Fool's Gold Coast

List of Links 26

As I mentioned in the previous post, I won't have Internet access at home until next Saturday on account of my move and Comcast's suckiness, so you probably won't be hearing from me again until April 6 or so (except, of course, on my worthless Twitter page). Here are some links that should get you through at least the next ten minutes. After that, you're on your own.

AWFUL HOUSE: Jim Gaffigan says funny things about the grossness of Waffle House.

YOU LUCKY PEOPLE, YOU: Kylie Minogue's "I Should Be So Lucky" gets the opera treatment.

BATTLE OF THE BABY BANGS!: Hilarious blogger Luvvie takes on the creator of a ridiculous product.

PICKIN' & SINNIN': Aquarium Drunkard listens to God Less America: Country & Western fer all ye Sinners’ n’ Sufferers.

I'VE GOT YOUR EXECUTIVE BRANCH RIGHT HERE: An artist paints herself having sex with each and every one of the US presidents [via Boing Boing].

WELL, WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME?: Sally Brown finds a new philosophy.

TRIPLE THREAT, CUBED: Michael Musto digs up a photo of Chita Rivera, Liza Minnelli, and Gwen Verdon from 1975, when Liza briefly filled in for Verdon during the original run of Chicago.

AND FINALLY: In The New Yorker, Atul Gawande considers whether solitary confinement constitutes torture (I know this link doesn't fit in with the rest, but you should really read the article).

Have a lovely week and I'll see you soon!

One Day More

Moving day is tomorrow, God help us all, and right now Kito and I are at the point in our preparations where I can't possibly see how we're going to get everything done in time. The old apartment is a dreadful mess, the bedroom remains entirely unpacked, we've cleaned neither the new nor the old place, and I'm not entirely sure I did everything required to get the gas turned on. Hurray for relocation, am I right?

And don't think you're getting out of this mess unaffected, either, because the awful, awful people of Comcast say they can't hook us up to the Internet until next Saturday, which means no Fool's Gold Coast for you for an entire week. I'll try to post a roundup of links before the lights go out in order to help get you through my absence and will see what I can do about using the wireless connection at some tragic Starbucks or something to post an entry next week, but in case I can't manage to do either, know that your old buddy Zee loves you and misses you and will be back with you just as soon as he can. Say a prayer, light a candle, etc.

[Also: according to a personality disorder quiz I found through FARBlog, I am moderately crazy in most respects, which should come as a surprise to no one.]

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid Disorder:	Low
Schizoid Disorder:	Moderate
Schizotypal Disorder:	Moderate
Antisocial Disorder:	Low
Borderline Disorder:	Low
Histrionic Disorder:	Moderate
Narcissistic Disorder:	Low
Avoidant Disorder:	High
Dependent Disorder:	Low
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder:	Moderate
-- Personality Disorder Test - Take It! -- -- Personality Disorders --

Links to the Past

Around here, the last few days of March customarily make up Sincerest Form of Flattery Week, when I make fun of other gay-themed Web logs. I'm sorry to report that I won't be spoofing this year (and maybe never again? I haven't decided yet) because I've already spoofed the blogs I wanted to spoof and haven't found enough spoof-worthy others to spoof in their place (spoof!).

I do hate to think of you going without parody at the end of March, though, so here, have some links to my favorite Sincerest Form of Flattery Week entries from the past, with my apologies.

Year One
3.27.2006: on the now-defunct Brat Boy School, an incredibly inane but somehow popular self-promotional blog maintained by would-be famous person Ethan Reynolds (or his manager).
3.29.2006: on the really mean (and also defunct?) I Probably Hate You.
3.30.2006: on Live Out Loud, a blog maintained by prominent "ex-gay" organization Exodus International.

Year Two
3.28.2007: on Jeremy Hooper's Gay As You, which seeks to combine gay and lesbian activism with a (pun-happy) sense of humor.
4.2.2007: on Queerty, the dumbest gay news and culture blog you ever did see.

Year Three
3.26.2008: on the personal blog of depressive porn star Erik Rhodes, who, in my version of things, retells The Little Engine That Could.

