Fool's Gold Coast

The Streak

ME: This is like my 754th consecutive bad hair day. I am the Cal Ripkin, Jr., of bad hair.
MY BOSS: That's not true. There was that one time your hair looked okay. Don't you remember? You looked young that day?

I stand corrected.

Cheap Laughs

As an adolescent, I loathed nervous, polite, or otherwise fake laughter--as, for example, when my pastor would tell some manifestly awful joke from the pulpit and the congregation would indulge him in a round of hearty, ersatz guffaws. It seemed to me yet another example of adult inauthenticity (I suppose I was rather Holden Caulfield-esque when it came to comedy in those days), and I vowed that my own laughs would always be genuine.

Now, of course, I hear myself cackling like a hyena on nitrous oxide in almost every interaction, and about 87% of the time I'm fake-laughing my fool head off.

How depressing--though inevitable?--to be forever disappointing one's past selves.

All That Glitters 90

A look at how I've been diverting myself lately.

Books
READ: Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare, ed. by Jonathan Bate [my opinion of it is only slightly more favorable than that of TS Eliot, who called it "one of the stupidest and most uninspired plays ever written"].
COMING UP: more of Shakespeare's tragedies.

Movies
SAW: The Muppets Take Manhattan.
REVIVAL OF THE WEEK: Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais, 1961), tomorrow night at the Gene Siskel Film Center.
THIS WEEK'S MOVIE NIGHT PICKS:
MINE: Ballast.
KITO'S: State of Play.

Men
LUSTED AFTER: Enrique Iglesias circa 2000, the guys in the GAP Christmas commercial, Levi Johnston, Joey McIntyre, Johnny Depp.

Current Interests
Movies, the gays, Sarah Palin, female pop stars, Shakespeare's tragedies, race, childhood, Chicago theater critics, reproductive rights, Asian food, local broadcasting, technology, Carrie Prejean, transfolk, the CTA, Ayn Rand, the 1990s, the White House, Nabokov.

Fool's Four
MY FAVORITE LOCAL NEWSCASTERS:
1. Janet Davies.
2. Tom Skilling.
3. Ron Magers.
4. Linda Yu.

Foolish Flashbacks
TWO YEARS AGO: "Trust me, you haven't lived until you've heard Tony Bennett sing a duet of 'Put on a Happy Face' from Bye, Bye, Birdie with Koosh ball-era Rosie O'Donnell; it just might be the single most irritating track in my entire music library."
&
"I remember arguing with someone about Amélie (he pro, me very much con)."
&
"The three conditions that induce flamboyance follow."
THREE YEARS AGO: "MY FOUR FAVORITE HEROINES FROM CHILDREN'S LITERATURE."
&
"Ah, those hectic adolescent years."
&
"When constructing a romantic or erotic fantasy I generally find back-story to be a bit of a nuisance: disenchanting at best, dick-shrivellingly repelling at worst."

Glitter
"Muppets, Music, and Magic: Jim Henson's Legacy," a retrospective of the puppeteer's career, runs through December 2 at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Wocka, wocka, and so forth.

List of Links 34: Men and Women

Found around the Web.


MEN TO WHOM I AM ATTRACTED: Neil Patrick Harris tweets, adorably.
And Levi Johnston accepts an award ("a stainless-steel objet d’art based on a fearsomely functional product known as the Eleven").

MEN WHO SERVE: DG Myers thinks The American by Henry James "may be the best novel ever written about an American combat veteran."

MEN WHO SUCK: Before you head out to see The Twilight Saga: New Moon (because you are 12, apparently), read Lucy Knisley's hilarious comic about becoming engrossed in the story against her will.

ELEVEN MEN & A MAD MAN: In this week's Chicago Reader, I review The Factory Theater's 1985 and A Red Orchid Theatre's A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant.

AMANDA: "And I went, 'I'm in. If I'm not the one who killed Sydney, I'm in.'" Heather Locklear returns to Melrose Place.

WOMEN OF WONDER: Someone awesome sculpts Wonder Woman from Wonder Bread.

