The Icon Faerie

I went to Slutwalk NYC by myself, but I wasn't alone.


(Photo by Denise Ginley. That is me, and my sign, and my little black dress that isn't saying anything BECAUSE IT'S A GODDAMN DRESS.)

( Cut for space and also possible triggers for rape/sexual violence. )

I have so much I want to talk about. But since brevity is the soul of wit and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief.

My sister is still in Japan of this moment. She's okay, there wasn't much damage in Nagoya from the earthquake, but she's going (I keep typing 'coming' but I'm not there) home for a bit and she'll get in on Monday. I don't know if my mom will ever let her go anywhere ever again, but maybe now at least she won't drive me crazy for a bit. I love my mother and understand being worried, but seriously. (I also understand that she is ~mother and her worry probably outshines any that I had -- and I was a bit worried but my sister is a smart girl and the Japanese know how to handle it.) I told Gretchen to grab something good when the looting started, but apparently they don't do that. Which is cool.

Sunday I went and saw Angels in America at Signature again. They changed the cast, and Michael Urie was playing Prior so obviously I had to go. As much as I hesitate to say it... Michael Urie is totally my Prior. Justin Kirk is wonderful in the film, and Christian Borle was amazing, but Michael? He was inspired. He was just the perfect combination of righteous, queeny rage, fear, awareness of the absurdity of it all, and at times, utter contempt for the world around him. And how he looks in a dress is exactly as unfair as you would think it is.

Adam Driver was a newcomer as Louis. I LOVED him. He LOOKED like a neurotic Jewboy, and had amazing comic timing. At first I thought he was a little stiff but I warmed up to him. I actually ended up liking Louis a little lot more than I usually do -- which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Considering some of the things he does, it increases my sympathy and emotional reaction when he does or says reprehensible things. Truthfully, Bill Heck puts too much ANGRY~ in his Joe for my taste. I get that he's supposed to be confused and maybe a bit self-loathing, but I don't think I should fear for Harper's safety when they're arguing. I didn't like Keira Keeley (I think that's her name) as Harper as much as I liked Zoe Kazan. Zoe was a bit younger, more ethereal -- I could believe she went flying and saw ex-drag queens in her hallucinations, but Keira went a bit more zombiesque with her interpretation at times. And there was a lot of yelling. :\ Bill Porter was still Belize and he was STILL fabulous. Jeffrey Wright is Jeffrey Wright but Bill Porter was DIVAING OUT. The angel was good. I don't know if I like her as much as Robin Weigert, but it was a different interpretation. A lot more human at all times, not just sometimes.

I didn't want to stalk too much -- stagedooring Off-Broadway is a different culture than Broadway shows, I'm finding -- but I wanted to fangirl Michael Urie a little and was under orders from occultebelta to do so. So he signed my copy of The Temperamentals and told him I'd enjoyed that play as well, I'm teaching it in my 101 class this semester (last semester wasn't so impressed with Angels), and it was in part due to that play that I want to pursue my MFA project in queer dramaturgy. I voiced a concern about identifying straight -- in my experience, cautious self-deprecation and disclaiming works out better in the end when it's genuine -- and he blew it off. He said, "You may have more to say than a queer artist." So therefore I intend to make no more apologies about it. Onward and upward. Michael Urie said so.

Last week I applied and interviewed for a customer service position at Old Navy -- so basically what I'd been doing at Lane Bryant, but I'll be able to do it in jeans. Except when they offered me the position and tried to set up a time for me to come in for training and such, they proceeded to ignore the availability I gave them when I applied and tried to get me to come in Monday during classtimes, Tuesdays when I'm teaching, and damn. I don't even. Why? So I gave him my availability AGAIN and he said he'd call back. That was Wednesday. So if this is going to be a chronic problem I'm not sure I want to work for them. Because my school and teaching job are going to come first. Sorry. The end.

I had two major writing assignments due last Monday. Of course I left them until the last minute. One was a ten minute play, which I actually ended up being proud of despite not considering myself a playwright (it's hard to give all the information the audience needs just in dialogue without being didactic or fake). I got a B+ on a paper on Elizabethan foreign policy. I probably would have gotten higher if I'd been able to bother with MLA formatting and edit properly, but no. She did compliment my handling of the history though, so I will take it.

