Typical.

The day before my birthday is the end of the world.

My close associate, Noes the Apocalypse Kitteh, and I have decided to start drinking heavily at 5 pm and not stop till the end of the world, just in case.

Nobody Writes Them Like They Used To, So It May As Well Be Me

I should mention that I finished the first draft of my play last night. I should be far more excited about it than I am, considering how long and how hard I've worked on it, but it's almost exactly as long as it should be (110 A4 pages) and actually hits the mark I wanted to set for it -- beginning with normal dialogue and slowly changing into the iambic pentameter of the source.



There aren't any songs (except one) beyond the first act, but I have a fair idea of what songs I want and where they need to go. It needs lots of work, but it's off to exactly the sort of start I wanted.

I need to get people to read it. I'm not ready to post all of it here, but I did want to post some pictures. They're snagged from all over the internet, and I used them -- provisionally as scene backgrounds. They're in no real order.

Clockwise, from top left: The Dungeon where Daniel is executed; castle interior 1; the forest where Michael is killed; the meeting-place of the barons.

I have a few more I might post.

Today's Episode in One Act.

No. 4 in my list of possible birthday presents: Ira Glass.

Ira is the host of NPR's This American Life with the velvety-smooth voice. That alone is a selling-point; the fact that he's reasonably hot is secondary.

Actually, his response from his show getting named-checked on The OC -- I believe the quote went something like "Is that that show by those hipster know-it-alls who talk about how fascinating ordinary people are? -- is more than enough to swoon over.

Best. Doctor Who. Companion. Ever.

No. 3 in my list of possible birthday presents: Philip Olivier.

Since the last two pictures haven't been that exciting, I figured a little beefcake never goes awry.

Olivier was on Brookside and Bo Selecta. He also starred in several of Big Finish's Doctor Who audio plays, though it seems to me that most of his obvious talent didn't get used.

In the productions, anyway.

And if they weren't used at all, then the people of Big Finish have a lot to answer for to the rest of Doctor Who fans who boldly live up to 90s stereotypes.

As an aside, there are very, very few people out there who inspire in me the same pillow-biting, immediate lust to get...

[cut scene of Roger Moore waving]

... uh, busy as Phil does.

I'll take "The Question is Irrelevant", Alex: Get to the Skin!

No. 2 in my list of possible birthday presents: Jon, from the Jeopardy Clue Crew. We'll just glide over the fact he's married and has kids. Oscar Wilde did, too.

[I reckon KJZZ is a joke unto itself here, and needs no further elaboration.]

[Later: It turns out KJZZ is in Salt Lake City, which is even more of a joke...]

Wrapping Not Necessary. Well, not all over.

Since I've made up my mind I'm not getting anything for my birthday Friday*, I have decided, O anonymous-silent-but-hopefully-still-extant audience, to give you a selection of appropriate gifts over the next few days. (If, that is, I don't decide to suppress any suggestion of celebration, which I have half a mind to do.)

No. 1: Nathan, from the Speaking of Sex Podcast. Yes, the picture is bad (it's the only one I could find at all). Fortunately, they're wrapping up a series of video podcasts to accompany their tour of the US, so you can download those and see better images. He's cute, smart, and funny. And I'm willing to bet (if he's retained even a tenth of what goes out in his podcast) one fine roll in the hay.

*I did get a package from Laura, though, so I did receive something. I'm just betting on nothing else.

Retraction

Yes, I know it's the middle of the say, so it must be a little disconcerting to see anew post pop up, but I thought the ending to that last post was a little mis-leading. On a little further reflection, I remembered one time recently I was quite happy, and -- truth be told -- I feel a little hangdog for skipping over it.

Probably the day or the day after the last hiatus here, I went to an It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia marathon at the home of Miss Laura Llew. That was a legitimately happy time, but the moment that stands out comes a little bit later.*

After getting terribly lost in upstate SC and narrowly avoiding a lynch mob down Bob Jones University way, I didn't get started back home till late -- late by my standards, which meant 3.30 am or so, I started back home. The sun rose about 15 or 20 miles from home, and by then I was punchy from lack of sleep and the last effects of some particularly good bourbon. My voice was a little scratchy from singing aloud various Belle and Sebastian songs.

But that moment reminded me of many, many other very happy moments, and not a few of them were under nearly identical circumstances, so it reminded me of an earlier period when I was quite happy, quite often.

