Show-Business!!
Posted: May 2, 2012 Filed under: advice, theater 1 Comment »I’ve seen a lot of theater in the last month. Here’s how it went:
Clybourne Park
I enjoyed the first act immensely. The acting is really phenomenal, the staging is beautiful and the writing is just almost teetering on the edge of what’s happening, which causes a great tension about plot. The second act was, well, how do I make this sound like a criticism–it was…enjoyable. There seems to be a new crop of plays budding up in the last five or six years, that are ostensibly “about” something, but to me feel ultimately as if they’re just there to make a good time for the audience. Clybourne Park, for all it’s efforts to talk about class and race and gentrification, mostly kept touching on it rather than leaping toward it head on. There is a fantastic speech in the second act–about a neighborhood’s value being difficult to….narrow down–but the other characters plow right ahead and say all the jokes, and to me this feels like the playwright is defeating himself by ultimately making an entertaining evening in the theater. I want to be destroyed by a play, transformed and left renewed. Is that too much to ask? And there is a sentimental plot device that ends the play which is, frankly, cheap and overdone and I felt embarrassed for everyone who let it go on. It’s a rich, lively, very-well-acted show that will leave you with lots to talk about, but is it actually going to move outside of conversations….I don’t know. I guess I’m in the minority: a person who likes difficult plays about difficult subjects and likes to feel bad after the curtain goes down.
A Streetcar Named Desire
Lord, help these actors who just can’t do it. Someone in the same row wondered aloud if perhaps “they” had “added some scenes.” That’s because the show feels so very very long and the rhythm is so very very static that I started to wonder if the play itself was truly as great as history has sworn it to be. The set is lovely, and seems cheap in a way that I like, in a way that feels real. The Tony-nominated costumes are great, there is some lovely jazz by Terence Blanchard in between scenes, but overall the actors are trying very hard to get it and they don’t. Nicole Ari Parker is working so hard to be a good Blanche, but she just can’t get there–I’m surprised they cast someone with so little stage experience. Nothing in the production feels like it’s making it across the finish line. This is perhaps the first production of Streetcar in which the audience is so glad Stanley rapes her, for at least we can move on already. Blair Underwood is, well, fine, doing what he’s doing, which feels a bit like he’s performing masculinity rather than being Stanley. Either that or he’s been given strange direction, and been allowed to move around as much as he pleases–good grief, Mr. Underwood, is knocking the furniture around the only thing you can think of to get the power in the scene? Everybody knows that powerful men are very, very still.
The Lyons
This is one of those plays, you know, where the family hates each other and acts like children and says horrible things that are funny but also horrible? But it’s also really, really good. The play covers that familiar territory, and in that way there’s not much “new” to be had, but the actors are phenomenal and the writing is fast and smart and has wonderful moments of beautiful, beautiful language. Linda Lavin is doing that Jewish mother thing that is SO OVERDONE and yet SO REAL AND NEW EACH TIME. She’s fucking great in it. She’s so cold and so decided, it’s like watching a destroyed person–but in the opposite way that Blanche DuBois might react–she is defiant, steely, resolved. I always feel like Michael Esper is over-doing it, he fidgets and blinks and harrumphs, but dammit you want to take care of him, especially in this play. Dick Latessa does a bit of acting in the second act that is so light, so easy, so unencumbered, and the language he’s given to act with is just so damn beautiful. Go, go, go.
Don’t Dress for Dinner
Don’t go see Don’t Dress for Dinner.
Leap of Faith
It’s very, very bad. Everyone is trying hard to make this bad material work. Raul Esparza, who I have seen do incredible things in plays and musicals is…kind of…speeding his way through this one. Or…kind of…doing his asshole schtick which was so delicate and put to good use in Company and Speed the Plow, here it’s just…sort of not that fun to watch. The songs aren’t good, the book is very, very bad. And they’re doing this odd whole-show-in-flashback thing where we’re inside the St. James theater and there are flatscreen TVs that are sort of half-assededly conceived and then Mr. Esparza takes us back to how we found ourselves in the theater…but they never get back to that idea, and the story ends back in Kansas, in the flashback, I think. The one redeeming moment of this offense is Mr. Esparza’s 11 o’clock number, “Jonas’s Soliliquy” I think it was called, when he is left alone on the end of the stage to summon the best of what he can do. Save your money and watch this.
