technique will be similar to Tarnation, but without the home video footage. I haven’t decided if I want to use voice-over, text on screen, or actually scan the diary text and find a way to make it scroll across the screen. The diary contains a long entry in which I come out to myself. I think, I hope, that it could be a very funny, moving piece. The best thing about this project is that I don’t need a cent to make it. I have Final Cut and a scanner, which is all I need.
Love:
I’ve been seeing M since around Thanksgiving last year, but I've resisted writing much here about him. Is it because we might be still in that phase where every revelation could be a rock on the rail, every admission of vulnerability feels like a dive off a cliff? I’m ready for that phase to be over. I want to speak clearly about this miraculous new love that grows bigger every day so that my heart feels like it will explode. I know that sounds overdramatic, but I mean it literally. Sometimes I can hardly breathe.
Life:
MP and JP are making progress on the container house they’re building for J and me. Possibly this summer, it will be ready for us to move in. When this project started, a year and a half ago, life was pretty different. J and I were like spinster aunts, with our circumscribed domestic life together. Things have gotten all stirred up in the last few months. I’m away from home a lot, spend most nights at M’s. I still cook for J and me, but not as regularly. M and I talk about the possibility of living together in the future, with no set date. M is entangled as well. He lives with a friend in a domestic arrangement similar to J’s and mine, though his friend is not a former partner. They have a lease, they have a way in which they’re accustomed to living together, a friendship, things they rely on each other for. Sometimes it feels impossibly complicated to me, on top of, or maybe because of, the sadness I feel about my changing friendship with J. And my financial insecurity lately makes all these issues particularly hard to see with any clarity.
Summer is coming, and frankly I’m scared. I don’t want to be furious and depressed from May until October, but I fear I am no match for it.
Today.
M has been gone for 10 days, I haven't gotten any sub work since early last week, there aren't any teacher job openings in Austin that I haven't already applied for. My car is in the shop. JP backed into it last week and smashed the front fender, so they're fixing it.
Things I could be doing: 1) volunteering for aGLIFF, either screening submitted films or helping out in the office, 2) revising either of two screenplays I'm working on, 3) pre-production work on Men & Boys, my short film, 4) preliminary work on a smaller video piece I have in mind in case I don't raise the money I need to make "Men & Boys," 5) reading the new Barbara Kingsolver novel (I started it a few days ago, it's great -- it's set in Mexico City in the 1930s). I know if I sit down to read I'll just fall asleep.
I don't want to do anything today except look at tumblr blogs and play Angry Birds on my iPhone.
Things I could be doing: 1) volunteering for aGLIFF, either screening submitted films or helping out in the office, 2) revising either of two screenplays I'm working on, 3) pre-production work on Men & Boys, my short film, 4) preliminary work on a smaller video piece I have in mind in case I don't raise the money I need to make "Men & Boys," 5) reading the new Barbara Kingsolver novel (I started it a few days ago, it's great -- it's set in Mexico City in the 1930s). I know if I sit down to read I'll just fall asleep.
I don't want to do anything today except look at tumblr blogs and play Angry Birds on my iPhone.
Hipsters on Food Stamps.
This is a fascinating read, or at least I thought so, given my current preoccupations with poverty and the artist's life. Two quintessentially American but seemingly unrelated attitudes dovetail nicely: Americans' general disdain for and suspicion of artists and Americans' belief that poor people deserve to eat crappy food.
(Be sure and read the response by one of the subjects of the article. He expresses most of the thoughts I had while reading the piece.)
I've thought about food stamps recently. Not thought about like "I'm gonna march down there and get me some," but thought about like, "What would it mean for someone like me to be getting food stamps?" I've been looking for work for months, and I don't have enough savings to live on for more than another few weeks -- why is it I seem to have a basic assumption that people like me (white, single, middle class background) don't really deserve public assistance? Why is it I assume that since I chose to be an artist I deserve financial insecurity? I'm not eligible for unemployment (the sort of respectable welfare for middle-class people), even though I've paid taxes all my life and even paid double in most years because self-employed people have to pay self-employment tax.