Like times when I had to avoid a head-on collision with another car because the highway on-ramp and exit ramp were one and the same in this little town, which sounds terrifying (and was at the time), but now strikes me as hysterically funny, if not pointlessly symbolic.

Or like any number of occasions when I had to drive back from the Outer Banks or elsewhere and wouldn't leave till after dark and still faces a 6- or 8-hour drive.

So there. Happy.

*Anyone else and I might think that would be the suggestion of a poor hostess and not mention it, but I'm reasonably sure Laura understands.

More Hardy than Wolfe

You know, after last night's post, I went digging through my boxes of books (all 1440+) to find my copy of The Web and the Rock. I remembered that it started out with a reference to Old Catawba, the name of the river that runs by here. Turns out I was wrong, incidentally.

In the midst of rooting around in all those books, I found a journal I kept from my last vacation. I bought because it was a cute, recycled children's and I knew I would be online for the duration.

It wasn't in with my other journals. It had been tossed in a box with some other books from my bedroom, mostly Southern lit -- Faulkner, Judge Whedbee's ghost stories, Capote.

I made the mistake of leafing through a few pages, just skimming it over without taking much in, when I realized it was exactly a year ago. I didn't think it would bother me much, and I don't think it per se did. Well, not per se. Maybe ipsa re. It did eventually make me pretty sad as it made me reflect on my life then, as opposed to now.

I haven't been out of the house in... well, the last day of Forum, which was the 18th of May. And I literally can't remember the last time I was legitimately happy about anything. That shouldn't make me want to die, but it sort of does.

I suppose you could. It'd be very Faulkner-y, "The Snopes done come to meetin' "looking, though.

The above quote was from a discussion I had with Ms Llew about wearing China Doll Dresses and petticoats. If pressed, I'd probably say specifically from Sanctuary. I hardly ever quote myself for a title, but I thought it was funny.

I can't believe it's been over two months from my last entry. I was in a local community theatre production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum for much of it. It was just as pointless over-dramatic and fraught with disaster as you think. I may well get around to discussing it more (there were some legitimately funny things in it) but not now.

One of the reasons that I started with a Faulkner mention is that something about this time of year always makes me pick up one of his books, and then read several more. I started out this year with where I left off with The Hamlet last year*. That doesn't really work, so I started off from the beginning of it again and finished it within two days. I want to finish The Town and The Mansion before summer gets too far along.

I decided to hold back a bit and try something else. This may (appropriately enough) be the Summer of Southern Writers. Before moving on to The Town -- which I could only ever find in the last volume of the Library of America series, although Wikipedia shows that somewhere there's version to match the old school Vintage editions -- I decided to read Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel, especially since it's roughly contemporary to Faulkner on a few levels.

But it's far harder going that Faulkner. I don't want to say it's clunky, but... it lacks a certain evocative economy when compared to Faulkner. Wolfe is into minute detail and laborious description. Most strikingly, he tries to affect something akin to a literary montage -- an early-ish chapter on morning in Altamount comes to mind -- that attempts to pile incident upon incident to evoke morning. In purely visual terms, it would work. But a picture being worth a thousand words, the result in a novel is long-winded description for its own sake that doesn't achieve a lot. Stylistic masturbation?

I wouldn't be surprised. Wolfe himself was never one to decry his own talent; it's hard not to see that kind of ego in the prose and what it asks of the reader. It isn't quite so bad as to make me throw the book down (yet), but it requires of the reader a certain dedication that I'm just not sure is warranted.

What's really scary is that this is the /edited/ version of Wolfe's work. When he died, he left hundreds of manuscript pages that his editor just sort of hacked into his last two novels. I read bits of The Web and the Rock in college, and what I recall of it corresponds to my worst fears.

When Wolfe died, Faulkner called him the best writer of their generation. I just don't see that. Maybe by the time I finish LHA, I will.

*I think I started Absalom, Absalom! at least eight times before I finished it.

The Surviving Things

I wondered around the city for some time. I noticed the doors were quite small and rounded, not shaped for a human. After a while, I began to realized I was being guided. Doors were sealing off. Eventually I was bundled into a room that converted into a lift. I plummeted several stories. When the door opened, I went through, heavy with foreboding.

I knew I was being watched. I turned around. There, in front of me, coming towards me was... was...

I could only scream...

The BBC -- the Basset Broadcasting Corporation -- continues its new serial, the adventures through space and time of Poochles Poo.


Meanwhile, at the edge of the city, Poochles and I were growing tired of waiting for Ms. Daisy. "We'd better go look for her," I said. Poochles dabbed a handkerchief to his forehead. He was panting quickly and shallowly. "Yes. Yes, that seems best," he agreed.

