Thursday morning I shit myself. Just a bit. At the Hyatt Regency on East Wacker, in Chicago.
It felt like a fart coming, a little relief from the tempest in my stomach. I was just waking and the king-sized hotel bed was clinging to me. But, let me tell you, once it became apparent that my gas had some substance I leaped out of the bed and into the bathroom, dropped trou, and sat myself onto the porcelain.
It was too late. The damage had been done. I wiped, washed, rinsed and tried to rehabilitate my sweatpants (by scrubbing with soap and scalding water, and blow drying and ironing).
I took some Imodium and then shaved and showered and dressed, trying to erase the ignominy and make myself presentable.
Due for a 'breakfast meeting,' I rushed out of my hotel and walked to another across the river. It was the wrong hotel. (The ABA Tech show had been there the last two times I went.) This is all the more confusing because the hotel, like any major hotel in Chicago on any given day, was hosting one or two conferences.
I got to the right hotel, only ten minutes late. After spooning some oatmeal, I worked our booth for half a day, then went to a meeting, then to O'Hare - where my flight to Harrisburg was delayed while its gate changed four times, all the while feeling like John Hurt giving birth to the Alien.
Friday I sat at a table in a table in a hallway outside a ballroom at a court reporters convention at the Sheraton Hershey. More Imodium, a mid-day nap, and cautious conservation of energy got me along until 5 PM when I presented to them a primer on the processes of electronic discovery.
After the presentation, I read through the comment cards. About half wrote that I had spoken too fast. That is something that makes a court reporter anxious, as quick talkers make their jobs more difficult.
Done with work for the week, at last, I walked across the parking lot to a Target, where I bought new pajama bottoms - navy blue pinstriped - for $9.99, along with saltines and several bottles of Smart Water (to restore my electrolytes).
Saturday morning I flew home.
The tempest has started to subside and my clothes are in the laundry.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
Graham Norton Made Me Cry
La Cage aux Folles was the second "Broadway" production I ever saw, or rather Broadway by way of a touring company to downtown Phoenix, in 1985. (The first had been 42nd Street starring a blowzy Dolores Grey.)
I didn't register the gayness, or didn't feel much for it. Odd considering I was a fourteen years old going in knowing each showtune. There was no "I Am What I Am" because I loved musicals without shame and no one told me that I should feel any other way. My parents and sister were with me, in fact.
Peter Marshall and Keene Curtis starred. (Turns out Keene was the first gay man to play Zsa Zsa, playing his first gay role, which I just found out while reading my program from a revival - nearly 25 years later, 500 miles away from Phoenix, on the bank of the Thames.)
Tonight I sat in the third row, on the far aisle, as Graham Norton sang "I Am What I Am" and then stormed off the stage, past me and directly out the side door of the theater onto the honest-to-goodness street.
As the lights went up for the interval I wiped away my tears. I had already been crying intermittently, involuntarily in that way that feels embarrassing for a grown man to cry at a Jerry Herman musical.
It's a brilliant production, don't get me wrong. It's been stripped of it's glitz and it's stopped apologizing for itself. The men don't rip off their wigs at the end of a song to shock a complicit audience. No self-respecting drag queen needs to trick the audience into believing she's a woman. There's no trickery necessary because a drag queen would be the last person to deny she's anything other than herself.
Graham Norton cannot sing so much, but he owned his part. His Zsa Zsa was not what we used to patronizingly refer to as courageous. He played his part with aplomb but, so much better, his performance was matter-of-fact. Thank you to Sean Penn for his courageous Harvey Milk, but no one except a gay man can sing "I Am What I Am" with the integrity of a real live homosexual. So, thank you Graham Norton for playing her with no more affection than one would expect from a French drag queen in a Jerry Herman musical...and no less.
When gay Arthur Laurents first directed La Cage, written by gay Jerry Herman and gay Harvery Fierstein, he said he couldn't have the leads kiss because half the theater would walk out. He wanted to finesse the audience into acceptance. This revival - some 25 years later, long enough for someone to be born and grown into an adult, this revival ended with a middle-aged gay couple kissing as the curtain slowly went down.
And the audience still leaped to it's feet.
I didn't register the gayness, or didn't feel much for it. Odd considering I was a fourteen years old going in knowing each showtune. There was no "I Am What I Am" because I loved musicals without shame and no one told me that I should feel any other way. My parents and sister were with me, in fact.
Peter Marshall and Keene Curtis starred. (Turns out Keene was the first gay man to play Zsa Zsa, playing his first gay role, which I just found out while reading my program from a revival - nearly 25 years later, 500 miles away from Phoenix, on the bank of the Thames.)