Reading List #3: Butch Realness
Posted: April 23, 2012 Filed under: advice, books, EXACTLY, Reading List, Uncategorized 2 Comments »People often ask me “Could you recommend a good book?” This is a difficult question to answer, in a way, because there are thousands of good books and whether or not you find a book “good” really depends on what’s happening in your life at the moment the book finds you. I say it that way on purpose. The best books are the ones that choose you. So, I’ve made some reading lists based on various themes. Say you like books about “Women on the Verge” or maybe you like “Bleak Arid Centers” or “New York Shitty.” Find a theme that interests you, trot off to your favorite independent bookstore, snatch up all the books, make a pot of tea, and settle in.
Let’s talk about it: the plight of the sensitive straight white male isn’t all that interesting in a socio-political landscape-type deal, but dammit these sensitive straight white guys can write a fucking book.
- Fay, by Larry Brown
- Population 485, by Michael Perry
- Dirty Music, by Tim Winton
- Plainsong, by Kent Haruf
- Volt, by Alan Heathcock
In the District, Part 2
Posted: April 18, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »
One weird thing about Washington, DC is that everyone seems to work in an office. Or, more specifically, everyone seems to work in the same kind of office–the rush hour “look” is homogenous; there are no people coming home from the overnight shift, there are no weirdo actor/performers in audition drag, there are suits and there are nearly-suits, there are no day laborers standing on corners. It doesn’t look like New York at all. (I am not sure whether I thought it would…)
That’s what I noticed first about riding the Metro from the hotel in Dupont Circle down to the Mall, where we tried to visit the Holocaust Museum before hearing the docent give us a brief speech about what we could expect from both the line, the ticket counter and the galleries themselves. Ultimately, we decided we didn’t have enough time to visit the museum proper, and so we left the line after five minutes of waiting.
Let me take a moment here to say that there needs to be some kind of Oscar for people who give Otherwise Unnoticed Public Performances. For example, this docent walked up and down the line explaining to the masses how we should ask questions of the other docents and not the ticket-seller, as that would just hold up the line, cause confusion, etc. He also did this with the kind of practiced, careful alacrity that only comes from repeated and thus distanced performance. You see this kind of brilliance sometimes in flight attendants, or in public transportation operators, sometimes the sample-maker at Costco is like the most brilliant performer you’ve ever seen. For the first honor, I’d like to nominate Lea DeLaria’s speech-to-the-audience at the end of On The Town years ago, for Equity Fights AIDS. Her appeal remains the one of the most indelible moments in my personal history of Otherwise Unnoticed Public Performance.
When we got to the Lincoln Memorial, the fire alarm was going off. Really. Fireman, like busy sardines poured out of the trucks and climbing up the stairs to figure out where the problem was. We waited patiently with 100s of other tourists on the plaza until they gave us the ‘all clear.’ Immediately, some young boys, maybe 13 years old, two of them, started sprinting up the stairs. I was jealous of them for a moment–they got to be the first people back inside the empty Lincoln Memorial. Who can ever say they’ve been inside that thing all alone. Even if it’s for five seconds. But hell, what a rush.
We strolled through the Vietnam War Memorial, stopped along some pond-area to watch the baby ducks (and to hear a nuclear-family have a nuclear-meltdown about the kid falling on her knee and the mom not getting off the phone fast enough.) Then through the Sculpture Garden where this Oldenberg has been given a nice grotto-like spot. Everything else–the Tony Smith, the Louise Bourgeois, the Alexander Calder–feels crowded. But, if you’re looking for a brief survey, very brief, it’s an incredible garden full of singular, beautiful ideas. They don’t need me to tell you how great it is.
After we saw the First Ladies exhibit at the Museum of American History, where the infamous Jason Wu dress worn by Michelle Obama on Inaguration Day is on display along with maybe 20 other first lady gowns (I’M LIVING!!!,) Hazel was feeling a little unwell, puking once or twice. I’m not sure if her stomach was acting up, or if she was commenting generally on the state of American history, the curatorial choices, or the commentary from the trying-hard-but-victimized-by-patriarchy-masses. The language of a six-month old is direct, but not always specific. One of her mother’s decided that maybe she just wanted some fresh air and–as much as she could remember–we delivered Hazel to the lawn where she had her very first ever feel of grass.
