An Unkind Christmas Poem: Reprinted from My Former Blog, 12/23/2003.

"T'was the night before Christmas,

and all through The Novel,

Not a human was stirring,

Though many a-devil."


"Fat boy was sitting from me not too far,

Ogling boys and eating a Mallomar.

And the one legged fellow was there in a slump,

Waxing and polishing the tip of his stump."


"At a table nearby, a filthy man sung a tune --

only term for it, it was the call of the loon.

Outside, a hag screeched and more she did howl,

While inside a man picked the lice from his jowl."


"The clerk rolled his eyes, and sneered with a grin,

while outside all the groats split a bottle of gin.

When out in the parking lot, there arose such a clatter,

I got up from the counter, to see what was the matter!"


"When what to my wandering eyes should appear,

But a staggering drunk, filth-covered, ear to ear.

He wore a red suit, fur-covered, I think.

His Santa Claus hat could not hide his godawful stink."


"He weaved and he staggered, his shirt covered with sick.

Clear, he was a bum, dressed up as St. Nick.

He fell on his knees, whipped out hose for a piss.

And babbled and roared, on a meth-amphetamine kick."


"His eyes -- how unfocused! His breath -- oh, how fowl!

His face-veins all-busted, his mouth shrieked in a howl!

He had a broad face and a little round belly,

That shook when he cackled, like a bowl full of jelly."


"MOTHER FUCKER! TITTY SUCKER!

TWO BALLED BITCH FUCK YOU ALL!

COMMIES AND JEW BASTARDS AND SLUMLORDS SO SMALL!

His voice roared and it echoed, through the whole place,

As Santa fell forward, landing right on his face."


"The Novel clerk called 911 as the crowd cheered,

While for the bum Santa, it was just as he feared.

As a cop car pulled up, oh so black and white,

And a brute cop dragged him off, holding him tight."


"So, round the corner, the cop car a-flew,

With the bum Santa in back, trapped as its crew.

From the back seat of the car, his hands all in chains,

The bum Santa called out, curses falling like rains."


"GOD DAMN YOU ALL, YOU ARE ALL PILES OF SHIT.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS? LIKE HELL! GO ROT IN A PIT!"

Library Story: The Magic Sunglasses.

Today a patron came up to my desk in the library’s Computer Commons. He was a young Asian man, fairly stocky, and quite respectable-looking, except for the huge, opaque sunglasses that were covering his face. He had just used the library’s reservation system to make a reservation to use a computer, but he was displeased by where he’d been assigned.

“I was wondering,” the gentleman smiled, “whether I actually have to take that particular computer. Even though I have a reservation for computer 12, can I sit down at some other computer and use it instead?”

I assured him that he could, of course, do just as he pleased, and he was quite delighted.

“That’s terrific!” he noted. “You see, since I started wearing these polarized sunglasses, it becomes incredibly easy to see the future – and I can tell that this computer…” he pointed in the direction of computer 12, “has only 4 months left to it. So I would rather have a different computer!”

I showed him to another computer, though I admit I had to hold myself back from asking what he saw in my future. I mean, don’t you wish YOU had those polarized, future-seeing sunglasses?

BLACK LEATHER at the Unknown Theatre.

It blazes like a shining beacon of snowy whiteness in the dark, guiding wise men to its vicinity and keeping them enthralled by its glowing convex orbs for the entire holiday season! No, silly, I am not talking about the Christmas Star of Bethlehem – I’m talking about playwright Michael Sargent’s pasty naked bottom, which is on near omnipresent display in his latest opus of excess and debauch. The bottom in question may not be the Star of the Nativity, but it is sure the salient feature in Sargent’s plays, which are, frankly, as known for their frequent sightings of naked flesh as Pinter plays are known for pauses. And, while “Black Leather” is not overly rigorously plotted -- and occasionally seems to bear the imprimatur of having been written with haste -- the piece is as strikingly ferocious and morally ambivalent as to be almost archetypal “Sargent.” I suppose the play could best be called a sort of Manhattan Art World Roman A Clef, centering on the notorious life of hardcore photographer Robert “Krapplethorpe,” who’s known for taking lurid photos of his naked tricks performing sado masochistic sex with him. The play opens with Krapplethorpe (Sargent) hilariously tearing apart a business meeting involving his sugar daddy (Jan Munroe) and the hag art gallery director (Kathy Bell Denton) who wants to exhibit Krapplethorpe’s photos – but wishes he’d give her more of the shots of avocados and fewer of the ones of whips going into anuses. Yet, the play’s focus crystallizes during scene two, when Krapplethorpe ditches his sugar daddy to bring home a hot trick (Kevin Daniels) from the Mineshaft, who then proceeds to rigorously roger Krapplethorpe’s rump. Then, as both men snort cocaine and booze it up in the post-coital glow, Krapplethorpe orders the trick to head to a rival’s house and chop off his head. The rest of the play centers on Krapplethorpe’s subsequent terror (upon regaining his senses) that the trick has actually done such a reprehensible thing. Director Chris Covics’ staging intentionally skirts any attempts to depict the sleazy characters sentimentally – they exist in an atmosphere of moral vacuity, orbiting around nothing at all – but there’s also something unusually believable about them. Sargent’s Krapplethorpe is an appetite-driven, spoiled child, whose behavior reflects an entitled, inwardly vacant person that has managed to get away with everything his entire life. The show’s nudity is, of course, blatant and exploitative – but it’s also oddly germane to a story that suggests the human body is a ridiculous object and that recreational sex is itself a bestial, vaguely porcine function. You’ll want to see this show on a night when the actors have all had showers before going on, though.

