Save it, Patty Hearst!

Theater critics lead SUCH exciting lives! They are always discovering something fresh and new and cutting edge!

And even if, say, Ben Brantley gives the latest Martin McDonagh play a luke-warm review, the NYTimes feels obliged to send another critic, Jason Zinoman, out to make it all up to McDonagh by writing a standard fellatio piece.

What really annoys me is theater critics implying that if you don't find pointless violence to be the most wonderous thing ever, it means you're big wimp - or even, the worst thing you can be as far as theater critics are concerned - unmanly. A "pussy" even. Not somebody who has balls. Like a man does.

The idea that right-wingers can't get anything produced is insane - they are lining up to produce anything that Mamet sneezes onto paper and he's a total right-winger.

But uh-oh, the New Yorker's critic has accused McDonagh of racism so his days as critics' darling may be numbered. For while misogyny is encouraged - it shows you haven't been pussy-whipped by the PC patrol and are still manly and in possession of your testicles, racism is a crossing of the line in the US.

But oh those poor poor upper-class right-wing men - always being oppressed! That's why The Flea Theater thinks it's so bold and daring for producing a piece of anti-abortion dreck written by some old upper-class white man. FIGHT THE POWER!

And as much as the critics WANT to love GIRLS IN TROUBLE, to prove how "fair and balanced" they are, it is, by all accounts a huge reeking turd of a play. I could find only one review by a woman so far, Time Out New York's Diane Snyder (no surprise, the ranks of theater critics is totally dominated by males), and she says:

Surely Jonathan Reynolds is having us on. He purports to be politically conservative, but the character who delivers the antiabortion diatribe in his polemical play Girls in Trouble is so ridiculous that one suspects he’s secretly working for NARAL.

The McDonagh fellator, Jason Zinoman says:

Mr. Reynolds, a playwright ("Stonewall Jackson's House"), screenwriter and former food columnist for The New York Times Magazine, has written a raw, flawed work. But he also goes places intellectually and dramatically that no left-wing dramatist would dare. At times that’s thrilling.

Few left-wing dramatists would write something as simplistic and noxious as what Reynolds wrote and still get produced. But thank Our Lord Jesus H. Christ that The Flea is brave enough to stand up for the rights of wealthy old right-wing white men, who have nothing but Fox News, obscenely wealthy think-tanks, the Catholic Church and 24-7 talk radio to turn to in order to get their views across! They MUST have theater too!

I will give Zinoman one thing - he's one of the few critics who gets how crazy right-wing OLEANNA is:

The deck is clearly stacked — it makes “Oleanna” look fair and balanced...

I had a very good time at Amiri Baraka's Master Class at the Cherry Lane tonight. It started off a little slow, but once he got comfortable it was great - he's charming and funny. And right in the middle of the class I got a great idea for a play that I'm working on now.

Only an evil right-wing douchebag like John Derbyshire of the National Review would portray Baraka so egregiously.

But as Baraka mentioned several times this evening - we have to fight the Right.

Speaking of which, there's a rightwing nutjob in my apartment building who posted a piece of paper on their apartment door - facing the hallway - with all this crazy anti-Obama ranting all over it. Jesus I hate teabaggers. At least the political kind.

That's where I'm heading one of these days, since countries in the far north tend to have a much better track record on gender equality as Katha Pollitt notes in her latest column. Although after #4 it switches to the bottom of the world - New Zealand - but that's where Jane Campion is from so not too surprising.

Pollitt:

And the winner is... Iceland! According to the 2009 Global Gender Gap report of the World Economic Forum, the land of glaciers and puffins, population 319,000, is the most gender egalitarian country on earth, with women having closed 80 percent of the gap with men. Finland (2), Norway (3), Sweden (4) and Denmark (7) are in the top ten too, as is New Zealand (5). You could try harder, Spain (17) and Germany (12)--in 2007 you were in the top ten. And O, Canada: 25. Very sad.