I've sort of started using my tumblr that I made to see what the fuss was about. And when I say 'using' I mean I'm reblogging shit like it's going out of style. It's here.

I am giving serious thought as to when I want to move, and 'soon' is what comes to mind. Twice this week I have been woken at 9:30 by a roommate (the same roommate) wailing the song "Fuck You" at the top of her voice. First of all, that's a god awful song 24/7, and second, 9:30 is not the proper hour to be shouting songs.

I just have this fear of not having enough money to stay in an apartment elsewhere and getting evicted and having to live in my car. Which is stupid. But I get anxious, I get depressed about being anxious, I get anxious because I don't get anything done when I'm depressed and it piles up, etc.

Also, Galileo is going to suck. And that is an objective assessment.

Since I don't think I'm smart enough for "The Politics of Aesthetics," let's have an LJ update instead.

Last weekend I was feeling a bit sick, and by Monday night I had a raging sinus infection. So I cancelled my class for Tuesday and went to the doctor and got some drugs. He was a nice doctor; we had a lovely conversation about Iowa because I was wearing my Coe College sweatshirt (I need a new one, this one's getting all ratty) and apparently his mother grew up in Cedar Rapids. Wednesday I was still on my back, but I woke upon Thursday and cared about things again, so I decided I could teach and go to Galileo rehearsal -- which is going really well. I'm enjoying it.

Friday was hella busy. I went into the city to run some errands; I dropped off/picked up scripts at Young Playwrights and got my brother a birthday gift. I walked around in the theatre district. I love the city so much, sometimes it actually hurts me.

Then I went with another woman in the program to see an NT Live broadcast of Donmar Warehouse's production of King Lear with Derek Jacobi. Now, I am a huge fan of Michael Grandage and the Donmar. I think they do beautiful shows that are not dependent on design or spectacle, but instead allow actors and plays to do the work for themselves and letting talent shine through. I would seriously give my right arm to work for that man.

That said, I also don't have another Lear that I've seen to compare it to -- but it was stunning. Derek Jacobi is just as marvelous as you think he would be from beginning to end. Gina McKee was an awesome stone cold bitch as Goneril. The brothers were also great, and the whole thing with them and Gloucester was so wonderful it hurt. Edmund was compact and sort of weaselly looking, and Edgar was tall, gallant -- basically everything he's supposed to be. (And he was doing some dead ringer Matt Smith and his confusing yet sexually exciting facial hair action as Tom, which was only a little distracting but it was working for me.) There was this wonderful/awful moment after Gloucester's been blinded and meets with Edgar again, still as Tom, he slips and calls him "father" when me and probably a good 70% of the audience all went, "Ohh" because it hurt so good. Ron Cook made me cry as the Fool -- he was superb. I have seen him onstage twice (I suppose technically three times?) and he is just so great every single time.

I don't know if I've ever had my heart broken quite like when Lear came on, wailing -- not so much crying as just a full out cry of despair -- with Cordelia's body.

They also advertised the next NT Live broadcast which is Johnny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch trading off lead roles of the Creature and Victor Frankenstein in "Frankenstein." They're going to do one broadcast for each and DO WANT. I want to see both.

Spider-Man is hiring a script doctor which is honestly what needed work but there is a part of me going ASSHOLES I'M A DRAMATURG THAT'S MY JOB.

Also I'm coming to that time where I have a lot of things to do and I don't want to do any of them, and some of them don't have a penalty like not doing homework does. These are things like finding a job, and finding internships to apply for.

ETA: Since I'm a big old slut for production/rehearsal photography, here's some for Lear.

So Hoff, who directed the Women's Chorale at Coe, died in his home earlier this week. For those of you less schooled in the subtleties of writing and speaking, that's usually code for "suicide" and that was confirmed for me today about twenty minutes ago. There are Coe alums all over the internet buzzing about it, and I already tweeted and wrote on Facebook about it but I'm still trying to make sense of this.

Hoff was not everybody's favorite teacher, as I said, and sometimes he wasn't mine. He pushed for excellence and sometimes I wondered wtf he was doing with us, but it always had results. Sometimes I was resentful for being in the chorale -- it did feel like a consolation prize to not being "good enough" for the mixed choir at times, but there are other times where I would not have jumped to the mixed choir if they'd asked me. I'm sure if you go back into the archives of my journal there will be posts littered with 'OH MY GOD I HATE HOFF RIGHT NOW' and the like, but the fact is that those moments were fleeting. My time with Hoff was... well for lack of a better term, magical.

