January 2008 Archives

I enjoy Family Guy most of the time, but this statement, by writer/creater Seth MacFarlane, is so colossally stupid, and explains everything I dislike about his comedy and philosophy:

Unless they’re hiding it well, there’s nobody on our staff who’s bigoted or homophobic. We’re all very progressive, and as a result we feel comfortable making jokes. We know what our own beliefs are, so no matter what we do it can’t possibly come from a negative place.

He misses the point entirely.  I don't care whether you are prejudiced IN YOUR SOUL -- I care what happens to your words once they're out there in the real world.  I care whether or not they embolden casual meanness.  I care whether or not they make life difficult and painful for people who don't deserve to be hassled. 

Grrrr!
Love
Dan

Some recommendations:

1. This astonishing video for Dave End's soon-to-be-hit single "And By Queen."  It's such a heartbreaking song, but the cutie-pie claymation stays true to Dave's ethos of enthusiastic redemption.  Logo please thanks?


2. The new issue of Max Steele's experimental porno zine, Scorcher.  The protagonist, Billy, makes me kinda angry, but I'm still totally under the spell of his bratty negativity.  Buy a copy from the source: billycheer@gmail.com.

3. Jeff Lewis' new covers record, "12 Crass Songs."  He was still finishing the album art when we were on tour in France this summer.  I'm going to the cd release party at the Mercury Lounge tonight.  And I NEVER go to the Mercury Lounge unless I MEAN IT.   Schwervon opens at 9:30!

4. Happy Days at BAM!!!  It closes this weekend!  Please find the last remaining ticket!  It's worth it, even from the back row!  (I should know.)

5. My show at Banjo Jim's on Sunday.  What else are you gonna do, watch the Super Bowl?  I'll be performing with some other Six Points Fellows, which means there will be lots of mutual appreciation vibes in the room.  It will make you feel good about yourself.

Love
Dan

I'm pretty stressed out right now, and the Democratic Primary isn't helping.  I'm starting to really freak out that Barack Obama might not get the nomination, and I really, really want him to.  Next week, when the big results come in, I'll be doing a performance at NYU's Bronfman Center.  I think we'll be checking the tally between songs.

Anyway, with all that rivalry tension in the air, I am comforted (SOMEHOW) by the drama of the following (very different) rivalry.  Somehow, I find it all incredibly cathartic:




Love,
Dan

I wanna dance.  Please let me dance.
If I don't dance, I might rupture something.
Do you feel that?  It's me, vibrating.
Love
Dan

Please enter my brain, so I can show you images of last weekend's Six Points retreat...



We started our journey in a rock-star tour bus.  This is what it looked like from the outside, after the bus STALLED ACROSS TRAIN TRACKS IN THE FREEZING SNOW AND WE HAD TO EVACUATE:



Clearly, we all could have died, but it felt particularly scary, since Ofri is pregnant.  Dan Safer started screaming, "SAVE OFRI, SAVE OFRI," which soon devolved into, "SAVE THE BEER, SAVE THE BEER!"  As soon as the problem arose, David Griffin bolted outside, to stand in the headlights and smoke cigarettes.  Saar got delightfully military-ish and helped the bus driver maneuver out of imminent doom.



The rest of us stood around and giggled. 



A variety of strangers, police officers and retreat center functionaries arrived to ferry us to our destination (while our bus driver (whose name is Jesus) was arrested for driving with an expired license.)  The last people to leave witnessed the high-speed train zoom across the tracks, where, 10 minutes previously, we lingered, giggling and fidgeting and wondering what to do. 

Finally, we arrived at "Mount Eden," and reunited with Galeet, who traveled separately with her adorable baby Yaniv, aka Yizzle.  Here he is with Ofri, who spent much of the weekend practicing the art of baby-holding:



We also met up with the Six Points partners from the Foundation for Jewish Culture, Avoda Arts and JDub Records.  Here is Elise, before she started a late-nite Hebrew hymn marathon, with much table-pounding on beats 1 and 3:



Did you notice the hilarious Hebrew calligraphy on the wall behind her?  There was a lot of that.

