my feminist hero of the summer
May 28, 2006
The apocalypse seems a lot further off
in Chicago. Happy Memorial Day weekend everybody--I owe probably every single person reading this blog an email and I apologize, apparently it's tougher to get wireless access here than I am used to in Brooklyn. Thank goodness. The bookslut reading at Hopleaf was great, thank you to everyone who came out. Michelle Tea and I both read about vaginas and Gary Amdahl read about a guy who calls himself a visigoth so it was v.v.v. fun.
Yesterday I took a little detour up to the prairie and napped in a hammock at the Ragdale Foundation and it was beyond idyllic (irises, fountains, calming noises of the bugs in the trees), then hung with a bunch of the Chicago artist posse and talked to my favorite photographer about Irigaray, and how the fuck often does that happen over the grill? Never. Delicious. Everybody in the neighborhood hanging out on their decks, music going, perfection, ready for summer.
Now it is all about Now, Voyager and air conditioning. The thing about visiting Ron is he has every single movie you could ever think of so if you are in a Bette Davis mood, say, you're going to be able to take your pick. He is ironing now, which may sound weird but it is the sheet that will be the screen for the neighborhood's outdoor movie tonight, To Catch A Thief. My hood at home is amazing but Chicago is really so vibrant and not gobbled up by hipsters and hedge funds and it's so great to visit an American city that feels like it's in such great shape. Yum.
May 24, 2006
Elizabeth reading in Chicago tonight!
Hi everybody. So I'm off to Chicago to read with Michelle Tea and Gary Amdahl at the Bookslut Reading Series. Chicago is magical and mysterious to me, one of those cities I only go to to have fun in, so I am gonna be a happy girl. Here is the scoop:
Bookslut Reading Series
Hopleaf, 7:30pm
5148 North Clark St
Apparently that will get you there. Fabulous. See you tonight. xxoo Elizabeth
May 22, 2006
other sports
I was at BEA this weekend and it was intense, but more importantly out here in my hometown where I keep trying to retreat to write for a little bit, the doctors are trying to fix this horse. He is from down the road in West Grove and has a taste for high drama I can appreciate. The vets out here are the best anywhere so with that and a little love I hope he will come through ok.
KENNETT SQUARE, Pa., May 21 — Barbaro's racing career is over, but a valiant and costly effort was made Sunday to repair the right hind leg of the horse that sustained a catastrophic ankle break before an audience of millions early in the Preakness Stakes on Saturday.
May 19, 2006
interview with Mike Daisey part three, in which Elizabeth asks him what Dr. Phil would do:
Since I am off to DC for the marketing bonanza convention-center nevaeH that is BEA, today's edition of Boys School questions for monologuist/writer/actor Mike Daisey all have to do with how artists (and I include scientists in that category) dance with the realities of capitalism. Also I am wondering how a more 19th-c style guy like Tesla, subject of tonight's "bio-logue," would do with say a Suze Orman-style life makeover and Mike gamely comes up with such a regimen for him. (Maybe this is a new day gig? a dayjob persona as Suze is the meta-solution to any number of artiste-problemes? Or maybe that sort of dishing out of answers for cash is a better question topic for Mike's show the week AFTER this one, which focuses on L. Ron Hubbard). Tonight at Galapagos in Williamsburg at 8pm, don't miss.
Okay, so first of all, let's tell the people about the wild ride they're in for tonight at your show on Tesla. What's the scoop?
Nikola Tesla is the quintessential mad scientist, and tonight's monologue traces his path from misunderstood genius to out-and-out madman--from the invention of the alternating electric motor to death rays and, eventually, his insane love affair with pigeons.
Last year I saw your show Monopoly, in which Tesla and his coil make a major appearance, and Tesla scared me--he stuck with his major passion and work ethic and then got seriously screwed over by Edison, who got all the credit and made buckets of cash off of Tesla's work. What's the lesson there for you as an artist?
There are many lessons, but some of the most central is that it is hard to walk in this world and the world of ideas, the transcendental world of inspiration, at the same time. For most of us it is a balancing act, and for Tesla his innate concern for his fellow man and naive trust in corporate entities is his downfall. By acting reasonably he got unreasonably screwed, and I think that's instructive for artists everywhere, who by definition are always bucking the system.
Is Tesla's high moral ground and reluctance to play the game sort of similar to how the Democratic party refuses to get a little more savvy to protect itself (and us)? If he were a little less Al Gore or Ralph Nader and a little more Bill Clinton, would Tesla's life have played out differently?