He was a hard taskmaster at times, yes, but it was all to make us better singers. I love to sing, and I love music. Behind his madness there was method, and always passion. He loved music and he loved theatre. He was head of the New York term program and while I didn't go on that exchange, I did get to go to Europe. I had to have three letters of recommendation; one I got from Steven (a theatre professor), one from Dr. Buckaloo (history) and the third I got from Hoff. He also wrote me a letter for grad school; I don't think it was SUNY (I don't remember how many letters I needed for here) but he did write me one and so because he did that I got to do things that I wasn't sure I would get to do. Some of my favorite memories at Coe, too, are the Winter Convocation, where WC sang the music (I love Christmas music) and the spring concerts, where sometimes it was so dang hot in Sinclair I thought I was going to fall over.

He loved theatre, and he knew I did too. When I was a senior he had made a trip to NY over winter break and had gone to see a bunch of shows. He brought in the souvenir program from Spring Awakening and the revival of Sunday in the Park with George so I could take a look at them. It was a small gesture, but one that meant a lot to me -- and now I'm in New York where Broadway is a train ride away. One year we did music from Phantom of the Opera at our spring concert, so we all gathered at his house, watched the movie, and then we had food after -- lots of delicious food.

Undergrad is the days before I got my depression and anxiety under control, and some mornings -- particularly late fall and winter, I think some of it was seasonal -- I just did not want to get out of bed. It's hard to describe but it is just the complete lack of will to do anything except lay in warm darkness. But most mornings I got out of bed, because I knew that at 12:00 or 11:00 or whenever rolled around, I got to go sing. I was never suicidal -- seriously anyway -- but I was probably close.

To know someone was in some kind of pain so awful that they thought that was the only way is awful, especially when they themselves had a hand in alleviating that pain for you, is indescribable. I wish there was a way I could have known, could have helped, could have repaid him. I don't know what he was thinking or feeling, but I still wish that I could have. Even though I have a certain flair for the dramatic, I'm not saying this to go "oh look at me, a professor I was close to died" or "I deal with these issues too," I am just trying to sort out how I feel. I'm sad. I'm a little angry (in general). I am just generally, all around, upset. I owe the teachers I was close to as an undergraduate a great debt, because it was at Coe that I started becoming the person I am today and started heading towards the person I wanted to become. They all had an amazing hand in that, and one of them took his own life for... whatever reason.

I suppose that I have no choice but to pay it forward, do everything my best, and make every showtune I sing just as expressive and wonderful as Hoff could have hoped to make it.

Guys, suicide doesn't just affect teenagers and young adults. Though I don't really know my thoughts on right to die, I do believe that suicide is a very drastic and permanent solution when the hurt is in your heart and soul and not your body. If you are having suicidal thoughts, then PLEASE tell someone. Anyone. If that someone doesn't listen to you and help you, tell someone else. Tell me. I'll listen, I'll metaphorically hold your hand (literally if I am close enough), and I will help you help yourself best that I can. I'm not a therapist or trained for psychology or anything, I just know what it's like to be in an enormous amount of pain that you don't know what to do with. We can find a better solution than suicide together.

Say a prayer for Richard Hoffman. He touched a lot of lives at Coe, and there are many more who will never be blessed to say they knew him, but he was a man with an enormous heart and a lot of soul, and that should not go unrecognized. Love him or hate him, no one should ever have to feel like suicide is the only option.

( To Do )

Val and I went to see New Moon because her roommates bought tickets but then they didn't want to go. It was DEFINITELY worth it. I actually liked it better than the first one, I thought it was a lot better. I credit this to the fact that they had a bigger budget and they didn't put that nasty blue filter on everything. MICHAEL SHEEN was everything I could have wanted in an Aro and more. I'll stop myself there, but. Wow. VOLTERRA WAS VOLTERRA! THE SNOZZBERRIES TASTE LIKE SNOZZBERRIES! And the ending was perfect. XD

