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Monday, 10 November 2003 (in a miasma of malarial delusions) 2:47pm Wanna know what I miss? Reading. More to the point, having time to actually sit down and read a book. Haven't done that in a good long while. John Shirley gave me a copy of his new novel Crawlers, from which he'll be reading at Wicked Messenger, and I was hoping to have it done by then. Doesn't seem likely. Of course, I could sit down and make some headway into it tonight, but, well, we have Mau Mau Sex Sex on DVD from GreenCine, and I've really been wanting to watch it. So you see where my priorities lie. Yesterday I met (e)'s companion for the last leg of her tour, Hal Sirowitz, the Poet Laureate of Queens, New York. He's a terribly sweet guy, the most literal representation of a "gentleman" I've ever met. And he's incredibly funny. The two of them touring and performing together is a terrific idea. Hal was staying at Matthue's apartment while he and (e) were in town; meanwhile. Matthue is in New York at Jennifer Blowdryer's place, and Anders is subletting a room while Matthue is gone, though not actually Matthue's. (Certain of these details will eventually seem relevant.) Anders and his assorted housemates over had Maddy and I over for a vegan kosher meal before the show. Damn good stuff. Something tells me that if I looked into it, I'd probably find that most of what I eat falls into that category anyway. So (e) and Hal featured at the Second Sundays Poetry Slam here in town. They were terrific—(e) appeared to be healing up nicely from the previous evening's debacle—but I gotta say, slams just aren't doing much for me. The competitive element leaves me cold, and I find most of the performances underwhelming, perhaps because of their sameness. (With the possible exception of Karuna, that is. She also performed her peanut butter piece—I'm not even going to try to describe it since I can't possibly do it justice—at Cal Slam, and didn't win there, either. No justice.) Say what you will about non-slam open mics; for better or worse, you never know what's going to happen next. Jeez, though, could this community get a little smaller? It's like this: I first saw Karuna at Cal, and we then ran into each other a few weeks later at Spanganga when she was trying to get tickets to see From Tel Aviv to Ramallah: A Beatbox Journey with Yuri Lane (the show which closed a few days before Night of the Living Dead opened), and again last night. Karuna asked if I'd met Hal before, and I said I'd only met him earlier that day. She said she'd met him the night before, when she crashed at the place where he's staying—Matthue's. Everybody knows everybody else, even if they don't know it yet.
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Sunday, 9 November 2003 (at dawn) 9:51am My heartfelt thanks to everyone who came to the play. Y'all are the best.
Pictures from last Saturday's show are here.
I added a new injury to the list of bumps and bruises I've gained throughout the run of the play: burned fingertips. Everyone else was drinking, and I very much wanted to get stoned. We had grass and a pipe, but Maddy's lighter didn't agree with me. It was small, so I had a hard time turning the wheel, and the flame itself was so small I had to get the lighter right into the pipe, the net result being the flame singed my fingers. It also didn't help that the screen of the pipe was thoroughly resonated, so I had to take quite a few hits before I felt anything. I was determined, however, and chalked up the burning to the unpleasantness that I've come to associate with drug ingestion, like the icky taste of 'shrooms or the teeth-grinding from the the speed with which acid is inevitably cut. Pain with the pleasure. It's all the same to the EKG. And if anyone's house is set up for pain and pleasure, it's Sean and Noona. (They live together, but aren't a couple. Not anymore.) It wasn't a play party, but all the equipment was there if anyone so desired. And, of course, Sean wore his bunny suit. (That picture is best descibed as "work-hostile.") Goes without saying. Meanwhile, Ty and Corey were more than a little pleased to find Noona's Hitachi Magic Wand. Although clothes were kept on, much fun was had. I'm glad I wore my Trinity pants, since they were just about right. It also made it all the more appropriate that Tallulah was there; her evening's john lived nearby, and she swung by on the way home. She never did get to be a zombie or even see the play, so hopefully being at the party made up for it a little, even if we're a bunch of amateurs by her standards. The night's mellow was slightly harshed by the head zombie, who chose a rather inappropriate time to confront me. Seems he didn't appreciate the k'vetching