ELSEWHERE:
My review of Goodman Theatre's Magnolia is in this week's issue of the Chicago Reader.

One Thing after Another 8: Our Greatest Natural Resource

PREVIOUSLY:

1. Dear world, writes Andrew, suicidally, I hope this letter finds you well. I am writing to inform you of a major, life-changing decision I have made that will involve my taking drastic action as soon as I finish this letter, which you will want to read in order to divine my motives. I will reveal my intended drastic action in the sentence that follows this one.
2. "The mail is on the table," says Scott. "Looks like you got a letter."
Olive swallows a lump of dread (metaphorically; dread does not actually come in lump form).
"Another one?" she says.
3. [The letter Olive receives]:
Dear world,
I hope this letter finds you well. I am writing to inform you of a major, life-changing decision I have made that will involve my taking drastic action as soon as I finish this letter, which you will want to read in order to divine my motives. I will reveal my intended drastic action in the sentence that follows this one.

"Do you know the extension for human resources?" Olive asks Lois, with whom she shares an office.
"I do not care for the term 'human resources,'" says Lois. "In my day (I am old), we used 'personnel.' I do not consider it morally defensible to think of humans as a type of resource. Humans are ends in themselves. Immanuel Kant said--"
"Found it!" says Olive, holding aloft a company directory.

"HR," says Carol in HR upon picking up the phone.
"Hi," says Olive, "I am a new employee, and I was wondering if you could give me some information."
"Didn't you go through new user training?" says Carol in HR. "The answers to any conceivable questions should have been supplied, along with a reasonably priced lunch."
"My question is not about my work," says Olive. "It's about another employee, Andrew something-or-other. He shared an office with me on the first day, but when I came into work the next morning, he had been replaced by a Lois something-or-other."
"I am sitting right here, you know," says Lois. "You could just ask me my last name."
"What is your question?" asks Carol in HR.
"Well, by any chance, did he kill himself?" asks Olive.
"I'm afraid I cannot divulge that sort of sensitive information," says Carol in HR. "Besides, without knowing your colleague's last name, I couldn't check the Employee Self-Downsizing Database for you anyway."
"The what?" says Olive.
"The Employee Self-Downsizing Database," says Carol in HR. "It's a list of employees who have chosen to terminate their temporal existences."
"You mean to tell me so many employees at this office have killed themselves that you've started keeping a list?" says Olive.
"I'm not at liberty to divulge that type of sensitive information," says Carol in HR, "but just between you and me, I blame the beige walls. Beige is the color of despair, you know."
"What if I found out Andrew's last name?" says Olive. "Could I look him up in your death data-bank then?"
"Of course not," says Carol in HR. "It would violate the privacy of the possibly deceased."
"But what if I had reason to suspect that I had been sent, through the ordinary postal system but with no postmark and no return address, Andrew's suicide letter, the latest in a string of strangers' suicide letters that I had received over the course of several weeks for reasons unknown and that I had begun to suspect, further, that my mailbox has become some kind of supernatural repository for the final thoughts of depressives about to off themselves, and so I needed to confirm that Andrew had indeed killed himself so that I might confirm, in turn, that I hadn't lost my mind? What then?"
"I would have to ask my supervisor," says Carol in HR, "but I doubt she would grant you access to the database. She's been in a mood ever since they ran out of non-dairy creamer in the breakroom. She really loves her non-dairy."

The Gold Mine 87: March 24, 1990

Stuff I've dug up.

Here's an excerpt from a diary entry I wrote on today's date 19 years ago. I was 10.

3-24-90
Well, I haven't written in this journal in a very long time [the previous entry is dated 10-25-89], so let me get you updated. We got to go to the Cotton Bowl again. I got a lot of neat things for Christmas.
Today it's 32F so I have to wear a sweatshirt.

How old are you when your voice changes?

ELSEWHERE:
My reviews of Circle Theatre's A Perfect Wedding and Urban Theater Company's Broken Thread are in this week's issue of Time Out Chicago.