Athough it's no picnic in the US, the report goes on to note all the incredibly vicious, routine ways that women are crushed by the patriarchy around the world, with things like abortion denied to women even to save her life (Nicaragua), honor killings (Turkey), as well as the crazy Sharia laws in most of the Muslim world, and places throughout the world in which little girls are sold into marriage to old men to pay a family's debt - which is nothing less than sexual slavery - all perfectly legal. And then there's the horrendous illegal stuff like child sex trafficking. When will the routine brutalization of women ever end?

an incurable cancer of the brain

Labels: Sonnets

I am sorry I missed this Freakonomics dudes beatdown at "The Sexist" column and at Tiger Beatdown back in October.

Dubner and Levitt have recently irked the hell out of me and many others by coming out as climate-change deniers - and Paul Krugman, the far superior economist, recently tweaked them by entitling one of his recent blog posts Freakout-nomics.

But before the climate issue, I was becoming extremely annoyed by their absolutely clueless take on prostitution - back in December 2008 when I asked How big a douchebag is Steven D. Levitt. Levitt compared the price of prostitute services to the price of rice in a stunning display of reductionism.

So in October 09 the Freaks were using their same sociological skills to look at why some prostitutes are so successful. I'll let Amanda and Sady take it from here:

SADY: yo lady.

AMANDA: hello! wait ...shouldn’t you be out, earning money for sex?

SADY: i know! i thought about it! but then i realized: i am probably not chipper enough for it. as per superfreakonomics, my disinclination to put your favorite song on the stereo and mix your favorite drink and smile gleefully about how awesome you are for paying someone to help you cheat on your wife would hurt me, probably, in the long run. PROFIT-WISE, that is!

AMANDA: right. which is why us curmudgeons have chosen a life of blogging, instead of the more obvious choice.

SADY: exactly. it's a wonder more women aren't out sexing for cash instead of blogging for dollars! oh, except that there are various disincentives to do that, actually? like, i am pretty sure there are women that choose to do sex work and like it, but what with the social marginalization, lack of protection by the law, health risks, etc. it is actually NOT a wonder that more women do not choose it.

AMANDA: there are so many things wrong with the treatment here, i can't even begin. you did a lot of the work in your piece, but i wanted to start off with this one sentence from the freakonomics excerpt: "There is one labour market women have always dominated: prostitution." hmm. really? i mean, i get that perhaps this is meant to be some sort of play on words, but given the amount of money men have made off of pimping out or trafficking prostitutes, i am not exaaaactly sure this is the case.

SADY: right? i mean, to frame the sex industry - not just prostitution, but other varieties of sex work in general - as "female-dominated" is just absurdly wrong. it's like calling starbucks "cashier-dominated." there are more women on the front lines, but management is by no means primarily or exclusively female. and given the exploitative relationship management has traditionally had with the service employees, that's something to worry about. not that there aren't exploitative female madams, etc. but you get where i am going, i hope. i think the entire article is so infuriating largely because it aims to present an "economic" analysis of prostitution by_ talking to one sex worker, basically? and reading the work of one other dude? this stuff is insanely complex, and people have been fighting about it and studying it forever, and it DRIVES ME INSANE that people are going to read this fluff and confuse it with an actual analysis.

AMANDA: yeah. here's another little pet peeve of mine: pretending that "prostitution" is the same as "sex." I understand that prostitution is a lot different than it was 100 years ago, and a lot of that has to do with changes in attitudes toward sex. but when these researchers say that prostitutes now see competition from "any woman who is willing to have sex with a man for free," they’re implying that tons of women are actually performing the work of a prostitute on a daily basis, which is absolutely not the case. the reality is that many prostitutes are not being paid to "have sex." they are being paid - as the researches note with the high-class prostitute - to have the kinds of sex that men can't get on a daily basis. and in reality, that doesn't mean "interesting sex" or "anal sex" or "enthusiastic sex" that these dudes just can't get out of their wives. it also means degradation. prostitutes are popular, to some men, because they can do whatever they want to them, and the appeal isn't in a particular sex act that they can't get at home, but rather in the experience of paying someone to be their sex partner. when these researches say you "have to like sex" enough to be a prostitute, that's bullshit. plenty of women like sex. you have to like PROSTITUTION enough. or... be poor! and according to them, poor prostitutes are kind of fucking idiots.