I don't intend these questions to imply that I feel I'm not getting something I'm entitled to. They're genuinely confusing questions to me.
(Be sure and read the response by one of the subjects of the article. He expresses most of the thoughts I had while reading the piece.)
I've thought about food stamps recently. Not thought about like "I'm gonna march down there and get me some," but thought about like, "What would it mean for someone like me to be getting food stamps?" I've been looking for work for months, and I don't have enough savings to live on for more than another few weeks -- why is it I seem to have a basic assumption that people like me (white, single, middle class background) don't really deserve public assistance? Why is it I assume that since I chose to be an artist I deserve financial insecurity? I'm not eligible for unemployment (the sort of respectable welfare for middle-class people), even though I've paid taxes all my life and even paid double in most years because self-employed people have to pay self-employment tax.
I don't intend these questions to imply that I feel I'm not getting something I'm entitled to. They're genuinely confusing questions to me.
It Doesn't Hurt to Ask. I Hope.
I remember years ago watching a country music awards show with my family and my mom rolled her eyes when one of the winners said something along the lines of "I want to thank my fans who I love dearly because without them I wouldn't be able to do this." I probably questioned the sincerity of the statement, too, this being before I saw at close hand how personally tied up an artist's livelihood can be to his or her fans' support.
When J and I were on the road with Y'all, I loved our fans deeply, sincerely, because, well, without them we couldn't have been doing what we did. Their love and support of our work was the engine that make it go. (Whether or not it made it go a little longer than it should have is a question for another day....)
Not only did our fans provide cash flow for our living expenses by coming to see our shows, buying our CDs and books and T-shirts and whatever else we could come up with to sell, they often fed and sheltered us. I don't know what else to feel but love and gratitude for people who took care of our basic needs, regardless of whether I knew them personally or not.
I still don't feel comfortable asking for money, but I don't want to stop making art, so I've made some kind of uneasy peace with it. I know the constant pleading can be a turnoff. I'm sure we lost fans like public radio stations lose listeners during pledge drives, but sustaining a career as an artist can be a giant money-eating monster, and in order to keep making art you have to keep feeding the monster.
I'll be very frank. I've had a hell of a time trying to figure out how to make a living the last few years, post-Y'all. I've had some great successes recently. A real career high for me has been my show, Lizzie Borden's critically-acclaimed run in New York last fall. That has been and continues to be a huge thrill for me, huge, but it's a success I can't measure in dollars and cents. Literally.
And it's been 5 years since I made Life in a Box, what I consider to be my biggest artistic achievement. The film did well, premiered in the San Francisco Int'l Film Festival (a fact which I'm very proud of) got great audience response during its festival run in 2005-7, and continues to accumulate admirers. But it hasn't made a dime and I'm still paying the credit card bills.
And I'm broke. I've been applying for every teaching job I can and trying to get work as a substitute and very rapidly running out of money. Lately, one thing does not seem to lead to another, and I wonder how I will ever get back on my feet. I hope I don't sound over-dramatic, but things are a little scary lately.
In my more confident moments, I don't care if I never get back on my feet again as long as I can continue to be creative. I want to make another movie. I'm tired of waiting. I've been writing screenplays, songs, essays, blogging like crazy. I'm doing the most complex and thoughtful writing of my life now. My best work is ahead of me. Broke and desperate or not, I need to be producing work.
I've written a short screenplay that I think is the ideal project for me now -- it's a simple, provocative story that I can shoot and edit without a lot of fuss, on a very small scale. But the only way I'm going to be able to do it is if I can get a short reprieve from the wolf at the door. A few thousand dollars will let me take a break from looking for a day job so I can finish writing, do some preproduction, shoot and edit the film. This is a tiny project, a 10-minute film. Probably a two-day shoot and maybe a couple weeks of editing. The speck of a budget also provides small stipends for a crew of one or two, two actors, and lunch on shooting days. I just need a couple months of being a full-time artist and then I'll go back to being broke and desperate.
If you appreciate my work and have $10 bucks or more to throw my way, now's the time.
When J and I were on the road with Y'all, I loved our fans deeply, sincerely, because, well, without them we couldn't have been doing what we did. Their love and support of our work was the engine that make it go. (Whether or not it made it go a little longer than it should have is a question for another day....)
