Thursday, September 29, 2011

Penguin Rep: Great Place on Earth

Friends, my friends are having a big auction for their great theater in Stony Point, New York. Jump on! Bid early and often. There’s even a trip to France. You name it. What are you waiting for? You know you’ve deprived yourself long enough. Live.

Penguins are forever.

This is a great place.

PENGUIN REP AUCTION

Stasis in Numbers

Though I might have my arithmetic construct wrong when it comes to laying down my fraction of: dwindling old timey resources/population growth

I do believe this is what has put us in stasis.

The tiny members of the population that has easy access to hording will continue to horde. They were fear driven to begin with. They will pretend they must continue to have a whole lot of stuff in order for your dreams to come true. Do not believe them. They are cunning and nothing can plug up the holes in their hearts.

The rest of humanity, well----it just grows and grows. As it grows, there is not a clear way to support it.

I believe this is what can explain our current economic crisis. Not just government this or that, or monetary policies or any other human made what-not. I believe it is biology. I believe our fiscal numbers are reflecting our current biological state.

This may be because I am a bit of a biologist, the carpenter seeing the entire world as a bunch of nails.

So throw a mollusk at me and say, “Oh, please.” But then, think about it. Math works.


 
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Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Question

Will summer ever end?

Monday, September 26, 2011

LIVE WORK SPACE October 4&5 in Hollywood

A Reading of

LIVE WORK SPACE

By Don Cummings

Tuesday October 4 and Wednesday October 5

8PM

THE PRODUCTION COMPANY
@ The Lex Theater
6760 Lexington Avenue 90038

with

Dan Alemshah Kimberly Bailey Johnny Clark
Madelynn Fattibene Doug Kreeger David Youse


Directed by Ben Campbell

This is to help form the next season of THE PRODUCTION COMPANY.

Your presence is invaluable.

I will be there both nights. Come on over. Love to see you.

Don


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Sunday, September 25, 2011

End of Summer, Into Fall, The Berkshires

Caregiver Farm, Cricket Creek Farm, Alpaca Farm, The House, The Woods at the end of Marion Avenue in North Adams/Williamstown. All of it.

Harvest. Eat. Grow again. As a species, we really figured it out?

 

The Album:


End of Summer, Into Fall, The Berkshires
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Thursday, September 22, 2011

Off to the Berkshires

Enjoy your weekend. Some say rain. I say cozy.

 
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Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Tigers

Have you all seen this? Well, watch it. It’s the poster-vid for the famous day.
Thanks to my Recognized-by-the-State-of-California-Domestic-Partner, Adam, who alerts me to all popular trends, hits and viral loads:



When I came out, back in the 80’s, my father looked at me, in that stylish basement in Ramsey, New Jersey, with the curved floor Zenith, and said, “I don’t care if you make love to tigers. You’re my son. I love you.”

I had it easy and my father always used every chance he could to be a little funny.

My mother was a little more dramatic about it. “You’ll never be happy,” she said. But she was basing this on someone who she was very close to, perhaps even a few men that she knew, at a time when gay men weren’t, in general, the blithest bunch. She got over it all very quickly.

In fact, I told her first. She said I should tell my father later that night. It all happened so fast, in one day. I thought it was going to be all sobbing and wailing and blaming and heaving of Teutonic bosoms. It was not at all like that.

My parents were people in the world and they knew there were lots of gay people in it. My Mom also said, “I’ve known since you were about eight years old.”

Was it the puppets? Me being in charge of all things Christmas? Or my articulate sensitive nature?

Does it matter?

Gay military friends, protect and service each other.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell Puff Piece

It’s over.

Thin edge of the wedge.

Look out, Kansas. We’re coming for your children! In fagtigues.




HOMOS AT THE LUNCH COUNTER! Weeeeeeee!

Monday, September 19, 2011

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Miserable, Untimely Death

I’m not one of those people who thinks death is strange. When I was a wee kid, I almost died from a bee sting. This was unpleasant. I went into a coma for a day. They say.
In 1998, I had this strange feeling I was dying. It was my appendix. After the operation, I had a gratitude experience that informed my adulthood from then on. Second lease. All that.
I like to live. I do. But I figure I will die. I hope I am very old when it happens. But really, only, if I am not alone. Or at least not too alone. Or at least with a little dog or something or a nurse that doesn’t hate me.

