xtcian

12/14/02 We're all a little

12/14/02

We're all a little freaked out by the possibility of a transit strike on Monday, and by "we're all" I mean approximately 12.7 gajillion people in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island, Queens and the Bronx. The only person I know who would be remotely prepared for such a thing is my sister Michelle, who not only biked to Boston from here and then walked across America, but routinely rode her bike from Astoria to Union Square every morning for work (if that doesn't sound impressive/insane, look at a map).

We tried to get some of the MTA scoop out of the Wall Street Journal reporters at Nell Casey and Jesse Drucker's Christmas party tonight, but Tessa said they were all talking "hyper-shop" and no salient details were forthcoming. 'Tis always lovely to see the brain trust of Nell, Virginia Heffernan, Lorraine Tobias and Tessa get together; those are four ladies who can discuss governmental policy with the same alacrity and enthusiasm as new haircuts. It's so easy to fetishize these women that I make a point of not doing so.

Tessa, Lorraine and Virginia hold forth in three different directions

Post-party, we packed into the car with all of the above, plus Natasha, DK, Alex Draper and Virginia's boyfriend David Samuels for a cram-packed ride back to Brooklyn that reminded everyone else of college, and reminded me of a typical car ride with my family. Back home, I kept Tessa in her duds long enough for us to take a particularly pretentious picture in our apartment hallway:

12/13/02 Herman Melville always said

12/13/02

Herman Melville always said that any particularly erudite allusion in novels was always a good thing: if your reader didn't get it, he/she wouldn't worry about it and skip right over without having noticed. But if the reader gets your allusion, he/she and the novelist will share the special, quick secret bond of two thinkers on the same wavelength. Melville had billions of allusions in "Moby Dick" some were biblical, some from other writers of his time, some mythological - and I rarely knew what the hell he was talking about. But he was right: when I did, I felt like Herman was winking across centuries, right at me.

The same can be said of humor, and I had a similar experience tonight while watching a tour de force workshop of a new play called "Crush the Infamous Thing," playing its penultimate night (in this incarnation) on W. 30th Street. The whole play is the rat-a-tat-tat dialogue that would occur if "Brideshead Revisited," "Sunset Boulevard" and the Thin Man movies all collided in a door-slamming farce. At one point, the lead man is visited by his ex-girlfriend, obviously pregnant. She threatens to expose his seedy life, but he talks her down, saying, "Don't worry, baby! I'll take you to the races!" She pats her tummy and says "Well, you better place, 'cuz I'm showing!"

A very silly joke, and nobody laughed, but I thought it was brilliant. Besides, they were on to the next line before you could blink, and the audience would no doubt get the next one. Ben Feldman (our Pink House lawyer) also represents this play, and apparently there are offers on the table for a real production, but I worry how many great lines like this will be shaved off so that Joe McMainstream don't git too confused. It's the little things like this that make life worth living and art worth consuming, in my opinion.

And if you're in New York tonight and want to catch the last performance of "Infamous Thing" before god-knows-what happens to it, head over to 259 W. 30th St. (b/w 7th and 8th) before curtain at 7pm Saturday and take it in. With four actors playing 14 different parts and the best girl-Friday dialogue west of 1947, it is one or two tweaks away from being a hit.

12/12/02 While talking to my

12/12/02

While talking to my shrink today, I realized how destructive the years 1979-81 were to my already-addled psyche, and not just because they were the worst fashion years since the 1890s. That was the time our family calls "2nd Iowa," when we came back to Iowa after a fully glorious couple of years in Northern London. I had spent "1st Iowa" getting the crap kicked out of me at Grant Wood Elementary School, so the thought of coming back to that shithole filled me with dread, and I was not disappointed.

I started 9th grade at Franklin Junior High School still a year ahead, having skipped kindergarten - and the first week, one of the violinists in the orchestra challenged me to a "fight by the bike rack" and a girl I'd known since kindergarten pulled my hair back so hard in the hallway that I dropped my books and screamed that I was a "fucking faggot." Hello again, America!