SADY: well, this was somewhere i was heading in the piece i wrote for CiF, but there just wasn’t room to talk about it there; even if we don't assume that all men are hiring prostitutes specifically to "degrade" them - and i don't know what goes on in all circumstances, i do assume that a lot of guys want to degrade women because they get off on the power imbalance and others do it for other reasons, from all the first-hand testimony I’ve heard - the nature of the transaction is fundamentally different than the nature of the transaction that is casual sex. at the risk of oversimplifying: in prostitution, a woman does what you want her to do, for money. in sex - even casual sex - a woman does some of what you want her to do, or maybe even all of it, but only in exchange for you doing what she wants as well. in casual sex, there is (unless you are a huge asshole) the expectation that you will be dealing with the desires and needs of the other party. female desire enters the picture. and i think THAT, we can say, is probably a big part of the "sex" vs. "prostitution" thing. even if the guys don't want to HURT the prostitutes, they're paying them to have sex that has nothing to do with their desires and everything to do with the desires of their clients. the only way you can miss that is if you don't acknowledge that women have desire.

AMANDA: right. so these economists are stumped - stumped, i tell you! - as to why more women don't spend their entire lives pleasing men and receiving no pleasure in return. they can't understand why this is, because outside of prostitution, women are lining up in droves to have sex! but instead of working through their obvious miscalculations here, they decide to tell imply that women are probably just kind of dumb. the kicker is when, at the end of the piece, this is how the researchers leave Allie, the
"high-class" prostitute who ended up becoming an economist: "Several students said this was the best lecture they had in all their years at the university, which is both a firm testament to Allie's insights and a brutal indictment of Levitt and the other professors." As if it's some kind of joke! when, in reality, these guys actually don't understand wtf they're talking about, and they're actually seemingly amused that a prostitute could not be a dumbass. so: why didn't she write this?

SADY: RIGHT! and that's the thing; i don't want to discount her insights or experiences - or those of LaSheena, the less privileged sex worker they interviewed for five seconds and then apparently forgot about because she wasn't smart enough to be a billionare sextrepreneur - but I think Levitt and Dubner kind of effectively discounted her already, by using her as a subject even though she IS GETTING A DEGREE IN ECONOMICS and simplifying her story, which has GOT to be more complex than the one we're reading, into this wacky quirky Happy Hooker stereotype.

AMANDA: yeah. and thank god she is getting an economics degree, because this is Exhibit A as to why more women need to be represented in the sciences. I’m sure that these guys are brilliant economists, but when you're attempting to form a theory as to why HALF OF HUMANS choose not to be prostitutes for a living, perhaps your own experience will be insufficient.

SADY: right. oh, and the lazy dumb hooker is getting a DEGREE IN ECONOMICS now! wacky twist! did you catch the part where they said she became a prostitute because she
"just didn’t like working all that hard?"

AMANDA: oh yeah. i caught that part. the weird thing is that the premise of their investigation is: why don't women prostitute themselves out for cash, when the pay is so good? and they entirely fail to even begin to answer that question. they don't come up with one reason why she wouldn't! oh, they come up with one reason: maybe she's married. but i don’t see another one!

SADY: i can't think of a single one! there's, like, one line where they acknowledge that it's ILLEGAL (being harassed, jailed, and potentially raped by cops: A DISINCENTIVE???) but that's only in the service of pointing out that its illegal status allows Allie to charge high fees.

AMANDA: haha right. now, i don't know if Levitt and Dubner are heterosexual males, but let's assume they are.

SADY: assumed!

AMANDA: the only appropriate response to the ridiculous question posed in the article would be, "I don't know, why don't you suck cock for a living?" Why don’t you suck cock, out of your fancy house, instead of being a famous economist? I'm sure that will be the pertinent question in "SuperDuperFreakonomics: The Freakiestonomics Yet"

SADY: yes, at some point. WHY AREN'T LEVITT AND DUBNER JOINTLY FELLATING YOU RIGHT NOW: A FREAKONOMIC ANALYSIS.

AMANDA: probably because they don't like sex?

