"I can be a complicated communicator..." (Liz G.'s LiveJournal)

Against my better judgment I went walking out that door / Smiled at 1 person then I nodded to 3 more

2004-07-12T16:01:50Z

Alright, that’s it. I hate to put you all through the annoyance of defriending me and refriending my new name, but I think my conversation a few days ago with a 16-year-old MoCCA volunteer who had enough sense to know that she won’t be able to pull off her screen name much past 18 has convinced me that it’s time to rechristen my internet persona (there’s only so many times a girl can be mistaken for a pro-dom before she starts to take it personally). So, it’s time to move this show over to 2muchexposition. Yeah, it’s a reference, which makes it inherently lame, but then, lame fits me perfectly. You can go there now, ‘cause there’s actually—gasp!—a new entry. Don’t worry, I won’t make a pattern of this… my last name change took me through at least six years.

“Don’t be sorry. / Sorry is a board game.”

2004-05-20T16:51:30Z

-----Original Message-----
From: 	Liz Gorinsky  
Sent:	Thursday, May 20, 2004 12:03 PM
To:	++Tor
Subject:	Title Change: Stemple

The formerly Untitled Fantasy Novel by Adam Stemple (HC 
8/05 0765311704, MM 0765350270) is now known as Singer 
of Souls. Please adjust your records accordingly.

- Liz

-----Original Message-----
From: 	Fiona Lee  
Sent:	Thursday, May 20, 2004 12:04 PM
To:	Liz Gorinsky
Subject:	RE: Title Change: Stemple

how emily of new moon this title is.

-----Original Message-----
From: 	Paul Stevens  
Sent:	Thursday, May 20, 2004 12:05 PM
To:	Liz Gorinsky
Subject:	RE: Title Change: Stemple

No. I refuse to conform!

--------------------------

Man. How lucky am I, to have such witty co-workers?

Why I’m really posting: I completely forgot to mention that we’re having a meeting for folks who want to volunteer at the Art Festival next Monday at 7:00. From the flyer:

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED...
to help staff this year’s MoCCA Art Festival and Harvey Awards Banquet (Saturday, June 26th & Sunday, June 27th at the Puck Building in NYC)

To find out more about how YOU can get involved, please attend our next VOLUNTEERS MEETING.

WHEN: Monday, May 24th at 7:00pm
WHERE: Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art
594 Broadway, Suite 401, NYC
By Subway: R,W to Prince St; B,D,F,V to B’way-Lafayette; or 6 to Bleecker-Lafayette
WHY: In addition to helping support the museum and its mission, event staff receive all sorts of swag and perks including: MoCCA ArtFest t-shirts &posters; free food & drink; special discounts; behind-the-scenes-access; the chance to hobnob with artists, writers, editors, and other comics & cartoon creators; invitation to the post-fest party; and much more!

For more info, email volunteers@moccany.org or call 212-254-3511

And since I went to way too much trouble making a web banner, and I’d like to make sure someone sees it:

(ph34r my l33t skillz)

Schwervon! on Saturday! Contact me for details.

"But, since she's a princess / There's hints of a prince / In the end."

2004-05-18T20:22:28Z

My weekend, two days removed: after finishing my first editorial letter, I was supposed to reward myself with the opportunity to sit down and write that theatre rant that's been festering in the back of my head since last week. Instead, most of Saturday was spent adamantly wanting to do nothing in particular. Okay, I cleaned the kitchen and did my laundry and sent some e-mails, but mostly I just succumbed to my desire to sit around and read my new, quasi-illegally obtained copies of Proof and Urinetown^[1]. The next day I went to MoCCA for my usual staffing gig, but instead of being productive, I spent at least two hours pacing around the museum, chatting with cmpriest. This mostly involved Cherie telling me cool ghost stories and explaining life in the South, me attempting not to succumb to my normal phone-related idiocy, and both of us being amused by the number of weird synchronicities in our lives (for example, the fact that we both get our corsets from the same Australian maker. Later on, this prompted me to revisit their site to engage in a little costume-lust, and become terribly pleased by the descriptions of their new "Gothic Shopping Tour[s], Corset part[ies and] Cemetery Tour[s]”). Cherie's had a good week, if the two mentions on Warren Ellis' diepunyhumans.com are any indication (the first prompted a Fed friend I hadn't spoken to in months to write to me in fanboyish glee, then Fast Fiction Friday put Cherie in the company of other fine writers such as the criminally charming literhottie Cory Doctorow).

All in all, said conversation left me pretty damn tempted to skip out on the beginning or end of WorldCon and fly out to DragonCon instead. All depends on whether I can scrounge up the plane fare and duck out of our Boston hotel room for a few days without anyone hating me. I'm amused to note that the DragonCon folks don't yet have a bio up for M. Ellis. I mean, it's not as if biographical information is that hard to come by, so I guess the tough part is coming up with precious lines like "Aside from making fanboys everywhere tremble with feelings they can't possibly understand, he has written and drawn more comics than you can fill a double-D brassiere with... so, stop on by and say hello to the comic book industry's King of Boobs."

Speaking of conventions, WisCon e-mailed me my final panel schedule last week. When I got the initial version about three weeks ago, I was either relieved or disappointed to see that they'd only put me on one panel. Then I get the version that “has gone to the printers”, and suddenly I'm on four. The "Square Pegs" panel is a bit eerily appropriate for me (nothing prepares you for a discussion on "why should geeky girls and women all be alike" like being the co-captain of the math and academic league teams, and the only chick taking computer science in your high school). Though I'm perplexed by my assignment to "Guilty Pleasures" panel--did they, like, go through people's websites specifically looking for lapsed English majors?--I can probably pull it off (does reading play scripts when you're supposed to be editing SF books count as a guilty pleasure?). The part that really scares me is the prospect of having to articulate my thoughts on dialogue on writing style on-the-fly. TNH is fond of saying that editors are some of the worst sufferers of imposter syndrome out there, and I'd wholeheartedly agree with her if I wasn't so sure that I actually am faking it.