In the District, Part 1
Posted: April 13, 2012 Filed under: ambiguous, Brooklyn, bullshit, friends, gays, Hazel, shamelessness, the unbearable weight of history, travel 1 Comment »On Easter Sunday morning, Kip and I got up early and took the F Train to Herald Square to catch the Bolt Bus to Washington, DC, where our friends Laura and Amy — and their 6 month old daughter, Hazel — have set up temporary shop while Laura does some research in the archives at Howard. So we spent a few days in “the District,” as my friend Jeff calls it, perhaps jokingly, I don’t actually know. (More about Jeff in Part 2.)
When The Bomb finally hits, I hope I go in the blast. I say this because, if the Bolt Bus is any indication of how New Yorkers might behave when all shit breaks loose, you don’t want to be around for the evacuation. Mind you, there is a bus to DC every thirty minutes, and the seats are reserved, but everyone still crams ahead to the front, waving their ticket print-outs and confirmation emails on glowing iPhone faces. It is, at least for a moment, chaos. Once everyone is on board, people calmed down, settled in, and we arrived 40 minutes early. The driver asked that we use headphones when listening to our “electronical devices.” I spent the 4 hours mostly staring out the window, into the scenery, past the scenery, to some content, empty place.
The Residence Inn on 19th Street upgrades us to a suite, which I suppose is a good thing, although what am I going to do with a sitting room and a full kitchen while I’m there. They even have a shopping list on the desk, in case I just can’t make it to the store. Back in the old days, I stayed in many many very fancy hotels, but who wants to send the desk clerk to get your cold cuts? Whatever your feelings about picking out your own tomato, Dupont Circle is a beautiful, beautiful neighborhood, and only as we’re walking from the hotel to L&A&H’s sub-let do I imagine, or rather realize, that most likely I could not afford to live there were DC my home, and probably I would feel the same way about it that many New Yorker’s feel about Park Slope, or Prospect Heights, or Ft. Greene. You know what I mean?
On the roof deck of L&A&H’s apartment building, a gaggle of very drunk and very white gay men are crowded around a table. I note four empty bottles of of Veuve, and a pitcher of orange juice. It is Sunday, after all. After a few fabulous minutes of catching up and snorgling the most perfect baby in the history of the world, two of the drunk gays come over to our table to inform us that they don’t want to move to Columbia Heights because that’s “where the black people live.” He whispers “black people.” This is when I become really confused. Isn’t this Washington, DC? Isn’t DC a black city? Isn’t our president black? Don’t the black people live everywhere?
I try to counter their racist stupidity by saying “Sounds like that’s where I’d like to live,” and the first one becomes defensive, noting that his boyfriend was held up at gunpoint by a black person, and that black person got off because the jury was “all black women.”
I’d heard that people in DC “had no politics” from other friends, but here it was, happening right in front of me. I’m not saying people in New York aren’t racist, misogynist bigots, but they (usually) know when to keep their mouths shut. And then it occurs to me that these gay men are saying all this because we are white, and our whiteness has given them license to say whatever they want. They believe that we, too, have no politics. All of us, except thankfully not six-month old Hazel, spent the rest of the afternoon pondering this idea. How does a city that is made of government have no politics?
Other things happened over the next two days, which I’ll write about as the week goes on. Stay tuned for the baby puke, the Jason Wu dress, getting lost on F Street, and the moment you realize you and your boyfriend are BOTH watching Woody Allen movies on your phones.
So Long, Ms. Rich
Posted: March 29, 2012 Filed under: art-making, gays, horrible, NYC, passings, poems, tennessee, the unbearable weight of history, Uncategorized Leave a comment »I was maybe sixteen when one of my English teachers handed me some photocopies as I left her class, folded in half, pulled from inside her purse, like they were a secret. They were dark on one edge of the paper, bright fields of white with a scattering of words on the other edge–that was how things looked when you made copies back then, because you laid the spine of the book down onto the glass and pressed to flatten it out. ”Here,” she said, and nothing else. I got the message from the tone, that, like medicine, or custom shoes, the poems were the right dose at the right time, the perfect fit, and they were meant just for me.