Meanwhile, in New York City, my new multimedia show ABSENTIA DEMENTIA was premiering at Dixon Place, as part of "Joseph Keckler and Friends."  (I'm the "Friends" part.)  I was really nervous about it, but as soon as it ended, I started getting really enthusiastic, congratulatory text messages.   This felt important.  I mean, obviously it feels good when people like your work; but this show was so impulsive and so self-indulgent, so I interpreted its success as a sign that I'm back on track.  After several weeks of feeling like I've lost my voice, I think I've pulled a Hillary Clinton.  ....Okay, bad analogy.  Anyway.  Back to Mount Eden.

Dan Safer was my roommate.  We watched Planet Unicorn with Saar:



I didn't take any pictures the next day, since we spent most of our time presenting and critiquing each other's work samples.  I was simultaneously a) astounded by the high quality of stuff my fellow Fellows are producing, and b) relieved that mostly everyone is just as scared and frustrated with their work as I am.  Possibly the most relaxing part of the weekend was just knowing that I'm not alone in my process misery.

The day after that was Shabbas, so we did Shabbasy things and completed Shabbasy assignments.  We tried to go on a walk, but it was hunting season, so a man with a large rifle told us to go away.  I didn't take my camera on that excursion, because we were instructed to FOCUS ON NATURE.  (Others still brought their cameras, so I'm expecting some glamor shots of me in a big tractor trailer very soon.)

After Havdalah, we had a great conversation with choreographer Tamar Rogoff.  In the 90s, she created an experimental theater piece about her family members who were killed in the Holocaust, and then produced it in the very same forest where they were slaughtered, using the remaining (mostly gentile) townspeople as actors and technicians.  She showed us her film about the experience, Summer in Ivye.  Afterwards, we were all excited to find out how she got funding.





Then we ate.



Doesn't Ofri have amazing cheek bones?  Saar stole my camera for a bit.  Here is the only photo he took that wasn't upside down:



A bunch of us stayed up really late, drinking things out of bottles.  Gabby drank so much seltzer, she FELL IN:



Andrea had a profound experience with a box of Female Sage tea:



The next morning, we finished presenting work, and took a survey about the retreat.  Jeremiah took it like this:



Then we talked about our feelings some more:







I really like everyone. 

We rode back to town in a normal, non-rockstar bus.  I went home and promptly fell asleep.

Love
Dan

ps: Here's Yizzle with Osmodeus, King of the Underworld:

Over the past week or so, my gayness has been wilting.

That changed on the M Train tonight, when I got cruised by a cute guy while listening to Bernadette Peters on my iPod.

Love
Dan

One of my favorite scenes in television history is finally on YouTube, though it cuts off a bit too soon:


Amen.
Love
Dan

I'll make a proper-ish update soon.  Until then, here's a photo from last weekend's Six Points Fellowship retreat:

Don't we look like a couple of grad students who got drunk and accidentally had sex?  In reality, we were two friends who woke up on New Years Day and spent the morning in bed with Andrew Hoepfner and Yoko.  Between faces, is all.

Love
Dan

I feel a little self-conscious admitting this, but I am so ready for the new Magnetic Fields album.  The whole thing is streaming for a limited time on some website.

My favorite right now is "Please Stop Dancing."

This is great.
Love
Dan

When you see a play at The Public Theater, you hear the intermittent rumble of the 6 train beneath you.  It lends a foreboding gravitas to just about anything.  I love it.  I saw Church last night.  I love that too.

Love
Dan

I was just on the phone with a client, and wanted to say "great," but changed my mind and decided to say "sure thing."

I said, "great thing!"

I like that a lot.

Love
Dan

New Hampshire.  Hillary: 39%, Obama: 36%, Edwards: 17%.

I am happy.  I want Obama to take the nomination, but I want it to be as close as possible.

Keep an eye on Feministing.com for their fantastic "24-Hour Hillary Sexism Watch."  So necessary!