So, about that theatre rant: for any of you New Yorkers who care at all about theatre or comedy, you've got less than a week to catch Engaged, "An Entirely Original Farcical Comedy in Three Acts" by William S. Gilbert (yes, that Gilbert) at Theatre For a New Audience. Try as I might to take my dorkiness to its logical extremes, I could never quite muster more than a passing appreciation for G&S operettas, but I appear to be a sucker for Gilbert’s solo work. The play is brilliant farce, the sort in which the best lines are uttered seven or eight times and you can guess almost everything that will occur within a few minutes of the play's start... yet Gilbert somehow manages to keep it from feeling remotely repetitive or predictable.

Engaged, well-synopsized by the line “Cheviot, who is a young man of large property, but extremely close-fisted, is cursed with a strangely amatory disposition [and] a habit of proposing marriage, as a matter of course, to every woman he meets,” is a pitch-perfect, frightfully modern working-through of Gilbert’s sentiments about the degradation of marriage into a commercial venture, particularly apt in these times when the institution has come under such intense scrutiny. Oscar Wilde had reportedly given Engaged much thought by the time he penned The Importance of Being Earnest 20 years later, and it shows: Engaged has exactly the sort of magic that Ernest never held for me. It’s also one of those shows that gets funnier the more you know about its historical context. Although most 18th century drama is notoriously cardboard, and consequently infrequently revived, I know a bit about conventions of the period's sentimental romances from discussions about Frank Norris' McTeague in an American lit class. The rest was filled in nicely by a great post-show symposium with the director (Doug Hughes), a Barnard lit professor (Patricia Denison), and moderator / ex-Voice theatre critic Jonathan Kalb. I'm clearly either a lifelong student or a graphomaniac, for as soon as Hughes commented that "Every cynic is a disappointed romantic,"^[2] I pulled out a pen and started taking notes.

Toward the end of the talkback, my father somehow steered the entire theatre into a discussion about the culture of theatre criticism in New York City. For a city with so much great theatre, New York sure has a lot of awful reviewers. And most of the ones who don’t suck can only be described as "batshit insane" (read: John Simon)^[3]. The thing is, most New Yorkers know this, so reviews don’t tend to make much of a difference... however, when The New York Times pan something, they tend to do an enormously effective job of it. Now, I’d never go so far as to imply that the Times would allow the financial clout of a production to influence their judgment. But I will say that it’s not uncommon for them to treat hype like a self-fulfilling prophecy and give great reviews to middleweight shows like The Producers, Hairspray, or Wicked. As Hughes pointed out, "It's as if the sheer expense and energy involved turns cheap art into something legitimate.”

Anyway, aside from mostly failing to impress me and being occasionally wrongheaded, I don’t have much beef with Ben Brantley. But in the few short months Margo Jefferson has been second-in-command, she’s already inspired theatre folks to verbize her name: namely, when a show is killed by a review that’s particularly ignorant of a production’s cultural or historic significance, it’s known as "getting Margoed". As Kalb put it, "If you can't recognize the conventions, you can't recognize when they're being inverted or subverted." And this... this burns me. Given the breadth of productions put on in New York in any given year, there's positively no excuse for anyone who’s been a professional for that long not to have a firm grasp of theatrical history, and even less excuse for the Times to let someone like that ruin other people’s shows.

On the up side: despite everyone's frequent claims that theatre is too expensive (it's not, if you know what you’re doing), Theatre for a New Audience blows that excuse away by offering $10 tickets for people 25 and under... and I'd bet that a significant percentage of you plunked down more than that in the past month to see movies you expected to be bad. If you're free any time before Sunday, I encourage you to check it out, thereby supporting live theatre, defeating abhorrent reviewing practices, and laughing yourself stupid in the process. Now, that's my kind of political statement.

[1] Speaking of Urinetown, I'm ridiculously psyched that someone has founded a New York branch of the Neo-Futurists so I can finally see Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind without going to Chicago. Ironically, word of this fact reached me at almost exactly the point when I realized I'd be swinging by Chicago on the way back from Wisconsin. However, whatever happens, I will definitely be seeing the Brooklyn production of Too Much Light at some point this summer, so let me know if you're up for that.

[2] Google indicates that that’s not an entirely original thought, but I’d never heard it before, and it’s one of the better six-word summaries of my life that I've heard, so I’m keeping it.

[3] Lest I get accused of being non-discriminately negative, I find myself agreeing with the (albeit sometimes scruffily written) reviews in Time Out New York more than anyone else's. Curiously, their recent article about how Caroline, or Change is doomed to fail despite its brilliance also claims The Producers and Hairspray as part of the reason why the stuff that's actually good gets so little attention. Sigh...

[4] ...link to Emily Lyn Brodsky, a pottymouth with a ukulele who was one of the openers for the MagFields at NYU. She isn’t exactly “good,” but there’s enough “something” about her that I’m practically addicted.

"Because I am a gentleman / Think of me as just your fan / Who remembers every dress you ever wore"

2004-05-07T04:58:18Z

Taking a momentary break from rereading 4&20 to tell you some non-lies about my day:

I wonder how one would go about starting a public service campaign to inform the world that (arguments about disparities in physical strength aside) chivalry is completely moronic? Like, to the guy that decided to mess with the perfectly effective alternate-feed through the subway exit this morning in order to insist that I go ahead of him: did you really think that would impress me? Even Miss Manners backs me up on this, so I clearly must be right. Now, to convince the rest of New York...

While I'm being a misanthrope, I might as well point out that my number one least favorite symptom of spring is probably the tons of totally gratuitous P.D.A.'s all the hell over the place. I gotta say, though, of the five or six couples with their arms around each other I saw on the way home from work, I almost actually... approved... of the guy with a girl in one arm and his skateboard in the other. Conclusion: I'm a dork. Or a pedophile. One of those.

Despite all the in-your-face tyranny-of-coupledom nonsense, Williamsburg is a really nice place in the spring. I've bragged to too many people to count about the fact that, instead of having any Starbucks anywhere, we've got about five great independent coffee shops. What's *really* too good to be true is the fact that one of the coffee shops between my apartment and the subway just converted its front room to a music store. Like, a good one, with impressive stock, sensible organization, and a great used section (especially for such a small place). I probably don't need to detail the perils of there being a good music store on my way home from work, but for today, after walking out with the new MagFields album and used copies of a B&S album and the Rough Trade AFNY comp (all relatively cheap), I have no complaints. I fear that rumors that the lyrics on i are not up to Stephin's accustomed brilliance are less exaggerated than I'd like, but... oh, it sure does sounds lovely.