I think it would have--if he'd retained control of his patents he'd have been one of the richest men in history, and then had the power to implement many of his later visions. On the other hand, he might not have been able to have the intensity he needed to see his visions if he hadn't been such a single-minded inventor. It is hard to say.
My most satanic question yet: If you were Tesla's life coach, what sort of regimen would you concoct for him? What should be Tesla's Goals and Objectives? What Life Skills does he need that he hasn't got?
I'd make him go on dates, and spend time with other human beings--an hour a day for starters, and build him up. I'd try to get him to cut himself some slack, and learn how to delegate the things in his life that aren't directly in the service of his visions. I would also make sure he hired a PR firm so that they could tell him never to call an invention, "Nikola Tesla's Death Ray", which is exactly the kind of name that gets you all the wrong press.
May 18, 2006
If you're at BEA & you want to say hi
definitely text me to find me, or stop by and say hi, I will be milling around with my girls, and I will probably be often at the Vertical booth leaning on Anne for moral support. If you are really really nice and or a journalist I can probably be convinced to hand over one of the very rare, very hot This Is Not Chick Lit tshirts and/or a galley. Plus enough Not Chick Lit postcards to make furniture out of (word on the street is that if you want to rent a small bookshelf from the convention center it's $350, so this could maybe work out for you).
xxooElizabeth
May 17, 2006
That was a fabulous reading last night--big thanks to Jessica and to Morgan the sound guy at Mo's (Morgan himself is also a comics artist!), and to everyone who came out. So fun. Our readings are on hiatus through the summer so that I can write something and also have a bit of fun when This Is Not Chick Lit comes out in August. I just finished the proofs for it and it is gorgeous--the 18 women writers who contributed stories did an amazing job.
May 16, 2006
don't miss: JESSICA ABEL tonight at 7pm!
Join us TONIGHT for JESSICA ABEL at Mo Pitkins, 7pm
FREE !
(31 Ave A between East 2nd and 3rd Streets)
Cartoonist and writer Jessica Abel is the author of the new graphic novel LA PERDIDA (Pantheon Books). Abel won both the Harvey and Lulu awards for “Best New Talent†in 1997. Abel’s Young Adult novel CARMINA is forthcoming from HarperCollins in 2007.
Abel has been teaching comics since 1998, and teaching in the Cartooning Department at the School of Visual Arts in New York since 2001.
May 12, 2006
Interview with Mike Daisey, part two
Part two of my interview with Mike Daisey, acclaimed monologuist, who will be performing tonight at Galapagos in Williamsburg at 8pm. (This is part of my new Boys' School initiative to cross-pollinate with the guy writers who are up to astounding things). xxoo--Elizabeth
EM: So tonight is your second segment of GREAT MEN OF GENIUS here in New York at Galapagos. Who's up for tonight and what can we look forward to in the monologue?
MD: P.T. Barnum, legend of the American imagination—supreme huckster, shyster and raconteur. I'll also be talking about hot bachelorette parties, the New York downtown performance scene and a particularly horrifying encounter I had as a young man with a Star Trek uniform. Also there are mermaids, sideshow freaks and a talking vagina.
EM: I love that you don't work from a script--it's so intuitive and brave. What are the benefits of working this way? How did you end up doing this?
MD: I grew up in northern Maine, where storytelling is inculcated from a young age, and I think that played a role. I've also always been fascinated by the intersection between the spoken and the written, because I want work that has the composed nature of written material while not becoming staid and untransformative—it's remarkable how quickly words can twist and writhe in the air into new shapes, and I love how unleashed from the page you can see how cruel they are—they never listen to you, and they do what they want.
So I think it's good, for the honesty, brevity and integrity it brings, and hard for those same reasons.
EM: Your lovely wife Jean-Michele Gregory directs your performances, 'cause you guys are the coolest couple on the block. How does she direct a monologue? I'm so nosy. I want to know the process, the process.
MD: Well, I drink a lot of coffee, and go on walks, and stare into space. Then finally I make an outline, and I talk through it with Jean-Michele, who mostly listens as I sketch out the bare outlines. After we do the show the first time, details emerge and the path is clearer, and now it's when she does a lot of work—page after page of edits and notes on what she heard, and she distills that down into succinct directives that penetrate. She's a ruthless editor, and it's her work that makes the whole hang together so tightly.
