start me up

So, summer is about to end. 
It was awesome.
Prague was great.

We'll be starting rehearsals tomorrow for The Lily's Revenge at the ART/Oberon space.  It's a five-hour-long drag epic/extravaganza by anti-diva diva playwright/performer Taylor Mac, about flowers that stage a revolution.

I'm playing a Poppy.

Tommy is also in it, playing an evil curtain called "The Great Longing".

It's sort of hard to describe.

But very excited to start, and thrilled that I get to do a show with Tommy! (which doesn't happen all that often, actually.  Only twice in our 12-year togetherness: 12th Night on the Common and The Communist Dracula Pageant, also at ART/Oberon).

We are doing 2 Gents together as well right after, with ASP. 

So we get to see each other a lot more, which is great.  No theatre widowing, at least not for a while!

Happy Labor Day to you all!

Ryan Shrugged

Paul Ryan?  Really?  I turn my back for ONE second, and the Mittster chooses his VP candidate and it's Paul Ryan? 

Oy.  Great. 

Now I have to hear all about his juvenile love affair with Ayn Rand for the next three months. 

Or maybe not, apparently. 

Ryan is now back-tracking on the whole "Ayn Rand-is-my-gal-pal" motif that has been following him for years.  He claims that his infatuation with her Darwinian, atheist, uncompassionate, "step-on-the-poor-and-needy" philosophy was merely an urban legend.

But people are understandably confused.

Maybe that's because he credited her as his inspiration for entering public service. 
Or the fact that he was a keynote speaker a few years back at a national convention of Rand loonies.  Or that he requires his staff to read "Atlas Shrugged" as part of their duties while under his employ.
 
You know, little things.

I read "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead", too.  When I was around 20 years old, just like everyone else.  And, like most normal people, I got over the notions of those books as I quickly grew older and realized that they are mostly crocks of shit. 

So any adult who actually takes Ayn Rand and her ideas seriously is going to make me raise my eyebrows thru the ceiling.

Her books read like juvenile romance novels, filled with evil, lazy socialist "takers" (Peter Keating, Ellsworth Toohey) and the noble, hard-working geniuses that they suck dry (John Galt, Howard Roark).  It's the sort of stories that flatter and enthrall every selfish, capitalist plutocrat that has ever ventured to creak open their mighty dust jackets.

And you don't have to be a genius to see how Randian ideas have fueled Paul Ryan, from gutting Medicare to destroying the middle class.  Leeches and succubi, all!

And its little wonder that Mitty finds Ryan so gosh-darn attractive.  Anyone who says one thing and then does another must make him feel right at home.  Can you imagine the dinner conversation?

"You want to gut Social Security?  Me too!!!"

Mitty must have had the urge to just strap Ryan to the top of his Cadillac and driven him all the way to the voting booth.

Actually, Mittens and Ryan even look alike.  There's this whole Portrait of Dorian Gray-thing going on when I see them standing next to each other.  Or is that too gay an anology? 

They seem like two cells that have metastasized in the same alien pod.  Together again at last.  And it feels so good...

Well, I am already bracing myself for Paul Ryan and the insufferable, libertarian/ideologue notions that will surely spew from his mouth. 

It's going to be a long time til November...

Further Notes:

So, today I read a long exhaustive New Yorker piece on Paul Ryan (written just weeks before his VP announcement), and I have to say it was revealing.  I think I disagree with just about everything he says/stands for.  Which is a pretty remarkable thing, especially since he seems more human than a lot of these other Republicans (but maybe that was just in the writing). 

And yet he still possesses a major factor that makes all Conservatives alike: a complete and total lack of empathy. 

Ryan's views, in a nut shell, are these (to me):  This is survival of the fittest.  If you can't compete, you need to lay down and get out of the way.  There's no hand-outs.  No free rides.  If you're poor or old or sick, well, that's your choice.  Tough luck.  The government has no business helping you out in any way.   Medicare?  Gone.  Medicaid?  Outta of here.  Unemployment?  History.  Social Security?  Privatize it.  If you need things like roads or schools or infastructure: pay for it yourself.  If you can't afford medical care: die.  He is a Libertarian Ideologue.  A Social Darwinian.   Every man for himself.

It's no wonder he loves Ayn Rand, who made selfishness a virtue. 

And yet Rand was also an atheist, which the Catholic Ryan shuns.  (How can you abhor the collective, and yet embrace a giant organized religion at the same time?  Isn't that a form of group think, ie, government?)  And Rand was Pro-choice (another Ryan no-no).  It's remarkable that the Republicans want the government out of people's private lives, and yet are constantly injecting and foisting their "morals" on the populance.

I'll probably keep adding to this thread as I go along and learn more about Paul Ryan, the man who wants to be 2nd in command of our country (and at least has a POV, which is more than Romney can boast).

Mister Ice

I didn't say that

I didn't mean to say that

The moment I said it

I regretted it.

I didn't mean...

what I meant to say
was that I couldn't quite know at the time
what I know now.

Which is always the way, isn't it?

Just when you think you know.
You don't.

And then you have to start all over again.

And I wouldn't have said it
I wouldn't have done it

When you think that we are judged
Not by what we say

But by what we do

and doing nothing is still doing something
is still making a choice
a choice to not decide
to not make a choice

to not upset the apple cart

so to speak
so they say
as the saying goes

And all I really would want right now

is to know
to know
to really know

what is inside that heart of yours
what is behind that smile of yours
what is underneath that hat of yours
up that sleeve of yours
above that head of yours
around that bend of yours
stuck in that craw of yours
because I'm leaving the gate

blindfolded

with one hand tied behind my back

So

Could I have cream with that?
Splenda?
A lid?
A straw?
Some ketchup?
Salt?
Irony?

Just give me irony.
Just give me irony.

Irony is free.

Well,

Not free.

But cheap.

Very cheap.

So cheap.

It might as well be free.

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!

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

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

Hotel Nepenthe at the Calderwood Pavillion! June 21-24

 The Hotel Nepenthe returns!  Some pics from our dress rehearsal, courtesy of Jeff Adelberg!

www.emergingamericafestival.com