Saturday, June 30, 2012

Girls on Film

After the Guthrie Theatre announced it's dickfest of a season next year - tentatively titled "Penis under the Proscenium", it was nice to be watching a lot of films lately from a female point of view!

First, we saw "Brave", which is a documentary about the early life of British journalist Rebekah Brooks. 

Long before she began working for Rupert Murdoch and illegally hacking the cell phones of murder victims, Rebekah lived in a magical world of warriors and will o' the wisps.  She still retained her lovely, flowing red hair and strident independence thru many trials and tribulations. 


Lesson #1: if someone even mildly disagrees with you, poison them and turn them into a grizzly.
The person you disagree with is your mother?  meh.
Clearly, Rebekah had a sticky moral code right from the start!

All the men in "Brave" are loud, ugly, obnoxious morons, so if that wasn't a great training ground for working in tabloid journalism, I don't know what it is!

Rebekah: if you're reading this (and I'm sure you are) we are all so proud.  Don't listen to those people shouting about morals and corruption.   You are brave.  Go out and conqueor the world!  Why should the men get to break all the laws and get away with it? 

Next was "Snow White and the Huntsmen", which was a parable on the evils of homosexuality.  Charleze Theron plays an icy lesbian who marries Kristen Stewarts father - who also happens to be king - and then totally kills him by stabbing him with a sword, which is kind of like an extra long penis, only more deadly and difficult to manage.  Then she goes around picking up local gals and sucking their life force out of them by kissing the air around them really hard.  Then she takes a bath in white paint.  Really, she is just crazy as a loon!

Meanwhile, poor Kirsten Stewart is locked up in a dark dungeon with no one to keep her company except her lack of talent.  Luckily, she escapes and before long has two guys falling all over her, just like in those "Twilight" movies.  Kristen falls on a patch of enchanted mushrooms in the dark forest and gets totally high on their spores.  Which, for me, is just another example of the evils of gay bars, with all those nasty drag queens and their poppers and what have you.

Kristin Stewart's main love interest is Chris Hemsworth, who looks like a side of beef trying to work out a math problem.  They need to run around and protect the Kingdom from gay marriage and rainbow cookies, and whatever else Charleze has up her pooched sleeve. 

Meanwhile, Charleze dances around and around with a bunch of crows.

Luckily, straightness wins out in the end!  Kristin and Charleze have this battle royale and Charleze makes the same mistake that EVERY effete, gay James Bond villian makes (and they were ALL effete and gay): she waits too long to kill Kristin Stewart, she just has to get some snarky, bitchy little quip in first.  It's the down fall of most gays: we can't resist an opportunity to be witty.  Nor can we resist mirrors that tell us we look great.  Charleze's mirror actually has this golden man pour out of it, like some liquid Liberace.  How gay can you get?

Finally, we watched "We Need To Talk About Kevin", which stars Tilda Swinton as a mother with a sociopath for a son.  Really, if any mother is going to have a sociopath for a child, it's Tilda Swinton, poor thing.  Tilda just looks bleak and tired though this whole ordeal, like a dazed greyhound.  Just when you think she's going to get a break, someone slaps her or throws her pet gerbil down the garbage disposal. 

The whole film was sort of a rip off of "The Bad Seed", only without the camp factor.  The weapon of choice this time around is bow and arrow.  I personally much perferred how that little cunt Rhoda got rid of her victims in "The Bad Seed": she just beat them to death with her shoe.  Now that takes moxie.  AND she gets away with it!  Which is much more true to life.  Hopefully, she is grown up enough now to take Rebekah Brooks' place at News of the World.  She would fit in just great!

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Wilde Words



“The public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities.... A fresh mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever it appears they get so angry and bewildered that they always use two stupid expressions--one is that the work of art is grossly unintelligible; the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral. What they mean by these words seems to me to be this. When they say a work is grossly unintelligible, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is new; when they describe a work as grossly immoral, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is true.” 
                   ― Oscar Wilde

Thursday, June 21, 2012

The Hotel Nepenthe returns!



The Hotel Nepenthe opens (or re-opens) tonight!

Very excited to be part of the Emerging America Festival.

The show looks beautiful: I hope you can make it!

We close in 4 days.

Get your tix here:  www.huntingtontheatre.org
or here:
www.emergingamericalfestival.com



Friday, June 15, 2012

The Hotel Nepenthe Returns!


I'm very excited that my play, The Hotel Nepenthe, will be back for six shows only as part of The Emerging America Festival next week!  

Scary Bellhops!  Fucked-up Starlets!  Wayward Political Wives!  Caffeine-addled Yuppies!

It's the same lovely cast: Marianna Bassham, Daniel Berger-Jones, Georgia Lyman and myself.

Gammons is directing again and designed the gorgeous costumes and set, which will be on the Wimberly Stage with the audience, facing this vast, empty array of red seats that the genius Jeff Adelberg is lighting.

Could NOT be more excited to bring this show to life again!  It's the original ASP production, hosted by The Huntington Theatre Company.

