2009, only the high points

“…and I remember that some of it wasn’t very nice. But most of it was beautiful. But just the same, all I kept saying to everyone was, I want to go home….and they sent me home. Doesn’t anybody believe me?”

Probably you know 2009 won’t go down in my personal history as a favorite year. But I can’t say it hasn’t been interesting. Over the past nine months I’ve hit a lot of new highs and also despaired just as often — may you never find out to what extent. But I’m not just being plucky when I say this year was memorable.

High points included:

· Launching SuperScript, my editing business, which (thank you Jesus, Mary & Joseph) is doing decently well for a new endeavor
· Having PATA’s Spotlight Award bestowed upon me (it’s kind of a like a People’s Choice award from Portland theater folk) when I wasn’t expecting it
· Working with the fabulous people of Wordstock

A few other favorite things:

Most compelling novel I read this year: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz. Yes, I realize you all read it last year, but what can I say, prior to 2009 I read mostly scripts — at least one a day—for many, many years.

No, I will not select a favorite script of 2009. Too many good ones to mention.

Short story that most bowled me over: Jon Raymond’s devastating “Train Choir” from Livability.

Favorite new music album: can’t decide between the gloomy claustrophilia of Twilight by The Handsome Family (a 2001 release, actually, thus only new to me) or the gleeful psychedelic revival of Merriweather Post Pavilion by the Animal Collective (turn up the volume on the video below to see what I mean).



Beloved musical rediscoveries: “Funny How Love Can Be,” in dueling editions produced by The Ivy League (soulful and a capella) and Harper’s Bizarre (hypercaffeinated), way, way back in the 1960s; also, from the same era, “I Woke Up This Morning,” by We Five (thank you Cousin Tabitha) and “Summer Song,” by Chad and Jeremy.

Favorite theater productions here in Portland: Ragtime (PCS); Apollo, by Nancy Keystone (PCS); Adam Bock’s The Receptionist(CoHo Theatre); Teeth of the Sons by Joseph Sousa (Re-Theater Instrument); Everyone Who Looks Like You (Hand2Mouth); The Lying Kind (Third Rail).

Biggest epiphany transmitted via TV show: Don Draper taking the kids out trick-or-treating, when a parent doling out candy says to him: “And who are you supposed to be?”

So much for the past year. Happy 2010. Let’s usher out the (n)aughts now and look forward to the tweens.

Ding Dong Ding Dong

By way of ringing out the old, I’m going to take a page from my colleague over at ghost light and regale you with snippets of blogs I started in 2008 but never finished, which will now be relegated to the virtual lumber room forever. In no special order….

1. The Opposite of Schadenfreude. This was all about my envy of new play development oases that benefited in a big way from the Mellon Foundation’s recent burst of largesse, gaining in most cases a million megabux each. The NPD universe is small, so of course these are all friends that got these important award – The Playwrights’ Center, for example – so I’m very, very glad for them, and well appreciate the life-changing effect these funds will have to the good. But at the same time I was discouraged, thinking of poor JAW and how those funds could have made the Festival its own entity, not dependent on PCS for its funding. Now I say this fully aware that Mellon has been phenomenally generous to PCS, which in turns benefits JAW, but….I still can’t help think of what might have been. I know, call me Eeyore.

2. Blogs I love but haven’t had a chance to profile because my job takes up my entire life: DreadWhimsy.; FailBlog; what cannot be won might be coaxed; Inogolo; Marissabidilla; Beard.Revue.

3. The Lives of Others. A gorgeous movie ostensibly about a playwright but actually the resilience of the human spirit. Half the movie (the first half) is dramaturgically conventional, but the second half skids along the surface of a series of future events that winds up being powerfully, though quietly, profound. And any more description that that would be a spoiler.

4. Favorite new ear candies: Labradford; Blonde Redhead; To Rococo Rot.

5. Cousin Tabitha and I love to delight each other by having an Incredible String Band quote for every occasion. Handy fragments include: “winter was cold and the clothing was thin”; “certainly the children have seen them”; “shadowy fingers on the curtains at night”; “it’s gone like snow on the water”; and of course, “my cousin has great changes coming.” C.T. (NHRNoc) may have additional faves.

6. Trendy new spices I’ve indulged myself with in 2008: ras el hanout; grains of paradise; vadouvan.

Enough already! Happiest of New Years to you, one and all. See you on flip side (as the kids say)(or said in the late 20th century) in 2009.

happynewyear and everything

Premature E-cachinnation

Days to go before it’s 2008, I realize, but already I’ve resolved to devolve in the coming year. There’s something I’d like to do a lot less, and it’s a something that’s frequently regarded by others as a signature of sorts for me – my smile.



The impetus for this, you ax? It comes out of a conversation I had a while back with Adam Bock. Now Adam is not a smiley kind of guy, in my opinion, but it came out that we came to feel we both offer up our smiles too much and too easily, as a reflex. Adam observed that it’s a trait endemic to gay men in particular – smiling as an act of submission, a way of saying “see, I’m harmless.” Just as so many gay people wind up in helping professions as an unconscious way of self-justification (“I make an important contribution to society”), so too does the self-deprecating smile telegraph that the smiler is soft and toothless and not worth attacking.

Also, because society tends to look on smiling, friendly people as weaker than their more impassive counterparts, smiling for gay men can broadcast an acceptance of their own second-class status.

There is a study related to this, which John Tierney quoted in The New York Times earlier this year, that speaks to this bias:

While we typically think of a smile as displaying our emotional state (happiness), it also appears that smiles convey information about the signaler’s status. Specifically, lower status individuals appear to smile more than higher status individuals. I suspect that this is due, in part, to the fact that there are several different types of smiles, including a true happiness smile and a true embarrassment smile. The latter smile, the embarrassment display, is often seen as an appeasement display in primates. Jimmy Carter smiled a lot, George Bush smiles much less. Jimmy Carter is generally perceived to be warm and friendly, but not very dominant and strong. George Bush is perceived be somewhat less warm and friendly, but is seen as quite dominant and strong.

Not that we shouldn’t smile at all, thank heavens people do. But for me, well . . . it’s a habit I’d like to break. And let me add that (notwithstanding the illustration I chose to accompany this post) I’m not saying my smile is fake or forced, I’ve just come to the point where I distrust my very readiness to smile. To always seek to blend with others, to pacify, to help and to cheerlead.

So don’t take it personally if the next time we meet my face is a perfect Botox blank. Blame Adam!