CARNIVAL KNOWLEDGE at The Lex Theatre.

After watching playwright Naomi Grossman’s solo show about her travails in the Purgatorial limbo of dating and relationships, you will absolutely and categorically want to swear off men. And why not? There never was such a deplorable collection of miserable man-boys with commitment issues, immaturity, and hygiene lapses as the he-baboons that Miss Grossman courts and is courted by. Grossman’s tale is told as a monologue, placed within the context of a circus setting. The show opens with the heroine playing a whimsical game of “whack a mole,” albeit with the rodents being replaced by the jaw-unlatching collection of ginormous pink (and brown) dildoes. From there, Grossman discusses the veritable rogues gallery of dudes she has gone out with, including a lumpen Trader Joe stockboy, a hypercritical neurotic, a middle aged professional masseur with a magnormous shvance, and many more – all of whom probably had reason to regret their dalliances if they accepted their invitation to Opening Night of Grossman’s show. Director Richard Embardo’d Circus Staging, complete with crazy “freakshow” posters, a fortune teller table, and more, jazzes up Grossman’s narrative marvelously, adding color and a twisty sardonic context to the monologue. Yet, Grossman’s reliance on endless malebashing, while never actually offering any soul searching to analyze precisely why these are the men she’s attracted to, inevitably causes the piece to reduce to being little more than a one note stand up act. Still, Grossman herself is a vibrant, charismatic, and sexy protagonist, whose witty and ironic turn comes across as simultaneously sexy and world weary – a vivid embodiment of a survivor of the dating wars.

A Library Story from 2006.

Last week, a man threw a fit in the library’s computer commons and had to be escorted out by two security guards, ranting and raving all the while. You see, someone had stolen his library card while he was away from his computer station – and then, when he finally sat down to do his work, the reservation computer snatched the monitor away from him and assigned it to someone else. All very normal and unexceptional, but he blew a gasket.

He howled and snarled, insulted me personally, yelled and bawled, until I hit my panic button and summoned security, who tried to calm him down. The sight of Last week, a man threw a fit in the library’s computer commons and had to be escorted out by two security guards, ranting and raving all the while. You see, someone had stolen his library card while he was away from his computer station – and then, when he finally sat down to do his work, the reservation computer snatched the monitor away from him and assigned it to someone else. All very normal and unexceptional, but he blew a gasket.

He howled and snarled, insulted me personally, yelled and bawledthe uniformed security officers, whisking away this gentleman, who was, in his late 50s, I’d say, scarecrow tall and lean with a frazz of white hair on his crown, was something to remember.

It was a decidedly ignominious display, and I swear that if something like that ever happened to me, I would be far too ashamed to ever come back to Santa Monica, let alone to the library to use the computers again. Yet, there he was today, regular as clockwork, acting as though nothing had happened, which is, I suppose the only way to behave if you really HAVE to come back and use a computer.

At one point, he came up to me at my big wooden desk and gruffly apologized for his behavior. But, you see, he was justified: “My library card!” he grunted. “And then the computer thing. Dang, I was just angry!”

I told him that he comes to the computer commons every single day and that he should be aware of how things work there by now. His acknowledged this, but then noted, “But I was working on something so important! You see, I have this legal case…”

And then he fished out this gigantic document from his moth-eaten shoulder bag.
“You see, it’s about this conspiracy at the patent office. And I complained to the FBI and the CIA and there’s this COVER up. And so, I wrote this letter to President Bush…” He proffered a curled up scrap of maniac-paper, covered with crayon and coffee cup circles – “Warning him that he needs to be aware that the people around him are involved with a COVER up. And then the computers went down. Just like that! And so, of course, I was angry. Anyone would be!”