ONE MAN, ONE WOMAN: Conservatives and gay men both like beauty pageants 'cause they enjoy oppressing and decorating women, respectively. The two camps do not agree, however, on Carrie Prejean (who is intolerable).

"WOMEN PAY ME THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS TO HANDLE THEIR BOOBS": TNR's Christopher Orr repurposes "some of 2012's more notable dialogue for an alternative literary experience."

Programming Note

Hey, guess what? I'm going to be on WTTW Channel 11's Chicago Tonight on December 16th to talk about holiday theater shows on a panel with Kerry Reid and Catey Sullivan.

Here's what the BFF said when I told her: "Well, you better get to the gym."

Don't I know the meanest people? Anyway, unless you want to miss seeing my scrawny self on the small screen, mark your calendars now.

Black Is Beauteous

And now, a message for alleged face-whitener Sammy Sosa, from Aaron the Moor of Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare.

Zounds, ye whore, is black so base a hue?
Sweet blowze, you are a beauteous blossom, sure (4.2.73-74).

This has been a message for Sammy Sosa from Aaron the Moor. Thank-you.

Lust List

And now, three men to whom I am attracted:

1. Kito's trainer Pedro. He is Puerto Rican and muscular, the two best things a person can be.

2. The guy who repaired the dishwasher at work today. Sad eyes, long eyelashes, sensuous mouth. I balk at using the word "sensuous" in most circumstances, so that should convince you of the extreme sensuosityousnessity.

3. Shirtless Mark Wahlberg. Regular Mark Wahlberg seems like a jerk, but you can't argue with the shirtless version.

This has been three men to whom I am attracted. Thank-you.

Seek and Ye Shall Find 44

Addressing your recent search engine queries.

sela ward
One of the stars of NBC's Sisters and, later, a show about finding love the second time around (I think it was called The Second Time Around or Once More with Feeling or Love Me I'm Old or something). She must be pushing--or pulling--50 at this point but still looks fantastic, as is evidenced by her supporting role in the remake of The Stepfather, to which Kito dragged me and which sucked.

Hotel Oscar Wilde died
beteau lavoir rick steves
The hotel where Oscar Wilde died--on November 30, 1900--is located at 13 rue des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Among his last words (supposedly): "Either this wallpaper goes, or I do." The exterior looks like this:


As for Le Bateau-Lavoir and Rick Steves, here's what the latter has to say about the former in the 2009 edition of his Paris guidebook:

A humble facade marks the place where Modern art was born. Here, in a lowly artists' abode (destroyed by fire in 1970, rebuilt a few years later) as many as 10 artists lived and worked. This former piano factory, converted to cheap housing, was nicknamed the "Laundry Boat" for its sprawling layout and crude facilities (sharing one water tap). It was "a weird, squalid place," wrote one resident, "filled with every kind of noise: arguing, singing, bedpans clattering, slamming doors, and suggestive moans coming from studio doors."

In 1904, a poor, unknown Spanish émigré named Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) moved in. He met dark-haired Fernande Olivier, his first real girlfriend, in the square outside. She soon moved in, lifting him out of his melancholy Blue Period into the rosy Rose Period. La belle Fernande posed nude for him, inspiring a freer treatment of the female form.

In 1907, Picasso started on a major canvas. For nine months, he produced hundreds of preparatory sketches, working long into the night. When he unveiled the work, even his friends were shocked. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon showed five nude women in a brothel (Fernande claimed they were all her), with primitive mask-like faces and fragmented bodies. Picasso had invented Cubism.