Tonight I sat in the third row, on the far aisle, as Graham Norton sang "I Am What I Am" and then stormed off the stage, past me and directly out the side door of the theater onto the honest-to-goodness street.
As the lights went up for the interval I wiped away my tears. I had already been crying intermittently, involuntarily in that way that feels embarrassing for a grown man to cry at a Jerry Herman musical.
It's a brilliant production, don't get me wrong. It's been stripped of it's glitz and it's stopped apologizing for itself. The men don't rip off their wigs at the end of a song to shock a complicit audience. No self-respecting drag queen needs to trick the audience into believing she's a woman. There's no trickery necessary because a drag queen would be the last person to deny she's anything other than herself.
Graham Norton cannot sing so much, but he owned his part. His Zsa Zsa was not what we used to patronizingly refer to as courageous. He played his part with aplomb but, so much better, his performance was matter-of-fact. Thank you to Sean Penn for his courageous Harvey Milk, but no one except a gay man can sing "I Am What I Am" with the integrity of a real live homosexual. So, thank you Graham Norton for playing her with no more affection than one would expect from a French drag queen in a Jerry Herman musical...and no less.
When gay Arthur Laurents first directed La Cage, written by gay Jerry Herman and gay Harvery Fierstein, he said he couldn't have the leads kiss because half the theater would walk out. He wanted to finesse the audience into acceptance. This revival - some 25 years later, long enough for someone to be born and grown into an adult, this revival ended with a middle-aged gay couple kissing as the curtain slowly went down.
And the audience still leaped to it's feet.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Friday, January 16, 2009
My Letter to the Editor of Time Out NY
From Time Out New York / Issue 693 : Jan 8–14, 2009 /
What your personal trainer is really thinking
Worst breach of gym etiquette you’ve ever seen?
“Two people having sex in the sauna…but that’s a tie with the two people I caught having sex on a stretch table when I still worked for a facility.”
“Putting gum under benches”
“This dude smelled like a garbage dump. It was so bad, people would leave. The owner of the gym stepped in and actually suspended his membership. This guy smelled so bad, I’m getting sick thinking about it.”
“Too much unsafe gay sex in the steam rooms.”
“Guys wear very tight spandex shorts from the ’80s and you can see all the sweat coming from their ass and their penises sticking out. I even saw some members coming from the locker room and working out naked like nothing happened. The gym manager had to come on the floor and bring them back to the locker room.”
Dear editor,
Re: "Worst breach of gym etiquette you've ever seen?"
It's always fun to see gay sex show up in a list of something titled "worst." In fact, two of the five offending acts are attributed to the frisky gay men of New York's saunas and steam rooms!
Unsafe sex is never cool, I agree. But your garden variety mutual masturbation or oral sex in the steam room may be against the rules (and also the law), but it's hardly a breach of etiquette in New York City. It's the set up in a lot of porn, in fact. The proper etiquette would be to join in, look away, or take your uptight self out of there.
For me, as a gym-goer, the worst breach of gym etiquette usually involves a trainer and his/her client occupying too much space or monopolizing one (and ofter several) pieces of equipment at once. I once went up to a trainer at my gym to ask when she'd be done with a machine and she said, "Oh, we only have about a half hour more." They'd been using it exclusively already for 30 minutes.
Kind regards,
David
Brooklyn, NY
What your personal trainer is really thinking
Worst breach of gym etiquette you’ve ever seen?
“Two people having sex in the sauna…but that’s a tie with the two people I caught having sex on a stretch table when I still worked for a facility.”
“Putting gum under benches”
“This dude smelled like a garbage dump. It was so bad, people would leave. The owner of the gym stepped in and actually suspended his membership. This guy smelled so bad, I’m getting sick thinking about it.”
“Too much unsafe gay sex in the steam rooms.”
“Guys wear very tight spandex shorts from the ’80s and you can see all the sweat coming from their ass and their penises sticking out. I even saw some members coming from the locker room and working out naked like nothing happened. The gym manager had to come on the floor and bring them back to the locker room.”
Dear editor,
Re: "Worst breach of gym etiquette you've ever seen?"
It's always fun to see gay sex show up in a list of something titled "worst." In fact, two of the five offending acts are attributed to the frisky gay men of New York's saunas and steam rooms!
Unsafe sex is never cool, I agree. But your garden variety mutual masturbation or oral sex in the steam room may be against the rules (and also the law), but it's hardly a breach of etiquette in New York City. It's the set up in a lot of porn, in fact. The proper etiquette would be to join in, look away, or take your uptight self out of there.