Editorial catch-of-the-day: we're using the Nation quote, "Carroll is a magic realist who plunders our unconscious for profound emotional truths," on the back of our reissue of Jonathan Carroll's Sleeping in Flame. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line, someone transposed the word "profane" for the word "profound," and no one noticed until after the sales proof was printed. Okay, I know I don't put out fires for a living or anything, but I definitely saved someone's ass today.

Also, Cherie and Lantz and I made Locus for the first time this issue. According to dotsomething, I turned pink. I promise I will get over this maudlin excitement about every stage of the editorial process and start acting like a sensible adult... soon.

A scant few minutes ago, I pulled the trigger on this year's MoCCA Poster. I think the fact that ferian had no idea what the MoCCA Art Festival was until I plugged yesterday's Friends of Lulu event means that I am clearly not whining enough. So, yeah... I'm directing this two-day comic and cartoon art festival (with the Harvey Awards between) on June 26 and 27. It will be grand, but if I ever inadvertently ignore you or snap at you or seem completely insane between now and then, that's probably why. If you'd like to get involved with the festival's execution as a preventative measure, now is the time to let me know.

Finally, in yet more shameless self promotion, Pat and I will be doing our last college radio exam show ever on Sunday (damn her for graduating). Since we're dorks, it will be themed: we're calling it "Your Days Are Numbered", and every song will have a number in the title. "But we don't care about the music!" I hear you protest. "We just want to hear you make idiots of yourselves." Lucky for you, we'll be doing that in spades (Pat assures me she will be heavily besotted).

The specs: starting this coming Sunday night (5/9) at 10 p.m. EST, we'll be on the air for four hours. You can tune in by going to www.wbar.org or playing http://160.39.99.120:8000/listen.pls in your MP3 player (use Ctrl-L to bring up the "Open location" window in WinAmp). You can IM us at WBARRequest if you're having technical problems or want to make requests. And if you're on campus, by all means stop by the station and harass us.

Heh. Like I needed an excuse to play "Dance: 10, Looks: 3" on the radio.

"Well, well, what else is in store? / Got all this and more, before twenty-four"

2004-04-29T09:00:46Z

I'm letting myself take a few minutes to ignore all the work I'm supposed to be doing, in part because I sent out a single MoCCA-related e-mail yesterday that yielded a response positive enough to suddenly make me go from far-too-stressed to cautiously optimistic (this is kind of weird in light of a conversation I had with LK this weekend which he concluded, "And, you know, if you're expecting to have any fun during the festival you can forget it right now. You will be miserable the entire time. I know I was last year, even during the two hours I was hanging out with Art Spiegelman that should have been one of the highlights of my life. You'll notice a thousand things that could have been a hundred times better and people will rant at you about all the ways you screwed up... but it's okay, because everyone will have an amazing time, and the day after it's over you'll be able to look back at this incredible thing you did," and I replied, "If there's one thing I learned from three years of running CUSFS it's that you really have to be a masochist to enjoy volunteer work," but I guess I either just got over a hump, or there's something about crawling around on the floor of the Puck Building measuring the distance between support columns, and then taking a roundabout route up a hidden utility staircase leading to a half-built office suite, ducking through the centers of doors whose glass has not yet been installed, just so you can sneak a few floor measurements that you can't get from the appropriate floor because there's a food tasting in progress, that makes you feel really productive)... but mostly because it's nice to feel compelled to write, and nicer still to have some news that actually justifies the effort.

Which is: about a month ago, the contract request finally went in for the first book I acquired at Tor. Long story short ("yeah, long story short!"), I picked up a two-year-old submission off the slush pile, fell in love with it immediately, and contacted the author the next day, only to find that the book had been published a full year before that date by a small-press in Georgia. I flirted with a few of the author's other books, but postponed making a decision until her agent mentioned in passing that rights to the first book were once again available. Then the day I finally get the full e-text, Warren Ellis mentions on his blog that his friend's book is going out of print, hordes of his loyal minions go out and buy it, and it goes up to number two on amazon.com's horror list.

That's the point at which I began asking everyone around me at Tor (hopefully) just-shy-of-obnoxious quantities of questions, as I began the long and somewhat arduous task of learning how to buy a book. I emerged from the process with the rights to publish three books by the funny, talented, and gorgeous Cherie Priest (awhile ago, Shay and I were joking about how she'd only hire hot people to work at her production company, and I'd only buy books from hot authors. I didn't actually mean that—I mean, it's not like I'm superficial, or anything—but it looks like I'm off to an auspicious start). The first book in the series is a Victorian horror / Southern gothica / urban fantasy / mystery-ghost story called Four and Twenty Blackbirds (the link will take you to the previous edition's entry on amazon.com, where you can read some very favorable and surprisingly plausible-sounding customer reviews). Because I am lazy and because it will take some effort to come up with better summary copy than this, here's a short synopsis straight from the agent:

Although she was orphaned at birth, Eden Moore is never alone. Three dead women watch from the shadows, bound to protect her from harm. But in the woods a gunman waits, convinced that Eden is destined to follow her wicked great-grandfather—an African magician with the power to curse the living and raise the dead. Now Eden must decipher the secret of the ghostly trio before a new enemy more dangerous than the fanatical assassin destroys what is left of her family. She will sift through lies in a Georgian ante-bellum mansion and climb through the haunted ruins of a 19th century hospital, desperately seeking the truth that will save her beloved aunt from the curse that threatens her life.

What happens next: in the very near future, I sit down and talk with Cherie about how best to add 20,000-some-odd words to her book, to appease the sales force and reconceive the book from a standalone to the first of a series. And then we are going to start one mother of a quote campaign. This means that if you're the single auspiciously published author on my "Friend Of" list, or, really, are any public figure I have a reasonable excuse to send this book to, you'll probably be hearing from me pretty soon. The mere mortals among you will have to wait until September 2005 or thereabouts. Oh, and hey, word to the wise: no matter how much we mock the slush pile, that's where I found both 4&20 and the next book I intend to buy, so either I'm insanely lucky, or there are some pretty clever people out there without agents (I suspect a little of both).