I read, from Yom Kippur 1984:
Find someone like yourself. Find others.Agree you will never desert each other.Understand that any rift among youmeans power to those who want to do you in.
I had always, somehow, felt the power of words–how words on a page could make a person feel invincible. How they can unlock a force, nurture a small seed that grows through decades to become a colossal castle-swallowing vine. At the time, I felt that those who wanted to do me in were all around me–principals, status-quo-loving teachers, other students–the kind of oppression that only a white kid in the suburbs can feel. But feel, nonetheless. Find someone like yourself. Find others. This was the first time I saw that I had the power to do just that. Inside me. Already. Not only did I have the power inside me, but I had the obligation to look for others, look outward, cast my eyes ahead. And, too, there was a promise that the others were looking to be found. Adrienne Rich made me feel like a person in the world.
It wasn’t until I was 21 or so, living in New York, that I discovered that everyone else had already discovered Rich’s work. Being a weirdo kid with nerdy interests–theater, the written word, secret languages–I’d somehow believed that Ms. Rich’s poems were only to be found on clandestine folded copies, all of them. I was shocked and disappointed. Until I realized that the poems had, in some sense, did for every reader what they had done for me. It was a slow realization, an uncomfortable one, having felt like a biggish fish in a small pond and then, bang, a nobody in the big city. By then, however, I had found the others. I knew that, at least. The transformation was exactly what a poem can do. Insinuate, declare, destroy, and then nurture, rebuild, create until you feel invincible. She’d promised it, and it came true. Since yesterday I have been wishing that I could bring her back with that same power, that I could harness those first feelings into some kind of remedy.
You, and you, and you, all of us, what if we lean out our windows, from New York to Tennessee to Texas and California, screaming her name into the wind, and she’ll come back, renewed. I always loved that the audience claps for a dying Tinkerbell and she is revived–certainly it could work for a fierce, sexual, Jewish, lesbian, intellectual sorceress like Ms. Rich.
Tonight I thinkno poetrywill serve
Finding the Confidence
Posted: March 15, 2012 Filed under: ambiguous, art-making, books, joan, Uncategorized, writing Leave a comment »I heard Joan Didion — my idol, my ideal reader, my legendary mother — speak at the New York Public Library back in November on the release of her last book Blue Nights, and then later, as I do, scoured the interwebs for more interviews and articles, finally landing upon an interview with David Ulin at the Los Angeles Public Library, in which (I think it was this one, it might have been the one from New York) in which Joan talked about getting the confidence back, or how you find your way back into a novel or long piece after so many behind you, or more specifically, who gives you the authority. She answered, “The reader.”
Since I started taking Rachel Sherman’s fiction writing workshop — which I highly recommend — I’ve been thinking about the reader as the authority vs. the writer as creator and guide. Or more specifically, how that problematic interaction both reveals an opportunity for greatness and a craggy space for confusion and terror on the part of the writer. It’s a big question — who is in charge?
Ultimately, of course, the choice rests in the hands of the reader — if they are bored, they will put the book down, and the writer loses. But you can do anything else to a reader — infuriate them, make them cry, make them laugh, give them an erection, question their values — but you can not bore them. Rachel often reminds us, if our work has become too opaque or, frankly, incomprehensible, “Choose where you want the reader to work.” I like this because it describes exactly what a good book does — invite the reader to take an active role in the experience of the story.
Somewhere along the way of the last few months, with thanks to the workshop, but most likely to bunches of other things, I felt in charge again. Or, rather: I remembered how the exchange works. The reader gives you the authority and then the writer respects that gift. Enough to give the reader something meaningful but not easy; beautiful but not pretty; messy but not untidy. That may sound simple, or not separate ideas, but anyone who is a creative person, especially a writer, more specifically me, will understand that.