I retreated into myself with such hermetic perfection that I was able to go through two years without saying one word at school; most folks probably thought I was retarded. I became adept at avoiding being called on in class, which is a learned art form. Especially in classes like French, when you're graded on pronunciation. I learned how to be so tightly coiled up and unapproachable that the teachers started looking right through me, knowing that asking me to speak may end up being more trouble than they wanted.

the "2nd Iowa" house

At home, things sucked too. I was growing hair in weird places, got my first taste of acne, and was experiencing the dawning of a new existentiality; all 12-year-olds stare into the gaping maw of unhappiness for the first time, but I fell straight in and was consumed. I didn't talk for an entire month at one point, and saw no joy in practicing either violin or piano, both instruments being nothing but sources of criticism from teachers and my parents. The only escape I had was ham radio (which I've explained in better detail), which meant the only people I talked to were 45-year-old spazzes in New Mexico.

One summer afternoon during one of those years - probably 1979 or something - I was riding bikes in the neighborhood, peripherally around Sean and his gang of scruffy ne'er-do-wells. This girl named Tina Buresh (who lived down the street) happened upon us all, and ended up riding down the hill with me towards our house. Sean et. al. immediately launched into the refrain that I had a new girlfriend, etc. and I bolted inside. I curled up in the bathroom, threw up, then stayed in the house for a couple of weeks.

I was so alarmingly horrified that this would even be a possibility. I'd had a nascent experience with the enchanting Heidi Downing a few years earlier, but London was a long way away, and now I was sailing into the outer troposphere of puberty. It seemed very dangerous and nauseating, upsetting the carefully-constructed control-issued persona I'd built for myself. The only good by-product of friendlessness was the freedom from catering to any other human. I was sickened by the responsibility of being liked.

Later on in life, after my first kiss at 18 and virginity loss at 21 (oh the stories), I pulled the worst trick imaginable: I tried to make up for a lifetime of being a romance-less dork by seducing as many women as I could, but I kept my horror at the responsibility of being loved. This set in motion the years 1989 to 2000, for which I'd like to lay me down on a desert basin and apologize. There were probably no two greater personality flaws working in perfectly disastrous incongruence with one another, and thank god I lived long enough to see it end.

12/11/02 New York is a

12/11/02

New York is a pretty miserable place physically even without bad weather; yeah, I know the water can be nice if you're looking at the right angle, and Prospect Park is a land of enchantment, but let's face it: nobody moves here because of the scenery. Make it 33 degrees F and throw horizontal sheets of black rain in your face, and you've got a day like today, when even suicide would take too much effort.

We had comfort food tonight in the form of lamb chops, "winter pesto" and asparagus, courtesy of Alex Draper and Lorraine Tobias in their sweet little Brooklyn Heights pad. The food was fabulous, but of course their baby Nora provided all of the highlights; she is moving into that phase when words fascinate her, and social interactions have the possibility of fearless delight.

She was especially fascinated with my digital camera, which after further reflection, makes sense: touch any button on the back of that thing, and the picture changes. Also, the lens moves in and out in a pleasing robotic fashion.

It's always fun to be a part of a baby's first anything, whether it be a word, a walk or a tooth. I had the pleasure of being there for the first picture Nora will ever take. She didn't know she was doing it, but her finger hit the shutter at just the right time, and caught her own father mid-sentence.

Nora's First Pic:

Alex Draper caught by the unfliching eye of Art School class of 2023 Graduate Nora Draper

Nora's Second Pick:

clothed in her first Tar Heel bib, Nora lets her feelings known about my early attempts at brainwashing

12/10/02 The oxyegenating sustenance of

12/10/02

The oxyegenating sustenance of New York conversations continued tonight, as we attended two events guaranteed to set one's brain whizzing with ideas. Downstairs at "Currents Uncorporated" (twee name, fabulous place), Tuesdays@9 has taken up semi-permanent residence, and the last four nights I've been have really sizzled. Much has to be said for Matt Dawson and Jen Albano, two T@9 workhorses who consistently evoke the evenings' best performances (in cold readings, no less) but Tessa did pretty damn well tonight too. It was her first "acting" since about 2000, and though she second-guessed herself on the subway home, I told her she was terrific. She said I was only saying that because we're engaged. I replied that if she sucked, true, I would still say she was terrific, but she robs me of the need to lie.