Although it's clear that age means less at Tor than it does most anywhere—the ridiculously cool alg did it quicker and more competently than I—there is something pretty satisfying about becoming a book editor (in deed, if not in title) before I hit 22.5. I'm still convinced that I've been living in some dream world where it's not completely ludicrous that people get paid to make books, and some day I will wake up to find that I've actually been programming in a basement for the past 10 months. For now, though... life is pretty grand.

A brief interlude, wherein I post some dialogue from an abrupt game of 1,000 Blank White Cards played at the CUSFS banquet last Saturday:

Julian: "Okay... I need to go. But before I do, I'm going to take this opportunity to play the 'Is Liz Goth?' card. So we need to take a vote. Who here thinks that Liz is Goth?"
(Everyone but Liz raises his or her hand.)
Liz: "Wait! You can't call a vote on me! I have the 'Leather Pants Exception' card."
Carrie: "Ha! But I'm going to counter that with the 'Liz is Wrong' card!"
Daniel: "Do you still think you're not goth, Liz?"
Liz: "Well, if it's a given that I'm going to be 'wrong', then, duh… of course I'm goth!"
Daniel: "Ha! Take that!" [plays the "Liz is Right" card]
Liz: "Awwww....!"
Julian, getting up to leave: "And, honestly, do we even need to consider the sheer absurdity of trying to counter an 'Is Liz Goth?' card with a 'Leather Pants Exception'? I mean, really..."

(If I've never played 1KBWC with you and this exchange is not enough to convince you that you've been missing out, please remind me to force you into a game sometime. It is simply the game for people who have always wanted to be improv comedians but are really only cool enough to play card games.)

In case you'd begun to worry that I was anything other than predictable, I'm going to again pretend that you guys actually care about my musical obsessions. Most recently, I've stumbled into this trend (which had better freakin' continue!) of going to concerts with Miss moderntime. Last Thursday was the first Magnetic Fields concert in the age of i. It was predictably awesome, enough to really make me wonder whether I should go to both Town Hall shows instead of just the second. But since I am too poor and too busy, I've been consoling myself with the fact that they'll prooobably do pretty similar sets on both nights like they did at BAM and at the Future Bible Shows at the Merc (and, hey, Anna, did I mention that LD was their second opener?). Then on Monday, Fi and Moshe cajoled me into seeing Jason Robert Brown (and friends) play a two hour set at a jazz club on 58th. He is a charmer, that one, and songs from The Last 5 Years never fail to make me swoon. If the very notion of finding a "nice Jewish boy" was not anathema to my heathen heart, I'm sure I'd be harboring a major crush by now.

Finally, I'll close with a quick rundown of my life for the next ten days: Thursday night, I'll be volunteering at a MoCCA party for the Ted Rall-edited Attitudes 2: The New Subversive Alternative Cartoonists. Pat has decided she's cool enough to merit a 4-day birthday celebration, but since I'd probably want to see Schwervon! and Mary Prankster and take advantage of our last opportunity to do a WBAR exam show anyway, I'm not going to disabuse her of that notion. Still tentative: an AFNY show at the bar two blocks from my house on Friday (it's almost like I'm not stalking Toby Goodshank!), Jeff Lewis on 5/1 and 5/6, the High Line on 5/4, and/or Patti Smith at the Warsaw on 5/1-5/4. As always, feel free to influence me toward or away from any event that so compels you.

"In an age before Atlantis rose, an age rife with sorcery and violence…"

2004-04-10T04:00:37Z

It's Friday afternoon,^[0] and my boss just left to go to church. The cynical part of me wonders when we atheists get to take off of work early, but I take significant recompense in all that time I get to spend being selfish instead of trying to please a higher power. In solidarity with my own cause, I've decided to slack off of opening submission envelopes for awhile and finish editing the LJ entry I started writing... oh, 2.5 weeks ago. I have no excuse, save that it's been really busy—I just spent the week shepherding my editors through one-on-ones^[1] and finally finished writing that MAF department report that I've been giving up a lot of sleep for (as goes the joke oft-repeated around the MoCCA gallery when we're giddy from prepping for a show until the wee hours of the morning: "300% raises for everyone!")—and I haven't been motivated enough to post to counteract that.

I also had to prep a presentation for the first(ish) book I'm serving as the editor on, an omnibus comprising the first two books of Frank Frazetta's Death Dealer series (based on the Frazetta painting, but actually written by some other guy). And by "prep", I mean, "read half of the reviews on amazon.com aloud to Pat". Don't get me wrong... the series has an impressive number of very favorable reviews, but I can't help but be amused by lines like:

This book is one of the great ones. Just like a Frazetta painting. Lusty, naked women that glisten beneath a primordial sun. Ravening, bloody battles. Demons. Barbaric sorcery. The Death Dealer books are cut from the cloth of Conan, and I'm talking about Robert E. Howard's Conan... As long as you appreciate naked girls, two-fisted honor and axe-heavy battles, you'll love the Prisoner of the Horned Helmet….

Oh! By the way, these books are probably the MOST VIOLENT books you will ever read. for example: Gath, in one of the books, rips off someone's arm, and BEATS HIM TO DEATH WITH IT! then beats the assailants friends with it too. he carries around a huge axe, and the art on the covers is GREAT! this is the only book series I have ever read, that the cover was not only really cool, but the cover ACTUALLY HAPPENS IN THE BOOK!!! The second you see the art on the cover of "Prisoner of the Horned Helmet" you will want to read the book more that anything! trust me... order this book! it isn't expensive, and it is REALLY WORTH THE MONEY!

So, this will be an interesting experience. I should have some (proper) good news on the editorial front to report here very soon, but I can't say anything just yet, unless you bug me personally.

The big event of last month, the one that drove me to my keyboard in the first place, was that I was making pasta for dinner when I set my hair on fire. Only a little bit, in the front, but it was enough for me to resolve that I should never do that again. Who knew burnt human hair could smell that bad?