Death, in threes. Mid-September.

I sat at a cafeteria table at Tufts once singing the Great Green Globs of Grimy Gopher Guts song…not knowing that the woman at the end of the table was Kara Kennedy. My good friend, Ma we called her because she was older than us and she knew Kara, was kicking me under the table. And then the kicks got harder and harder. I was very annoyed. Kara got up and left the table. Ma said, “That was Kara Kennedy. The one you said you were going to get to marry you.” What is hilarious is that Ma (and I for a childish second) thought this was even a possibility. I did not know Kara Kennedy, but she certainly thought I was a loud, annoying infant. Which I was. And she did not marry me. Now she is no longer alive. So many people are no longer alive. It was strange to read that she died.

Then, I read on Facebook today, that a friend of mine from high school died. This is terrible. I had a very special class trip to Paris in the tenth grade which sort of informed me that I wanted to spend a lot of time in France. At the time I was sixteen. I think I slept four hours a night. I was staying on the top floor of the Pont Royal Hotel in the Sixth Arr. And so was Stacy, next door, with another friend, KK. All the other kids were on lower floors---somehow, we had the luck of getting the garret rooms. It was a party—but mostly just horsing around, like you do, when you’re young and innocent and insist on having a good time. I was so sad to hear that she died (See that she died) on Facebook. I have no idea how. Sounds like it was sudden. She really was one of those warm, incredible members of our species. Sadness. Stories ending. Paris will carry on. This Stacy, really, was unique. Often, people die and you think, “Yeah, okay—death.” But this one was a real drag.

And we saw the movie Contagion. We even Imaxed it because seats were available. Kind of documentary-like. Full on cast of amazing actors. It was enjoyable. No real conflict in the story. It was laid out more like a documentary. Well done, Mr. Soderbergh and everyone in it. Worse, could be ahead.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Mothers

Mothers, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up Unvaccinated.

--This message is brought to you by the HPV generation, an infected bunch by what I like to call: The Human Paloma Picasso virus.

 
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Wednesday, September 14, 2011

A Simple Horror

Fifty-million, that’s 50,000,000, that’s Five times Ten Million People in this country do not have Health Insurance.

Maybe when it gets up to 100,000,000, there might be enough heft to vote for a public health plan?

What has to happen in this country to get people to vote for leaders who will help them?

We Interrupt This Blog

To bring you the latest news:

People are still beating the crap out of gay kids.

Back when I was a kid, and I was gay, I was not ever beaten up. Not exactly. But I was abused, verbally, every few days. And because I was no shrinking violet, I responded by saying things like, “Fuck you.” Or, “Why are you talking to me like that?” Or even, “Sure, let me see your dick.”

But I had a special privilege because I had a little bit of popularity, a high G.P.A., a sense of humor and adventure and I was raised by very liberal, brave people. Additionally, I had many allies. I was protected. Even D.S. a great athlete, during senior year in gym, would pick me first on his team---knowing that we’d have a great time even though I was the worst player of anything on earth. He had a sense of humor about team picking. I was the recipient of his good jokes.

But there was taunting. And the taunting ultimately caused great depression. As it does. And then one has to fight, what feels like forevs, to pull out. And you do. And it’s fine. But I think the statistic is something like, you lose ten years of your life doing that. Of course, they are talking about the loss of years that you gain wealth and status by assimilating into the normative masses. But in our culture, those are real losses. And you do lean toward the normal over time. It just sort of happens to everyone.

I am all for assimilation. Especially since most people’s personalities are so grating. What the hell! Why not a little conforming? Why not some formality? And while you’re at it, why not put down that beer can, tuck in your shirt, shut your mouth and listen for a change?

I feel bad for natty gay kids. But they might conform a bit more so they are not so attacked. Maybe UNtuck their shirts? That being said, if some boy comes to school all glittery, nail polish gleaming, prancing around all goofy-like, well, shit---just give him a wide berth. He needs the room to do his jetés. I know I do.

Even as an adult, there is a bit of homophobia I still face. Very rarely, but I do. Some people just believe it is wrong or it’s a mistake. This dismissal is also a form of abuse. There is absolutely nothing I can do about that. Except dance.



 
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Monday, September 12, 2011

Less Government, More Corporations

The moronic notion that with less government one then enjoys more freedom is enough to make me want to spit out my corn-syrup-based-Snapple.

