Hope your day is funky and fabulous!
Archive for December 2011
Here are the steps to a holiday card self-hate spiral…
1. Sometime around September, have a brilliant holiday card idea. Congratulate yourself for your infinite cleverness and creativity. Promptly forget about it in favor of Halloween preparations. Don’t worry- you have plenty of time.
2. Wait too long to execute whatever elaborate machinations said card requires until you wind up doing things like schlepping your family to the mall dressed like the Addams family and then waiting on line for 3 hours to see the mall Santa.
3. Ask some super stoned copy shop employees to help with the layout.
4. Beg your graphic designer friend to re-do the layout.
5. Now it’s December 20. Check the calender again. Yup- sure is. Pay for a rush printing job.
6. Lay out all the card-sending paraphernalia.
7. Begin feeling warm and fuzzy as you write out each address- enjoying the memories, the feeling of connection, the sense of pride in your still-sort-of-clever card.
8. Start to get depressed as you cross off all the friends and family members who don’t like you anymore.
9. How many more pages of addresses left to go? Start to get relieved as you cross off all the friends and family members who don’t like you anymore.
10. The hours wear on. You’re neglecting your child. You’ve ordered pizza for dinner two nights in a row. You have other things to do- like your job for instance. You swear to never do holiday cards ever again.
11. Walk the final stack down to the mailbox. So neat. So satisfying. But still, you’re never doing this again.
12. Let the coming months erase the pain until September rolls around again. See step 1.
I one day anticipate having to explain that celebrating two holidays doesn’t equal getting double presents, but for now T just thinks having two holidays means having candles he’s not supposed to blow out and balls he’s not supposed to throw.
It took me a few years to get the hang of it, but I have to admit that there’s a real decadent joy for me in doing all the traditional Christmas stuff. Sometimes I feel like an imposter. Other times I feel guilty- like I’ve totally assimilated and lost all sense of my own culture. But most times I just feel like we’re carving out our own space in the world and figuring out by trial and error who we are as a family. We’re constantly in a process of discovering where we’re going to find a sense of community. It’s different for us than it was for my parents, who had a social and religious network that had been in place for generations.
I grew up Jewish and Scott grew up Christian and we both fluctuate in our commitment to any sort of religion. But when it comes to explaining spiritual principles to our son, I see how useful it would be to have the sort of framework that Judaism provided for me as a kid. I envy many of my friends the simplicity of having an organized set of beliefs. Because when it comes to explaining things like God and Jesus and the meaning of these holidays in a developmentally appropriate way, I’m pretty much stumped.
But for the time being, we haven’t found a religious community that fully makes sense to us, so we’re still out here floating around with our latkes and gluten-free Christmas cookies and grab bag of holiday stories.
And anyway, look at us. Simplicity would be so out of character.
I can’t believe I’m about to do this. I can’t believe I’m even about to write this, but here goes. We’re packing up the whole operation and going to New York for the month of January so that I can perform, along with DJ Mendel and Jenny Greer, in Cattywampus, written and directed by Robert Cucuzza, at Incubator Arts Project. Here’s the trailer for the show.
And here’s a description:
In this backwoods reinvention of August Strindberg’s classic Miss Julie, writer and director Robert Cucuzza hones an essential tale of class and power, and stages it in modern-day Appalachia. Cucuzza and his collaborators orchestrate a multidisciplinary approach highlighted by distinctly American forms—country-western music written by Juli Crockett, line dancing choreographed by Jordana Che Toback—that binds Strindberg’s characters, both the rich and the poor, by exposing their shared vulnerability in a time of economic collapse.
As some of you know, I did a run of Cattywampus this summer and it was an incredible experience. I adored working with this cast and crew. So much so that I’m willing to learn the whole snowsuit drill of having a toddler in NY in the wintertime.
I’ve promised Tariku snow. He’s talking about it day and night. That and the fact that he’s going to get to watch endless shows on the airplane. I have a “go ahead and watch TV until your eyes bleed” airplane DVD policy.
We’ve actually been wanting to have an extended stay in NY. I don’t think we pictured it being in the middle of January, but then things rarely happen exactly as planned. We decided to go ahead and embrace the adventure.
There’s a Kickstarter campaign for Transit Authority, the non-profit production company behind Cattywampus. Please consider donating even a few tax-deductible buckaroos to help make art happen.