Reading List #2: Food Porn Fiction
Posted: March 3, 2012 Filed under: advice, books, food, Uncategorized Leave a comment »People often ask me “Could you recommend a good book?” This is a difficult question to answer, in a way, because there are thousands of good books and whether or not you find a book “good” really depends on what’s happening in your life at the moment the book finds you. I say it that way on purpose. The best books are the ones that choose you. So, I’m making some reading lists over the next several months based on various themes. Say you like books about “Women on the Verge” or maybe you like “Butch Realness” or “New York Shitty.” This way, you can find a theme that interests you, trot off to your favorite independent bookstore, make a pot of tea, and settle in.
Each of these books intersects with the world of food in an interesting way — be it the private chef of the Stein/Toklas household, a snowy suburban Red Lobster, a meat-filled mystery, and the first take on Frankenfoods.
- The Book of Salt, by Monique Truong
- The Bobby Gold Stories, by Anthony Bourdain
- Last Night at the Lobster, by Stewart O’Nan
- The Food of the Gods, by H.G. Wells
- Salt: A World History, by Mark Kurlansky (okay, this is not a novel.)
Prompt #2
Posted: February 28, 2012 Filed under: ambiguous, new stuff, tennessee, the unbearable weight of history, writing 2 Comments »I started taking Rachel Sherman’s Ditmas Park Fiction Workshop back in January, and sometimes, if the trains are slow or people are late, we’ll start with a writing prompt for 10 minutes or so. I’ve never really used these before, but they do work. They do a funny thing to your writing brain–you can’t stop to re-think, and in that way, only the real meat of something comes out, or at least that’s how it feels to me. It’s harder to fuck it up. Last night, she said “Write about a lesson.” So, this is what came out:
The lesson is: You can cheat your boss out of product if you figure out a way to hide it, like exchanging a ten for two fives–same money in and out–when viewed from the grainy footage of the security camera that surely he never checks because, after all, you’re fifteen years old and this is Baskin Robbins and you’re raking it in every night in July and what’s two scoops to him, when he gives the girls who work with you make-up for Christmas, and they’re mortified. He gives you a pen and pencil set, and you’re thinking–that’s it? Make-up and writing utensils? It occurs to you then how sexist and awful this is, but you don’t have the words for it yet, because you haven’t read Judith Butler or Jack Halberstam or Ms Magazine or Gloria Steinem or Susan Faludi or Alice Walker, and only after you have read them do you realize what an idiot he was, not a horrible person, trying to be nice, but getting it all wrong.
The lesson is, also: Some people will smoke pot in the walk-in and never get caught. This perplexes you does not infuriate you, just hangs there like a big cold question mark. How do you smoke a joint in the walk-in and not get caught? What if your mom is a regular at Governor’s Lounge and she’s three times once the Tight Jeans Contest and you’re thinking–what sort of thing wins the tight jeans contest? Just, like, how tight they are? Later–see above, the Butler, the Ms. Magazine–you’ll understand that it probably has something to do with how you look in the jeans.
Then, the lesson is: Sometimes you have to drive the offending pot smoker back to her house at 1am, after you turn off the light and set the alarm and cram the wad of cash down into the safe and throw the key back under the door, because her contest-winning mother has had too much and can’t drive, or won’t, or shouldn’t, or is already passed out on the couch, which is what it turns out to be when you get there, and you’re seeing her drunk in the jeans with her long hair that reminds you of the covers of your neighbors Cher records and you think the last lesson is: I gotta get outta this town.
Oscar Bingo 2012
Posted: February 23, 2012 Filed under: fabulousness, friends, movies 1 Comment »
Ladies & Ladies, please find your 2012 Oscar bingo cards below, complete with “Red Carpet” free space. For some reason, they rendered oddly when I made them in the “Meryl Streep looks sickening!”* square, and instead it just says “Meryl Streep looks.”
So, I say you have two options. You can either 1) wait for a shot of Meryl looking sickening and then call that square yours, or 2) fill in your own adjective for how Meryl looks on Sunday evening–feel free to pick “devastating,” or “dressed the house down,” or some other thing you feel she “looks” and then convince your partymates that you deserve the square. Let’s raise the stakes, right?
I also managed to mis-spell Kristen Wiig’s name, so that some cards have “Krieten Wiig” squares, which I can only attest to being too busy and distracted to care about spelling Krietan’s name.