Does any one person believe they can build a large building or a highway or a postal service or a healthcare system? No matter what---it takes something very organized to do the large projects.

And look, corporations do some things very well. War machines. Monoculture corn. Cheap office supplies. Shampoo.

The government has classically done a bunch of things very well. The highway system. The post office. War machines. Monoculture corn.

Oh wait! There’s overlap. Remember Wenn diagrams?

Friends on the Right, you will never have ultimate power. Large groups of some sort will always have to do the really big things.

And don’t corporations already have enough? Just look at this hideous table situation outside this corporate restaurant. Must everything look like this? For you to feel safe?

 
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Sunday, September 11, 2011

Those Brilliant Terrorists

If their intention was to bring down Capitalism, they did not succeed.

But they sure made a huge dent.

Poking us in the eye with those big planes into our big buildings was enough to make a lot of fearful idiots get into a useless war, the longest one we’ve ever had after the one we’re still in, and spend spend spend to bankruptcy.

It was brilliant on the part of those hateful animals. They spent almost nothing. We spent the richest-country-in-the-world’s surplus.

Say what you want about those angry cave dwellers, they outwitted us. And now we are broke.

The mouse killed the lion. Maybe not killed. But hobbled for sure.

For the personal tragedy they wrought upon so many people in the Northeast on that fateful day, they must be considered nothing more than monster pond scum. Certainly.

But pond scum has its own intelligence. Otherwise, we would not even know what pond scum is because it would not have survived.

Bleach is a fine pond scum killer. Let’s poor bleach on all of them.
But let’s not throw another dollar in their direction. Momma needs shoes. Bridgework. And high speed trains.

Friday, September 09, 2011

Sugar Mountain Follies

Follies. We saw it. Tonight.

Bernadette Peters, Jan Maxwell, Elaine Paige, etc.

It’s always great to see a play about a bunch of washed up old broads. Singing.

I saw the last incarnation of Follies ten years ago with Blythe D. and Judith I.

This one was better.

Look—the talent was fantastic. Soup to nuts. Enjoyable. Choreography, singing, directing, all of it.

Just one little thing---it didn’t really reach me beyond a very well crafted machine. But as a machine, it worked very well.

Clever show, this is, with the younger versions of characters mirroring the older versions…or actually reverse imaging. And the way it swings into a follies show of the inner lives of the four main characters (when it comes to love). Of course, the double entendre of the word Follies is not to be overlooked.

Exceptionally performed by all.

Bernadette is too old for the role.

The year is 1971 and the hep talk of the time is dated.

The metaphors in the dialog, by James Goldman, sound like merchant class drivel. Diamonds and limos and such.

But the numbers---that’s the deal. It’s always about the music in musicals and the music in this one is fantastic. We all know it. So you do what you must, you sit how you sit, in order to get to the songs.

There could also be another reason why this did not reach me: Nostalgic Sentiment. I am terrified of it. I know my half Irish soul could be sucked into such a thing and never return. I must be cautious. In college, I remember getting very drunk or stoned or both, alone in my single dorm room and I was listening to Neil Young’s Sugar Mountain, “You can’t be twenty on Sugar Mountain,” and looking into a mirror and watching myself cry like a raving lunatic because I was all grown up and my childhood was over and I would never have the sweetness of youth nor the hope of forever again.

It was quite a scene. (I had just turned twenty). I was inconsolable.

But during that silly excrescence of tears and grabbing-backward, I realized, “Don, this is such bullshit. No more of this.”

Sometimes, it still gets me, time and what could have been. But I believe it is a trap.

It must be handled, the past, like a joke, not to be taken seriously or it all gets maudlin. Because however much that could have been never was, there are infinite universes of even more things that never came your way, besides.

Wednesday, September 07, 2011

Tuesday, September 06, 2011

From the Roof of My House in Los Angeles

This can only mean one thing: Sometimes there is something very nice looking right nearby.

 
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Friday, September 02, 2011

Sitting in My House

Strange, to sit in your house, with some of your own furniture even, after not living in it for two years.

It is incredibly comforting and feels like the past, the present and the future all at once.

I like what it is doing to my sense of time.

I wonder what it will do, ultimately, to my sense of enjoyment.

This stained Ikea pine table, with the one leaf that’s the wrong color, it’s looking pretty shabby.