Perhaps even better was the impromptu theatre that was created when the fire alarm went off and we had to evacuate the theatre. First, some people refused to leave the theatre, and then the epic whining began while we were waiting outside for the firetrucks to do their thing. We eventually got to go back in and. Well:
[02:39] dramaturgy: Oh god. And then we were being let back in the theatre, so we were waiting for the movie to get started again.
[02:39] dramaturgy: When this group of tweens in the middle of the theatre start "ED-WARD *clap clap* ED-WARD *clap clap*"
[02:39] dramaturgy: And pretty soon we get, "JA-COB *clap clap* JA-COB *clap clap"
[02:40] thinkatory: *dead*
[02:40] dramaturgy: I WISH I WAS MAKING THIS UP, KITTY.
[02:40] thinkatory: SO DO I
[02:40] thinkatory: OH MY GOD YOU CANNOT MAKE THIS SHIT UP
[02:40] thinkatory: That is. XD
[02:41] dramaturgy: I was like DEAR GOD IT'S GOING TO BE A BLOODBATH.

Oh and there was more ~drama tonight. Honestly I think we're all at the end of the semester and we all need a nap and a juicebox but none of us are getting either so we're just cranky.

A few mere months ago I thought Twitter was stupid and it kind of is but I can be a stupid person. So here is what I've been up to, according to my Twitter updates.

SUNY is still driving me nuts. I e-mailed the graduate school today, although. Augh. I am trying not to get my knickers in a twist over it but my knickers are pretty twisty to begin with.

Tuesday when I was driving to work some idiot teenagers (seriously these guys had a couple years in high school left) were trying to play games with me. I was going 70 or so (running late >_>) and they were going 65, so whatever. I was getting ready to pass, and then they sped up. I sped up because I wasn't really thinking about it, and they sped up. So I could see they were going to be douchebags (i.e. I actually looked at them through my windows and they were both grinning at me like the shit eating dirtbags they are) and did what any mature adult would do. I slammed on my brakes, got behind them, and tailgated when they continued to play Speed Up, Slow Down with me. So in conclusion, yes, I am amazing and mature. But they started it.

And then I get to work and we get our new marketing stuff, my boss and I find that the new marketing not only makes more work for us and it is stupid. I am only glad my last day is soon so I don't actually have to learn any of that crap.

Yesterday I watched the first couple episodes of The Bedford Diaries, a short lived show on WB that wasn't picked back up when they became the CW. There are only eight episodes and I love to watch Milo Ventimiglia... well, doing anything. I am only a red-blooded female. Although seeing him in a pink polo shirt killed me a little.

And now today I have to go to work. Again.

So is it wrong of me to be just a LITTLE pleased that my parents are now being repaid for... well.

Last fall they moved upstairs into the bigger bedroom in the house. At first it was my room, and then my sister and I later shared this room for about five or six years before I moved back downstairs. She moved down into their room since it's smaller and she's in college most of the year. So really it just makes sense. BUT my mother now has some complaints about being up there, which were my complaints from first grade -- when we moved into this house.

FIRST, that every little noise downstairs drifts upstairs, so they have to close the door and that still doesn't help much. Given that I spent a lot of years laying awake at nine, ten, eleven o'clock listening to whatever it was they were watching on TV and not sleeping, I find it a little difficult to have sympathy.

SECOND, it's hot. It used to annoy my parents, but when I was in elementary/middle school I used to sleep downstairs on the couch, floor, in the recliner, wherever, just so I didn't have to sleep upstairs. Because regardless of the fact that we have central air conditioning, it just doesn't seem to get up there. When I got into high school they put their foot down and we started sleeping upstairs. And it was Hot.

So yeah. I feel a little vindictive for being like "I told you so" and it feels so, so good.

thinkatory and I are now rewatching S4 of Supernatural and we are discovering AWESOME things. Like last night, we watched 4x09 and 4x10, and while Ruby and Dean are arguing in the church when Alistair is coming in 4x09, Sam takes a flask from his jacket, drinks, and then the focus is back on him in time for us to see him replace it. AND THAT AIN'T CRANBERRY VODKA IN THAT FLASK, I would just bet you. Also, I just love 4x10. <3333 That climax is gorgeous. (Obviously, I did a huge old picspam of it. Speaking of which, picspammy needs a better challenge for next month, this one was just not inspiring. :\)

Some days all that stands between me and splattering my brains all over a wall is the five day waiting period on purchasing a firearm.

Congratulations universe.

YOU WIN. I QUIT LIFE.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/03/iowa.same.sex/

Every once in awhile, my state does something that makes me VERY proud to be an Iowan.