SADY: i mean, jesus. sex work is complicated. i'm so sure - and i have to keep reiterating this, because i feel bad for assuming that allie's "i just happened to go on an online dating service and tell people i was an escort because, tee-hee, i just love sex" narrative is a Pile O' Poopy - that there are women who are very fulfilled in their sex work, or at least prefer it to the other jobs they could have. i'm SURE of this. but asking THAT ONE LADY to tell you what prostitution is like - hell, even what the MONEY side of prostitution is like - is massively misguided.

AMANDA: i mean honestly. LaSheena straight-up tells them that she "doesn't like men." And somehow, because Allie says that she LOVES men, this sample size of 2 indicates that women who like men make tons of money doin' what they love, and women who don't like men are poor street hookers. so really, women don't cash in on the obvious benefits of prostitution because they're... bitches?

SADY: that's what irked me so much – they're so invested in this Ayn Rand fantasy of the fulfilled sex-liking happy safe rich sex worker that pretty much everyone else is left out of the picture, or else shamed as inadequate. Allie is like the John Galt of professional sex, in this equation.

Back in college, well before I became interested enough in poetry to write it (two years this April 10, unless you count the elven folks' rhyme-speak in my play TAM LIN written in 2002) one of my favorite poems in the Norton Anthology was LeRoi Jones' "W. W."

The entire poem is available online in Google books. My favorite part:


... The black women in Newark are fine. Even with all that grease
in their heads. I mean even the ones where the wigs
slide around, and they coming at you 75degrees off course.
I could talk to them. Bring them around. To something.
Some kind of quick course, on the sidewalk, like Hey baby
why don't you take that thing off yo' haid. You look like
Miss Muffett in a runaway ugly machine. I mean. Like that.


So cool. After writing that poem Jones had his best-known play, DUTCHMAN, premiere at the Cherry Lane Theatre, in 1964. (Then he changed his name to Amiri Baraka)

So imagine my excitement when Cherry Lane offered NYCPlaywrights a bunch of free passes to Baraka's March 8th Master Class. It's not often you get to meet the author of one of your favorite poems.

I mean. Like that.

...Persistent algorithm of your life...

Labels: Sonnets

Well this week's edition of Hot Man in Regency... seems to actually be PRE-Regency - the dude's ponytail is a give-away. But I couldn't resist the title, "A Bath Intrique" - I'm imagining some wild bathtub scenario - in short, I WAS intrigued... but alas the intrigue is not in a charming iron claw-footed antique bathing apparatus, but rather in the city of Bath.

Cassie Wyndmoore's brains have always been her distinguishing characteristic. Of course, most gentlemen prefer a pretty wife over a clever one - which is fine with Cassie, who prefers reading to flirting. That is, until a trip to Bath puts her carriage out of service, and Cassie in the path of a helpful "stranger" who doesn't recall that they've met before. Cassie has been smitten with Derek Leighton ever since he courted one of her beautiful sisters. Yet now that he's paying attention to her instead, Cassie can't help wondering about his motives - especially when he seems unduly interested in some strange documents she discovered on a park bench...It is a rare thing to encounter a lady whose intelligence places her above and beyond the fairest of the ton. And for the Earl of Richmond, more surprising still that a woman he found unremarkable upon their first meeting has now engaged his interest so completely. True, Cassie is possessed of important papers that Derek must obtain in order to defeat a French spy - but in attempting to seduce her into turning them over, Derek soon realizes he has given away his heart. Now, his mission is twofold: Prove his loyalty to the Crown...and his love to Cassie.

*sigh* no rubber duckie action this time around.

Well that does it - I am going to have to write a play about Janis Joplin. There's already a musical about Joplin, created in co-operation with her brother and sister, and there WAS going to be a movie called The Gospel According to Janis but apparently that's not happening now.

In any case, I think it's time for a straight play - with some music. Less biographical than the musical, I think.

It's really astounding how popular Janis Joplin is now. She was 27 when she died, 39 years ago, and MY blog gets hits from people Googling her name all the time. Granted I've mentioned her by name several times in the past couple of years, but to give some perspective: I've mentioned Paul Krugman many more times - and Krugman is alive and kicking, writing for the NYTimes, recently won a Nobel Prize, and just had a write-up in the New Yorker. And I don't think anybody has Googled their way to my site via "Paul Krugman" yet. I got 30 visits to my site JUST TODAY from people looking for Joplin.