Other Forces 2012 // Robert Cucuzza & Transit Authority
Cattywampus
In this backwoods reinvention of August Strindberg’s classic Miss Julie, writer and director Robert Cucuzza hones an essential tale of class and power, and stages it in modern-day Appalachia. Cucuzza and his collaborators orchestrate a multidisciplinary approach highlighted by distinctly American forms—country-western music written by Juli Crockett, line dancing choreographed by Jordana Che Toback—that binds Strindberg’s characters, both the rich and the poor, by exposing their shared vulnerability in a time of economic collapse.
Cattywampus runs from January 4th to January 25th, 2012. Shows begin at 8pm.
at Incubator Arts Project
131 E10th St.
New York, NY 10026
SPREADING THE WORD for 8 YEARS!
“Tongue & Groove”
A monthly offering of short fiction, personal essays, poetry, spoken word + music
Produced by Conrad Romo and featuring:
Matthew Specktor — That Summertime Sound
Heather Havrilesky — Disaster Preparedness
Anna David — Falling for Me,
Jillian Lauren — Pretty
PLUS a musical guest TBD
Sunday December 18th
6-7:30 pm
The Hotel Cafe
1623 1/2 N. Cahuenga Blvd.
Hollywood, Ca 90028
$6.00
Matthew Specktor’s books include That Summertime Sound (2009) and American Dream Machine, which is forthcoming in Fall, 2012 from Tin House. His writing has appeared in Open City, Canteen and Harper’s. He is Senior Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Heather Havrilesky is a regular contributor to the New York Times Magazine and the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead, 2011). She was TV critic at salon.com for 7 years, co-created the cartoon Filler for suck.com, and her writing has appeared in The LA Times, Bookforum, New York Magazine and NPR’s “All Things Considered.”
Anna David is the author of the novels Party Girl (HarperCollins, 2007) and Bought (HarperCollins, 2009), the anthology Reality Matters (HarperCollins, 2010) and the memoir Falling for Me (HarperCollins, 2011). She’s written for many magazines and appeared on TV discussing addiction, dating, or the personal lives of celebrities she doesn’t know.
Jillian Lauren is a writer and performer with an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University. She is the author of the memoir Some Girls: My Life in a Harem and the novel Pretty, both from Plume/Penguin. Her writing has also appeared in The Paris Review, The New York Times, Los Angeles Magazine, Vanity Fair and Flaunt Magazine, among others. Jillian has appeared at spoken word and storytelling events across the country. She recently premiered her solo performance piece, Mother Tongue, in Los Angeles, where she lives with her husband and son.
Come one, come all and come early! Seating is limited and we start on time! Tongueandgroovela .com
Please come to
a holiday celebration to benefit
Toys For Tots
featuring three saucy scribes
reading from their latest books
Jamie Rose, Shut Up & Dance!
Jillian Lauren, Pretty
Samantha Dunn, Failing Paris
Hosted by the Two Roads Theater & Gallery
Sunday, December 11th 6:30pm
The Two Roads Theater
4348 Tujunga Ave.
Studio City, CA 91602
(street parking available)
Admission is free.
Guests are asked to bring an
unopened, unwrapped toy for donation
to the Toys for Tots program.
Actress/author Jamie Rose will read from her debut book, Shut Up and Dance! The Joy of Letting Go of the Lead — On the Dance Floor and Off
“In her delicious new memoir, Shut Up & Dance! Jamie Rose turns feminism on its head by relating how she became stronger and more secure by yielding, first on the dance floor and then in real life. Like the tango, the advice in this book is simple, elegant, brilliant, and very sexy.”
-Martha Frankel, author of Hats & Eyeglasses: A Memoir
Bestselling author Jillian Lauren will read from her new novel, Pretty
“An utterly riveting, and compulsively readable saga Jillian Lauren renders the taste and feel of wretched excess – be it sex, drugs, food, or Los Angeles – with a savage veracity and style all her own.” -Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight
Award-winning author Samantha Dunn with read from her newly re-issued novel, Failing Paris
(Nominated for the PEN/West Fiction prize.”FAILING PARIS is the kind of novel that seems polished of every extraneous word, shaped like a bullet for velocity.” — Los Angeles Times)
Books will be available for purchase on site.
Arrive anytime between 6:30pm-7:00pm
Reading 7:00-8:00pm
Book signing with the writers 8:00-8:30pm
Light refreshments (homemade holiday cookies!) will be served.