I'd been doing about the rest of the zombies, like the fact that their time is constantly off, or that they make entirely too much noise backstage at the wrong times, or that they spill beer backstage every night. Little things like that. He informed me that trying to keep the zombies in line is like trying to herd cats, and that I shouldn't have such high expectations about them. That's my newcomer's naivete, I suppose, expecting that everyone involved in a production would do their best. All this, however, was after he asking why I hadn't wished him a happy birthday yet. Mind you, I'd only heard in passing earlier in the evening that it was his birthday, and hadn't seen him since then, and was stoned and otherwise distracted. Noona had said a couple days before that the zombies were feeling isolated from the rest of the cast, like we don't interact very much. Which is somewhat true, I suppose, since they get made up at a house near Spanganga, and as such we don't see them before the show. It made me wonder if I get singled out as being a prima donna, not deigning to have anything to do with them except complain. I don't know, and it's not like it matters at this point. I do know that Maddy and I have become good friends with the tech people, so I'd like to think that implies that we're not stuck up. I mean, I know how that sounds, but I've heard lots of stories about actors not giving the crew the time of day. Our final show was, to put it mildly, chaotic. Maybe our energy was weird from the mild debauchery of the night before. Nothing went catastrophically wrong, but it also felt like we were going to fly apart at the seams at any moment. Made it all the more exciting, I suppose. Cues were missed, lines were stepped on, at least one prop misbehaved and the zombies were absolutely fucking apeshit. I'm told they were encouraged, by someone who has no business encouraging them, to do whatever the hell they wanted. How that was supposed to be different from any other night, I don't know. But it was still fun, and, according to Jennifer's date, looked fine from where the audience was sitting. And that's ultimately what matters. Afterwards, we ate and watched MST3K with Jim and Erin, the (literally) resident techs. They've demanded that we come back and visit often, whether we're performing or not. I think we can manage that. Especially since, after walking by it a zillion times, Maddy and I only just discovered Ali Baba's Cave at 19th and Valencia, just a block from Spanganga. My god but that place is good. Mmmm. Falafel and hummus and dolma and...our regular pre-show foodage was a tofu burrito from El Buen Sabor at 18th and Valencia, and I'm sure we'll be back there as well, but... I'm still amazed I made it through the run of the show without getting sick, especially given my tendency to psychosomate myself into illness before gigs. At one point my throat was threatening to get sore, but it didn't. It wouldn't have mattered if it had; the show must go on, as they say, and it's not like there were understudies. Worse, there was something bouncing around the cast and crew. I'm crediting my sustained healthiness to daily ingestion of Natural Value Organic Cayenne Hot Sauce, usually on tofu. I'd gotten the idea from Joe Donohoe, who eats a lot of that sort of thing, and claims that during the year which he worked at a Vietnamese restaurant and made a point of eating the same hot and spicy foods as the rest of the staff, he never got sick once. Sounded like it was worth a try, and so far, so good. It's funny. While I don't tend to be a superstitious person, the theater worldthrives on superstition, and I became one in a hurry. I almost wrote about the hot sauce once I started eating it—i must spread the good news!—but I was afraid that if I did, it would cease to work. If it was really working at all, that is. While I knew intellectually that talking about it wouldn't change whatever its effectiveness might be, I wasn't about to take any unnecessary chances. of course not, harry...
Aside from the pictures, there really isn't any record of the show. Attempts to videotape it didn't work out because of the low lighting. It's probably
for the best. Live theater should be just that.
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Saturday, 8 November 2003 (eleison closing) 5:22pm And then, tonight, it's over.
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Wednesday, 5 November 2003 (crawlspace) 9:11am The office is still standing in spite of my game of hooky—I mean, my Unavoidable Absence yesterday. My computer doesn't appear to have been turned on, which is the one thing I was worried about. There isn't much really incriminating on it (what there is is also online), but still. My space. Stay away.