Also, she withholds sex until I do it right, and that's very motivating.
ack
Well. I went to meditation group finally again after 2 years and there was a big, long discussion of what we really know for sure (most people said: nothing. 3 people said: my family loves me. My friend said: I need sleep to function. I said: it is always the right decision to trust my intuition).
But I have an addendum: it's pretty clear that one more element of absolute truth is thank god for Toni Morrison.
What Is the Best Work of American Fiction of the Last 25 Years?: from the New York Times. The photo will give you a little giggle to see her in the center of some white-dudes as (appropriately) her backup singers. But then it will be a little depressing to see the one other woman and one black guy on the rest of the list of 25.
Various folks are asking me right now for definitive proof that women's books are taken less seriously than men's, that serious work by women gets less review space, gets published less often and to less fanfare. Is this photo not enough, is this list not enough? Repeating it is getting odd for me: no wonder the Guerrilla Girls had a big nasty lawsuit-- infighting is probably a welcome distraction from the stark statistics and the strong resistance to obvious bias.
My days of being more Bjorklike, off creating in the woods with my own version of Matthew Barney (maybe minus the vaseline furniture & goatheads around the house, though) making his Husband movies and cooking lots of food and not blogging are coming soon. Well, relatively. First get ready for This Is Not Chick Lit, whose birthday, August 1, is the same as Chuck D's.
xxoo Elizabeth
May 08, 2006
MAY 2006 BOOK CLUB selections are up!
This month, we recommend:
La Perdida, a new graphic novel by Jessica Abel in hardcover
My Sister's Continent by Gina Frangello, an original paperback
Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel, new in paperback
(Click titles for full reviews). And don't miss our next reading on 5/16, with Jessica Abel (she'll be showing slides of her work, so that's always even more fun)
xxooElizabeth
May 07, 2006
where is the next Kathy Acker?
So Gina Frangello has a fabulous post up wondering, among other things, about the effects of chick lit on the next generation of women writers:
I laughed my ass off at Bridget Jones' Diary when I read it in Amsterdam in 1998. I even sent it to a friend who reminded me of Bridget, and she loved it too. Now, I find myself feeling guilty. This was pre-Bush, pre-9/11; who could have guessed a cultural revolution was coming to the United States? I was under the mistaken impression that Kathy Acker and Helen Fielding could both exist--that the universe of fiction was big enough for them both. In the past 5 or 6 years, it seems I am being proven more and more wrong. I just wonder, by the time the cultural pendulum swings back, how many promising women writers of the next generation will already have been silenced.
May 06, 2006
"This is the time for every artist in every genre to do what he or she does loudly and consistently. It doesn't matter to me what your position is. You've got to keep asserting the complexity and the originality of life, and the multiplicity of it, and the facets of it. This is about being a complex human being in the world, not about finding a villain. There is no time for anything else other than the best that you've got."
Jessica DuLong just sent this quotation from Toni Morrison to me--it's what I try to say in the writing workshops I teach but this is of course a much more elegant and Morrison-perfect iteration.
I met a woman at a wedding recently who is in MFA writing classes and was sort of wishy-washy about calling herself a writer, "Well--I write but I don't know if I'm a writer." Do you know this sentence? People feel that unless mainstream publishing has granted them a book deal they are somehow less than, somehow unofficial or unworthy. But it's precisely this dedication to "asserting the complexity and originality of life" that makes you a writer--this endeavor is something that mainstream publishing is less and less interested in.
Anyway. I'm going to go experience the complexity of New York sunshine in May. xxoo
May 05, 2006
Interview with Mike Daisey, part one
Our first Boys' School substitute teacher is Mike Daisey, who is fabulous and who is in Williamsburg performing at Galapagos tonight at 8pm--I will be there so come say hi if you make it out.
Mike is a monologuist the New York Times has called "the master storyteller" and his new series is all about "megalomania and desire constructed from the interleaved life stories of Bertolt Brecht, P.T. Barnum, Nikola Tesla and L. Ron Hubbard." He's super smart and funny and dark and great to watch--no performance is ever the same. His brilliant wife, Jean-Michele Gregory, directs. I will be having a brief chat with Mike each Friday this month here at the Grace blog.
EM: Okay, Mike, so tell me about the overall concept of GREAT MEN OF GENIUS.
MD: I take the biographies of four infamous but not always well-known geniuses and talk about their lives, teasing out the meaning of genius by reflecting back and forth between biography of them and autobiographical stories. It's like an episode of BIOGRAPHY mixed with THIS AMERICAN LIFE and performed by someone very fond of KIDS IN THE HALL and THE DAILY SHOW.