Admission is free but guests are requested to bring a new, unwrapped toy for donation to Toys for Tots.
Seating is limited and reservations are required. Please RSVP to info@jrosestudio.com or call 323-799-1183
I love fairy tales. I’ve always been fascinated by fairy tale archetypes and story structure. And my husband will tell you that I’m obsessive about seeing every contemporary adaptation of a fairy tale that comes down the pike, however cheesy it may be.
So I really wanted to like ABC’s new show, Once Upon a Time. I almost even did like Once Upon a Time, in a guilty late-night, real-butter-on-my-popcorn, to-hell-with-the-fifteen-huge-holes-in-the-premise kind of way. But in the end I choked on the fact that the only vaguely ethnic or at least kinda swarthy characters in the show are the evil queen/adoptive mom (you know- same difference) and the evil Jewish banker/Rumpelstilskin (you know- same difference).
It’s pretty much de-rigeur for fairy tales to deal with adoption in some way. Protagonists of fanciful stories are often orphans. As an adopted child, this was always important to me. I cast myself in my own fairy tale, in which I had been left on my parents’ doorstep by a princess mother who couldn’t care for me because she had been transformed into a swan by an evil spell. It was the only explanation for how I had landed with such regrettably normal people.
The archetypal orphan embodies the broad and magical possibilities that lie in having an origin that is shrouded, at least partially, in mystery. Also, there is a mystical quality associated with borders- with the edges between one thing and another. Adopted children live in two worlds, on some metaphysical level. We hold two stories at the same time. This makes us uniquely suited to stand at the helm of a fairy tale.
In any adaptation of a fairy tale, I’m expecting some evil step-mom dynamics at the very least. As a fairy tale connoisseur, I have a high tolerance for this sort of thing. But I think I’m going to have to say that this show is over the line. As an adoptive mom, it sticks in my craw to watch a face off between evil adoptive mom and savior birth mom that contains dialogue like, “I will destroy you if it’s the last thing I ever do.”
And the racial stereotyping is subtle (mostly because the only ethnic diversity is in tiny variations on shades of white), but it’s there. Don’t get me started on the usurious Mr. Gold…
I hung in there for a couple of episodes, but I’m afraid that I’m not going to wait around for the happy ending with this one.
Have anyone else caught this show? I’d love to hear your thoughts? Adoptive mommies? Evil queens?
All those clubs in Hollywood with lines down the block and car service Hummers loitering nearby in clouds of pot smoke? Skanks and wannabes. I’m going to tip you off to the hottest spot in tinseltown, so pay attention, starfuckers…
Yo Gabba Gabba Live is the place to go if you want to, “Hop in a circle, hop in a circle now…” while rubbing elbows with Milla Jovovich and Ione Skye and a pregnant porn star with a kid on her hip and an NFL linebacker and Biz Markie’s entourage and someone you’re totally sure is in a band you like but you can’t figure out which one. Even DJ Lance’s handler looks like she’s in Sly and the Family Stone.
And all of these folks are getting in the populist spirit of the thing and sucking down beers at intermission with the rest of the rabble in the lobby. Because no one would be so gauche as to watch a kid’s show from the side of the stage.
For those of you parents who don’t expose your kids to media (bless your stalwart hearts), Yo Gabba Gabba is basically the kid’s show you thought you invented one night Freshman year when you and some friends dropped acid and got out the crafting supplies and rock albums. It’s awesome.
But seriously, it was a cute night and a great show. I’m pretty sure. If you have a kid who isn’t completely overwhelmed by sensory stimuli. Which would mean, if you aren’t us.
Wow, it’s hard to take your kid to something that he’s so excited about and you’re therefore so excited about and then have him absolutely freeze. T got both of our necks in a tandem death-grip and sat there terrified but refusing to leave while everybody jumped, shook and shimmied their wiggles out all around us.
The night was salvaged by a visit with T’s Gabbaland friends after the show. And after the massive dysregulation started to calm down a bit (like three days later) we still had the pictures for T to enjoy.
But dealing with T’s sensitivity and hyper-arousal is a learning process. I’m starting to get that even though something seems like it’s going to be a fantastic time, I have to take into account all the factors before buying tickets. As much as we love Gabba, the flashing lights, crowds and crazy noise were not exactly the best idea. So next time I’ll know.
But can we still please go to see The Muppet Movie? Come on…please?