Then, after that, I put on a bikini, praised Cthulhu, and wrestled in fake blood on the steps of my alma mater.

Heh. Okay... I'd love to be coy about that last bit, but my life is just not cool enough that I can brush something like that off. The story starts at a Cthulhu Week^[2] planning meeting my freshman year. In the sort of scenario only explicable when a group of geeks get together in a room, we were throwing out possible event ideas, with the intent of running a fake postering campaign for Cthulhoid events that weren't actually happening, when Eugene suggested "Coed Naked Blood Wrestling." We were stunned. It was a brilliant idea... and totally unfeasible for a group with ten members, most of them male.

Three years later, I'm in much the same position, except that now I'm about to graduate and I'm habitually getting reckless with CUSFS' reputation (witness: Stoner Night, Male Objectification Night). So when we started planning for Cthulhu Week, I was like, "Hey, guys, this is a terrible idea, but why don't we actually do Coed Naked Blood Wrestling this year?" And so we did. It was a logistical nightmare, but probably the only event I will ever run that inspires random strangers to rip their clothes off in front of a throng of people standing outside a campus administration building. In other words, so worth it.

Anyway, it was awesome enough that the non-graduating officers unanimously decided to make it a tradition. Furthermore, Julian kept insisting that she could beat me in a presidential deathmatch, to the extent that I had to wrestle her and show her how blatantly wrong she was. Despite my confidence that I could slaughter Julian, I was incredibly nervous once the event started, as people remembering how cool it was last year and bringing their friends, plus an influx of frat boys and passing perverts, meant that there were a hell of a lot of people there and a hell of a lot of cameras. If you look at one picture, it must be this one (there are full sets here and here, and there must be others out there... anyone have any links?). Personally, I'm notoriously unphotogenic, and being freakishly pale and singularly unimpressive in a bikini hardly helped things... but you can take a look if you promise not to hold that against me.^[3]

Man. Who knew it was so easy to get college students to take their clothes off? But, hey, kids: since I clearly can't go an entire post without considering the philosophical implications of something... although Blood Wrestling might have started out as an excuse for the public airing of nubile young flesh, it's taken on a purpose far more noble than that, which is that geeks—especially geeks at a city school with a stunted social scene—need to feel sexy too, and having a bunch of people cheer for you while you take your clothes off is certainly one way to go about it. Secondly, there are definitely not enough well-publicized pagan rituals taking place on college campuses these days. Not buying it? Whatever. Just check out how much fun everyone is having in the photographs, and tell me it doesn't look like we're doing the world some good.

In completely unrelated news, after a brief stint where I could think about nothing but theatre, I've developed a sudden, dangerous habit for antifolk compilations (and shows: Kimya Loves Me!). As in, two weeks ago I caved and ordered the first issue of Anti-Up Magazine. I got it on Friday, and by Sunday I'd read the entire thing and listened to the CD about seven times. Of course, my only recourse was to get a subscription (#2 got here last week), and then Toby sent me the Unicornsounds and Luv-A-Lot compilations this past Monday. In case you need some reassurance that I haven't forgotten that there's a world out there beyond antifolk, I also recently saw Thea Gilmore, Libbie Schrader, and... Rock 'n' Rollerskating! (Beyond my wildest dreams, incidentally. So going back.)

Peace out, y'all... I have another band to see. :)

[0] Or was, when I started revising this.

[1] Tor's name for the pre-launch meeting, wherein the editors first present their new season of books to the in-house sales/marketing/publicity/production staff. So called because this meeting used to pit a single editor against a single, all-powerful representative from the other departments.

[2] The quick and dirty explanation of Cthulhu Week, if you're too lazy to follow the link: years ago, a group of people at SUNY Binghamton formed a group called the Campus Crusade for Cthulhu, presumably out of annoyance with an existing prostelytization-bent organization with a similar moniker. Their aims: to serve Cthulhu—one of the Great Old Ones sleeping beneath the ocean—until such time that the Stars are Right and he (it?) and his brethren can awaken and resume their control over the earth (see the stories of H.P. Lovecraft for further proof-of-concept). Our aims: if we start appeasing Cthulhu now, perhaps when the end times come, he will eat us last. In the meantime, we tender him our freshest virgins and our finest displays of athleticism (the mock-blood serving as a visual precursor to the gory spectacle that will surely await once Cthulhu's time comes due).

[3] Speaking of photographs, I've thus far neglected to post links to pictures of the Pirate Parade. Initial research revealed these and these (though the first guy's head count is clearly way off).

"...idiotic arpeggios of self-approbation..."

2004-03-11T04:07:32Z

"But shall we get off the very boring subject of me? I'm not interesting. You can sum me up in about ten words: a former student of English literature who—who—who went downhill from there! Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha! Oh for God's sake...."

This entry is primarily about the Wallace Shawn reading I attended last night. So if you don't want to see me acting like a sycophantic, pseudo-intellectual fangirl, you can skip to the list of dates at the end... which you probably won't care about, either. :)

Anyway. I'm loathe to underestimate the cultural savvyness of my "readership" by contextualizing a name you already know, but the opening of a recent Time Out New York interview was so apt I want to keep it here for perpetuity anyway: "Wallace Shawn has two sets of fans, and chances are they don't overlap much. First, there are the moviegoers who see him as a spectral butler in The Haunted Mansion and whisper with relish, "There's the 'Inconceivable' guy from [The] Princess Bride!" Then there are others who see him shrugging and mugging in the same flicks and hang their heads in despair, wondering why America's most dangerous playwright has to take silly roles when his work ought to be presented at Lincoln Center."

Don't get me wrong... I'm seriously in love with much of Shawn's film work—especially Vizzini and Rex from Toy Story—but a depressingly small segment of people know that he's also one of our weirdest, most brilliant living playwrights. Or, as he put it in an interview with the New York Times Magazine, "My plays have been strange from the beginning, and they never got unstrange." Aunt Dan and Lemon (still playing off-Broadway) provoked a stronger response from me than almost anything in any media ever does: once I got over the initial dazzling effect of the glut of hot girls peopling Shawn's world, I realized that the themes that had been discussed in the play were striking some chord with nearly every thought and discussion I had for the next month.