Love
Dan

In case you didn't know, I am a delicate flower.


Love,
Dan

I know I keep posting stuff about Hillary Clinton, but that doesn't mean I'm voting for her.  Still, I think she's being treated unfairly, and it's causing me physical pain.  This woman withstood the brunt of anti-feminism in the 90s, and, whether you want to admit it or not, she did it for us.  She waged those battles on our behalf.  And she waged them against some of the most disgusting misogynists to ever surface in contemporary mainstream American politics.  And she prevailed!

"People hate Hillary Clinton" has become such a cliché, but look at what she's managed to do in spite of that hate.  She has accomplished so much with her life, and while I don't always agree with her on policy, I have such tremendous respect for her as a citizen and a feminist.

I'm reposting this from the NYTimes Blog:

“Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act,” Mrs. Clinton said when asked about Mr. Obama’s rejoinder by Fox’s Major Garrett after her speech in Dover. “It took a president to get it done.”

The Obama campaign declined to comment on either of those remarks.

Later, during an appearance in Salem, Mrs. Clinton refined her remarks on Fox:

“You know, today Senator Obama used President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to criticize me. He basically compared himself to our greatest heroes because they gave great speeches.

“President Kennedy was in Congress for 14 years. He was a war hero. He was a man of great accomplishments and readiness to be president. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a movement. He was gassed. He was beaten. He was jailed. And he gave a speech that was one of the most beautifully, profoundly important speeches ever written in America, the “I have a dream” speech.

“And then he worked with President Johnson to get the civil rights laws passed, because the dream couldn’t be realized until finally it was legally permissible for people of all colors and backgrounds and races and ethnicities to be accepted as citizens.

“I’m running for president because I believe that there is not a contradiction between experience and change.”

Love

Dan

Thank you, once again, Gloria Steinam:

I’m not advocating a competition for who has it toughest. The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together. That’s why Senators Clinton and Obama have to be careful not to let a healthy debate turn into the kind of hostility that the news media love. Both will need a coalition of outsiders to win a general election. The abolition and suffrage movements progressed when united and were damaged by division; we should remember that.

Read the whole piece here.
Love
Dan

I know this shouldn't effect me much, but...


Love
Dan

Coming home from Staten Island
a black cat almost crossed my path
but noticed me at the last moment
and stood to the side.

Love
Dan

Oh my god.  I am so feeling Hillary Clinton right now.  Not on a political level, just an emotional one.  I've been saying for a while that I can relate to Hillary Clinton, that I feel like I AM her, that I can only despise her to the extent that we are similar.  But, here, the tensile rage in her voice - the fury she can barely squelch - I know that sound.  I make that sound a lot.  That is the sound of feminine determination being taken for granted.  That is the sound of a goddess abused. 

We have to be so strong, just to acquire dignity.  I wonder how often it's worth it.


Love,
Dan

And that was Susie Asado. And a baby.

Love
Dan

I sort of lost it at the grocery store yesterday, when this song came on the radio:



I know, I know.  That band sucks.  It's true: they do.  And I know, I know.  It's not "about anything."  That's the complaint I've heard the most - that it's not "about anything," that it has "stupid lyrics."  And okay, they're stupid.  But, at 15 years old, after my ex-boyfriend more or less outed me, all I wanted to hear was some big blonde guy with an acoustic guitar singing, "I won't tell em' yr name!"  Swoon! 

I played a warm, cozy show last night, at Pete's Candy Store.  But, more importantly, so did Susie Asado.  I'm so overwhelmed by her songs and voice and performance.  I can't even talk about this right now.

Love
Dan

I'm pretty inspired by this article about fashion in Iran.

“I was Westernized, but I was never comfortable — it did not feel right,” she said. “Most designers constantly say how they want to make women look sexy. I don’t want women to be viewed as objects.”

Love
Dan

This is sort of the funniest sentence I've read in weeks:

He does fairly well, although his pronunciation of Lacan leaves a little to be (as it were) desired.

From Al Filreis.  Read the full blog post here.
Love
Dan