Fool's Gold Coast

All That Glitters 87

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

Books
READ: Call It Sleep by Henry Roth.
COMING UP: books by Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro.

Movies
SAW: The Wizard of Oz [70th anniversary screening].
THIS WEEK'S MOVIE NIGHT PICKS:
THEME: Tabloid Fodder.
KITO'S SELECTION: My Family [chosen because J-Lo has a small part in it (pretty weak, right?)].
MINE: Cleopatra [the one starring Liz Taylor and a scenery-devouring Richard Burton].

Music
SAW: Son Volt @ The Vic.
BOUGHT: The Beatles, Revolver.

Current Interests
The bizarre, Chicago plays on Broadway, the gays, Barbra, my childhood, female pop stars, theater criticism, Jews, books, alt-country, the Beatles, fashion, Illinois politics, evangelicals, intolerable celebrities.

Fool's Four
FOUR THINGS I LIKE ABOUT THIS BLOG'S NEW DESIGN:
1. It retains a minimalist aesthetic.
2. Yet looks less like a GeoCities page from 1995.
3. More fonts!
4. Wider margins!

Foolish Flashbacks
ONE YEAR AGO: "According to my records, Kito and I fooled around, on average, about two times per week during the month of September (as I am writing this before midnight, numbers are subject to change given any last-minute hanky panky)."
TWO YEARS AGO: "FOUR GAYEST SOUNDING FOOTBALL POSITIONS."
&
"I want to be alone. I also want someone to beg me to abandon my seclusion. There's the rub."

Glitter
Here, kids, have some candy.

[via Boing Boing]

ELSEWHERE:
My short review of Strawdog Theatre Company's Saint Crispin's Day is in this week's Chicago Reader.

List of Links 31

Found around the Web.

I GOTTA FEELING . . . that you're gonna like this, if you haven't seen it already.

THEATRE IN CHICAGO: Kris Vire teaches the Guardian's readers about how we have plays here in Chicago.

O NO: Ben Brantley does not much care for Peter Sellars's "exasperatingly misconceived" production of Othello, starring John Ortiz as the Moor of Venice and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Iago.

DIE, QUARTERLY: The print edition of Northwestern's TriQuarterly bites the dust, and the new online version will be run by student editors [via Chicago Reader].

YOU STAY CLASSY, RIGHT WING: A Salt Lake City man accuses Judy Shepard of lying about the circumstances surrounding the death of her son Matthew.

TAKING IT ON THE CHIN: The New Yorker's Nancy Franklin reviews Jay Leno's new show [via Videogum].

AND FINALLY: A flashback: "You would've thought the sport would eventually catch on with me over all that time, but, bless my poor little homosexual heart, I just couldn't bring myself to pay attention."

Drag Kings

Every now and then I'll see a guy on the street or in a bar or wherever and I'll think, wow, he's cute except for his slight case of man-boobs. And then I realize I'm looking at a lesbian and I feel funny. I suppose it's similar to how Olivia must feel in Twelfth Night when she finds out she's spent most of the play lusting for a girl. Or how Amy Irving would feel in Yentl if she found out she was married to Barbra Streisand.

Actually, now that I think of it, sometimes I persist in recognizing the cute-boy qualities of a tomboyish girl even when I know for sure she's a girl. Hilary Swank in Boys Don't Cry, for instance. Or Ashley from the current season of Top Chef. I mean, I wouldn't want to deal with the whole vagina situation, but technically speaking, what I am feeling in those moments, God help me, is opposite-sex attraction. Even in the case of Yentl, I can't help feeling that Barbra makes a fairly adorable yeshiva boy. Fix the plumbing, and I'd totally hit that.

I guess what I'm wondering is: do you think my wanting to fuck a tranny version of Barbra Streisand makes me straight?

[PS. Yes, I changed the blog's design. Deal.]

Mister Julie

I regret becoming Facebook friends with the girl who cleans my apartment. Her frequently updated status messages seem to focus inordinately on toying with and getting back at men--and while this normally wouldn't bother me in the slightest, I feel a little uncomfortable with the idea of some vengeful coquette rummaging around my home when I'm not there. I mean, what if she decides to take out her frustrations on my original Broadway cast recordings?

I guess, in the end, it's true that you can't be friends--not even fake Facebook friends--with people on your payroll. It's the same reason my boss and I will never be buddies: the balance of power is unequal (that, and I'm a terrible employee).

After all, wasn't that the whole point of Strindberg's Miss Julie--that you shouldn't befriend the help because sooner or later they'll kill your pet bird? Replace "pet bird" with "original Broadway cast recordings" and the play's modern-day equivalent basically writes itself.

ELSEWHERE:
My short review of Blair Thomas's Hard Headed Heart is in this week's Chicago Reader.

Why do some people put the entire text of their e-mails in the subject line? Is it supposed to be easier to read? Is pressing "Tab" too tiring? Are they simply trying to say that what their message is about is identical to what their message *is*?

In any case, it really bugs me.

All That Glitters 86

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

Books
READ: Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes.

Movies
SAW: Love Happens [terrible], The Prowler.

Music
BOUGHT: REM, Reckoning: Deluxe Edition; The Stone Roses, The Stone Roses.