I arrived before The Boss, and as soon as he got here I went into Proactive
Secretary Mode: "I was supposed to tell you yesterday to get in touch with xxxxxxxxx, and
I have a letter I sent last week to xxxxxxxxx which needs to be followed up." It feels like a game of
misdirection, like in that original Star Trek episode "The Ultimate Computer"
when the
M-5 fooled the crew into thinking it was still using the primary helm and navigation controls by
sending through an electronic impulse at regular intervals as a decoy. Hell, sometimes my entire life
feels like that.
The men claim they were tricked into kissing, cuddling and holding hands with the "woman", Miriam, and say it was only after three weeks of filming that they were told she was male.The "truth" being that Miriam, aka the "woman," is (in their words) "a man waiting for a sex-change operation." Funny, that picture in the Guardian doesn't look like a man to me, but what would I know? They also use the female pronoun in spite of pronouncing Miriam to be a man. Gosh, this stuff is all so confusing, isn't it?
I'm beginning to have my suspicions that the whole thing is a hoax, a story fed to the press in order to ruffle the feathers of humorless PC types such as myself.
The AP article refers to the show as Find Me a Man, but
in the Guardian, it's the slightly more clever There's Something About Miriam. Not sure why, but that discrepancy makes me wonder.
Y'know, it was all supposed to be in good fun. Can't I take a joke?
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Tuesday, 4 November 2003 (foregather in the name) 8:06am An evil shawarma has convinced me to call in sick to work.
I will, however, be voting today. Throwing it away, more precisely, since I'm voting
for Ammiano for mayor even though Newsom is more likely to win. I'm reckless
like that.
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Sunday, 2 November 2003 (harmonic relation) 11:55pm Tristan and Violet's party on Friday night, John Shirley coming to see me in the play on Saturday, seeing Greendale with Horehound today, and both him and I then featuring at K'vetch (along with Michelle and Larry-Bob and Meliza and others). A damn good weekend. Back to work tomorrow morning, which sucks, but it's only for eight hours. Eight hours, five days a week. I can handle that.
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Saturday, 1 November 2003 (lines to a great lord) 4:39pm Though we'd originally planned on parking in Ted and Kelly's driveway a half a mile away, we actually got lucky and found a spot just a couple blocks down from Tristan's. Right at Haight and Fillmore, in fact, in the heart of things. Well, a heart of things, anyway. Still not as bad as The Castro would have been. Tristan and Violet made coffin- and stake-shaped tofu for me. I love my friends so much. I was probably the only person at the party not doing anything remotely costume-like. It's just not my thing. Never has been. I get looked at every other day of the year like I'm wearing a costume anyway, so I just can't bring myself to put any effort into it. I didn't even put on the hairfall I've been wearing in the play. I'm no fun at all. A little over a year ago, Gwen Araujo was killed because some boys she had sex with discovered she was a tranny. There are some who believe the murder was not a hate crime, but rather a reaction to Gwen raping them. (I wasn't in the room with them, but if they didn't find out Gwen was a tranny until afterwards, then it's a safe bet that if there was any penetration was done by them, and with mutual consent, so...forget it. I can't think on that level.) And this is not simply the opinion of one wingnut writing for a college paper. Reality TV show with transsexual shelved Now, I'm not surprised that the show as conceived, produced and almost broadcast. Frankly, I'm surprised it didn't (almost) happen sooner. Trannies are still a great cultural punchline, and probably always will be. During my lifetime, at least. What gets me is the charges, all of them except the last. Conspiracy to commit a sexual assault? Defamation? Personal injury? Since the charge is only conspiracy to commit, the actual sexual assault evidently never happened—i.e., the men were never quote-raped-unquote by the devious transsexual—but they may have had some other kind of contact with her, perhaps kissing or feeling her up, and since it was actually a man!!!, that qualifies as injury. I suspect that Miriam being pre-op is important, especially since the straight world puts so much emphasis on genitals. (I may never get SRS, and to some people, that means I'll always be male, regardless of how I look.) After all, she still has a dick, which makes her all the more of a man, which is very important for the The Big Moment at the conclusion of the show, of the finalist's reaction to learning the truth. "She used to be a man" wouldn't get quite as shocked a reaction as "She's really a man." I fucking hate television. I don't care that this show was actually British. I hate it all, around the world. Even Angel and kittypr0n suck.
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