And he went on and on for a bit like that, until my eyes started to glaze and I gently smiled, noting, “Well, sir, there’s no line today. So you can go to any computer that’s available! Enjoy!”

It’s funny how I hear the most loopy stuff, almost six or seven times a day.

COMING HOME at the Fountain.

I think the first play I saw by Athol Fugard, the South African senior dean of playwriting, was “The Road to Mecca,” which I attended in a famous production, starring the playwright, at the Lyttleton when I was sixteen or something like that. At the time, the show’s philosophical and political elements were wasted on a bratty wretch such as myself. To a sixteen year old brat obsessed with Tom Baker-era Doctor Who and Star Trek, there was nothing less compelling than a stage filled with a dreary folks yakking it up bout the atrocities of Apartheid. I remember thinking, “Boy is this play BORING!” In fact, I believe that I thought the play was so boring, I stayed away from any Athol Fugard play for long after Apartheid fell in South Africa.
It is quite possible that, at 45, I am finally now old enough to appreciate Fugard, as this weekend, I found the Fountain Theater’s production of “Coming Home” to be an extraordinary moving work. The fall of Apartheid did for Fugard what the fall of the Soviet Communism did for John Le Carre: It essentially undercut much of what motivated the writers’ work. However, unlike Le Carre, Fugard has continued to write effectively about the cultural evolution of his home land. While the piece misses the anti-Apartheid furor of his earlier works, this play is a powerful meditation on mid-life disappointment, and on the notion that sometimes things don’t get better in the world: Sometimes things get worse.
Veronica (Deidre Henry) has returned to the small town shanty in which she was brought up by her loving grandfather Oupa (Adolphus Ward). As a girl, Veronica found her home incredibly stifling, and her dreams of becoming a chanteuse drove her to leave home for Johannesberg. However, like so many young girls adrift in the Big City, Veronica soon found herself pregnant and jobless, and was forced to turn to a life of prostitution to make ends meet. Penniless and hopeless, she contracted AIDS and returned, with her tail between her legs, to the shanty she swore she would never see again. She finds that her beloved grandfather has died – and that her only friend is slow witted childhood playmate Witboi (Thomas Silcott, entirely endearing), who has been taking care of the farm land and house in her grandfather’s name. Veronica’s young son (Timothy Taylor) is disgusted by the squalid home – and takes an immediate dislike to Witboi, whom he thinks is stupid. But Veronica has great incentive to make things work: She’s too poor to be allowed to receive any of the medications that could save her life and will die soon. Act Two takes place several years later, as the son, now 10, has been forced to grow up in a hurry as his mother’s health declines.
Director Stephen Sach helms a particularly powerful character-driven production whose intimacy is frequently incredibly haunting. Over the course of the story, we start to feel as though we are invested in these characters’ lives. And, when we see Henry’s Veronica in the first part of Act Two, bitter and resigned, and ferocious with a desperation to ensure the safety of her child after she’s gone, there’s something terrifically sad about the transition. Fugard utilizes visions and flashbacks to craft a haunting mood. A scene in which Henry launches into a rock song in which she appears to be the star she dreams of being is lit with glittering disco lights, which vanishes, along with her grandfather’s ghost, to show the grim world she actually lives in. And the final coda, which shows the woman dying while her writer son mystically bonds with his long dead grandfather, is beautifully executed, albeit hard to justify logically speaking. Moody, beautiful, and strangely despairing, the play’s clearly a text that could only be written by a mature writer who understands disappointment and loss: It’s the perfect antidote to LEGALLY BLONDE: THE MUSICAL, which, I have to tell you, I wouldn’t see with your eyes.

Theater: PAY ATTENTION at the Santa Monica Playhouse's Other Space.

Playwright Frank South's engrossing autobiographical solo show explores that unexpectedly shifting border that lies between the twin no man's lands of genius and madness. South has been challenged his entire life with the condition we today call attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, a state defined by a frequent inability to focus, hyperactivity, and impulsiveness.

And yet South's play, which sometimes appears to owe a debt of stylistic discursive gratitude to Spalding Gray, turns out to be quite different from a standard sob story "drama of affliction." It's also a Hollywood tragedy and a story of overcoming addiction, as much as it is a portrait of life with ADHD.

By any standard, his ADHD notwithstanding, South has had extraordinary success. An early writing protégé of filmmaker Robert Altman, South was also an executive producer and showrunner for the series Melrose Place, a gig he enjoyed for several years. During his life's ups and downs, South is haunted by a little imaginary demon, whom we at first assume is the embodiment of his ADHD. Only gradually do we come to realize that the demon stalking him is that voice of self-destructiveness that speaks to almost all of us.

