Friday, June 21, 2019

Ugh. Summer

Summer in New York is hell.

It is worse in Florida - I was there a couple of years ago in late July - early August. I ended up driving around in Miami in the middle of the night and I was blasting the air conditioner in the rented SUV all the way to Key West.

I'd love to visit my friend Rosemary who now lives in Sydney Australia. Today is the first day of winter in Australia.

Monday, June 17, 2019

Quelle smartass, Siri

My conversation en français avec Siri, with translations.
      MOI
Je n'ai pas dit les gros mots. 
(I did not say curse words.) 
     SIRI
Ce n'est pas gentil. 
(It's not nice.) 
      MOI
Vous êtes fou. 
(You are crazy.) 
      SIRI
Eh bien, si on regard de plus pres, c'est vous qui parlez a un être virtuel qui vit dans un nuage. 
(Well if one looks closer, it is you who talks to a virtual being who lives in a cloud.) 
    MOI
(avec resignation) 
Vous avez raison. 
(You are right.) 
     SIRI
Merci, Nanettes. 

     ~ FIN ~

Saturday, June 15, 2019

Terrence McNally on PBS


Running NYCPlaywrights you sometimes get a heads-up that you might not otherwise. This past week someone from PBS reached out to me to ask if I could help promote, on the NYCPlaywrights web site, the PBS "American Masters" episode on Terrence McNally, which is currently running in free streaming mode. I said I would.

I watched it. I hadn't been aware that McNally had had  romantic relationships with both Edward Albee and Wendy Wasserstein, which are discussed in the PBS piece.

I was aware that McNally had a relationship with Gary Bonasorte, because I met Bonasorte while they were an item, and in fact not too long before Bonasorte died. I was briefly involved with Rattlestick Theater in 1999, which Bonasorte had founded in 1994. I created an early version of their web site interface, which can still be found via the Wayback Machine, which I present here. 

It's pretty interesting now to see the names listed on the advisory board and Board of Directors. Although I had been writing plays since 1992, by 1999 I still had little knowledge of theater history so names like Marsha Norman and Joe Mantello and even Terrence McNally meant nothing to me at the time I was posting them on the web site. 

Neither did the name Abigail Disney, whom I don't remember ever hearing about before I friended her on Twitter because of her very cool left-of-center views.

It was thanks to this Rattlestick connection that I met a guy who was crashing at Edward Albee's apartment (while Albee was vacationing on Montauk) and thus have my stories about Edward Albee's apartment, which I have mentioned on this blog before.

I met Bonasorte but I didn't exactly hang out with him. I had one conversation with him but I remember it pretty clearly because it was along the lines of "aren't men exasperating" and I found Bonasorte very sweet and relatable.

I would later find out who Joe Mantello was when I was sued over my tiny little off-off Broadway play TAM LIN  and Mantello's lawsuit against a theater for using the set, as described in the published version of LOVE! VALOR! COMPASSION!, was used to justify the lawsuit against my former partner and I by the litigants, even though the Mantello case was settled outside of court and therefore legally useless as a precedent.

Mantello makes an appearance in the McNally PBS show, but they don't mention the lawsuit.

I haven't done much theater lately - those of us who have to make a living can't depend on theater, which will soon become exclusively, I fear, a hobby of those with trust funds. Although I do have several plays percolating in my mind, and will probably do readings of them soon. And of course I do NYCPlaywrights ever week.

But lately I've been spending my time on my Pinkerite web site.

Saturday, June 01, 2019

*** sigh ***