Quality of Life

It occurred to me this weekend that I've been so busy lately that I haven't even had time for porn. I seriously thought this. I was off to see a play or something and I thought, Gee, I'd really rather curl up with a bottle of lotion and some choice URLs. And I must say, it seems to me an awful shame when a fella's world goes so topsy-turvy that he can't make time for the things that really matter. Don't you think? I mean, sure, I'm alive . . . but am I living?

Is This the Promised End?

Last night at the theater, my fellow audience members and I experienced the worst case I have ever seen of uncertainty about whether or not the show had actually concluded. The action stopped abruptly and the cast took no bows, so we just sat there for an agonizing eternity, exchanging uncomfortable glances as our hands, aching to clap so that we might end our misery, hung frozen in the air. After several minutes of this purgatorial torment, the house lights came up, the actors began whispering furiously behind the set (you could hear them because it was a small space), and I had to struggle to suppress the nervous giggles rising from my breast. And still we sat, until--finally--the director took to the stage to release us with an announcement about making donations on our way out. The applause following his words was the purest expression of relief I've heard in a while.

It was positively cathartic.


ELSEWHERE:
My short reviews of Theo Ubique Theatre Company's Evita and Congo Square Theatre Company's Saint James Infirmary are in this week's issue of the Chicago Reader.

Madness

Everyone at work is very excited about NCAA March Madness, mostly because they enjoy filling in those bracket things. I can sympathize (charts are fun), but I have no plans to join in because, well, I know when I'm not needed (see ya when the Tony awards pool rolls around!).

The only time I ever gave a substantial hoot about the college basketball tournament was when the University of Arkansas Razorbacks won it during my freshman year of high school. Oh my stars, was that ever exciting. There was this large fellow named Corliss Williamson, you see, and this pigeon-toed fellow named Scotty Thurman, and they were the stars of the team but who cares, because the cutest was Corey Beck. The coach was Nolan Richardson, whom everybody loved until a few years later when he accused the athletic department of racism (Richardson is black) and the entire state turned on him (besides, he had started losing games).

But that came later. In 1994 the Hogs were awesome in every way and therefore found themselves in the championship game against Duke University, whose students must have to take a course in obnoxiousness before they are allowed to graduate because, seriously, have you ever met a Duke alum you could stand? I thought not. Anyway, it was the championship game and the score was close and maybe we were behind I don't really know/care, when, with less than a minute left in the game, good ol' pigeon-toed Scotty shot this long three-pointer that seemed to hang in the air forever and we all held our breath and dared to dream and various other clichés and, oh my God, it went in and Duke lost and Arkansas was finally # 1 in something other than childhood obesity and we all screamed and wept and felt better about being closeted teenagers.

It was wonderful, and I refuse to cheapen the memory by paying attention to sports ever again.


ELSEWHERE:
My reviews of Broadway in Chicago's A Bronx Tale and The New Colony's Frat are in this week's issue of Time Out Chicago.

One Thing after Another 7: Two Stars

"Good morning, darling," says Chicago Tribune theater critic Chris Jones to his wife, Chicago Sun-Times theater critic Hedy Weiss. "Sweet dreams?"
"Oh, somewhat recommended, I suppose," says Hedy Weiss. "The images were galvanic but the storytelling lax. How about you?"
"My dreams were tiresomely Oedipal, I'm afraid," says Chris Jones, "replete with father-slaying mayhem."
"Speaking of family," says Hedy Weiss, "don't forget we have my sister's birthday dinner tonight."
"Oh, but darling," says Chris Jones, "I do so loathe your relations. Couldn't we tell them we're leaving for theater critic sleepaway camp?"
"Of course not," says Hedy Weiss. "They know we just returned from theater critic sleepaway camp last week. Besides, I promised."
"Rats," says Chris Jones. "I just know it's going to be one star."
"Out of a possible four?" asks Hedy Weiss.
"Out of a possible FIVE," replies Chris Jones.

The Gold Mine 86: March 15, 1992

Stuff I've dug up.

Here's an excerpt from a diary entry I wrote on today's date seventeen years ago. I was 12.

3-15-92
Well, we aren't going to my grandparents' house for Spring Break after all. My parents decided not to.
Right now I'm watching some stupid movie about some stupid lady. I'm not really in the mood to write.