EM: What would you guess women writers have to learn from these particular boy geniuses you're delving into?
MD: Well, it's "men" for a reason—one of the unifying elements in this particular quartet is their chauvinism, and many of the monologues have sub-themes on the tortured relationships many of these men had with women. So I suspect that's interesting to everybody.
I'm also parsing the idea of genius—is it truly inspired, or is it a social construct we use to anoint certain, chosen people, or something of a mixture of the two. Lest you think that it's just a lecture, there are also a lot of funny, humiliating and embarrassing anecdotes—it's a ride.
EM: Who is the genius for tonight & what's the scoop?
MD: Tonight I'm talking about Bertolt Brecht, renowned German bad-boy playwright, who lived and loved a constant group of women, usually three or four at a time...and in the years since his death it's becoming more and more clear that the women wrote almost everything. So I examine the nature of collaboration, and the rules that emerge from it both sexually, politically and intellectually.
EM: Will you be talking tonight in the monologue about how hot I looked in that lavender bridesmaid's dress at the wedding we were both just in?
MD: No, but the sordid and steamy events of the bachelorette party are actually in the monologue about P.T. Barnum. Very hot, Elizabeth. Very.
GREAT MEN OF GENIUS:
Created and Performed by Mike Daisey
Directed by Jean-Michele Gregory
"You get the feeling that Daisey is coming to new conclusions and realizations all the time, right there on stage--that his delving into the minds of these men is never complete, and that it's deepening before your eyes."
The Stranger
"An interestingly unpredictable and uneasy moosh of homage and parody...a kind of dual Rorschach test, in which one man identifies his own demons and ideals in the ink-blot of another's life story."
Seattle Times
"Daisey comes off as a kindred comic cousin to the late Saturday Night Live actor Chris Farley or maybe the precocious brother to social commentator/filmmaker Michael Moore. Each performance literally has a life of its own, as Daisey works without a script, using only a few pages of notes on yellow legal pad pages, and a towel always close at hand to wipe the sweat from his animated face."
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Friday, May 5 ~ Bertolt Brecht, playwright, poet, lover of women and certifiable cad who escaped Nazi Germany, sympathized with the Communists, failed in Hollywood, was persecuted by McCarthy, and redefined world theater.
Friday, May 12 ~ P.T. Barnum, gifted entrepreneur, showman, raconteur, hoaxster, freakshow and circus promoter who changed the face of nineteenth century America through blatant, shameless lying.
Friday, May 19 ~ Nikola Tesla, mad genius, brilliant scientist and visionary who sparred with Thomas Edison and died insane and penniless writing love sonnets to pigeons after bringing the world electricity as we know it.
Friday, May 26 ~ L. Ron Hubbard, bigamist, occultist, and charismatic science fiction author-turned-guru who took 1950's popular psychiatry by storm and went on to create the Church of Scientology: the most celebrity-driven and litigious organization on Earth.
ALL SHOWS AT 8PM AT GALAPAGOS ART SPACE
Located at 70 North 6th Street between Kent and Wythe
In Williamsburg--take the L train to Bedford
For tickets and information call 212.868.4444 or click here
"Jessa Crispin Wants You To Leave Her Vagina Out of It"
check Jessa out in the Book Standard:
Ever since The Vagina Monologues and The Bitch in the House I’ve become sick of the constant pressure to really think about my femininity—every tiny aspect of it, whether it’s what my vagina would wear if it could wear clothes (thank you, Eve Ensler, for ruining my brain with imagery of Claire Danes’s vagina clothed in a feather boa), or my outrage at having housekeeping responsibilities. And evidently my childhood was particularly rough and special, just because I spent it as a female.
It’s quite remarkable, isn’t it, that men have survived so long without their own anthologies on the very special ways their penises impact their lives? I mean, how do they know how to think about doing dishes? Oh right, according to The Bitch in the House, they never do dishes.
Boys' School
I have been wanting to make a bit of space here at Grace to appreciate the guy artists who have been so inspiring to me. We are here to support and celebrate women artists, and some cross-pollination with guy artists is part of that. Lately, I've been feeling especially appreciative of and curious about men who are really pushing forward in their art and asking big questions--guys like Dave Chappelle, Alan Moore, Chuck D.
These men and more are gorgeous and revolutionary, the antithesis of the "wonder boys" who coast on their massive book deals for their realist novels of manners about the upper middle class. It's the marketing structure that prioritizes that boring sort of narrative above all else that I am so sick of.