For me, as a gym-goer, the worst breach of gym etiquette usually involves a trainer and his/her client occupying too much space or monopolizing one (and ofter several) pieces of equipment at once. I once went up to a trainer at my gym to ask when she'd be done with a machine and she said, "Oh, we only have about a half hour more." They'd been using it exclusively already for 30 minutes.
Kind regards,
David
Brooklyn, NY
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Liza Minnelli Made Me Cry
Liza walked upstage to the piano and gripped it like a prizefighter going to the ropes. Tired and worn, she gathered her spirit - not her strength, wiped her face with a towel and came back downstage.
I had last seen Liza Minnelli during her last comeback, produced by her then husband David Gest. That had been stressful viewing. Back then, she would approach one of those big notes by screwing her legs into the stage, punching the air with her fist, while the voice would wobble out. "Please make it, Liza. You can do it," I would whisper each time.
Liza at the Palace was different, I had heard.
My friend Mitch emailed me: You have to see this. He'd never done that before. The show appeared on both 2008 top ten lists in the NY Times Arts & Leisure year-in-review. Then on Monday, Dec 22nd my best friend Bob called up to tell me that four seats, fifth row center had just magically appeared on Ticketmaster for xmas eve! We bought them, just knowing our husbands wouldn't want to miss this.
...and she was FANTASTIC! Her voice was no longer the clarion it had been. She sacrificed that too much pills and liquor. Still, she sang strong and steady. She danced. She mocked her age, making a shtick of it like a pro.
After twenty plus songs, she stood center stage, fingered the microphone with one hand and shook out her wet hair with the other. She quietly said, "A few years ago a terrible thing happened. Some people tried to hurt us, hurt our city. But, but they did not succeed. We came together as a city, as a county. Stronger. Yes. Stronger."
Tears had already starting rolling down my cheeks.
As she launched into "New York, New York," I cried. Steady streams released from my eyes.
I had been vulnerable, for sure. The holidays are hard - melancholy, demanding, tiring. My guard had been weak, but - to be true - I love New York City and I love a showtune. Liza created a pitch perfect storm.
God bless her.
I had last seen Liza Minnelli during her last comeback, produced by her then husband David Gest. That had been stressful viewing. Back then, she would approach one of those big notes by screwing her legs into the stage, punching the air with her fist, while the voice would wobble out. "Please make it, Liza. You can do it," I would whisper each time.
Liza at the Palace was different, I had heard.
My friend Mitch emailed me: You have to see this. He'd never done that before. The show appeared on both 2008 top ten lists in the NY Times Arts & Leisure year-in-review. Then on Monday, Dec 22nd my best friend Bob called up to tell me that four seats, fifth row center had just magically appeared on Ticketmaster for xmas eve! We bought them, just knowing our husbands wouldn't want to miss this.
...and she was FANTASTIC! Her voice was no longer the clarion it had been. She sacrificed that too much pills and liquor. Still, she sang strong and steady. She danced. She mocked her age, making a shtick of it like a pro.
After twenty plus songs, she stood center stage, fingered the microphone with one hand and shook out her wet hair with the other. She quietly said, "A few years ago a terrible thing happened. Some people tried to hurt us, hurt our city. But, but they did not succeed. We came together as a city, as a county. Stronger. Yes. Stronger."
Tears had already starting rolling down my cheeks.
As she launched into "New York, New York," I cried. Steady streams released from my eyes.
I had been vulnerable, for sure. The holidays are hard - melancholy, demanding, tiring. My guard had been weak, but - to be true - I love New York City and I love a showtune. Liza created a pitch perfect storm.
God bless her.
Monday, December 29, 2008
LGA to ATL to DFW: a comedy of errors and mishaps
Went to wrong airport.
Scrutinized at security.
Flight delayed.
Missed connection.
Left package with gifts in overhead.
Waited 30+ minutes on hold to talk to Delta's lost & found. They will call me if they find it.
Everyone tells me it could have been worse.
It's good to be here, nevertheless
Scrutinized at security.
Flight delayed.
Missed connection.
Left package with gifts in overhead.
Waited 30+ minutes on hold to talk to Delta's lost & found. They will call me if they find it.
Everyone tells me it could have been worse.
It's good to be here, nevertheless
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Holiday Humbug Harumph
Via email, from me to my mother:
Would you prefer something that smelled like Lavender or Lemon & Coriander?
Her reply:
No
My reply:
What do you mean no? That wasn't an option. It either or b.
She wrote back:
Still no
Would you prefer something that smelled like Lavender or Lemon & Coriander?
Her reply:
No
My reply:
What do you mean no? That wasn't an option. It either or b.
She wrote back:
Still no
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