Current Interests
George W. Bush, books, the Internet, Glenn Beck, Oscar Wilde, Latinos, Wal-Mart, Project Runway, Sissy Spacek, dick, Glee, the grotesque, my co-workers, Saved by the Bell, kitsch, fashion, Kito, Whitney Houston, 30 Rock, musical theater, Oprah, the BFF, marriage equality, Kanye.

Fool's Four
FOUR SUPPOSED TEARJERKERS THAT DO NOT MAKE ME CRY:
1. Love Story.
2. The Notebook.
3. PS I Love You.
4. Titanic.

Foolish Flashbacks
TWO YEARS AGO: "If you can find a more enjoyable musical about fucking corpses, I'd like to see it."
THREE YEARS AGO: "I realize that a certain moral laxity hangs around the indomitably cheerful (generally speaking, if you're not miserable, you're probably not paying close enough attention), but I really haven't the temperament to sustain a depression for any substantial length of time. After all, there's always something good on TV."

Glitter
Yeast Nation, the new musical by Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis, opens this week at American Theater Company. The title is only slightly less awful than that of Kotis and Hollmann's previous effort, Urinetown.

One Thing after Another 19: The Gospel of Success

PREVIOUSLY:
1. "Olive has received her co-worker Andrew's suicide note through the mail--along with the suicide notes of several strangers--and has decided to figure out everything she can about Andrew in hopes of discovering why she is getting the notes in the first place."
2. "'Trixie,' says Olive's gay roommate Scott (who is a hairstylist), 'this is my straight roommate Olive. Olive, this is my client Trixie. She is a recovering alcoholic.'"
--------------------------------------

Olive had listened in secret astonishment as Scott's client revealed herself to be none other than Andrew's mother (she revealed this in the following way: "My son--a low-level office worker named Andrew Malchance--recently killed himself"). Olive didn't get a chance to talk to the woman, however, because Scott was around and she didn't feel like filling him in on the whole "I-get-suicide-letters-through-the-mail" thing. She saw a potential opening, however, when Mrs. Malchance began talking about how becoming involved with the First Christian Church of Jesus was helping her pull herself from the depths of despair and alcohol dependency.

That's how Olive ends up at the massive, convention center-like FCCoJ the very next Sunday, feeling more keenly aware of her Jewishness than she has ever felt in her life and sitting just three pews and a little to the side behind a rapt, positively beatific Trixie Malchance, who does not notice she is being watched because she is too busy hanging on every word of Rev. Lonnie Lloyd's Gospel of Upward Mobility. The gist: "God wants you to be rich and happy so if you are neither it is probably due to your lack of faith. You are supposed to dance the jig of victory atop the mountain of success, but you are crying tears of doubt while being confined to the wheelchair of failure. God is for winners not whiners. So stop complaining about your financial problems or your cancer or whatever, and claim the spoils of faith. Also, do not be gay."

Assumed Names

Because I have, since the onset of literacy, done a great deal of independent reading, discovering many authors on my own outside of the classroom, it often happens that I haven't heard an author's name said aloud until after I have already formed my own, frequently incorrect idea of its pronunciation. If I'm lucky, I will hear someone say the name correctly before I have unthinkingly uttered my pitiful mangling of it. But, as you should know by now, I am rarely lucky. A partial list of names that have, at various times, revealed my ignorance would have to include:

Chinua Achebe
Ian Buruma
JM Coetzee
Rainer Maria Rilke
Arundhati Roy
Czesław Miłosz
Charles Simic
Leszek Kołakowski
Nadine Gordimer
Yehuda Amichai
Friedrich Nietzsche
Annie Proulx
WG Sebald
&
Thucydides

--and, to be honest, I'm still not sure about some of them.


ELSEWHERE:
My short review of Provision Theater Company's Cotton Patch Gospel is in this week's Chicago Reader.

Don't Cry Out Loud

Tonight's Movie Night theme, selected by Kito, is "Tearjerkers." It seems appropriate, then, to share my father's post-screening analysis of the film The Notebook.

My face hurts from trying not to cry.
--My dad, post-The Notebook

Only One Guy Was Naked, but Three Dicks Were on Display

Kito threw a 30th birthday party for a friend of his at our apartment on Friday night, and I went to the movies. I figured this was only mildly rude of me because I did show up eventually. I would have been there at the beginning, but the services of a male stripper had been contracted and I wanted nothing to do with that--not because I am prudish but because I am easily embarrassed and the thought of being subjected to the attentions of some beefy, tip-hungry naked fellow in a room full of people makes me blush to the roots of my hair. The only striptease I have ever enjoyed occurred at a New Year's Eve party, and I only liked that one because it involved an unplanned (and hilarious) mid-lapdance chair collapse.

In any event, I managed to miss the dancer this time, but unfortunately I did arrive in time to overhear the conversation of two guests who have evidently taken up the breathtakingly offensive habit of calling each other "Jew" as often as possible--as in, "Pass me those nachos, Jew" and "You're standing on my foot, you dirty Jew" and so on.

"I'm sorry," I said, "but did you just call him 'Jew'?"
Yes, indeed he had.
"Are either of you Jewish?" I asked, thinking perhaps this was a new thing the hep young Israelites were calling each other.
No, they said, why would I think that?

Tell me, when did my home become an appropriate setting for parties attended by naked people and anti-Semites?