We went through the door and into the corridor I investigated earlier, and found what looked to be a small lab. "Look at this!" Poochles exclaimed. "It measures something; look at the drum." I agreed, but wondered what it measured. "But, sir, it means the people who built this city were intelligent, scientific!"

"Well, clearly, Poochles..." I said as we continued to nose around the room. I heard an odd clicking noise and followed it over to a huge bank of computers. I quickly realized it was a Geiger Counter. "Uhh... Poochles? I found a Geiger Counter. And it's all in the 'Danger' zone."

Poochles trotted over to it and peered down. Almost conversationally, he said "Yes, that would explain quite a bit, quite a bit. We've got Radiation Sickness. But... Oh No! Look at this!" He was pointing to another read-out just below the Geiger Counter.

"This is a Ham-Detection Unit! And it's reading zero. We must leave -- leave at once. There might be no ham on this whole planet!" he looked at be a bit wall-eyed and marched towards the door.

I grabbed his arm. "But Poochles, what about Daisy? We've got to find her! And what about your fluid link? Don't you still need Mercury?"

"About that... I have to admit, that was a little sabotage on my part," he said sheepishly.

"I know. I watched you, remember? I asked you why you did that. And you ignored me!"

He again moved towards the door. "So I did. So I did. Well, I'm going back to the BASSAT. You can find Daisy if you like but..." As we crossed through the door, we saw Them.

Four of them glided over to hem us in, their noses twitching. Imagine a pink pepper-pot that someone put bunny ears on, and a little plastic bunny nose. From the top dome, an eyestick stuck out, and two appendage stuck out about half-way up the pot, one a pointy stick and the other a gun. I briefly wondered what the pointy stick was for, but then noticed the bottom half of the things were covered with parti-coloured Easter Eggs.

They looked... oddly festive. And aggressive. Like they were going to foist an Easter Egg hunt on us, whether we wanted it or not.

"Stop!" one of them said. "You-are-our-prisoner," they told us in a matter-of-fact way. Its voice was synthesized, harsh and metallic and irritatingly high-pitched. Its ears glowed with each syllable. "Follow."

This, I thought, was increasingly stupid. I walked towards the door. One of them glided over to me very quickly and poked me with its stick. "Ow!" I said. "That kinds hurt!"

Apparently, they thought this took all the fight out of me, and they shepherded Poochles and me into a bare room they seemed to be using for a cell. Inside, Daisy was lying on the floor.

" 'Lo," she said, not looking up.

The creatures left.

"So here we are again, imprisoned." I said, fingering the place where I was poked. "I do hope this doesn't become a regular thing."

Poochles looked dubious. We sat there for a while, playing 20 Questions and growing sicker. Eventually, one of the things came back and took Poochles out of the cell.

Poochles later told me they dragged him into their pastel yellow headquarters. Muzak version of "Your Easter Bonnet" and "Here Comes Peter Cottontail" endlessly piped in. Four of the creatures interrogated him, asking him if he was a Thrall.

He wasn't. He didn't even know what one was.

"Oh." said the thing. He then launched on a long speech how how he was a Bunlek, and how the Bunleks had been at war with a group of Christmas elves called the Thralls. The war had gone nuclear, and the Bunleks, who originally were Easter-loving bunny-suit furri enthusiasts, built the metal suits they wore for protection and retreated into their city. The Thralls stayed out in the open, no doubt to become hideous mutants. But they had a nifty anti-radiation drug.

"Oh," said the Poochles. "Yeah, they gave us some, I think."

The Bunleks gave him a few menacing pokes with their sharp sticks and told him he had to go get some. He agreed, but pointed out he was too sick to go.

He told me all this back in the cell, as a preface to my own trip back to the BASSAT. The Bunleks were getting antsy; one poked me right in the butt and said "Get-going. Bring-us-the-drug."

So I went. The trip back wasn't that long, so I ran around in circles several times through the woods. I even ran in place for a while, and let some floor technicians hit in the face with some branches. The forest wasn't that large, and it was difficult not to run into the shirtless guy following me.

When I got to the BASSAT, it had just started to rain. When I had grabbed the box of vials from inside the console room, I opened the double doors to a roll of thunder. It wasn't very scary,
but I had noticed almost 24 minutes had elapsed...