Not only did our fans provide cash flow for our living expenses by coming to see our shows, buying our CDs and books and T-shirts and whatever else we could come up with to sell, they often fed and sheltered us. I don't know what else to feel but love and gratitude for people who took care of our basic needs, regardless of whether I knew them personally or not.
I still don't feel comfortable asking for money, but I don't want to stop making art, so I've made some kind of uneasy peace with it. I know the constant pleading can be a turnoff. I'm sure we lost fans like public radio stations lose listeners during pledge drives, but sustaining a career as an artist can be a giant money-eating monster, and in order to keep making art you have to keep feeding the monster.
I'll be very frank. I've had a hell of a time trying to figure out how to make a living the last few years, post-Y'all. I've had some great successes recently. A real career high for me has been my show, Lizzie Borden's critically-acclaimed run in New York last fall. That has been and continues to be a huge thrill for me, huge, but it's a success I can't measure in dollars and cents. Literally.
And it's been 5 years since I made Life in a Box, what I consider to be my biggest artistic achievement. The film did well, premiered in the San Francisco Int'l Film Festival (a fact which I'm very proud of) got great audience response during its festival run in 2005-7, and continues to accumulate admirers. But it hasn't made a dime and I'm still paying the credit card bills.
And I'm broke. I've been applying for every teaching job I can and trying to get work as a substitute and very rapidly running out of money. Lately, one thing does not seem to lead to another, and I wonder how I will ever get back on my feet. I hope I don't sound over-dramatic, but things are a little scary lately.
In my more confident moments, I don't care if I never get back on my feet again as long as I can continue to be creative. I want to make another movie. I'm tired of waiting. I've been writing screenplays, songs, essays, blogging like crazy. I'm doing the most complex and thoughtful writing of my life now. My best work is ahead of me. Broke and desperate or not, I need to be producing work.
I've written a short screenplay that I think is the ideal project for me now -- it's a simple, provocative story that I can shoot and edit without a lot of fuss, on a very small scale. But the only way I'm going to be able to do it is if I can get a short reprieve from the wolf at the door. A few thousand dollars will let me take a break from looking for a day job so I can finish writing, do some preproduction, shoot and edit the film. This is a tiny project, a 10-minute film. Probably a two-day shoot and maybe a couple weeks of editing. The speck of a budget also provides small stipends for a crew of one or two, two actors, and lunch on shooting days. I just need a couple months of being a full-time artist and then I'll go back to being broke and desperate.
If you appreciate my work and have $10 bucks or more to throw my way, now's the time.
Hot Guy.
Man oh man, I am sure having a complicated reaction to these photos of a beautiful man. This is Olympic pole-vaulter, Balian Buschbaum, née Yvonne Buschbaum.
I don't see anything queer at all in these pictures after (after?) his transition. He has become exactly the sort of impossibly handsome, athletic man that I have resented and desired since I was about 11 years old. I am aware that I am reacting to pictures, to a presentation, not to an actual man, but I was responding to a presentation, to a performance, in 5th grade too: the straight white teeth, the shirt open 3 buttons, the hiphuggers, the masculine swagger that I couldn't master.
I don't have any pithy conclusion to offer; I just found my reaction to these photos fascinating.
I don't see anything queer at all in these pictures after (after?) his transition. He has become exactly the sort of impossibly handsome, athletic man that I have resented and desired since I was about 11 years old. I am aware that I am reacting to pictures, to a presentation, not to an actual man, but I was responding to a presentation, to a performance, in 5th grade too: the straight white teeth, the shirt open 3 buttons, the hiphuggers, the masculine swagger that I couldn't master.
I don't have any pithy conclusion to offer; I just found my reaction to these photos fascinating.
I'll Watch Drag Queens Do Pretty Much Anything.
I get bored fast with all the Project Runway/American Idol, etc. talent shows, but for some reason (i.e., because it's drag queens) I'm mesmerized by RuPaul's Drag Race. I actually teared up a little last night at JuJuBe's harrowing last-minute save from elimination when she Lipsynched ... For Her Life. And we laughed and cried to see Jessica Wild sashay away.