For the next two years, he and his neighbors Georges Braque and Juan Gris revolutionized the art world. Sharing paints, ideas, and girlfriends, they made Montmartre "The Cubist Arcropolis," attracting free-thinking "Moderns" from all over the world to visit their studios--the artists Modigliani and Henri Rousseau, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, and the American expatriate writer Gertrude Stein. By the time Picasso moved to better quarters (and dumped Fernande), he was famous. Still, Picasso would later say, "I know one day we'll return to Bateau-Lavoir. It was there that we were really happy--when they thought of us as painters, not strange animals."

how to date a puerto rican
This term pops up quite a bit, and I don't know why. I mean, are you looking to date a Puerto Rican specifically and want tips on how to go about doing that? Or have you wound up in a budding relationship with a boricua and need advice on how to deal with what seems to you a strange, exotic species? If it's the former, have you tried visiting a salsa club? And if it's the latter, you sound like a hick. But don't worry: help is on the way!

fool's gold coast
A collection of Web-scribbles by a Swoosie Kurtz devotee who preys on straight men and does not own a Borders Rewards card.

Thanks for stopping by!

ELSEWHERE:
My mini-review of GayCo's The Audacity of Nope, or How I Fell for a Pansy Scheme is in this week's Chicago Reader.

One Thing after Another 22: For the Win

PREVIOUSLY:
1. “Say,” says Trixie to Olive, “how would you like to accompany me on my counseling session with Rev. Lonnie Lloyd?”
2. "I am here at the Louvre to tell people about Jesus," says Eli to Trixie's dead son Andrew. "As my mentor and pastor Dr. Lonnie Lloyd would say, 'Don't be a quitter, son: / Just go git-r-done!'"
________________________________________________________________

It turns out that a counseling session with the Rev. Dr. Lonnie Lloyd consists of the counselee sitting there quietly while the Rev. Dr. Lonnie Lloyd recites prosperity-gospel slogans. "God wants us to succeed," he says. "Ask and you shall receive," he says. "Christianity is for winners, not whiners," he says. "The market ultimately regulates itself so the government should keep its nose out of Wall Street," he says.

Olive cannot see how any of this could help a grieving alcoholic pull her life together, but Trixie Malchance hangs on every word.

"What do you recommend for those times when someone really needs a drink?" Trixie asks when he finally opens the session up to a little Q&A.

"I would recommend claiming victory over your addiction," Rev.-Dr. Lloyd says, "and receiving the gifts God wants to give you. You see, we are like children, and God is like a grandmother bearing a plate of Fig Newtons. We need only ask for a Fig Newton, and Grandma God will give us one because she loves us and wants to see us happy. If we don't get a Fig Newton and consequently we're unhappy, it's only because we didn't ask for one, not because God didn't want to give us one. It does not follow from this, of course, that God is a woman. That is liberal nonsense."

This seems a satisfactory answer to Mrs. Malchance, but then, she has not read as many suicide notes as Olive has and thus still believes that happiness is possible. Olive does not say anything, however, because she feels it is not her place, and, in any case:

"I am afraid that is all the time we have for today," says Lonnie Lloyd. "I do not want to miss my flight."

"Your flight?" says Trixie, alarmed. "Where are you going?"

"Paris, France," says Lonnie Lloyd. "I need to check the progress of some missionaries our church sent over to spread the Good News to the godless French."

"But what about my recovery?" says Trixie. "How will I fare without you?"

"I do not know," says Lonnie Lloyd, who has clearly not given it a thought. "But best of luck, okay?"

At which point Olive realizes at last that Mrs. Malchance is, for some unfathomable reason, deeply in love with the Rev. Dr. Lonnie Lloyd.

Plan B

Last night I attended a birthday party at a bar in Wrigleyville. A few attractive straight men were there, which prompted another gay partygoer to make an argument that seemed entirely reasonable to me. If he were straight, he said, he would pursue women, sure--but on those nights when no women were interested in what he had to offer, he would say to himself, well, there's no sense in letting the evening become a complete waste; why don't I let a gay guy give me a blow job? After all, as a great man once said, "You can't always get what you want--but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need."

It's not like anyone is questioning anyone's this, or suggesting anyone else's latent that. I just think it's smart to have a backup plan. That's all I'm saying.

I also liked what Kito said when a very drunk young woman wearing a sombrero and poncho paraded past: "It's not a party 'til there's a white girl in a sombrero."

It does seem an accurate gauge, you have to admit.