I began researching the play today, I bought a copy of "Love, Janis" by Laura Joplin, Janis's sister. The book is not valuable for Laura Joplin's prose - she's a lousy writer. It is valuable for all of Janis's letters reprinted in the book. She was a very chatty letter-writer and surprisingly family-oriented for someone with such a hoochee-mamma reputation.

And in spite of her growing success, she was as star-struck as anybody, as in this example from a letter to her mother in April 1967:

Speaking of England, guess who was in town last week - Paul McCartney!!! (He's a Beatle.) And he came to see us!!! SIGH Honest to God! He came to the Matrix & saw us & told some people that he dug us. Isn't that exciting!!!! Gawd, I was so thrilled - I still am! Imagine - Paul!!!! If it could only have been George...

From this quote I learn that Janis Joplin and I have very different tastes in men. Seriously? George over Paul??? In spring 1967 Paul McCartney was not only an incredibly beautiful 25-year-old man, he had just seen the completion of the recording sessions of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - which by all accounts got made due to his pushing for it. In fact, the story is that McCartney pushed to get the Pepper recording finished by April 1967 so that he could fly to the US to be with his girlfriend Jane Asher for her birthday. Which is why he was able to catch Janis Joplin's show in April 1967.

Other Joplin-Beatles trivia - Joplin recorded "Happy Trails" for John Lennon's birthday, but by the time the tape got to him, she was already dead.

Poor old Janis - she got some bad, extra-strength heroin - that's what did her in.

part 1

part 2

That would be ecstasy, you and me and Leslie, groovin...



The men were all big and ugly and hair and GAY!



We'll see what the audience feedback says

Where better to find homosexuals than in the theatre?


Whatever happened to that good old-fashioned Sodomite hospitality?

This isn't so much about the clothing although that's a nice cravat - but whoah, who knew that Gericault was the hotness? I'd rather gaze upon his self-portrait than The Raft of the Medusa!

All the fine arts are covered on this blog: It was good to see you again.

Labels: Hot Man in Regency Period Clothing of the Week, Sonnets

I see whineypants is still having a hissy fit over being accused of exploitation. But he's trying to pass it off as a joke, both twittering and blogging things to the effect of - hey, look at me - I'm an exploiter - hah hah.

I suspect that he believes that because actors are nice to him they are all perfectly happy with everything and never ever talk shit behind his back. Obliviousness is a kind of paradise, I suppose.

All these aging boys with their toys in their bubbles - it's like Edward Einhorn who told me once:

"Well, I think the theory behind it all is that the actors get the glory of having being on stage, which is why they are usually happy to work for free... "

People who have never lived hand-to-mouth seem incapable of conceiving of a world where other people do. And why would off-off Broadway / independent film actors living in New York during the worst economic times since the Great Depression need something as mundane and uncreative as money, anyway?

And yes, I don't mind at all if he links to my blog again and boosts my monetization. At least SOMEBODY is making money from this guy.

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Jane Campion - doesn't exploit actors, feminist, makes great movies with good dialog. That's the kind of director I like. Are they only found in New Zealand?

Since Ben Whishaw is in town I think I'll invite him to sit in on an NYCPlaywrights meeting. You never know...

Andrew Bellware is concerned that I didn't mention him by name when I pointed out how he exploited actors - one of his calls for actors even ended up in "Nudity Required, No Pay" a blog I've been following for awhile.

Here's a website/blog I've linked to before (you'll remember, she's the "nest of vipers" blogger). Nancy McClernan has been writing/snarking about me specifically in some of her blog posts and yet she doesn't use my name so I didn't find out 'till just now. Dammit!

So in this post I certainly hope I've remedied the situation to his satisfaction.

I never paid attention to Andrew Bellware until Feb. 2009 when he decided to post a link to my blog, complaining because I said something unflattering about Manhattan Theatre Source there. The irony of this escapes him, utterly - he says something nasty about Manhattan Theatre Source once a month. Apparently only he is allowed to criticize MTS.

