Helen Boyd Kramer's journal on gender and stuff
Our friend Angela Madden is opening a play she wrote – and performs in – tonight at the Connelly Theatre. It’s called C.E.O. & Cinderella. We got to see it before I left for Wisconsin, and I’m glad I did. It’s interesting, it’s funny, and it’s moving.
It also only runs until February 19th, so do get tickets as soon as you can. It’s being presented by the theatre company Betty helped form a couple of years ago, and their website has all the info you need.
Angela, break a leg. We love you.
New York is considering a law that would make recycling those damn plastic bags a requirement – for businesses.
I think that rocks.
Tell Mayor Bloomberg to pass it.
2007’s Biggest Oversight in Preserving NYC’s Cultural History:
Allowing CBGB to close its doors.
Becca Tucker is clueless, of that I’m sure. This article she wrote – about stalking Claire Danes – is about as low as low gets. & Ignorant. To me, it’s typical of this new breed of New Yorkers who come here to be near the money and the fame and the art & who don’t understand the premise: that we, as New Yorkers, get to live around the talented, the rich, & the famous BECAUSE WE DON’T BOTHER THEM.
Celebrities come here in order to disappear a little, without hiding behind walled gates and guards. A lot of creative people want to be around people living, going to work, waking up in time to make the donuts. It’s why, I think, there are so many film-makers and writers and poets and performance artists here; we thrive off of each other’s ideas but also off of the buzz of life around us.
The point isn’t that you can stalk Claire Danes. Tons of famous people live here and would be easy enough to stalk, and that includes people who are famous for anything and everything you can imagine. But they live here because New Yorkers are famously cool and relatively unimpressed with fame; it’s a sign of your own couth, here, to not be so overwhelmed with seeing someone famous that you can keep your cool. You might smile, or even politely ask for an autograph if the person is an especial hero, but for me, the real joy has always been in watching someone I admire show up at an event I went to (like watching a Buster Keaton move with David Byrne, or seeing a Bill Irwin show while seated a couple of rows behind Robin Williams, or even seeing Rufus Wainwright with David Bowie en scene).
I mean, *of course* famous people are here, and accessible, and sometimes they even buy their own groceries. This is New York, and hello! – that’s the fucking point. It’s perfectly acceptable to wait to meet celebrities when they’re on – like at a stage door or a premiere, or a book signing or lecture or performance – but not when they’re walking their dog.
Get some manners, people. Or go back to where you came from.
(via Feministe)
Fuckwads. I think we should name a street after Hassan Askari, or at least get him some protection, because you know someone is going to give him a hard time about standing up for a Jewish guy.
Happy non-denominational holiday season, everyone!
& Why, people, is this such an issue? Wish me a happy Chanukah, a peaceful Kwanzaa, a lovely Christmas, or a light-filled Ramadan. I could not care less which. It’s when someone tells me to drop dead that I have a problem with. The idea that people are getting into fights over wishing someone a good anything BLOWS. MY. MIND.
Apparently the folks who write Law & Order did their research; a local scientist & his students recently found gonorrhea in the Gowanus Canal.
But in the 70s, according to The New York Post, it contained typhus, typhoid, & cholera.
I’m not sure if this is better or worse.
Tonight, do come to a crossdressing event at the LGBT Center in NYC. Rachel Kramer Bussel’s Crossdressing: Erotic Stories book is the reason for the gathering. I’ll be reading, as will Miss Vera, amongst others.
Do come! It should be a fun night!
Gentrification is all around us these days in Park Slope, and now it’s even moving into our end of our neighborhood (which we’ve always fondly referred to as “The People’s Slope.”)
Here’s an example: one of our favorite local eateries was called Jack’s. They made a great pot roast & Betty’s favorite Huevos Rancheros. They’ve been closed for more than a month, and we’re anxiously hoping they will re-open.
A block away, a new place called Piramide has just opened, along with places called Fuel and Edible Eats.
*sigh* It means there’s a lot more of these folks around, too.
Charles Busch‘s current production of Die Mommy Die! was reviewed in The New York Times today:
Directed by Carl Andress, “Die Mommie Die!,†which runs a peppy 90 minutes, is infused with the good-natured comic brio that has made Mr. Busch a drag artist whom middle America can embrace. Even theatergoers who don’t catch the copious old-movie quotations, verbal and physical, should enjoy Mr. Busch’s hair-trigger comic timing and rubbery mugging, which brings to mind vintage Lucille Ball. (The association is underscored by Mr. Busch’s choice of red wigs, designed by Katherine Carr.)
I’ve seen a bunch of Charles Busch’s shows over the years – including Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, The Lady in Question, Shanghai Moon and Times Square Angel – and always find them smart and fun. I even met Joan Jett in the bathroom at one production! So do go if you get a chance, or rather: make the chance.
I’m at an Au Bon Pain in Boston’s South Station the other day trying to buy a cup of soup while I waited for my next train. They have clam chowder on the list of soups, so I ask,
“What kind of clam chowder is it?”
Blank stare.
“Is it white or red?”
“Do you want clam chowder?”
“What color is it?”
Blank stare, eyeroll.
The clerk next to her overhears it & asks me,
“You’re from New York?”
I nod.
He says to my clerk,
“You need to get out of Boston once in a while. In New York they have red clam chowder too.”
I had no idea that when you’re in New England, all the clam chowder is New England clam chowder. I mean, if they serve both New England clam chowder and Manhattan clam chowder in Manhattan…