108. The Week in Me
Brooklyn! Come see me read on Tuesday!
And you can listen to me talk the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie on
’s podcast Piecing it Together!
I’ve been busy!
Gotta open this with The Big Gay Jamboree, which I saw about an hour after getting out of The Substance. The two are not entirely dissonant, both treatises on womens’ economic subjugation and cultural commidifiability calibrated by our subscription to the color pink. But one has my pal and friend of the ‘letter Natalie Walker in it, and so, if forced to choose, Big Gay Jamboree is the one I’d watch again. And again. And text five of my gayest friends to go get tickets to see it again. Natalie, as I have long suspected, feared, prophesised, told y’all bitches, a STAR. Madeline Kahn reborn. Marilyn Monroe as Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, revamped, emphasis on the vamp. Her belt is only rivaled by the smooth, skilled, and holy shit RIPPED Paris Nix, an actor whose work I have never seen but now may follow around like the Grateful Dead. I turned to my friend Carey several times to say “Who IS this guy?” and we spent a good minute or two poring over his playbill entry to clock if we had seen him before. We hadn’t. How could that be. Another star in a full sky of a show, and one of the brightest.
But: the plot, or what I and the marketing team feel is safe enough to spoil on their website: “Help! Stacey’s fallen into a musical and she can’t get out. Last night, she got a little bit blackout drunk. This morning, she woke up in some b*tch ass Music Man world where everybody keeps bursting into song & dance, and where gay still just means happy. Maybe it’s a dream. Maybe it’s an allergic reaction to her birth control. Or maybe it’s Maybelline (don’t sue us! sponsor us? we’ll talk later). But if Stacey’s truly trapped inside a Golden Age musical, there’s only one way out: sing out! Or find the stage door. Whatever gets the most applause.”
This show is LOUD. This show is DUMB. This show is GAY. And it is perfect. I laughed harder than I have at anything I have watched or seen this year. If they let Conrad Ricamora join this show it’s sweeping Oh, Mary! at the knees and announcing itself the victor. It’s camp and meta and sung the hell out of and Christ, Alex Moffat is so good at playing a dumb prick (see Trump, Eric). Yes, Alex Moffat is in this as Stacey’s malignant himbo boyfriend, and what a joy to see him infuse a tired, trope-ic role with DayGlo douchery. The reveals come fast and loose like poppers, and procure genuine “oh shits” from the audience. The characters’ inner revelations are jagged and…reasonable (these are Rodgers & Hammerstein extras, essentially, so yes they’re at best the types who “don’t see color”). I am set to se it again soon with a straight, male friend in his 60’s, a critic, and I am scared of what I may need to generationally translate for him and what hand gestures I may need to deploy. I can’t wait.
Jonathan and I unexpectedly met Neil Patrick Harris while strolling the Broadway Flea.
He was incredibly charming, damn him.
Outright celebrity of this newsletter Michael Dale, a tenured and revered theater critic and one of my best friends, invited me to attend an experimental new and highly queer memory play called I’m Going to Eat You Alive, hosted in a (white) black-box room at CultureLab, a Long Island City art space featuring a gallery, art installations throughout, the theater space, and an outdoor stage where musicians performed as I walked up and into the venue. You can read Michael’s review here.
I’m going to say that this is the strangest play I have ever seen, and I do mean that as a compliment. I was shocked to learn that the playwright Riley Elton McCarthy (a new pal whose DM’s I slid right into after the show, hi Riley!) had never seen Twin Peaks, because they swung Dr. Amp’s Golden Shovel to hit that tone right on the head. Flannel and peat and B-roll of roads best not traveled at night. Hyperfixations and family relationships so knotty and acidic that you are reminded that no supernatural fright can ever compete with the terrors lurking in your own backyard - or bedroom. Burnt skin and Pica and soiled wedding dresses. Humanity is sick, not the roaches, and if anything we poison them. Was absolutely, in the only spoiler I would dare provide, gooped and gagged when Es, one of the three (step)siblings in this play, walked out with a violin and duetted to , “The Bug Collector” by Haley Heynderickx, one of my favorite songs of all time and a clever little easter egg for the indie heauxs out there (it’s me, indie heaux).
I learned today that the theater canceled all upcoming performances and am hoping that this show finds its way to new audiences soon, because it deserves to be produced - and seen. Content warning if Twin Peaks, Psycho, or Flowers in the Attic are triggering for you, even in more ways than the obvious common ribbons.
To read:
This was shared by
in a post dedicated to Arizona on the ballot:
We gonna rock down to Cousin Pam Avenue / And then we’ll take it higher - on Philly naming a street after Erika Alexander. (Much deserved!)
Donald Trump enacted the PREVENTS Task Force, and then stood for a POSED PHOTO OP at Arlington on the grave of a soldier who served 6 tours oversees and then died by suicide. Thanks to my cousin Gregg, an aspiring VA lawyer, for talking to me about this on one of my morning commutes to work recently.
A (very) short story from my pal
:
“More Than Anything Else, the Rally to Rescue the Republic Was Awkward” -
for The Nation, taking a lovely little shit on Russell Brand’s tightie-wighties and Matt Taibbi. Related:
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“Take a good look at what you’re looking at and who you are looking to for cues. Maybe it’s time to take ownership of the gaze, the status quo, and the presumed power dynamics? How can we each look at each other with more kindness, equal in the eyes of what’s below and above?” - from my rabbi,
I know y’all love watching that man do handstands but he is a cultist: (via
)To watch:
I do NOT watch YouTube content. It was something I didn’t love about being in a six-year long relationship with a man, coming home to someone watching 45-minute explainer videos about He-Man merchandise instead of something I felt was a valuable use of eyes, like seven episodes of Monk starring Ted Levine1…or a movie starring Ted Levine…I just watched Heat for the first time this weekend and was reminded how lethally attracted I am to Ted Levine…anyway. So I, the person who never watches YouTube content and thinks the entire medium derivative and wasteful, spent FOUR AMERICAN HOURS watching content creator Jenny Nicholson discuss Disney’s misleading marketing around their failed Star Wars Hotel, thanks to a Walden Green article about Neom for Dirt. I’ve seen about 5 of the Star Wars movies, and once each. I do not take it seriously as a franchise since Benicio del Toro did that Porky Pig ass stutter throughout whichever one of the Kelly Marie Tran movies he was in. I never went to the hotel. I was rapt.
Princess Diaries. You know you want to. With the exception of Julie Andrews mattress-surfing, the second movie you can skip. Michael Moscovitz or GTFO.
This is literally just Simone:
Both her being the best big sister ever, and then MOMMY doing spoonies with her…when she lets me. Also, me and Boobie.
This is literally just Lugosi:
Actually my babies:
Various and sundry:
From my lovely, lovely friend Rob, a brilliant writer and one of the most successful I know, which makes this staggering to read:
Love you bitches,
TG
Loving the links to Munya’s Brand takedown (the man doesn’t miss - check out his How to Survive A Dictator duo of documentaries on Zimbabwe and North Korea) and the Star Wars Hotel madness (Granted I’m a sucker for YouTube essays regularly - my latest fave is one on the Don’t Worry Darling madness.)
My Rainforest Cafe jacket is perhaps the best conversation starter piece that I now own. People have stopped on the streets to comment on it. I was not prepared for this level of fame, but I'll take it.