Good news from San Fran... here and here.
DEAD CITY is closing tonight. Gonna go see it. Join me?
... like the time I told a very sexy graphic designer I was "addicted to fonts" so he'd think I was awesome, but then he asked to borrow some and all I had was Arial and Times New Roman
...or the time I got drunk by myself at Barney's Beanery in LA and tried to get this girl to go home with me by telling her we could ride the MTA bus home together and make out in the back
...or that time I asked that cute fella I worked with out for drinks via email, and he emailed me back saying he didn't date fellow employees, so I wrote back "that's cool, I'm only part time so it doesn't really count"
Those times, I picture myself as a short balding man wearing a brown seer-sucker suit and wingtips. My comb-over is oiled and so is my moustache, and I'm tipping my whiskey sour toward my next victim as he/her cringes silently to him/herself in the corner.
Have you been this man?
One of the worst parts of being out of the city in June is that a ton of amazing stuff starts to bloom, and not just the 9/11 tulips. The Mermaid Parade is today, Central Park Summerstage and Celebrate Brooklyn and countless indie music fests are kickin', my Carroll Gardens buds are all imbibing cheap burgers and $1 Pabst at the Gowanus Yacht Club, the street fairs are unfolding with their greasy corn cobs and fresh lemonade... and of course there is some wicked theatre stomping around town in its big ugly workboots.
One thing I'm sad to be missing (ends today) is the Loretta Lux exhibit at the Yossi Milo Gallery... her bloodless disaffected children in their surreal landscapes make my skin crawl, but mostly because I feel like she has somehow captured the sodden pneuma of my own strange, isolated childhood.
But there are some things cookin' in San Fran, luckily. Gonna go get my Matthew Barney on... opening today at SF Moma. Yeah yeah.
Go 'head, draw that restraint, son!
Okay I'm tired of looking at Shane. I think I'm over her. Another hot, brief, fake affair. What can I say, I'm a heartbreaker.
We go into previews tonight. The show is looking good. If you're in the bay area, please check it out...
Oh. My. God. I am in trouble. I have fallen very, very hard for someone who does not exist.
Shane on The L Word. The other night I watched three straight episodes in a row and I am ADDICTED to this character. Not the actress who plays her, but the character. Shane, the impossibly hot, impossibly tormented, promiscuous hairdresser with excellent clothes. Shane, you make me feel like a twelve-year-old boy.
Look, I know she's just a creation. A team of writers assembled her from the frayed scraps of their own lurid fantasies. But I literally cannot get enough of her. I think about her all the time. I dream about her. I want to clasp her long fingers beneath my chin and wear her like a bonnet. I want to pour her into my coffee and swirl her around and then drink her down and feel her burn my throat. I want to get tangled up in her like fishing wire, knotted so tightly the fire department will have to come in with the jaws of life to pry us apart.
Is this wrong? It feels a little unhealthy... but in a good way. Like crack.
... bringin' you the songs that wail from the most whirlingest centers of our most deepliest troubled souls where the most complicated of human urges lie...
...and now, this little ditty by Antony and the Johnsons... but please don't be drunk when you listen to it, as it has been known to induce spontaneous and interminable weepage from those in fragile states. It will smash you like candy glass.
In other news, my hair has been falling out in clumps due to stress. Suggestions are welcome as to how to stop this... but please don't say yoga.
bed creaking rhythmically in the master bedroom as she listens in the guest room, lying back on the futon she is thinking of a dark bar, a pinball machine, a man's hand, a mouth--
the wildly hairy black cat, 11 years old and onery, lying on its back outside the master bedroom guarding the congress
in the kitchen, an empty bag from Victoria's Secret, words printed in gold on the inside: GIVE ME SEXY.... seems to have done the job [creak-creak-creak]
one healthy shot of a stranger's Patrone, then another, will they notice it's gone
a white business envelope on the kitchen table with the word "Mommy" written across the back, light flourish on the "Y" (she can't stop staring at the "Y")
light drains in, coffee pot brews on its own, she's still awake at the kitchen table, alone, wearing lingerie from her bridal shower and eating noodle soup
somewhere in boston, someone is sleeping
Dead City
by Patti Smith
This dead city longs to be
This dead city longs to be free
Seven screaming horses
Melt down in the sun
Building scenes on empty dreams
And smoking them one by one
This dead city longs to be
This dead city longs to be living
Is it any wonder there's squalor in the sun
With their broken schemes and their lotteries
They never get nowhere
Is it any wonder they're spitting at the sun
God's parasites in abandoned sites
and they never have much fun
If I was a blind man
Would you see for me
Or would you confuse
The nature of my blues
And refuse a hand to me
Is it any wonder crying in the sun
Is it any wonder I'm crying in the sun
Well I built my dreams on your empty scenes
Now I'm burning them one by one
This damn city this dead city
Immortal city
Motor city
Suc-cess city
Longs to be
Longs to be
Free
Free
Free
from Peace & Noise, 1997, Arista Records
DEAD CITY is extending. To those of you who have seen it, thank you and I love you. I really love you. You are so wonderful and supportive and even if you hated it I still love you.