Next Week: Escape to Danger

Dreams of Lost New York

I'm coming to the end of another cycle of insomnia: that is, I've spent the past two weeks or so getting by on two or three hours of sleep, so tonight I'm going to swallow three or four sleeping pills and crash. Well, have taken, so if I begin to become incoherent, that's why. And if problems ensue, I'm saying the only reason I did it was because I heard it on Stephen Fry.

If there's anything good that can be dragged out of sleepless nights, it's that the dreams I have are proportionately more vivid. Some people claim to only dream in black and white; not me. I always dream in colour, and insomnia seems to guarantee Technicolor and extra vividness in recollection.

About a week ago, I dreamed I was coming home on the subway, but for some reason, I missed my stop. I was going to get off at the next stop and catch a train in the opposite direction to get back. But for some reason the next stop was Coney Island. Now, since I lived on the D line, my stop was the Ninth Ave. station at 39th Street: Coney Island was another 12 stops away. (To put this into perspective, it was 10 stops to work in Manhattan, and a lot of those were short Manhattan skips apart, like between 50th Street at Rockefeller Center and 53 St at 7th Ave. Brooklyn stops are much further apart.)

And this wasn't the fancy new Stillwell Ave terminus. In my dream, the Coney Island station was on a huge pier: at leats a mile wide and quarter mile across. The pier was made of blond wood and the two tracks (The Stillwell Ave station ends three lines, so there must be tracks in real life. I wouldn't know for sure since I've never been there) that were right in the middle of the pier, leading down into the water. There was also a ferry service back into Manhattan. The sea water was a brilliant turquoise of far warmer beaches.

There were kiosks like arcades and food booths all up and down the pier, and a few rides, like a ferris wheel, and a roller coaster. I was shocked to see the kiosk nearest me was some sort of Dalek game, with them painted garishly all over the stand, and a row of prizes that included pint glasses with daleks stencilled on. I don't actually remember the game you played.

It made me very sad to be there, I remember, and I was grateful to the daleks for making me happy. I decided to leave, and thought about taking the train back. There were two in the station, but they were both N trains, parked and waiting, just like at the other end of the line in Astoria, and they didn't stop near where I wanted to go. I decided to take the ferry instead, even though that went into Manhattan.

The ferry was sort of a sub when I got in, and launched itself under the water, with lots of bubbles floating up to the surface. There were two bubble-shaped window at the front, where two pilots were, and maybe about a dozen other people in the car. The interior was dark brown, more like a helicopter than the ferries or train cars. There were also rows of windows down the sides, and through them, we could see two or three Orcas swimming and playing. I determined that I was going to go to Jim Halliwell's Comic shop on 33th Street, which is across the street from the Empire State Building, and where I used to get some Doctor Who books.


And then I woke up.

I also had another dream about having a rent boy, but I was living in my grandmother's (now vacant) house. I will not go into torrid details of the first part, but later on I was worried because I had spent more time than I thought -- three hours -- and it was more than I could afford. The bill was $379, and I was worrying if I could cover than AND a tip. In the end, I think I could.

I pushed the poor guy into a bathroom because other people were coming in. Family, I think. In the end, he came out and I introduced him as my boyfriend, and he totally went with it. I really remember the guy, though: all tall, dark and curly and more built than I usually like, but not anybody I had ever seen before.

Oh well. The pills are really kicking in now, so I 'm going to scoot.

Where did I pull that title from? I googled it, but it doesn't come up, and I'm pretty sure it's not one of my own terms. Conjures up sort of a sub-par version of Benet's By the Waters of Babylon.

Beat the Qu... Heat. The Heat.

It's hard not to view this place as a backwards hell-hole sometimes. And by this, I mean not this lovely blog, but the place where I currently... abide. Endure? I hesitate to say "live", since that suggests some non-existent complicity in the matter.

It's not there aren't some nice people; there are. Somewhere. I think. I'm frequently reminded of -- and no doubt shall be greatly again in a few weeks -- of Margaret Cho's crack about the South: "It's not the hate, it's the stupidity."

They still beat queers here, you know. And while /obvious/ support of this is on the wane, clearly the undercurrent that's it's okay to do so is clearly alive and well, as this week's news proves. The local "big" city's school system Charlotte-Mecklenberg Schools passed, with great controversy, a no-bullying policy.

Why the controversy? It included a clause that listed homosexuality specifically as something protected (along with other things like race and religion).

The local Christian fundamentalists turned out to decry this as an advance of the mythical-yet-deeply-cherished concept of The Homosexual Agenda. I hope, dear reader, you could hear those capital letters. People apparently think that the school merely admitting gays exist is ripping all sexual education out of the hands of parents and is tacit support of a menacing political agenda.