It's funny that he didn't discover my parody of his movie "Angry Planet" for over a year after I posted it to my blog (in response to his attacking me in the first place), considering that some of his friends (looking at you NC) monitored my blog through most of 2009. Why didn't they mention it to him?

Bellware posted my parody in its entirety to his own blog, without my permission, because he's as clueless as he is shameless - but when you live in a world where people work for you for free I guess you really develop a hearty disrespect for everybody else's creative work.

I emailed him to point out he did not have my permission - he then published my email address along with my email, and wrote:

Ooh! Legal consequences! Well I'll truncate the boring parts where it repeats itself anyway, that'll reduce the tl;dr part of our lives on the blog.

Repeats itself - yes because I was parodying your film. I guess the concept of "parody" escapes him.

In response to my email he "truncated" the parody - so of course the parody is reduced in effect - which I presume is what he wants. The parody is not very long in the first place - it gets in, makes its point and gets out. But as I said - no respect for other people's work.

It's amusing that he makes a point of saying what a waste of time my commentary/parody is, while he's obsessing over it.

And he can't figure out how to find the individual number of a blogger post and actually whined to me in his response to my email that I didn't provide it to make linking easier.

Like most exploiters, Bellware tries to make the issue about "prurience" - that is a favorite defense of the poor-Roman Polanski brigade. People were out to get Polanski because they HATE TEH SEX! Those puritanical Americans! As if Polanski did not drug and rape a 13-year old and then scamper off.

It's not about nudity, it's about not paying actors for nudity. Only an idiot - or someone being willfully obtuse - could fail to get that.

I do worry that if people see my parody they will want to see his movie, the way people like to see The Room, the famously bad movie.

And "Angry Planet" really is bad. It's not the actors' fault - many of them are very good in spite of the nonsensical script. And Bellware, I already explained just one facet of why your movie sucks - back in May 2009 - your "friends" seem to have let you down again.

I see that the posts on his blog, right after his attack on me, are all defensive about the fact that he doesn't pay actors - they get "points" - the film world's version of stock options instead apparently. But clearly my criticisms are having some effect - so all you actors who've donated your time and talent to his movies: if you ever see a dime, you'll probably have me to thank, at least in part.

UPDATE: Bellware's internet buddies are as clueless as he is. One of them writes in the comments:

legal consequences!?! that is five kinds of special, she reserves the right to mock and snipe at endless length and you are the target of her vitriol.

He either doesn't know, or doesn't care that:

Bellware attacked me, publicly, first in 2009.

A parody is free speech.

A creative work - which includes parodies - is property belonging to the author. There are laws about using people's work without their permission. Bellware is either unaware of this, or doesn't give a damn.

Bellware posted an annoucement offering to "hire" an actress to perform nude for no pay - this ended up on a blog that specializes in highlighting actor exploitation, specifically the exploitation of actresses who are constantly being asked to perform nude for no pay. Only a creep would make such an offer - and he's still a creep even if there are actresses desperate enough to agree to such working conditions.

It is my First Amendment right to express my opinion of Bellware's actions - and Bellware has certainly availed himself of such a right - first.

Bellware is not the only director who expects actors to work for free - the exploitation of actors in NYC is rampant. And these are the same people who throw gigantic hissy fits - as Bellware has done - if ANYBODY suggests that they might have some ethical failings. I suppose they don't get much pushback in their privileged existences, normally, and any they do get is absolutely shocking.

But if Lindsay Stewart really wants a sonnet, I can oblige - although I already have a limerick in mind, ready to go.

****

I do owe Bellware a little - thanks to the increase in web traffic he's sent my way, I'm making money through link clicks.

When you spend your days exploiting unpaid labor, you tend to undervalue other people and their work. This is why a director whose work inspired a short piece of mine decided that it would be perfectly acceptable to reproduce my entire work on his blog without my permission.

I will seek legal advice on how to proceed.

They are so different... but each so wonderful in his own way...


Evgeni Plushenko - I cannot describe this performance, except that it's perfection.