South's narrative trajectory drifts through time, frequently echoing the disjointed thought processes of someone with ADHD. Although the piece could stand cutting, and some of South's digressions play as a prosaic laundry list chronology, director Mark Travis' deceptively unobtrusive staging crafts an intimacy that gradually leaves us feeling we know the star personally. As an actor, South's sometimes-halting line readings and stammering delivery are at first hard to penetrate; but, with his jowelly hangdog face and mildly Mephistophelean grin, he's immediately likable, and the absolute authenticity and immediacy of the performance are striking.

Presented by and at the Other Space at Santa Monica Playhouse, 1211 Fourth St., Santa Monica. May 2–June 7. Fri.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 6 p.m. (323) 960-7738 or www.plays411.com/payattention.

Theater: COME BACK LITTLE HORNY at the Lost Studio.

COME BACK LITTLE HORNY In playwright Laura Richardson’s clever sourball of a family comedy, mom Susan (Wendy Phillips) and dad Ian (Scott Paulin) used to be artists, but now they’re retired — read “tapped out” — and they seem to spend most of their time sniping at each other. Meanwhile, their closeted gay son Loki (Brendan Bonner) and borderline schizophrenic daughter Nora (Jennifer Erholm) still live at home, subjected to endless sneers and veiled insults thrown in their direction. Into this toxic atmosphere comes the family’s one successful scion, Stanford University professor and bestselling author Raven (Danielle Weeks), who, estranged from her clan, shows up for a visit, bringing along her newly adopted pet dog Horny (delightfully played in canine drag by Jason Paige, whose leg-humping, slobbery performance all but barks with the unfiltered love that the human characters can’t express to each other). Raven’s latest book is a hostile but truthful roman à clef about her family — and, as they peruse the book, the clan is forced to confront the miserable truth. Director Martha Demson’s character-driven production artfully emphasizes the subtext underlying the family’s brittle relationship. Not a line is spoken that doesn’t seep with layers of corrosive back story. Although the pacing occasionally falters — and the piece frankly could use some cutting, particularly during the final third — the writing is smartly full of just the sorts of lines you hope never to hear from your mother. The ensemble work boasts some ferocious acting turns, particularly from Phillips’ scathingly bitter mother and Weeks’ superficially loving, passively hostile daughter. Lost Studio Theatre, 130 S. LaBrea Ave., Hlywd.; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 4 p.m.; through June 20. (310) 600-3682. (Paul Birchall)

Theater: THE DEVIL WITH BOOBS.

There's vomit! There's piss! There's drool! There are ginormous, watermelon-sized plastic breasts, capped with kiwi-sized nippilonis! How can you not love director Tom Quaintance's phenomenally daffy production of Dario Fo's deliciously amoral farce? This is a charming production that takes goofy surreal gaggery to such bad taste, tacky extremes, it's impossible to be grossed out or offended – you'd have to be a churl, like so many of the delicious farce's characters. Set in 16th Century Italy, the play concerns an uptight, morally rigid Judge (Michael Winters), who is so repressed he downs laxatives so that if he feels sexual desire, it will be utterly offset by the need to explosively defecate. A pair of demons plot to possess the Judge and force him to commit sins that will sentence him to hell. To do this, apprentice demon Barlocco (Sparber) is to burrow into the anus of the Judge and take over his body. Unfortunately, something goes wrong, and the demon actually enters the body of the Judge's brittle crone of a housekeeper Pizzocca (Katherine Griffith), turning her from a zaftige battleaxe into a horny slut with eyes for His Honor's honor. Complications ensue when a corrupt Cardinal (Weston Blakesley) arrives in town, with sleazy plans of his own. Fo presents farce with a sharp political edge – and between the scenes of randy abandon and devilish glee, there are vulpine jabs at the church, the law, and human greed. Along with this, Quaintance presents a show that is visually perfect: Christina Wright's gorgeous Italian comedia buffo costumes are amazing, and the piece is anchored by Alex Wright's beautiful music and background songs. As for the piece's comic timing, it's perfect. A scene involving the Cardinal, a huge bucket of horse feces, and a bottle of freshly decanted demon piss is a study in simultaneous horror and hilarity. As the much put upon Judge, Winters is a fantastic straight man, but the show truly belongs to Griffith's toweringly comic turn as the haplessly possessed housekeeper. On a dime, she manages to shift from mean rat bag to brutish demon to lustful she devil, offering a performance that is versatile, yet impeccably nuanced.