When I first read The Designated Mourner, it didn't draw nearly as visceral a reaction from me. What I saw last night—a one-night quasi-revival of the production directed by Andre Gregory and featuring Larry Pine, Deborah Eisenberg, and Shawn himself (it sold out a 30-seat gentlemen's club in Wall Street every day of its 2000 run)—made it all too clear what the right production can do to illuminate a text. It's a little alarming, to start, how much more terrifying political plays get when they're performed in a roomful of people who are already scared witless by their own government. And since this is a play about the demise of the intelligencia; the danger of dichotomy; the relative benefits and comforts of high versus low culture; the fact that it is occasionally our duty not to be nice; and the sheer, terrible truth that sometimes the only way to overcome it all is to stop thinking about it... you can imagine its effect on the sort of people who would give up their evening to watch actors delivering three hours of monologues on a nearly bare stage.

You can supposedly hear a recording of the whole thing here, or you can borrow the script from me, either of which I strongly recommend if you enjoy being devastated. Combine with Patrick Marber's Closer for a surefire recipe for despair.

The other thing on my agenda is to run down a list of the events that are currently on my social calendar. This is so you can tell me if you want to accompany me, and because I want to make sure I have them all in one place and I'm not forgetting to mention any of them to someone who would resent me for neglecting them. And so you can stalk me, of course. Anything up until the end of the year is fair game for this, so let me know if I'm not aware of something I really should have left room for…

3/10: Yeardly Smith: More (which was relevant back when I thought I'd finish this entry in time to post it before the show)
3/11: Valhalla (NYTW)
3/12: Karyn Kuhl at Arlene Grocery (?)
3/13: Chapelle's Show taping, courtesy of my super-cool roomie who works there (tentative)
3/14: King Lear at Lincoln Center
3/19-21: One day of Lunacon (for Tor). Possibly catching Ex-Mex at Downtime on the 20th if there's no conflict
3/24: Torie tells me I have to see Gutenberg! The Musical!, and I think this is the only day I can make it
3/25: MoCCA Event: Superman on the Couch
3/26: CUSFS and the Fed will be hosting the second annual Coed Naked Blood Wrestling match as part of CUSFS's celebration of Cthulhu Week. Looks like I... gasp!... may actually be wrestling this time, so you could theoretically show up and make me even more self-conscious I'll be already. Why the hell am I publicizing this? I have no idea.
3/31: Thea Gilmore, who I rant about all the freakin' time, is playing Joe's Pub (7:30, $15) on her first US tour in years. But that night is also CUSFS' first Virgin Sacrifice since my freshman year. My only hope is that the sacrifice is late enough that I can make both.
4/3: Jeff Lewis at Bluestockings
4/8: Libbie Schrader (formerly of Think of England) at the Sidewalk
4/9: Fed Bash
4/15: Kimya Dawson at the Knitting Factory
4/17: Karyn Kuhl at CB's Gallery
4/22: Magnetic Fields at NYU's Kimmel Center
4/24: CUSFS Banquet. Plus, I still plan to put together a proposal for a 24-hour Comic Book Day event at the MoCCA gallery. I'd better get on that soon if I actually want it to happen.
5/1: Jeff Lewis at the Sidewalk
5/6: Jeff Lewis at the Bowery Poetry Club
5/8 or 5/15: Engaged at TFANA
5/13: MoCCA Event: Kyle Baker
5/28-31: Wiscon (for Tor), possibly followed by vacation in Chicago
6/6: Tony Awards
6/26-27: MAF / Harveys Weekend
9/2-6: Noreascon, a.k.a. WorldCon '04. It's in Boston this year, so east coast geeks haven't much excuse not to check it out. And, um, Eugene? We should really figure out the hotel room thang.
10/5: Official opening of MoCCA's SoHo gallery (tentative). This day is also notable for another trivial reason, but I'll let you guess what that is. :)
11/5: Opening night of The Incredibles
11/18: Magnetic Fields at Carnegie Hall

Plus, there are tons more shows I think I'd like to make time for before they close, among them: Aunt Dan and Lemon (again), Sea of Tranquility, Roulette, Frozen, Bug (on comp?); Gypsy, I Am My Own Wife, Wonderful Town (rush?); Assassins (ushering?); Avenue Q (lottery?); and Jumpers (whatever it takes). Let me know if you want me to keep you apprised on my plans for any of these shows in particular.

Avast, ye land lubber! Read this smartly.

2004-03-02T08:04:07Z

I feel kinda clichéd rockin' the "What I Did Today" entries, but it's not every day that one attends a Pirate Parade.

When I got word of this, my first reaction was, "No freakin' way," and my second was, "That is clearly the coolest thing ever." The only fact I know about the event is that, for the second year in a row, an unidentified group of scurvy rogues spread word that all like-minded individuals should gather at St. Mark's Church at 4:00 on Sunday for the beginning of a pirate parade. I had no idea what I was getting into, but I couldn't not go and watch. For the first half hour or so, I stood around with my friends, and watched other, more socialized pirates singing sea shanties, brandishing fake swords, dancing jigs, and throwing around their (candy) booty. After awhile, when the crowd started to get a little land-weary, somebody finally incited the drum band to start moving, and we all followed suit.

I dunno if you can imagine what it looks like when a crowd of 150 teens and twentysomethings, most in some form of pirate costume, takes to the streets... but I'd certainly never seen anything like it. Our party was rounded out by two ships (one of them constructed of cardboard, and worn by a girl atop a bicycle; the other a souped-up rolling dumpster), a dozen or so people with drums, tons of skull-and-crossbone flags, a pirate lass hitting passing cars with her stuffed fish, and one guy making elaborate formations in the air by swinging around chains with flaming balls on the ends. Every so often, someone would start a call-and response chant (such as: "Give me an R!" "Arrr!" "Give me an R!" "Arrr!" "Give me an R!" "Arrr!" "What does that spell?" "ARRRR!" and, approximately, "The pirate's life is the life for me! It's time for rum and sodomy!"). There was also a fair bit of anti-Bush chanting. I'm normally all for that, but I mildly resented the politicization of this particular event—I mean, couldn't we all gather together in pirate-y camaraderie without it being diluted by an ulterior motive? I guess it was inevitable, though.