The upshot that can be gathered from this? Apparently, the people who oppose the bill want to put out that either gays don't really exist, and if they do, it's okay to beat them at school.

Fortunately, the anti-bullying program passed through the CMS school board, but the local newscasts all made sure to show various people shaking their fists, vowing to continue fighting for the children's right to beat up people. *That* wouldn't be an approving, subtle little nudge to the viewing audience, at all, would it?

In happier news: Diesel Sweeties is coming up on its 2,000th strip, and is releasing all the strips in torrent collections for free! Yay! As a part of the general celebration, a few of their classic t-shirts are on sale for $10. I love all their stuff, but right now, it's just too pricey. While none of the reduced shirts are my favourites (Herschl the Hook-Up Hare!), I couldn't resist the opportunity to pick one up. Though the "It's fun to use learning for evil" was a contender, I eventually went with the "We Are Not All Jerks" one. It's a mark of my utmost respect that one of the characters in my play wears Red Robot Pixel Socks in the first scene. Not that anyone would notice that, but it's a character point, dammit. (In related news, the fine folks over at Octopus Pie -- well, Meredith Gran to give credit where it's due -- has come out with a Brooklyn Spring shirt I pine for, too.)

Also in happy news, Stephen Fry has started his own podcast. The first one, detailing how he broke his arm, was done under the influence of sleeping pills and was 25 uncut minutes of him complaining. It was better than 99% of, well, every other media, and personal proof (yet again) that there's no pointing in me whining on when there are others so very much better at it.

Show Me Some Skin. Or Don't.

You may know they've started showing Newsnight on BBC America. It isn't the proper, week-nightly one, but a cobble-together of Monday to Thursday's most interesting
or important stories, aired here on Friday nights. So while it's not as comprehensive, it is more Paxman-intensive, so you can see him tear into more people per episode. Which is part of the fun, really, and since everyone falls equally under him, it's much more balanced than 99% of American news. And almost equally more intelligent. Katie Couric *is* a perky little thing, and we all like to watch her over on CBS, but her idea of hard-hitting question does tend to be: "Is it as hard as I think it is to be so busy, Mrs Obama...

Anyway, Madeline Holt, the Culture Correspondent for Newsnight did a story last week I can't imagine getting aired here. It was about gay porn models (I'd love to call them actors, really I would, but thankfully enough reality has set in in the industry that they all are supposed to be called models now. I think that's much better. I mean, these are trained professionals working under uncomfortable circumstances. Calling them actors makes them sound like ought to be "ferrying hamburgers somewhere on the North Circular Road"*...) porn models, as I said, contracting HIV whilst making bareback videos.

Apparently, three videos have been pulled from shops because they feature a scene made by Icreme productions (of which I can find no web presence) and featured in at least one Eurocreme movie. They never said which ones, though, although I was surprised to see to see Bareback Thrill Ride** zoom across the screen at one point. Although I have to point out it was during a film segment which was probably just about the popularity of bareback titles.

Then they chuffed out some PSA with Chi Chi LaRue talking about how much the gay community has gone through and now people are getting AIDS for porn. Don't get me wrong, I agree with him completely in theory. ( I was going to post the ad here, but I just can't bring myself to foist Chi Chi LaRue on potentially innocent victims, gay or straight...)

But it's complicated.

Are people who watch bareback porn complicit somehow in these boys' getting HIV? To a degree, I think they are. They create a market where bareback videos have a demand, certainly, and without that demand the videos wouldn't flourish. And porn producers (sadly) are not always not known for their virtue.

What wasn't touched on at all, really, in the newscast was that a lot of this bareback trend can be traced back to really scummy producers taking advantage about a decade ago of very poor, very desperate boys in post-Communist Bloc (there's a pun for you Eurocreme fans) countries. A lot of the current crop still takes advantage of under-privileged young men from Central and Eastern Europe. Knowing a bit about the history of bareback, the net effect of this newscast's was "OMG, now it's happening to good English boys".

That's not to say there aren't thoroughly decent porn producers and production companies, who take care of their models. The crux of the Newsnight story was that the particular company mentioned wasn't meticulous in keeping up with their models' blood-tests and their laxity in enforcement directly led to the models' HIV status. Presumably -- hopefully -- most companies do keep up being meticulous.

