May 2008 Archives

I just stumbled across these amazing pictures that Jordaan took of my favorite Canadians, Chris Yang and Richard Laviolette.  I miss them!  I wanna go to Canada!


Love
Dan

From the New Yorker review of the Sex and the City movie:

"I walked into the theatre hoping for a nice evening and came out as a hard-line Marxist."

You go, girl.

Love
Dan

Even cooler than Kim Deal is MY GRANDMA:

May 28, 2008
Washington Jewish Week
Yiddish of Greater Washington Concert to Honor Local Workmen's Circle Branch
by Aaron Leibel

Hilda Fishback says she was "born" into the Workmen's Circle.

"My parents were very active in their branch in New York," says Fishback, 89, and one of the founding members of a Washington, D.C., branch of the organization, which is being honored at Sunday's Yiddish of Greater Washington concert.

That was during World War II, when she and her husband, Sam, came to the area. A social and a political organization, the chapter numbered some 60 families at its peak in the 1950s.

"As the needs arose, we developed programs for our children," says the Silver Spring resident, including a preschool and a Yiddish Sunday school.

The best thing, though, were the friendships. "The group became our family," Fisback says. "We were very close."

The Workmen's Circle, socialist in orientation, was politically active, as well. "We were a very liberal organization that cared about people and wanted people to be treated equally," Fishback says.

Members worked for civil rights in the 1950s and '60s, she says, recalling efforts to integrate the segregated National Theater. They were active in the Soviet Jewry movement, as well.

And, of course, they promoted the Yiddish language and culture. "We helped found Yiddish of Greater Washington," Fishback remembers.

Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring, headquartered in New York, was founded in 1900. Its mission has been "Jewish community, the promotion of an enlightened Jewish culture, and social justice," according to its Web site (www.circle.org). It has 121 branches in cities throughout North America.

The local Workmen's Circle branch 494 is being dissolved -- there are only four members left, Fishback explains -- but a younger version still exists.

More than 10 years ago, the members of the existing group encouraged younger members of the national Workmen's Circle, some of whom attended their meetings, to form a new branch, notes Shelby Shapiro of Bethesda.

"The theory was that younger people would be attracted to a group with younger people, not with old fogies," he explains.

Branch 1100 has about 10 English-speakers, ranging in age from the early 50s to about 75, who are "into Yiddish language and culture." Members meet every Tuesday at Morty's (formerly Krupin's) in the District to hone their Yiddish-speaking skills.

That group, Workmen's Circle branch 1100, will be one of the beneficiaries of the original chapter's funds, Fishback says. In addition, the money will be divided among Yiddish of Greater Washington, the Jacob Zuckerman Fund of the Workmen's Circle in New York and the Jewish Labor Committee.

Fishback is proud of the children of her group's members. "We and our children are still involved in causes to help people," she says.

For the past few weeks, whenever I'm not thinking about 1) my play, 2) The Faggots show at OJ ALL DAY, 3) various recent natural disasters that have killed hundreds of thousands of people (btw, help out), 4) the lack of locally-grown food in my diet, 5) my two zines-in-progress, 6) my friends.... whenever I'm not thinking about those things, I've been thinking about Kim Deal and the two bands she fronts/has fronted: The Breeders and The Amps.


I would like my life to have a tangible purpose.  I would like to dedicate my existence to creating tangible, positive change in the world.  I would like my actions to have an overtly productive consequence, relieving intense suffering and healing the scars of everything bad that has ever happened, ever.

And so, under the weight of those lofty desires, I suppose it makes sense that I've become obsessed with a rock singer who has no apparent agenda and makes no apparent value judgments.  Her rhetoric is overtly non-feminist without being anti-feminist (and it's difficult for me to say such a thing).  Her songs barely refer to the real world at all.  They are elliptical without seeming pretentious or mystical or even poetic. 

I cannot (I physically CANNOT) stop listening to this song, and it's probably just about getting drunk and hanging out:


Except there's this line at the end, this window into a world of action: "I wanna be a city official, cause no one gets you - YEAHHHHH."  I mean...I DO.  I do want to be a city official.  And that's the reason - it's because no one gets you.  But I do.  I think I do.  I think I get you.  And someone's gotta represent you.  Someone's gotta take your grievances public.  And it might as well be Kim Deal.  Or me.  Or Dave End.  Or Gina Young.  Or Kimya Dawson.  Or Justin Bond.  Or Jeffrey Lewis.  Cause that's what it's about, really.  Being a city official.  Being right there, in the center of town, making decisions, doing the dirty work.  Being an artist IS being a politician.  I think?  Maybe?  Tipp City, yeah.  I'm still here...