The best explanation anyone would give us of where we were headed was, "To the sea!", so our chaotic procession was guided by this awesome Critical Mass-like group decision-making process. The route started down Second Avenue, proceeding in and out of traffic according to whim. Pretty much everyone we passed stopped and stared, and a disconcerting percentage whipped out cameras and camcorders (yeah, apparently even New Yorkers get surprised). The nice thing was that, aside from one jerk who gunned his engine at us, pretty much all of the drivers and pedestrians on our route were totally digging us, even drawing supportive "Arrr!"s from a bunch of spectators.

Have I mentioned how much I love New York?

Things went remarkably smoothly for the first half hour or so, until some of the PTB noticed our existence, and the parade became a big game of "evade the cops": a police car pulls up in front of us, we turn the corner and go the other way; process repeats (my friend Zeke, trying to get me to leave the parade and go see Holy Mountain: "C'mon, this is clearly only leading to beatings and tear-gas". Me: "But I've never been beaten or tear-gassed!"). No one could tell whether the cops were actually trying to stop us, or just keep us out of traffic. Either way, they didn't seem to come to any organizational consensus until we had nearly reached the East River. I got a little nervous when the parade started up an FDR Drive overpass in the vicinity of an NYPD van and at least three police cars (my pirate intuition kept telling me that it would be way too easy to let everyone mount the bridge and then cordon it off at both ends), but the cops just kept watching us. The fact that they weren't saying anything made me increasingly uncomfortable, but eventually a few policemen got out of their cars and walked along with us until we reached our destination, apparently having told some of the pack leaders that they wouldn't impede our progress so long as we stayed on side streets and followed traffic signals. I gotta say, I had a lot more respect for the NYPD on Sunday than most of the past few years, when I've pretty much just seen them standing on subway platforms holding semiautomatic weapons and picking up girls.

All in all, we wound up walking a bit less than two hours in total, taking a circuitous route between 2nd at 10th, and Rivington (or Grand) and a block or two from the East River. We eventually meandered back up to St. Mark's Church, at which point the pack commenced merrymaking. I stood around and watched for awhile, but I'm pretty much incapable of starting conversations with strangers, so eventually I just gave up and went home.

(One thing I've resolved is that I really have to acquire the makings of a better pirate costume than I've currently got. I mostly just need bloomers and some scarves, but, damn, I could make a good sea wench if I got my act together.)

Ironically, not ten feet from the church, I was stopped by a street book dealer and his friend. They first asked me what had been going on ("We just got back from a pirate parade." "Are you a pirate?" "Um... I'm with the pirates."), then started querying me about why so many people are so fond of pirates. My gut answer was, "Pirates are cool!", which is just a shade more respectable than, say, "Well, Johnny's a pirate, and I'd follow him anywhere." But something made me want to give these two curbside intellectuals a decent argument for our bizarre admiration of what is, admittedly, not the nicest group of people. I thought out loud for a while, and eventually concluded that piracy is the new anarchy. Then I got an impromptu lecture about the history of piracy, anarchy, German nihilism, and populism, and I wound up explaining my thoughts on the value of parading for nonpolitical purposes (I likened our march to the celebration of St. Patty's Day, since perhaps the biggest rift between the two is the alcoholic beverage of choice) and the weaknesses behind the modern-day publishing machine. It was one of those awesome impromptu experiences that doesn't happen to me nearly enough. I'm not sure whether or not it was tarnished by the fact that the bookseller tried to get my contact info when I finally bid him goodbye.

Later that night, I cooked West African Chicken Stew while Shay ran back and forth between watching the Academy Awards and conversing on AIM. It's been a few years since I've seen any of the Oscars, but the Blake Edwards tribute and the live performance of "Belleville Rendez-vous" were awesome enough to make me wonder what I've been missing. Unfortunately, much of my lack of faith in the Academy was quickly restored when they gave best song to LOTR. Honestly, guys, aren't you taking this "sweep" thing a little too far?

In general, life is beautiful. In the past ten days I: saw Dufus, and the impressively awful acts before and after them, at the Mercury Lounge; watched all of the Oscar-nominated live and animated shorts on the big screen; saw one of my favorite professors at Columbia give a talkback after a performance of Pericles at BAM; attended the first event in MoCCA's new space, along with about 200 other people and two Segways; celebrated a college friend's sixth birthday; watched Jeff Lewis play a ten-minute song consisting entirely of backwards versions of subway announcements and phone hold messages; and went to the Art Expo at the Javitz to stalk someone.

Oh, and Shay would like me to mention that when we saw Regina Spektor at the Knitting Factory last January, SHE TOO was there, and SHE TOO fell in love with Regina and bought her CD. Would any of the other five people I was with that night like to register complaints about their exclusion?

Content! Content!

2004-02-27T04:08:35Z

Sorry I haven't been around here much over the past few days. I've been busy. But over on my real website, I just posted a super-long entry about the past ten months of my life and my favorite reads, listens, and watches of 2003. I don't think there's anything especially controversial about it, but you're free to comment over here if you'd like.

Now that I've gotten the "impending expiration of my computer account" e-mail from Idaemon, I guess my next project is to clean out my inbox (only 5,245 messages, at the moment) and migrate my website and my e-mail over to my new ISP. For a while I thought that graduating as an AcIS staff member would allow me to slip under the wire, but I think instead it just exempted me from the trimonthly e-mails everyone was supposed to be getting to warn them about the disruption months in advance. I am not looking forward to this. So far I don't know if Earthlink has CGI support or if I've got shell access (pine has become one of my most trusted companions over the past 4+ years), but I'm dubious about both. And, yeah, I'm investigating Panix and suchlike, but I don't know if I'm ready to plunk down the cash just yet. We shall see.

Dear Manuscript,

2004-02-18T23:25:16Z

It has just occurred to me that if anyone ever looks at my submission log, neither "used attractive font on cover letter" nor "shares first name and last initial with past paramour" will look like very defensible reasons for moving you into the pile of manuscripts I need to evaluate by myself. Therefore, into the general slush you go.