There are 10 different cards, in case you’re playing with a crowd.
*”Sickening” in this sense is like this.
Download the Bingo cards here.
Talde
Posted: February 22, 2012 Filed under: advice, Brooklyn, food, kip, new stuff, readings 1 Comment »I read some new pages last night at Dixon Place as part of the Wicked Queer Authors series, curated by Marty Correia, who is a fabulous writer (and is doing this interesting Write America Project.) I think I got some video, and if it turns out, I’ll post it here in a few days. Marty gave me the best introduction I’ve ever had at a reading, for realz, I was so honored. It was personal, genuine, and talked about my work on this blog and particularly how, “I don’t know how this guy doesn’t weigh 400 pounds the way he eats,” because I’m always writing about food. I think the last few years I write more about food. As it becomes more interesting to me. As I become a better cook myself. (This, from the kid who ate peanut butter on hot dogs every day until high school. True story.) So, here’s more about what I ate, and Marty, this one’s for you.
Last Sunday night, the day before the holiday Monday, Kip and I went to Talde in Park Slope, which is Dale Talde’s new casual-Chinese place. If you watch Top Chef, which I do, you’ll know that he’s a badass chef, and also he’s smokin’ hot sexy. I knew it would be a madhouse, so we went early, 5:30, and already there was a 45-minute wait, which we expected, so we sat at the bar. I had a couple of “Brooklyn Slings” which is gin, cherry liquor, pineapple, and bitters. It was superb, even if we did have to wait a while to be served — or even acknowledged. Dear Bartenders Everywhere: We can see that you are slammed, but a little eye contact goes a long way. Kip had a couple of Hitachino Red Rice Ales. I don’t generally like beer, but I very much like Hitachino.
Since we were only two, we sat at the “chef’s counter” in the back, which faces the open kitchen — I like to watch people cook, and I like to see the orchestration that goes on to make a kitchen run smoothly. We started with the Perilla Leaf appetizer — with toasted shrimp, coconut, bacon-tamarind caramel, peanuts — which was a bit over-sold by the waiter, but we were there to spend money and eat well, so we leapt at it, no grudges. It was a fantastic little plate of single bites — every flavor at once, showing off what sort of places you expect to go with the coming meal. Some people on Yelp seem to think that this should be served as an amuse, not a $5 appetizer, well, it’s a casual Park Slope joint, so hey everybody relax.
foto by Tom Carpenter
Then we had the Saigon Crepes, which is crunchy and light, not like a soft crepe that you might be thinking of, and, holy crap it was good — maybe it was the best thing we ate all night, with smoked shrimp, Chinese bacon, mint, and I think I recall bean sprouts, cilantro, and basil. If you go, have this. It’s killer. Also have the Pretzel Pork and Chive Dumplings, which are like your traditional pork and chive dumpling punched up with crunchy pretzel salt and a darker, doughier wrapper.
Who wants salad or soup when you can have pretzel dumplings and fried crepes with bacon?
We shared the BBQ Smoked Pork Shoulder, which has a miso-mustard sauce on top, and a fresh pear…hash?…as garnish. This is my only complaint, a very minor, snobby, needy complaint: Give us some more pear, jesus, it’s a pear, I’ve got a huge slab of perfectly cooked, shoulder that’s been under the broiler getting more and more fabulous, I need more of that fruit to cut the fat. But damn, the shoulder was delicious. The market vegetable that night was a Chinese green, I didn’t catch the name when the waiter mentioned it, and we had it stir-fried with edamame — superb.
We also had the Black Pepper Toast, which was nice along with the pork and the greens. What is this new toast moment we’re having in restaurants? It’s a thing, right? I think it has something to do with the current comfort food trend, seems like everyone is serving a toast dish as a side, or maybe they’ve figured out a way to get us to pay $3 for a slice of hot bread cut into triangles.
I suppose at some point they’ll have a real pastry chef — they only opened about 5 weeks ago — but for now there is only the one dessert: Halo Halo with Original Cap’n Crunch and the usual additions — coconut, evaporated milk, jelly-tapioca-maybe things. Don’t freak out, just get it.
So, in a word: go.