To those of you who haven't, well you still can. Until June 30th. The press release told me so.
To those of you who are like, "SCREW Callaghan. I am SO EFFING SICK of hearing about that little troll." Well, I completely understand. But you should know that this woman will hunt you down and eat your flesh off:
Pick o' the week, dudes! The madness won't stop. Just don't hate me if you see it and feel like it doesn't live up to the hype...
In other madness, I'm in Los Angeles now for a reading at the Boston Court Theatre. If you're in LA come check my pulse. I'll be in the back of the room with clumps of hair in my fists. (My OWN hair, thank you.)
BUT, if you're in NYC it is SPRING THEATRE MADNESS! Go see everything at SUMMERWORKS!! Then go see Adam's play and get free beer. Then go see Jason's play and get an education. And somewhere in there go see the reading that Jason keeps talking about by Kristen Kosmas, because she's a beautiful writer and Willis is a great director. Oh, and Kate Ryan's play is up at 13P. And Gary has a play at the Brick theatre in Williamsburg. Holy crow, June is ON FIRE.
And one final bit of madness... here. You were warned...
I'm in San Francisco. And will be for quite a while, heretofore reporting dutifully from the Bay Area.
So. On topic...
1st holy crap: This PRESS!! WTF, man? Another one? And this? And this too? (Thanks, Matt!) Did I drunkenly sign my name in blood in some devil's bar one night? It means nothing, really, but it feels new. Like something has changed. Probably it hasn't, I'm just striving to make sense of it, and it's all luck anyway. But in the meantime, I don't know where all my theatre friends have disappeared to...
Don't get me wrong, we did receive a couple negative notices too. Or rather, I did. I'm not gonna link to them, so if you care to waste your time searching I'm sure they're not difficult to find... but even those make the play sound cool. Just waiting now for Ashton to jump out of some bushes.
And... 2nd holy crap: This FOOD! WTF, man? I hired this gal to plan and cook a meal with me for Soph's birthday, and it was OUTRAGEOUS. First she sent me a few menu options based on some guidelines I set up (lots of veggies, no fish or beef, season-appropriate ingredients, etc); then she did a preliminary visit where she scoped out my kitchen to see if I had all the appropriate materials for the meal; then she did all the grocery shopping, prepared some of the food at her own home, brought her own hand-mixer, and did the cooking while I chopped carrots and drank beer. She even passed on a few little cooking tips here and there, which I promptly forgot.
The menu included garlic soup, farfalle with mascarpone and asparagus and hazelnuts, and sauteed lamb chops with fennel butter. (You can find the entire menu here.) Not only was the meal perfect, but it was SO FUN to relinguish my kitchen to someone else for a while.
In short, HIRE HER. Before she realizes how awesome she is and becomes unaffordable.
... but so so happy. We KILLED ourselves on this show, like none I've ever worked on... the cast was getting major re-writes until last week, and had to deal with things like having new lines SCOTCH-TAPED to various props... we lost an actor last minute and had to schedule extra rehearsals with the new actor when we literally had no time... and after the first preview the other night we sat around for three hours with our exhausted, over-worked designers, trying to discuss how to fix all the things we didn't have time to tech properly. And there's more...
But it's good. It's good it's good. I love it. And I'm not the only one, thank goodness:
NY Times
TheatreMania
Variety
George Hunka
I think we're gonna have a kick-ass run. Come join us... we want to show you what we've made.
Oh, PS. Comments are back. For now...