Happy Saturday

2004-02-15T21:56:33Z

I dunno about you guys, but I had a pretty freakin' awesome February 14th. We started the day with an anti-VD cookie swap. In case any of you had been lauding my cleverness, I should reiterate that the idea was stolen wholesale from an entry in kimya_dawson_'s LiveJournal). But we made it ours, damn it. I got to spend the morning in the vicinity of five batches of cookies, a gallon of milk, and a gaggle of geeky Barnard girls, and I sure as hell hope we get to do it again someday. Since I was hanging out with Kate, the current divine savior of my once-college paper, and it was the Saturday of layout weekend, I used her as an excuse to bring leftover cookies to the Fed office and say hi to the people there. Then I spent some time in Butler Library, working on MoCCA stuff at a free terminal. The proceedings triggered a few fond, deeply-felt pangs of longing for my "bright college days," but at least I know intellectually that the real world is pretty great too. As evening approached, I discovered that Eugene was planning to head downtown at about the same time as I was, so we caught dinner at Koronet's and then caught the train together.

The plan for that evening was to see Regina Spektor play at Tonic. The opening act ended up being one of the single greatest one-trick acts I've ever seen: namely, Michael Leviton, who sings nautical sea ditties while accompanying himself on a ukulele. Leviton is not only an impressive punster, but had entirely the proper spirit for a V-Day show: "Can you make Valentine's Day resolutions? Because I should really resolve to be less hateful; less enthusiastic about saying terrible things about other people." Then, later on, after singing a song about the dumbest girl in NYC: "Damn, I broke my resolution already, didn't I?"

Tonic was packed by the time Regina took the stage. She's been getting a lot of media attention lately, in part because she deserves it, but mostly because she came from out of nowhere (a.k.a. the Sidewalk Cafe) to open for the Strokes. I first saw her last January at the fated antifolk show at the Knitting Factory that also introduced me to Double Deuce and concluded with a great Kimya set. I feel guilty riding this particular descriptive line into cliché, but it still feels pretty apt to me, so: Regina Spektor is, basically, Tori Amos before she lost her sense of humor. She makes silly noises and sings about pickles and mermaids and the baby Jesus, and is one of those artists who makes me want to give her a hug after every song. She even conducted a raffle with our ticket stubs that enabled six lucky people to walk home with prizes like a 38DD bra with boxes of heart-shaped chocolates hand-crafted into each breast. She's a doll. And Russian!

After the show, I walked a scant few blocks to Matt H.'s new LES studio and hung out with friends from the Fed until the fairly wee hours. I love those guys, and my selfish self is really glad that Matt's back from Cali, because having one more hysterically funny person in my life ain't never gonna hurt me.

I guess I should grudgingly point out that this is the first year I noticed that for such a putrid, indefensible occasion, VD really does inspire a lot of great events around the city. Aside from what I ended up doing, there was also a Valentine's Day Rock 'n' Rollerskate at OfficeOps, a "community arts and culture center" in East Williamsburg. It appears to sometimes function as a large indoor rink where they rent out skates, put some bands in a cage in the center, and everyone, presumably, goes wild. And, man, I haven't skated in a rink since I was 13 and my mom used to drive me and my friends to The Rink in Montvale, so I really hope I can go to the next one of these.

The other thing I noticed was that the Quirkyalones, "a community of independent thought on singledom, life, and love," have rechristened February 14th "International Quirkyalone Day". I was intrigued, so I checked out their website (temporarily down because they hit their bandwith cap, but hopefully back up soon) and was horrified to find myself vehemently agreeing with pretty much everything it said. As a matter of course, I tend to be pretty resistant to movements and ideologies (for myself, I mean; I have no problem with my friends buying into whatever cultish notions that grab their fancy), but I had an awful time not feeling like this website was speaking directly to me. I think the line that clinched it was at the bottom of their "Additional Diagnostic Signs (to figuring out whether you're a Quirkyalone)" page, where they ask whether you "[p]ossess a talent at deconstructing love songs equal only to your vulnerability to them". So, um, I'm thinking of buying the book. I probably should be more ashamed of this than I am, but, hey... sometimes a girl really needs someone to tell her she's not a freak.

Back-pedaling

2004-02-14T03:00:55Z

Okay, so I lied.

The thing is, on a near-constant basis, my brain comes up with stupid little newsflashes that amuse the heck out of me. I figure that one day I might want to look back on these and laugh at my folly, but of course I can never post them on my web page because my web page is usually massively overdue for a big, long entry about everything I've done with my life for the past eight months. So I don't. Instead, I end up using them for away messages, or pasting them in text files, and if you're not AIM-stalking me during that exact instant, you end up "missing out".

So, you win. I'm going to start using LiveJournal instead. In fact, my conversion is so complete that I bet I'll even be making some "friends only" entries, like if I need to say something particularly scandalous about an unsuspecting bad author (in other words, if you're reading this anonymously, you might wind up under the mistaken impression that I'm not a terrible person).

On the agenda for tonight (Or, Why I Decided To Be Lame And Head Home Instead of Going to the Karyn Kühl Concert): making chocolate peanut butter bars for tomorrow's Anti-VD Cookie Swap (contact me if you're plan-less and haven't heard about this yet) and attempting to shrink the gap between where the MoCCA website is and where it's supposed to be. But first things first: I finally brought my rollerblades home from the office, and this seems like a glorious night to try to train myself out of being a wuss about speed, an unfortunate habit I picked up after spending a few months skating on sidewalks and dodging pedestrians and red lights every few seconds. I think I'll start by skating down to the W'burg Bridge, going up the insanely steep south on-ramp (assuming the south side is still open) and making myself go down it without braking constantly.

Oh, and before you mock me for this, please remember... I resisted posting here for over a year. At least give me credit for dedicated stubbornness. :)

mistressliz @ 2002-12-06T21:48:00

2002-12-07T03:07:52Z

Right. Please know that I will never, ever, actually use this as a journal. Any and all real content goes straight to http://mistressliz.cjb.net. But I'd like a friends list, and I wouldn't mind commenting eventually, so here I am.