Love
Dan

Thanks a lot, California! 


Thanks a whole freaking lot.

Love,
Dan

A quote from Irena Sendler, a Polish gentile woman who saved thousands of Jewish children during the Holocaust:

We who were rescuing children are not some kind of heroes. That term irritates me greatly. The opposite is true. I continue to have qualms of conscience that I did so little. I could have done more. This regret will follow me to my death.

Read her full obituary here.

Love
Dan

It's come to my attention that Tony Kushner's husband writes a column for EntertainmentWeekly.com.  Click here for his latest musings on American Idol.

I am sitting here, trying to imagine American Idol night at the Kushner-Harris apartment.  Do they watch it together?  Is Tony in another room, reading?  And afterwards, when the husband is sitting at his laptop, collecting his thoughts about television shows, does he bounce them off Tony?  Does Tony care?  Does he secretly feel like this is a stupid writing subject, or is it no secret at all?  Or does he not feel that way in the first place?  I am so full of questions.

Here's a question: Who wants to fly to Minneapolis with me when his new play opens?  Schulman doesn't want to.  Thanks a lot, Schulman.

Love
Dan

I saw Tegan & Sara last night, but all I can think about is the Breeders show in June.  Battle of the twin sister bands?  Here's some really useful advice from Kim:

I think about this stuff too. Each individual is on her own. I think it’s weird that you think that music is a male-dominated field. Beyoncé, Gwen, Madonna? I think it’s a money-dominated field. If you pay for the studio session, you will be treated seriously. If you get a house engineer who is an asshole, tell the studio owner and they will get someone else more suited to you. If all else fails, do what my sister, Kelley, does. Start singing Metallica songs really loud with the wrong lyrics. Guys can’t stand it.

I can feel it.



Love
Dan

Well.  I'm not.  ...No, really.


Love,
Dan

To the boy reading Torah outside of the gay punk show at Cakeshop tonight:

Call me?

Love
Dan

1. In 2001, the U.S. abducted Al Jazeera reporter Sami al-Haj in Afghanistan, where he was on assignment.  They ended up bringing him to Guantanamo Bay, where he was held without being charged for six years.  He has just been released, after being continuously tortured and fed through a tube during a year-long hunger strike.  Here is his statement, reposted from a column by Amy Goodman:

“I’m very happy to be in Sudan, but I’m very sad because of the situation of our brothers who remain in Guantanamo. Conditions in Guantanamo are very, very bad, and they get worse by the day. Our human condition, our human dignity was violated, and the American administration went beyond all human values, all moral values, all religious values. In Guantanamo, you have animals that are called iguanas, rats that are treated with more humanity. But we have people from more than 50 countries that are completely deprived of all rights and privileges, and they will not give them the rights that they give to animals.” He described the desecration of the Quran as part of the effort to break him: “They hold the Quran in contempt, destroyed it several times and put their dirty feet on it. They also sat on the Quran while trying to get us angry. They repeatedly committed violations against our dignity and our sexual organs.” At least one official in the Defense Department has denied the charges.

2.  In the Americans Fetishize Size, Luxury and Consumption Department, a family that was featured on "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" is now unable to pay their new utilities and taxes.

Marrero, who lives on a pension of $939 a month, paid $2,016 in property taxes in November. In February, he wrote out a check for $1,512. On May 1, another $1,512 was due.  And the utilities, he said, cost about $10,000 a year.  "It's too much," said Marrero's son Billy Joe. "We tried taking out lightbulbs and doing other things to save energy, but the house still eats a lot of power."

3. In sorta nice news, a Nepal just elected their first gay MP!  Quothe him:

"There has been a significant change in the Maoist attitude toward sexual and gender minorities. I and the Blue Diamond Society [a gay group] had many meetings, dialogues, and orientations with several parties, including the Maoists. And this year, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), the Nepali Congress Party [the second-largest party in the constituent assembly], and the Communist Party-(United) all included LGBT rights in their election manifestos."

This is after many years of queer people being systematically harassed, beaten and ostracized by the government, which declared homosexuality "the project of capitalism."  Sometimes things get better.  Sometimes.