How can I entice you more?   The same production won The Elliot Norton Award for "Best New Play" and "Best Ensemble".  It also won an IRNE for "Best New Play" recently.

AND this is a HOME GROWN play, with all local artists and designers!

Please COME if you missed it the first time!  And if you saw it the first time, COME AGAIN!

And if you like the show:  please spread the word: we open and close in only 4 DAYS!!!

Here's all the info:  www.emergingamericafestival.com

See you at the show!!!

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Zombie Apocalypse



I dreamed it was the Zombie Apocalypse.

And the only weapon I had to defend myself was a staple gun.
Everyone else in my scrappy, ragtag group of survivors had guns, crossbows, knifes as big as hockey sticks.
Not me.  I had a staple gun.
As stressed in most Zombie movies, tales and infomercials, the only way to kill a Zombie is to shoot it in the brain.  Otherwise, it would just keep going, like some slimy, gut-leaking Energizer Bunny.
As you can probably imagine, it is really difficult to staple a Zombie brain.  Usually I would get pinned down by a gashing flesh-eater and be fending them off with one arm while stapling away at their skull with the other until someone in my group would come along and bash them in the head.
Thanks!
Our group of survivors was incredibly diverse.  There was this good-looking blond man and woman.   (And when I say “good-looking”, I mean they could both be underwear models.   They were stunning.)
  These two didn’t like each other at first, because the good-looking man had killed the good-looking woman’s slightly less attractive and slutty best friend (she had turned into a Zombie, so he kind of had no choice) and the good-looking woman was going thru all these stages of grief.  I wanted to say: “Man up, Lady!  It’s the Zombie freaking Apocalypse!” 
These two end up as a couple before long; biting and scratching each other the whole way.  Of course.
 There was also this muscled, cranky black guy haunted by his wife’s death; a scrappy Asian kid who was always breaking open the backs of broken computers and making them run again; and this incredibly buff Latina that did lots of push-ups and that everyone called “Sanchez”.
“Sanchez, look out!”
“Sanchez, behind you!”
“Fire in the hole, Sanchez!”
I wanted to scream: “She has a FIRST name, people!”
There was also this older man in our group who constantly needed help and would spout out words of wisdom every other second:
“Rain is coming, we best take cover.”
“No time for arguing. Night will be here soon. 
“Rub this curry powder on that wound.  It will throw off the scent.”
Old people are so wise!  Like very smart border collies or eerie genius children, you really want one by your side during a Zombie Apocalypse. 
And then there was me.  The sassy, middle-aged gay guy with a staple gun. 
Clearly, I was there as some sort of comic relief.   I remember feeling surprised that I made it this far, because gay men almost never survive a Zombie Apocalypse. 
Maybe that’s because we’re all taking our 3:30 disco naps during the outbreak and get eaten up in the first wave. 
Or maybe we think the Zombies are some sort of Michael Jackson “Thriller” flash mob and try to join in.
But the most likely explanation is that the Zombie Apocalypse occurs at precisely the same time as the Tony Awards.
Anyway, it seems my function in our little group was to come up with quippy, deadpan one-liners.
Like, if a really gooey, rotting Zombie stumbles towards us, I would say something like: “Oh my God, this one needs a Make-Over!”
Or if someone manages to decapitate a Zombie, I’d say something like:  “Wow!  And I thought I was having a bad hair day!” 
Snap snap snap snap!
Yes, even in my dreams, I’m playing a stereotype.
I’m wearing a suit and tie in my dream, so I imagine that before the shit hit the fan I had some sort of soul-killing office job.  So I'm thinking the Zombie Apocalypse injected some much-needed excitement in my dull routine.
I was also better looking and slimmer in my dream which, I'm told, is exactly what heaven is like.  Only probably without the Zombies trying to eat you.
I’m not sure how I acquired the staple gun.  It’s something you would see more in an arts and crafts store than an office.  Who knows?  But I have to say, as the dream progressed I became more self-reliant and badass.
 I learned that I didn’t need to be near the Zombies in order to staple them in the brain.  The staples could just fly right out from a distance, so if I aimed really well at a gaping eye-socket or exposed head wound, I could take down a zombie all by myself!
 Hopefully I will graduate to a nail gun at some point.
But I suppose that’s in another dream.

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Mi Picasa es su Picasa


Oh Blog.

It's been a while. 

I was away, traveling. 

Then, when I got back, I discovered that I had reached my limit of pictures that I could upload.  (I naively thought that I could upload a limitless amount, but apparently there is a limit to them - or where there are stored, anyway -
which is this magical land called Picasa,
which now wants me to purchase additional space for some sort of yearly fee,
which I just don't want to do. 
And since images, for me, are such an essential part of this blog, I'm not sure what to do. 
So, we've reached an impasse, of sorts.) 

And yet, I just uploaded this pic above, so I'm not sure what gives.  It wasn't letting me download images a week ago.

Perhaps it's the size of the pic that matters?

I really don't know.

Anyone with knowledge or advice on photo sharing in the context of a blog, please feel free to let me know what to do here.