But... just how responsible are these companies, anyway? Don't their models have enough sense not to have unprotected sex? Aren't they responsible for themselves? How can you grow up after 1985 or so and not know the dangers of unprotected sex (and not be from the South)? For me, anyway, it's hard not put some blame on the models themselves.

What really smarted was the one of the boys they got to go on camera. When Holt asked him what he felt about the repercussions of his actions -- and remember, in the UK, one of those repercussions is that the general public is footing his incipient treatment and (not to be coy about) protracted, messy death -- he grinned a self-satisfied grin and said "Dunno". A nation of queers over the age of 23 or so rose up as one with a desire to smack him.

Another point in the articles was "Are people going to do this at home?" And many of the same questions apply. And most of the "how stupid are you to fuck bareback" retorts apply. And all these videos, to be fair, are rife with "This is well dangerous" labels.

To be honest, one of my concerns with this is personal. I've got a bareback video on my PC. I watch it. Am I indirectly supporting this side of the industry? I'm not actively supporting it: my choice for a video has never yet been determined by whether or not condoms are used. It's virtually immaterial to me. But I am looking at the videos, so I am influencing things. In the end, I probably won't watch any more bareback films to ease my own conscience. But questions about how responsible each boy is for himself will still be around.

But it's not like I'm going to fuck bareback, but then I'm not really given much option, either.

*Quote taken from Robert Holmes, beloved Doctor Who writer, from one of Peter Haining's virtually identical books on the series... probably the one in The Doctor Who Files and probably the article about his wife perforating an ulcer in Germany.

**I really hope my conscience won't stop from watching this hot -- hott -- movie.

First, a few questions:

1) Am I the only one who had to look up what an Oxford Comma was?

2) Who are you people? I have a few repeat customers, as it were, of whom I have little knowledge. For instance, person from Louth, who are you? Person from Tempe, AZ, who are you? The people streaming in from various Middle Eastern places to look at (presumably) soft-core boy-kissing because their web-nannies ward them off from real porn -- this I understand. People looking for Furri porn -- this I *don't*understand, but I'm too lazy to track down one errant image that summons ye as hogs to slaughter-blood. Regular hits from other places (including Ile-de-France) confuse me. Identify yourself. Cookies may ensue. Actually, I fear that you are someone I know and haven't recognized moves me, so sing out... Feel free to use the nifty Guest Map.

Next, an observation:

I saw a coyote the other day. At least, I'm reasonably certain it was. My first though was that it was a wolf -- having spent more than my fair share driving through the swampy woods of NE North Carolina, I have seen Red Wolves -- typically dead on the side of the road, to be fair -- and I have seen Gray Wolves, and this was not a wolf. Nor was it a dog.*

Next, an exultation:

I got a random check from my (ex-) health insurance company. I used it to get a DVD set and book I've wanted for months. The local Barnes and Noble (and before you give me crap, it's the only bookstore with 30 miles. Yes, the only one. ) has a copy of Stephen Frye's The Liar. Judging from its shelfware, it's roughly contemporary from its 1992 publishing date, and certainly no-one else in these parts would read it. And it is lovely. It's literally hard to put down: erudite, cheeky and quite queer. The first part is -- deliberately, I'm sure -- like a cock-eyes Another Country, so clearly I'm enamored of it. I burn night-light praising it now rather than reading it.
The DVD set was It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia -- a returned-to-the-store copy and consequently cheap, but I've yet to find any problems with it.

Progress of the Rake?

You're the Tortured Intellectual!
Take What sort of Hipster are you? today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Personality Test Generator.

You're sensitive, you're emotional, and you wonder why everyone else in the world exists on a different plane. You cannot eat, breathe, or sleep without analyzing each action to death. You're usually sombre, depressed, lethargic, but you can be nearly glad from time to time. You wear whatever you can find on your cluttered bedroom floor. You carry books, notepads, reading glasses with you wherever you go. You have friends, but only a few who truly get where you're coming from. You frequent coffee shops, libraries, and the less crowded bars. You're obsessed with past people, past ideas, past lives. You wish you could die and be reborn as Jack Kerouac.

A) I'm not a hipster, but I'd sure write over-wrought prose to get between that model's pages.

B) Except for the Kerouac thing, it's pretty right-on. Compare this to a few years ago.

I haven't got a clever name for this one

I'm not sure exactly what's up with the spate of youtube videos lately, other than it's nice to have some video content to back up whatever I'm on about. This'll be the last for a while, hopefully.

