Fool's Gold Coast

I Am the One She's Been Waiting For

With the Obama/Biden button pinned to my coat and the copy of Main Currents of Marxism I've been lugging around lately, I have begun to worry that the long sought after link between the Democratic presidential candidate and socialism just might be me.

I tell you this on the assumption that you won't alert Gov. Palin.

ELSEWHERE:
My reviews of American Theater Company's Celebrity Row and BackStage Theatre Company's Beauty on the Vine are in this week's issue of Time Out Chicago.

All That Glitters 68

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

Books
READ: Little Me by Patrick Dennis.

Plays
SAW: Caroline, or Change (Court Theatre) [I cried my eyes out].

Movies
SAW: The Pool, Rent [they filmed the last performance and showed it in movie theaters], W, Last Year at Marienbad, Make Way for Tomorrow [again: cried my eyes out].
REVIVAL OF THE WEEK: Zero de Conduite / Man's Castle [double feature, tomorrow night at the Film Center].

Music
ACQUIRED: Caroline, or Change (original Broadway cast recording); Trout Fishing in America, Big Round World.
MOST RECENTLY PLAYED SONGS IN MY iTUNES LIBRARY: "Make It Another Old Fashioned Please," Patti LuPone; "Crazy Horses," The Osmonds; "Rock 'n' Roll Party Queen," Grease (soundtrack); "Giant Steps (Alternate Version 1)," John Coltrane; "Mothers of the Disappeared," U2.

Fool's Four
MY FAVORITE WORDS IN LEWIS CARROLL'S "JABBERWOCKY":
1. Brillig.
2. Frabjous.
3. Vorpal.
4. Bandersnatch.

A Foolish Flashback
TWO YEARS AGO: "Can't we just get drunk and fuck?" "The Mood for Love." 10.27.2006.

One Thing after Another 2: In Which Andrew Remembers Things

PREVIOUSLY:
"Welcome to our office, where you now work," says Andrew [to Olivia]. "It is beige."

RESUMPTION OF STORY:
"It's my lunchtime now," says Andrew. "I was told you could cover for me."
"But it's my first day," says Olivia. "I don't even know what you do."
"It figures you would disappoint me," he says. "I have had a disappointing life."

FLASHBACK:
Andrew is a child. He shows an aptitude for something or other.
"We can't afford lessons," says his single mother. "Your father left us and I'm an alcoholic."
"Also," says his older brother, "you are queer."

Time passes, but not enough to bring us back to the present. Andrew is a teenager.
"Hello," he says. "I am here to pick you up for the prom."
"Oh, you were serious?" says Jessica Hartmaller. "I thought when you asked me it was a joke. I'm going with Trent van Summers."
"Also," says Trent, "you are queer."

Curiouser and Curiouser

Surest sign that I haven't any blogworthy material: an entry about my hair.

So I was getting my hair cut yesterday. Now that my longtime stylist DC has become a flight attendant, the job has fallen to a friend of Kito's named Josh. Currently, he's trying to get me to grow my hair out. That's what having a longtime stylist means: he tries to get you to grow your hair out, until you do, at which point he begins trying to convince you to let him chop it all off. And so it goes until one of you dies or, worse, becomes a flight attendant (I imagine going bald would also disrupt the pattern).

As it happens, Josh will play the Mad Hatter in the Alice in Wonderland-themed group costume I told you about the other day (I'm Tweedle Dee). Thanks to the typically imprecise Kito, I was under the impression that the theme was glam through the looking-glass, but according to Josh (who seems to take the matter very seriously) we don't have to limit ourselves to glam rock but can interpret our characters more broadly as Wonderland rock stars.

"Keeping with the music theme," he said, "you guys could do a hip-hop version of Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee."

Yes, that sounds exactly like something I could pull off. Who's more hip-hop than I? (Answer: everyone).

One Thing after Another, Part I: In Which We Meet the Characters, They Meet Each Other, and Then One of Them Thinks Something

INTRODUCTION OF CHARACTERS:
"Hi," says Olivia.
"Oh, hi," says Andrew.

EXPOSITION:
"Welcome to our office, where you now work," says Andrew. "It is beige."

RISING ACTION:
"They said they don't have a chair for me yet," says Olivia.

FALLING ACTION:
"Oh," says Andrew, turning back to his computer screen.

SURPRISE TWIST:
I have a terrible secret, thinks Olivia.

NEXT TIME:
"Here is your chair," says Mark, entering with a chair. It is beige.

ELSEWHERE:
My short reviews of Profiles Theatre's Men of Tortuga and DBF Productions' Shakesploitation! are in this week's issue of the Chicago Reader.

Tweedle Zee

For Halloween this year, the costumes worn by Kito and me will be but two components in a group look inspired by Alice in Wonderland and glam rock. We're supposed to be Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee. Naturally, I've assumed the role of Dee.

As far as I can tell, the plan is to clothe us in brighter, tighter versions of the outfits depicted in Tenniel's classic illustrations and adorn our faces with copious amounts of glitter.

I'm pretty sure we're going to look like gay clowns.

More than usual, I mean.


ELSEWHERE:
My review of Hell in a Handbag Productions' Haywire! is in this week's issue of Time Out Chicago.

Seek and Ye Shall Find 36

Addressing your recent search engine queries.

Chili pepper, chicago drag queen
My favorite female impersonator. Bears a passing resemblance to late-career Edie Adams (who, sadly, passed away recently).

mark paul gosselaar butt pics
Okay, but this is the last time I'm linking to these. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm tired of Zack Morris's ass.