Theater: Desperate Writers at the Edgemar Theater Center.

It's not just the writers who appear desperate in this clubfooted comedy by Joshua Grenrock and Catherine Schreiber, it's the actors, too. And, after about twenty minutes of being trapped in the world of this unpleasant, pseudo-glib, and wearisome Hollywood farce, the audience quickly becomes desperate, as well. This is one of those comedies which appears written by Hollywood fringe insiders, who are indeed desperate – desperate to work off the hostility and envy of a Tinseltown that has never given them the cash, power, and glittering prizes that are their supposed just deserts. Folks like this inevitably write Hollywood "comedies" that "trenchantly skewer" the excesses and shallowness of Tinseltown – excesses and shallownesses which they'd be only too happy to engage in given half the chance. David (Brian Krause) and Ashley (Kate Hollinshead) are lovers and co-writers, toiling on their script in the hopes of making a sale that will allow them to get married and live the life they've wanted – no, that they deserve (they think). Shame on those evil movie executives for not bowing to the inevitable and snapping up their opuses! When David and Ashley can't get a meeting to save their life, they do the most logical thing they can think of: They kidnap three sleazy movie moguls (Grenrock, Schreiber, and Andrew Ross Wynn), and imprison them in a cage, until the execs agree to read David's script. Although one exec has a heart attack, the others are soon engaged in a bidding war for David's work, thus proving that crime pays many dividends. Admittedly, Schreiber and Grenrock aren't aiming any higher than Generic Sit Com, but even by those standards the writing is surface glib, with little content or psychological believability. The characters, intended as being charming, are flat out repulsive, with Krause and Hollinshead's self-justifying, creepy writer couple being particularly offputting. The stock stereotype trio of moguls are little more than standard issue movie biz scuzzbuckets: We sense that the writers could have used the premise to actually spoof specific Hollywood types and characters, but there's the ultimate sense that, well, the authors don't actually seem to know much about what they're writing about – with the result that the piece descends into clumsy gags, chaotic shtick, and a feelgood finale that leaves a nasty taste in the mouth, all things considered. Maybe it might be time for a moratorium on the sort of drama in which a character kidnaps another character and gets rewarded for it.

Not the First Time At the Rodeo.

This is not, as some drag queens say, My First Time At The Rodeo. At least, not in terms of blogging. Some may be aware that I kept a blog from 2002 straight through 2007, updating it religiously – nay, some would say with the borderline devotion of an obsessive compulsive confronted with a pile of paper clips needing to be organized by color or bend angle degree measure.

However, what has changed is this: I wrote the previous blog under a different name (pseudononymously, is the three dollar word), and this time I am going to write under my Real and True Name. So, this time, I am afraid, this is going to be A Clean Room. What a shame.

Of course, I can't help but go on about how wonderful my OLD blog was – I'm like one of those passive aggressive woman on a blind date with a guy she really doesn't like that much, talking endlessly about her ex-boyfriend. But the time has come for me to forget about the Old Blog, that had a number of devoted fans, and to start the New Blog, which, alas, no one will probably ever read. Ironic, no?

The brilliant thing about the other blog was that I wrote it anonymously, so I could say precisely what I wanted to say at any time, offending anyone and everyone, without filters or accountability. After all, so many blog writers write the same sort of stuff – but under their own names. And then they become horrified when someone actually READS what they say about them and calls them on the carpet about it.

"Why did you say such a terrible thing about your mother/son/brother/boss?" they write. "What COULD you be thinking?" It's as though folks think that because it's in print, they should not be held responsible for their unconscionable revelations and tasteless ranting digressions.

Since I wrote under a fake name previously, no one ever found me out and I never got into trouble with any relative or employer. I suppose you might say that I did get into some small trouble with an A-list celebrity once, but in the end that whole episode ended up as just too much Bilbo Baggage.

Keeping a blog under one's own name can be quite a bit like wielding a boomerang – a boomerang with gigantic teeth that will bite you when it flies back into your hand. Or it could be considered akin to raising a pet crocodile that is endlessly cute when it's a little one, but which then grows up and bites your head off. "But what were you expecting?" the crocodile can only answer. "I am a crocodile. And this is what a crocodile does."

Now I must worry that what I say being actionable – or I must be concerned with some boss or co-worker googling me and digging up my words. So a bit of circumspection will be in order. No trashing co-workers and employers. Check. No indiscreet anecdotes that will be recounted at the water cooler tomorrow. Check. Instead, I shall just use this blog as a center for delightful badinage, a la Birchall, as well as being a clearing house for my various reviews and professional writings. And who knows how often I shall update? We shall see, dear hearts, we shall see.