You may notice I hardly ever talk about my personal life right now. Quite frankly, it's not entertaining in the deeply venial, mostly-comic style I usually evoke. And one of the... well, not benefits, really but... results... of thinking about and writing about tragedy as a genre is the sure knowledge that however pathetic your personal life is, the cards are stacked against you that it will ever rise to the level of tragedy. And if perchance does, the US will never appreciate it.

Which is just as well -- it' a bit harsh, but it keeps you wallowing too deeply in self-fear and self-pity. (Heh heh. *That* is a little criticism joke for you!)

But in contradiction to what I just said -- and without going into particular detail -- the past few weeks have been the worst of a bad time. Insomnia doesn't help. I've never really suffered from it before, but over the past months, I've developed a healthy respect for it. I'm sure it's stress-related, but I haven't gotten more than 3 or 4 hours a night for ages. Generally, after a week or two of listening all night to trains whistles from miles away*, I get desperate enough to swallow a few sleeping pills, and that's where I am right now. It this post disappears tomorrow, you'll know that it didn't pass the right-mind test. Heh.

Anyway, the point of the post is this: music helps the soul. There's nothing better than hearing a song someone else sings that describes the way you feel. The above song is mine right now. And yes, purists, I know it's his uncle who wrote the song, but I like Rufus' version better. I like that extra little bit of frisson his sexuality gives it, and I just think he's lived it better. It's one of the few songs he sings that I can forget how... slimy he is personally (yes, I have met him so I can say that with some level of authority) and just for once go with the song. Since I always like something to look at while I watch videos -- closed captions and subtitles, how I love thee -- below are the lyrics.

One Man Guy
Rufus Wainwright
from his album Poses (Dreamworks, 2001)

People will know when they see this show
The kind of a guy I am
They'll recognize just what I stand for and what I just can't stand
They'll perceive what I believe in
And what I know is true
And they'll recognize I'm a one man guy
Always was through and through

People meditate
Hey that's just great
Trying to find the inner you
People depend on family and friends
And other folks to pull them through

I don't know why I'm a one man guy
Or why I'm a one man show
But these three cubic feet of bone and blood and meat are all I love and know

'Cause I'm a one man guy in the morning
Same in the afternoon
One man guy when the sun goes down
I whistle me a one man tune

One man guy a one man guy
Only kind of guy to be
I'm a one man guy
I'm a one man guy
I'm a one man guy is me

I'm gonna bathe and shave
And dress myself and eat solo every night
Unplug the phone, sleep alone
Stay way out of sight
Sure it's kind of lonely
Yeah it's sort of sick
Being your own one and only
Is a dirty selfish trick

'Cause I'm a one man guy in the morning
Same in the afternoon
One man guy when the sun goes down
I whistle me a one man tune
One man guy a one man guy
Only kind of guy to be
I'm a one man guy
I'm a one man guy
I'm a one man guy is me

*Yes, it is very "Blues in the Night". The nearest trains tacks are 4 or 5 miles away, but the whistles come in clear and low. Oddly, it's much more depressing a sound that the ships' horns from Upper New York Harbour I could hear in Brooklyn.

Survey Confirms...

...What we all knew anyway. Go get a haircut, Justin Long. Or a blowjob. One or the other.

I Feel Bad...

that no-one told the producers of Never Back Down that gay porn typically has a crappy techno soundtrack.

The Kid's All Right

The problem of youth has one other sort-of-tangential problem for me: class.

My first thought is to make the Edward figure (Daniel, from here on out) to be the son and heir of a CEO of a big company who dies early on in the play, or even before it begins. But that gets rid of lots -- lots -- of the weighty material of Marlowe's work. Actually, the more I think of it this way, the less I like it. I think Daniel will have to be a young king. I mean, there /is/dramatic precedent for that (cough cough Henry IV 1, Henry IV 2, Henry V cough cough). And it does give a certain frisson in the relationship between Daniel and some of his nobles: in Marlowe's version, I think there's a certain petulance and conception of Edward's inexperience by the nobles that's difficult to respect in a man the age of the historical Edward II, but completely in keeping with someone 18 or so.

After all, it has been argued that this kind of generational conflict is a big theme in the work (I think the editors of the New Mermaids version [the 2nd edition] of the play bring that up), and I kind of like the idea of the older generation of rebels (Mortimer Senior, Warwick et al.) being infirm in some way: morbidly obese, with an oxygen tank, in a wheelchair... Remember, the characters aren't on an even playing field, so of course these lot get the short end of the stick.