And that nerdy genius Paul Krugman - A WHOLE PROFILE IN THE NEW YORKER - FINALLY!

But on the left he was revered. "The book tour for 'The Great Unravelling' was like revival meetings, because so few people were speaking out then," Krugman says. "There was a great event—it was in Berkeley, which devalues it a bit - but there was this event with a joint appearance by Al Franken, Kevin Phillips, and me, with three thousand people in the audience, and when we walked onstage we got a standing ovation. That would have been 2004." "I remember one woman saying, 'I thought I was going crazy until I read you,' " Wells says. "He gave a talk for a small bookstore in Marin County, and the town was so small they didn't have a place big enough to hold it, so they held it in a local church, and they had to open the windows, because people were outside listening."

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/03/01/100301fa_fact_macfarquhar?currentPage=all#ixzz0gJTPuZrw

ANY DAY 2 is the name of the movie being produced by one of the characters in my upcoming web cast series. I just have to find enough bob-cut wigs and ho-clothes for the lady actors.

Of course if actors are willing to be exploited - to act in shitty movies for no pay - nothing can stop them - not even the Screen Actors Guild or Actors Equity, apparently.

During yesterday's rehearsal for SODOM & GOMORRAH: THE ONE MAN SHOW one of the actors used the term "showmance" to describe the often short-term, embarrassing sexual relationship that sometimes develops between two actors during the course of theater productions. And the very worst is when one of the actors is married and you have to meet the actor's spouse. Awkward!

I love the term, though and plan to use it.

One of the actors had an hysterical story about a production of "The Nutcracker" that she was in, during which one of the female actors was having sex backstage with the actor playing the Nutcracker - in the magic sleigh that goes to Nutcracker land - while the guy was wearing the giant Nutcracker head. I fell on the floor laughing at the image - I am trying to convince her to write a monologue about it - if she doesn't soon, I will write the damn thing myself.

ah, memories...

Labels: Sonnets

Ophelia needs to write her poem(s) on a blog - that worked for me!

OK, I don't love this image so much, even though the guy is cute - I guess because he's not wearing a jacket - and he has an open collar, not a darling cravat. And the short sleeve is lame-o.

But I think the name of this novel is really funny, so voila.

Labels: Hot Man in Regency Period Clothing of the Week

I see you pussycat

Labels: Sonnets

Ah yes, another play forged in the bitter flames of actor betrayal and mendacity - it is a foundry that runs hot 24/7.

Wordsmiths

Somebody remind me again why I fuss and fret about the way actors are exploited.

UPDATE: hmmm.... judging from the statistics on the visitors who read this play, it takes about four minutes to read.

Do I wake or do I dream?

Labels: Sonnets

Mike Giorgio is really going to town in the role of Oliver, the actor doing the one-man show in my play.

My Darlington excerpt now has been read 1001 times, rated by 7 people for a total of 3.86 out of 5. Although I'm confused - it was rated 3.75 before, by 8 people - so I guess one of the hatahs removed their vote?

It's the Year of the Tiger

I can't believe I've never heard of the Eight Immortals of the Chinese Tao pantheon.

I can still hardly believe that Albert (pronounced al-BEAR) Capsouto is gone. He died of a brain tumor in January at the age of 53. All the Freres were attentive hosts at their restaurant Capsouto Freres, but he might have been the nicest. I'm going to Capsouto for my birthday and I'm not sure what to say to them. I guess the only thing to say is "sorry for your loss."

More about Albert here.

Diana Gaston, the author of "The Reputable Rake" tells Risky Regencies why she likes this book cover:

This is why I LOVED my cover for A Reputable Rake. I could not have asked for a better cover, by far my favorite. The Rake is just so handsome and his expression perfectly represents the hero of the book.

I concur - he's a hotty. The longer than usual hair makes the difference I think but also, he's slightly more boyish and pretty than the standard rock-hard jaw guys most often used in these things.

Diane has her own blog, and she provides an excerpt from the novel and alas, it's rather lame. However, the story of the woman who inspired the heroine of her novel is pretty interesting - and better written.