A highlight of the evening was her monologue written for Billy Strong, which he delivered industrial strength. His pacing was slow, but what he lacked in speed he made up for in intensity; Billy on-stage can be one of the scariest motherscratchers you've ever seen.

The crowd afterwards is one of the more supportive arts communities you'll find outside the school plays of midwestern junior high schools; this is a stunning talent pool of New York's finest actors, all of whom are aching to help one another, and more than happy to give props to their fellow 212's (sorry, I saw 8 Mile this afternoon, and loved their use of "313" Detroit's area code as a symbol of pride). Contrast a night like tonight with any typical schmoozing and shit-talking occurring after a bullshit "showcase" of marginally-talented sorority-chicks-turned-actors in Los Angeles, and you'll see that this is an oasis indeed. New York is the only town that truly believes that a high tide raises all ships, I swear to God. Maybe it's an island mentality.

Although I didn't want to go, I'm glad we went to the Moth party afterwards; we got to hang with our buds Bliss Broyard and Josh Schenk. I also met Janine Jackson, who is a media critic at Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, a group whose soul purpose is to keep the mainstream media from spiraling out of control. She was super cool, and a great person to vent with, seeing as many of my (and Tessa's) discussions and various shoes-being-thrown-at-the-TV concern media literacy, or a pitiful lack thereof in this country.

Much was made of Fox News taking over CNN in the ratings, but it shouldn't come as much of a surprise or even be that worrisome: sans national emergencies, Americans turn to 24-hour news channels for entertainment, not news. When actual news happens, CNN always gets its ratings back (as evidenced in the election returns a few weeks back). When the next terrorist attack happens, people will turn to CNN for a week, but then back to their regular haunt so they can hear people talk shit about towelheads again.

A quote in Tessa's monologue - given to her by an old documentarian - has haunted me for weeks: "The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity." In a nutshell, this is why Republicans can always scream louder, because the politics of blame and hatred are so damned easy to articulate. Life itself, however - and being a good person - is complicated and hard. Good Democrats are masters of nuance, easily misinterpreted by conservatives as wishy-washy. A liberal pundit would have to possess twice the brain power of a conservative in order to achieve the decibel level of someone like Bill O'Reilly, so that he/she could spell out the complexities of being decent in a way that thick Americans could understand. Michael Kinsley and Al Franken try, but neither have the wherewithal to be a liberal bullhorn on a Rush Limbaugh-sized stage.

And so we wait for one to appear. O'Reilly can personally attack Bill Moyers on his show and get away with it (which to me, is like a janitor heckling the Dalai Lama), yet Moyer's response is buried where only hardcore devotees can find it.

It's all sickening, to be sure, but at least in New York you can find your small, disturbed band of brothers and sisters who support your artistic endeavors and fight the good fight on your behalf. It is wonderful to be engaged to someone who shares your rage at a country so full of shit, but even the best "nation of two" can get lonely without reinforcement.

12/9/02 More Crap I Found

12/9/02

More Crap I Found in the Barn, Part II

My family collects ancient videotapes like barnacles attach themselves to ocean steamliners; there are bootleg VHS videos in our barn of Duran Duran curated by my sister twenty years ago. Throw in a couple of Arcadia High School 1988 Chanteurs Concert videos and a copy of "R.E.M. Succumbs" with mold growing on it, and you have but a taste of the 100+ tapes in there.

I thought my tapes were largely destroyed, but it turns out a few good ones from the misty past were in good shape. I've had to make wise use of my time on the Oprah Winfrey Show, as it always seems to interest people, it looks funny on a resum, and the show itself is still kickin' around - but hardly anyone has seen that episode. That's because the day it was supposed to air in March 1994, it was suddenly pre-empted by Fat Teen Week, and thus every relative who had set their VCRs for me were treated instead to a 445 lb. gal named Sheila talking about how hard high school desks are to sit in.