Which leaves the problem of the Gaveston-character's age (Michael, from here on out). Gaveston is a well-written character in Marlowe, so there are several ways he can be played by an intelligent actor. Very often, he gets played as an opportunistic schemer who takes advantage of Edward (Derek Jarman's Edward II film shows this to a degree); this usually shows Gaveston as older and wiser than Edward. There are also versions (like Brecht's play) that show him as the object of Edward's unreasoning passion, where he often is shown to be younger than Edward.

I think, though, there are problems with both interpretations. Each version gets played by reducing the agency of the opposite lover: the more manipulative Gaveston, the less canny Edward and vice versa. I think the best path is to go in between. There's a great scene in Brecht's version where Gaveston runs away from a battle that really doesn't work in his vision of the relationship. It's a scene that's touching on its own, but doesn't ring true for that mise-en-scene. (My thought is that it's some unadulterated Lion Feuchtwanger, but I've got nothing at all to back that up.)

All in all, I think Michael should be a little older than Daniel; the real Gaveston met Edward when Edward I was impressed with Gaveston's character and recommended him to Edward II as a companion. Being a little older keeps that idea going, but also helps play up the historical idea that Edward I later repented himself when Gaveston turned out to be a bad influence. And I think bad influences are sexy.

The Problems of the Youth

I believe (at times, anyway) very strongly in the idea of "give the people what they want". In the past few hours, I've had three people wend the Jaylemurph way under the Google Search "hunter brown gay jeopardy", which is comforting. It's not just me who thinks it, then.

Sadly, he will not be going on to the Finals round. And to be fair, he was legitimately beaten in competition, although I do invite humorous "spear carrier" comments. [Alas, he is not technically in my dating pool* since he only measure up to 5'11"...]

Anyway, I feel like I've been unduly beating around the Edward II bush the past few days. God -- how many mixed metaphors is that? Anyway: topic the first -- the central conceit of the work.

It's a version of Marlowe's work as envisioned by a 17 year old. A smart one, and a gay one, obviously, and one of the Kids. Right now, my vision is that he's a fairly regular high school student who projects himself and the people around him at school into the world of the play. He becomes Edward, his crush becomes Gaveston, and so forth. Also currently (and I admit this might change), I'm really into the idea that as the play progresses, it becomes more and more Marlowe's play and less and less the vision of the reader. The idea being that early on, you can have scenes that show Edward and Gaveston meeting and falling for each other, which are completely absent in Marlowe but end up in roughly the same place. I'm not going to be coy about the ending; it will be different. Sort of.

I think that almost the same sequence of events can happen, even with Edward being murdered, but with it not being about giving up dignity and pride. I think, for instance, that Edward can give up his crown without giving up his sense of self, or his sense of desire. (See what I will later say for my idea of the last scene.) But I get ahead of myself.

For me, this immediately brings up two problems. The first one seems to me the lesser of the two. If it's handled intelligently, I can't help but feel, it will ultimately be a positive point rather than a liability. It's age. The age of the characters.

There is something adolescent in the writings of Marlowe. I don't see this as a fault, but it seems hard to me to describe it as anything else. Read his plays: in the cockiness of his heroes (Tamburlaine, Faustus, Edward) is something undeniably so. I have two theories about this.

Theory One, part one: A big part of me thinks that Marlowe never reaches an emotional level of maturity. Maybe because he was never able to. And yes, I'm well-aware of the dangers of reading into the author the passions of his works. But I don't think that someone in his period so strongly identifying with same-sex desire could come to an adult understanding of emotional or sexual maturity -- he never even had the opportunity (or so it seems) to be in a deeply committed, long-term relationship. If that's the case, it does seem unlikely he produce a fictional version of one. What he can -- and does often and well -- is convey the fleeting, conflicting passions of an infatuation: the pursued and the pursuer, the frustrated and the victor.

And to his credit, he doesn't ever really supply the goods of a purely heterosexual relationship. As far as I know (and I'd love to hear a dissenting view) the closest he gets is Hero and Leander -- and the guy Leander is practically raped by Poseidon while swimming.

Theory One, part two: the basic element of his dramaturgy doesn't support this. Marlowe's plays are, in some sense, always about people who get what they want and then suffer. Compare this to Shakespeare's characters, who dither about getting what they want (look at Hamlet). This idea of going after and getting what you want without considering the consequences strikes me as adolescent in a way Shakespeare never is.

*Let us not forget Laura's idea of a Hallowe'en costume: a post note above my head that says you must be "6' 0" to ride this ride".