"fools gold" +"zac thompson"
You probably mean "Fool's Gold Coast," a blog written by funny-talking hypochondriac Zac Thompson, who does NOT have sex with food.

"the cat had begun to clean"
. . . its whiskers. Sophie caressed its back again, drawing her fingers along until they met the sharp furry crook where the tail turned up. The cat's back rose convulsively to press against her hand. She smiled, wondering how often, if ever before, the cat had felt a friendly human touch, and she was still smiling as the cat reared up on its hind legs, even as it struck at her with extended claws, smiling right up to that second when it sank its teeth into the back of her left hand and hung from her flesh so that she nearly fell forward, stunned and horrified, yet conscious enough of Otto's presence to smother the cry that arose in her throat as she jerked her hand back from that circle of barbed wire.
--Paula Fox, Desperate Characters


Thanks for stopping by!

The Gold Mine 78: Imaginary Invalids

Stuff I've dug up.

My aunt had by degrees dropped every other visitor's name from her list, because they were all guilty of the fatal error, in her eyes, of falling into one or other of the two categories of people she most detested. One group, the worse of the two, and the one of which she rid herself first, consisted of those who advised her not to "coddle" herself, and preached (even if only negatively and with no outward signs beyond an occasional disapproving silence or doubting smile) the subversive doctrine that a sharp walk in the sun and a good red beefsteak would do her more good (when she had had only two wretched mouthfuls of Vichy water on her stomach for fourteen hours!) than her bed and her medicines. The other category was composed of people who appeared to believe that she was more seriously ill than she thought, in fact that she was as seriously ill as she said. And so, of those whom she had allowed upstairs to her room, after considerable hesitation and only at Françoise's urgent request, and who in the course of their visit had shown how unworthy they were of the honour which had been done them by venturing a timid: "Don't you think that if you were just to stir out a little on really fine days . . .?" or who, on the other hand, when she said to them: "I'm very low, very low; nearing the end, I'm afraid" had replied: "Ah, yes, when one has no strength left! Still, you may last a while yet," all alike might be certain that her doors would never be opened to them again.
--Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Volume I: Swann's Way (trans. by CK Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, rev. by DJ Enright)

My older daughter, Callie, believes that what was most surprising about [EB and Katharine] Whites' joint hypochondria was its energy; they were falling apart, they felt terrible, but they weren't depressed. The narcissism and intimacy of their exchanged symptoms could be infuriating, since it excluded everyone else, but it was so dopey that you laughed at it and forgave them. When you turned up at their house after an absence, they'd ask you about your kids and your job and your recent doings, and almost in the same breath bring up a lingering migraine or this morning's fresh back spasm. Someone in the family--someone who'd been reading about astronomy lately and remembered the "red shift" phenomenon as a measure of radiation and distance--named this the "White shift," and it stuck.
--Roger Angell, Let Me Finish

BÉLINE: O cut out those tears Toinette--he's not worth the trouble. What loss is he to anyone but himself? What good was he doing on earth? A man who annoyed the whole world--dirty, disgusting, always needing an enema or dose of something in his belly. Always blowing his nose or coughing or spitting. A bad-tempered, tiresome bore--scolding the servants day and night.
--Molière, The Imaginary Invalid (3.12)

Of Baby-Making & Baby Music

My original idea for this entry was to share with you my answers to Time Out Chicago's sex survey, but then I figured you might not want to know which fruits and vegetables I've made love to (seriously, like a third of the questions were about food: "Have you ever been picked up in a grocery store?", "Have you ever stuck a cucumber up your hoo-ha?," "Could you go for a burrito right about now?", "Can you tell that our boss is making us write this survey in lieu of taking a lunch break?").

So instead, here is the tracklist for the latest compilation CD I made for the BFF. This one is made up of children's songs (or songs that can reasonably be construed as such).

Playlist XII: Kidstuff
1. "It's Not Easy," Pete's Dragon (soundtrack)
2. "My Favorite Things," The Sound of Music (soundtrack)
3. "Three Is a Magic Number," Blind Melon
4. "The Boys," Big River (original Broadway cast recording)
5. "Put on a Happy Face," Bye Bye Birdie (original Broadway cast recording)
6. "Somebody Gonna Love You," The Color Purple (original Broadway cast recording)
7. "Not While I'm Around," Mandy Patinkin
8. "Mary Cristo," Arnaldo Antunes, Carlinhos Brown, Marisa Monte
9. "Cookies," A Year with Frog and Toad (original cast recording)
10. "Baby Baby," Amy Grant
11. "Moonshine Lullaby," Patti LuPone
12. "Under the Bamboo Tree," Liza Minnelli
13. "Bein' Green," Frank Sinatra
14. "Little Lamb," Gypsy (2008 Broadway cast recording)
15. "Piragua," In the Heights (original Broadway cast recording)
16. "Shortnin' Bread," Johnny Mercer
17. "Roosevelt Petrucius Coleslaw," Caroline, or Change (original Broadway cast recording)
18. "Always Chew Your Food," Trout Fishing in America

Worrywartitis

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the 17 diseases, conditions, and symptoms on which my anxious, hypochondriacal mind most frequently fixates, listed in order from head to toe:

glaucoma
macular degeneration
hearing loss
dental caries
loss of sole remaining baby tooth
dry mouth (as a symptom of diabetes)
acne
acid reflux
diabetes
poor circulation
hernia
herpes
testicular cancer
hemorrhoids
constipation
varicose veins
&
neuropathy (as a symptom of diabetes)

On the bright side, I have at last deemed rabies unlikely.