If you don't have time to catch the whole thing, this parody from Big Gay Sketch Show pretty much nails it.
If you don't have time to catch the whole thing, this parody from Big Gay Sketch Show pretty much nails it.
More Gay Movies & Entertainment News
Uuuuhh.
M and I were on our way to A's house for his weekly RuPaul's Drag Race gathering last night, guessing that everyone would want to know about our trip to Mexico City last week, and of course anxious to tell everyone how wonderful and magical and absolutely amazing it was, but we both sort of realized that we didn't know how to turn it into a narrative. And, too, I thought, I don't know how to turn the last few months of my life into a narrative. Which is saying something, because I'm pretty good at the narrative thing. Even if I have to bluff.I fell madly in love with a man, and then I fell madly in love with a city. That's all I've got so far.
So, I'm seriously neglecting my blogging. Not just here, but at The Gay Place and Bilerico where I'm required to write something about something instead of blubbering about my incoherent thoughts. Not only did I take a week off, but now, three days back, I can't focus long enough to write a paragraph that's not a mess. I'll come up with something, I hope soon, but right now my mind is spinning too fast.
Oh! My birthday was Monday, the day I returned from Mexico. I turned 49. Unbelievable. I spent the eve of my birthday vomiting on the bus from Mexico City to Nuevo Laredo at the border. Nice. Maybe it was the lax food safety laws in Mexico (are there any?) or the water, but I'm telling myself I was just overwrought and overwhelmed. I was actually crying the night before we left, I was so sad to be leaving. I haven't fallen so hard for a city since I was 18 on my first visit to New York. Hard core.
(Okay, one coherent thought: the street food in Mexico City is sublime. We ate almost every meal from street vendors. Usually for less than 5 bucks for the both of us, we stuffed ourselves on the most delicious food I've ever had. I guess, in a way, that fact can stand in for the whole experience of the city.)
I Voted For This Man.
I still love my president.
Not Writing, Shopping.
I've been such a lazy blogger this last week. I didn't post anything at all, not since Monday, on The Gay Place (nor did anyone else!). I was recently invited to become a contributor on one of my favorite blogs, The Bilerico Project, an LGBT blog with a national audience, the excitement of which, you'd think, would have spurred some rumination on something or other, but it did not.I'm preoccupied. I doubt this will be as momentous to anyone else as it is to me, but I am putting on a suit and tie and going to a fancy party tonight. I can't even remember the last time I wore a suit. Maybe my sister's first wedding, about 20 years ago? The best part of it is that I got the whole outfit at Savers for less than $15.
I'll post pictures later.
The Runaways
I'm waiting with joy and dread for the Runaways biopic. This is encouraging -- Dakota Fanning et al.'s version of Cherry Bomb. It's not bad at all:
Harrumph.
I seriously wish the restaurant industry would get together and reform the ridiculous system of tipping. Maybe then they won't be able to justify the fact that waiters in many restaurants make at least five times as much as the cooks. I haven't kept up with this recently, but I remember a few years ago reading that some fancy, high-profile restaurants (including Chez Panisse in Berkeley and Per Se in New York) had abolished tipping.
Restaurant owners: Pay your staff a fair and decent wage. Charge your customers what the food and service really cost. Not just because it would be simpler and more equitable, but because then we won't have to read any more stupid editorials by cheap, petty assholes who had an unpleasant experience in a restaurant the night before and feel the need to share their bad mood with the world.
Restaurant owners: Pay your staff a fair and decent wage. Charge your customers what the food and service really cost. Not just because it would be simpler and more equitable, but because then we won't have to read any more stupid editorials by cheap, petty assholes who had an unpleasant experience in a restaurant the night before and feel the need to share their bad mood with the world.
Stop the Presses! Some Bimbo Has An Opinion About Gay Marriage!
Does anyone else find it bizarre how much we care lately about the political opinions of beauty pageant contestants? I don't for the life of me understand why it's interesting that Miss Beverly Hills (Miss Beverly Hills?!) supports the execution of homosexuals.