Only one time zone caught it the first time around: Mountain Time. I had to visit some friends in Salt Lake City to get a copy, and when I saw it, I was horrified. So wracked with nausea I was with my visage on TV that legions of stories erupted; the most famous has me awakening from wisdom tooth surgery three days later bawling like a newborn. My own mother had to come get me because I was convinced I had turned into an actual frog.

The show itself was a sham and a nightmare, something I can write about later, but I was always convinced my performance was weak salsa. I was there to hawk a book about Generation X, and all I did was damage control against baby boomers who thought we were a bunch of fuckin' whiners. Tessa and I watched it tonight, however, and the distance of eight years has given me the serenity to believe I did the best I could. My hair, however, was inexcusable in any age.

Another tape that surfaced was the fine documentary "Voices From the Bottom of the Board," written and directed by the now-award-winning commercial director team of Amy Hill and Chris Reiss. Made in 1993 when they were fresh out of art college, "Voices" is probably the best, definitive generational statement on video: they took some money from an unnamed foundation and drove around America for a year, interviewing every young person they could find.

clockwise from top left: with Dana; with Jon Gray, Dana, David Reilly, Jason Torchinsky and Trinity; Jon jokes with Dana about her mom

They phoned me up after reading 13th-GEN and made Chapel Hill one of their biggest stops. While there, they interviewed me solo, then with Dana, then with Jay Murray, and finally culminating on the steps of the Purple House with every smart thinker from a mile radius lending their bon mots. It's a fantastic thing to have on film: me slouching in a lawn chair with a bourbon, Jon Gray holding a guitar, Dana looking fresh and fabulous, a young David Reilly with the best lines of the night, even my fave Trinity was there (where are you, my dear?). Truly a slice of 1993 when the livin' was not easier, but certainly slower. The most important thing to us those days was liquor, philosophy and darts, all three of which I feel I'm missing.

12/8/02 I stayed up way

12/8/02

I stayed up way too late tonight building more shelves for the library; this time they came out great, albeit small. Tessa, Sean and Michelle took up most of the other shelves, so now I have my own little nook to put up my favorites.

Hoping to stack 'em with the best of my intellectual oeuvre, I wound up in the barn at 3am sifting through ancient boxes looking for my books. Instead, I found most of my giant stashes of crap, the kind of stuff that made Tessa cry when we first packed it in the U-Haul. I tried explaining to her that I keep a lot of stuff because even the tiniest bits of papers give me writing ideas, but she only partially bought it.

I did hit a mother lode at one point, the spoils of which are below. Let's take a look at three good ones, shall we?
(click any image for bigger)

1. The Rap Mike.

Perhaps the best present ever given to me, and I've been around 35 years. Sean found this at Radio Shack, and we fucked with it for about six years until it exploded. My favorite part, of course, is the box it came in: featuring a white kid wearing a bolero and a swiss army jacket (meant to mimic Public Enemy, I guess) he gets the vote for Kid You Most Want to Slug in the Face. And the piece de resistance? The "rap" made up by Radio Shack marketing employees:

It's got sound.
It's got light.
Rap mike. Rap mike.

2. A Typical Note from C.

I suppose this kind of writing speaks for itself, but C was a particularly feisty lass I dated in 1995-96 in Chapel Hill. She would often leave notes around the Pink House for me to find, some of them very loving, and others... well, others like this one.

3. My Sundance Press Pass.

(actual size)

In 1999, while writing movie reviews for CitySearch, I convinced them to send me to Park City, UT for the Sundance Film Festival. On opening day, I went to the Welcome Center and they snapped my picture while I was still unpacking. I begged for a replacement, and they told me to fuck off. Once outside, I found out that my press pass was as good as toilet paper, and I didn't get into any movie I wanted. Basically, I wrote a report to my small but disturbed following of CitySearch readers about how lame the festival was if you weren't famous, and drove back to Los Angeles. I don't think CS sent anyone to the festival again, and I kept the press pass as a constant reminder how awful life was for me in Califorinia, and not to cut my hair too short.

So who says keeping random shit isn't good for you?