But the sexy boy artists who are really pushing the envelope rather than relying on the artistic equivalent of the Williamsburg hipster uniform: how can we resist? I'll be putting up little interviews as the spirit moves me.
The first installment of Boys' School will be up today, featuring one of my favorite New York guy writers. Can't wait.
xxoo Elizabeth
May 04, 2006
ew
Now that it looks like Edward Norton is dating his 18-yr-old co-star, (um, allegedly) can you NOT WAIT until Courtney Love, who claims he rather than Kurt was the big love of her life, explains this to us? I am rooting for her sobriety, of course, so I feel a little bit bad for imagining her explosive, public, fucked-up explanation. But if she went after Salma Hayek . . .
You know, Courtney's whole flashing her boobs in Wendy's moment was back in 2004, the same year Evan Rachel Wood, then age 16 (just a few years older than Courtney's daughter Frances Bean), and Ed Norton were filming their love scenes for Down In The Valley. Don't tell me you wouldn't consider flashing some NYU students if you found that out about the guy you love most right before you were about to turn 40 and your liposuction/implants still looked kind of fabulous.
Anyway.
Norton insists the relationship between their characters in the movie isn't really that fucked up:
Given Harlan's borderline-illegal relationship with Tobe, it seems like a dash of Humbert Humbert also made it into the mix, but Norton emphasizes that Harlan and Tobe are emotional equals. "This is not a Lolita relationship between the two of them at all," he says. Even so, Wood was only 16 when their love scenes were shot. Moleskin, the bandagelike adhesive usually used on feet to prevent blisters, was applied to any part of the actress that couldn't be shown on camera. "Getting that stuff off is the worst experience," she says. "It's just the most painful thing I've ever had to do."
Still, it was worth the reward of starring opposite Norton, Wood says: "I found this interview I did when I was, like, twelve. This kind of creeped me out. Somebody asked me who I'd want to work with. I was like, 'I don't know, Edward Norton.' I can't believe I'm playing his girlfriend."
tubular
Oh Jessa: the degree of her badassness seems to just keep expanding weekly. It's not online (although my skills in tracking shit down are famously lacking so maybe somewhere it is) but if you get the May print edition of Jane magazine, you will find an amazing essay by ms. bookslut called, "Why won't my doctor let me get my tubes tied?" Page 150.
The scoop is that she asks doctor after doctor to tie her ridiculously fertile Midwestern tubes, but even the "cool" doctors say they have to "convince a panel of other doctors that you're right for the procedure, but all they're going to see is that you're 24. Come back when you're 35 and we'll see."
THEN!:
After trying various other forms of birth control with terrible results, I gave up and told my boyfriend I would just never have sex ever again. He received a new clarity. "I'll get a vasectomy," he declared.
I snorted, "Good luck. You're not much older than me. Whey would they sterilize you and not me?" Still, we gave it a shot.
At the clinic, the nurse looked at my boyfriend and said, "You're here for a vasectomy consultation?" We nodded. "You do realize this is a permanent procedure, that it is very difficult and expensive to reverse?" I took a deep breath. Here it comes: another round of rejection. "Well, okay then, how's next Friday?"
. . . all my boyfriend had to do was ask? It was hard to keep from ripping the nurse's hair out.
May 02, 2006
Margaret Cho=punk rock and "The Sensuous Woman"
Women artists are just figuring out, as a group, how to survive in our careers now that a career is an option. It's the beginning of an epoch, and it's so interesting to see how people mix up their venues from big corporate publishing to the punk rock down home endeavor of putting on a little show. Margaret Cho had another book out last year and of course she had her brief, early fling with network television with All American Girl which famously thrashed her health and spirit beyond recognition. But she's built a grass roots community following that keeps her going as an artist. (It's the kind of thing Tori Amos has, and Neil Gaiman, and a lot of the other comics artists whose work is so vibrant compared to a lot of what's going on in mainstream plain old literary publishing).
Now, Margaret Cho's new thang is going on in LA, a bellydancing-burlesque kind of review thang--I just realized I haven't been to LA in ten years but this could actually get me there.
I am so jealous of Margaret's hair in those photos! And she looks so fabulous with her big ass snake tattoos and her little bellydancing outfit. Maybe we will get up the gumption to try this at Grace (but I'm not even gonna think about it until 2007 so don't nudge me honey). Emberly might get out her tassels, however, if you ask nicely.