Love
Dan
 

When I got home from work last night, I locked myself in the bathroom, turned on the hot water, and sat on the toilet seat, with my feet on the bathtub ledge, reading books in the steam.  After around an hour, I could breathe through my nose.  I was struck by this passage:

...Through his memories I recall hours on end sitting in the weeds in the backyard next to the lawn chair where my uncle lay in shorts and a wedding ring, his body hardened and brown from days of skin diving in faraway oceans filled with the mysterious fish and creatures he described.  I stared and stared and sometimes played with his arms for hours and I remember feeling a slight dizziness that years later I came to see first as a curse and then as a tool: a wedge that I might successfully drive between me and a world that was rapidly becoming more and more insane.

I guess it's pretty common for radically-aligned queer people to see their sexuality as a "tool" or a "wedge" - a privileged opportunity to distance yourself from an unsustainable world.  But I worry that it's getting less and less common.  I know I've asked this question in a billion different ways over the past few years, but: If being queer gets too easy, will it no longer serve such a crucial function?

Two nights ago, I dreamed I was sunbathing on an idyllic hillside - the kind with only one tree.  Joseph was hiding in my guitar-case, which was lying in the grass somewhere.  Suddenly I was apprehended by a bunch of Cuban soldiers, who said I was trespassing in Cuba.  They brought me and my guitar-case to a dungeon where I was tortured by a bunch of old ladies in masks.  When they were done, most of them left, but one lady stayed behind to guard me.  I told her to open the guitar-case, and she was so startled to find a human being in there that she had an emotional breakdown and let us free.  When I escaped the dungeon, I was in New Orleans.  Someone was chasing me, so I started leaping over the tops of the buildings, from roof to roof.  I had a gun, and I was indiscriminately shooting black people.  Then I woke up.

What a horrible dream, no!?!?   I mentioned it to Joseph and he said, "Those black folks could have been spared if they'd just offed you in Cuba."  And that is TRUE.  It got me wondering how my subconscious mind feels about the following subjects:

-Communism
-Leisure
-Art vs. Action
-Places where "natural disasters" have struck
-Race
-Privilege

I mean, in a way, the dream is quite direct.  A bunch of communists punish me for relaxing.  They torture me in Cuba, the same way my own government tortures people at Guantanamo Bay.  When I escape, I find myself confronted with the aftermath of a disaster, and my response is to kill the people most effected by that disaster. 

Ugh!  Guilt is so ugly and obnoxious!  Especially when it's VICARIOUS guilt.  Guilt for not preventing someone ELSE for doing something bad. 

Earlier that day, I donated money to a relief agency working in Myanmar.  Maybe this was my subconscious reaction to the puniness of that measure.  And yet: What else can we do?

That is not a rhetorical question.  Let's talk.
Love
Dan

If I listen to these Breeders bootlegs hard enough, maybe they will cure this head-cold.

Did I mention I get sick all the time?

I got stuck in the cold Monday night, after Faggots rehearsal.  I ate a taco outside with Dibs.  I could feel myself getting cold.  I need to not let this happen.

I've canceled my appointments for the week.  Bleh.

Love
Dan

I've read "Close To The Knives" by David Wojnarowicz before, but when a friend mentioned it in his blog, I realized I'd completely forgotten everything about it.  Re-reading it now, I'm flabbergasted that it didn't make more of an impression the first time.

And on the day when over twenty thousand people in Myanmar have been killed by the weather, I find myself reading this:

Americans can't deal with death unless they own it.  If they own it, they will celebrate it, like in the air force base museum of the atomic bomb, where whole families of camera-toting tourists gather after the required i.d. security checks.  In the gray-carpeted rooms, they walk the mazes of portable screens and platforms and enlarged photographs of death and incineration as seen from a discreet distance.  The distance is far enough so you can't see the bodies, only the architecture.

...I'm thinking if I owned the place I'd hook the constant smell of rotting flesh into the air-conditioning unit and have all the screens filled with speeded-up films of rotting corpses and the family outside the window is moving to the next plane for the next photo.  A man steps out from behind a doorway I hadn't noticed before and offers me his hand in greeting, asking if I'd like a cup of coffee.  He looks like the kind of guy who'd one day end up in an alcohol detox center studying snakes and insects.  I turn away without a word; I'll never shake the hand of someone I might be fighting against in wartime.

Perhaps you'd like to lend a hand.

Love
Dan

Brought my amp on the train this morning.

Listened to "Son of Three" by the Breeders on repeat until my iPod ran out of juice.

Wondering if the food shortage will force people to buy local.

My mom is going to grow tomatoes because she doesn't want to buy them.


Other things.
Love
Dan

1. Yesterday morning, I saw this graffiti on the subway:

2. Yesterday afternoon, I read this article: "AIDS: Making Art & Raising Hell."

Love
Dan