I mean, c'mon, this peabrain's comment barely merits an eyeroll, but instead we get the story covered by every major news outlet and plastered all over the blogosphere. Here's an interminable segment by Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, complete with counterpoint by America's favorite gay dad, Dan Savage.
I mean, c'mon, this peabrain's comment barely merits an eyeroll, but instead we get the story covered by every major news outlet and plastered all over the blogosphere. Here's an interminable segment by Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, complete with counterpoint by America's favorite gay dad, Dan Savage.
Maybe if we all just decided to ignore these nitwits, we wouldn't find them later in life poised to be a heartbeat away from becoming the president of the United States. Seriously, people. Turn around and walk away. Don't encourage them.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Happy Birthday, Johnny.
When I was a little kid, my mother played two records more than any others. One was the Jordanaires' This Land, an album of American folk songs sung in beautiful, smooth 4-part harmony. Their version of "All My Trails" still lives deep in my soul and floats on the surface of my dreams.The other was Johnny Cash's Greatest Hits Vol. 1. Those songs indicated to me at a very young age that adults must have a world of exotic and dangerous concerns: erotic obsession, social injustice, marginal people, the tenuousness of sexual fidelity. Those songs may have been my first encounter with the idea that people often say things they don't exactly mean, to be funny or to make a point.
Anyway, I revere Johnny Cash, so does J, and this was always one of our favorite songs to sing.
The Ohio Theater Is Closing.
I know things change and die, blah blah blah, but this is a tough one. The Ohio Theater was my artistic home for many years. It's where I met and became friends with Tim and Kristin and so many others who are still my dear friends. It's where I began to learn how to write songs for theatre. It's where Lizzie Borden was born. It's where I met Jay. I guess I thought if it could survive the 80s and the even more brutal 90s -- in Soho, for god's sake, I mean, in 1989 we were bitching about how Soho had become an upscale mall -- I guess I thought it would be around forever. So sad.
The Great Texas Snow Freakout of 2010.
For a while this morning there were big globs of snow, or more like airborne slush, falling from the sky, and the Texans were beside themselves because apparently that sort of thing never happens here. Then later on for a bit, there was some real snow falling, but it was too warm and the ground was too wet for it to really accumulate. I drove to the film festival office where I've been volunteering in the afternoons, and the roads were nearly empty. Everyone stayed home because the roads are ... wet? Then the precipitation stopped, now it's close to 40 degrees, but still the Austin schools district told parents they could come get their kids from school, every one is leaving work early, and everything this evening has been canceled. As far as I can tell, the "snow" is over, but everyone is so traumatized, they need an evening off.
New Gay Theater.
I stumbled on this article minutes after writing a blog post on the Gay Place about the new gay conservatism. I'm sorry I didn't see it sooner or I would have linked to it as an example of this conservative trend.It's a shame that the economics of New York theater ensure that what happens there is mostly a conversation between artists and rich people, but I guess the point is that you can see these new plays as symptomatic of the kinds of concerns gay people have now, at least gay playwrights.
Keeping in mind that the New York Times is good at making things sound dull whether they are or not, the new plays mentioned in the article don't sound interesting to me, except The Pride (because of the history angle and because an old friend -- who is crazy talented -- designed the sets). But I would love to see the revival of Boys in the Band. I saw the movie when I was in my twenties -- at that time, it was understood, in the fringey artist/activist circles I traveled in, to be an embarrassing relic and our quintessential self-loathing story. But I remember being moved by it. I'm very curious to see how a contemporary group of artists interpret it, and how a contemporary audience receives it. In fact, I think I'll rent the movie and watch it again, to see how it holds up.
Happy Birthday, Yoko.
My favorite Yoko:
Seriously?
Dick Cheney is bragging about his war crimes, Uganda is close to passing legislation calling for the execution of homosexuals, and this is what people are up in arms about today? Is it possible that she was snubbed by Vanity Fair not because she's fat and black but because Precious is a stupid movie, her performance is unremarkable, and the only reason she got nominated for an Oscar is because the voters feel guilty about abused pregnant fat black girls with AIDS? Give me a fucking break. This is not injustice. Worry about something important.