Labels: Hot Man in Regency Period Clothing of the Week

Interesting stuff - here's The Mystery of Darlington Manor, "A Dramatic Adventure for Castle Falkenstein."

And then there's The history and antiquities of the parish of Darlington published in 1854 - ooh, research for my story.

And here's Darlington House, a fancy-schmancy restaurant.

Ooh, and I was Elvis Presley's Bastard Love Child by Andrew Darlington. OK, getting pretty far afield now.

back to the Curse

Labels: Darlington Curse

It's the New Yorker's 85th anniversary.

I NEVER get tired of this song and performance. But I have been literally searching for over four years now for a translation - or even just the lyrics in Maori. You can even see the proof here - I begged for a translation on a Maori web site in November 2005 - I've also asked anthropologist friends. And to this day, I've still got bupkis.

I do know the song is in B major because I figured it out on the guitar once. I'd love to do a whole Maori musical.

"Bright Star" is now available from iTunes - I immediately downloaded it as soon as I saw that. And so I had the luxury of viewing all my favorite scenes several times.

The picture above is a screen cap from a favorite scene, where the young men of the town - one of them refers to them as the "Hampstead Heathens" - put on a concert. I was pleased to see in the credits that Ben Whishaw actually did sing in the chorus. And I got to hear again his reciting of Keat's Ode to a Nightingale over the credits as well.

What a wonderful piece of film-making is "Bright Star" - from the attention to the ordinary details of early 19th century England to the wonderful performances to the heart-rending reality of poor John Keats' early death (at 25). And also, something dear to my heart: the solace of poetry in the face of romantic anguish and desolation. The final scene has Fanny wandering the woods grieving and longing for Keats, reciting his poem "Bright Star" like a prayer.

Keats was quite opinionated on the subject of poetry, which really doesn't come through clearly in the movie, but at one point he explains to Fanny - and the quote comes from one of his letters on the subject:

"A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore; it's to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out. It is an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept mystery."

Well said, Keats.

When I compare a movie like this to some of the stupid movies in the world - especially ones that are pointless, derivative exercises in degradation, and to make the degradation absolute, the crass orcish filmmakers find it expedient to exploit actors and mock their professionalism in order to generate pure effluvia - the contrast could not be starker. Those movies are hideous, while "Bright Star" is beautiful.

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever" said John Keats.

Well said, Keats.

Yay! Ben Whishaw is coming to Off-Broadway:

BEN WHISHAW threw a series of jersey tops and skinny jeans on and off his wiry body like a juggler tossing scarves in the air. He stood before a full-length mirror, head cocked, his petite frame topped by an explosion of thick black hair, a boyish yet chiseled face and the eyes of a pixie.

Mr. Whishaw, 29, was in a Midtown rehearsal studio at a costume fitting for "The Pride," a play about gay identity and the price of sexual liberation that is now in previews at the Lucille Lortel Theater. He tried on a striped pullover that caught the eye of his director, Joe Mantello.

"I don’t think we should transform him into Gidget," Mr. Mantello said to Mattie Ullrich, the costume designer.

Not that the versatile Mr. Whishaw couldn't play a surfer girl from Malibu if he wanted. On film he's metamorphosed into John Keats ("Bright Star"), Keith Richards ("Stoned") and Bob Dylan ("I'm Not There") as well as an 18th-century man with a killer nose in "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer," Lord Sebastian in a remake of "Brideshead Revisited" and an unhinged teenager in "My Brother Tom."

But it was a stage role that brought most acclaim. In Trevor Nunn's 2004 production of "Hamlet," at the Old Vic in London, Mr. Whishaw, then 23 and six months out of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, played the title character as an overprivileged brat.

Critics were jubilant. Charles Spencer, writing in The Daily Telegraph, said that Mr. Whishaw "earned his place in such distinguished company" as Gielgud and Olivier. Ben Brantley of The New York Times has listed Mr. Whishaw among his most memorable Hamlets, alongside Mark Rylance and Simon Russell Beale.
more at the NYTimes

Alas he won't be wearing Regency era clothing for this play, but I'm still looking forward to the production at the Lucille Lortel.