Monthly Archives: April 2003

Today, the gay cheerleading squad cheered for the New York Sharks, one of 21 teams in the Independent Women’s Football League. They were playing the Montréal Blitz.

This meant that you had a bunch of fags jumping up and down waving pom-poms and a bunch of dykes in football helmets tackling each other. Plus, none of the fags had any idea what was going on in the game, so every once in a while we would start cheering “D-D-D-Defense,” for example, and then have to stop and figure out if the Sharks were actually playing defense or offense at the moment. Eventually we gave up trying to figure the game out and just jumped up and down and looked pretty and got ice cream from the ice cream truck.

And the Sharks won.

Go Sharks go!

Pros of going to the third step aerobics class you’ve ever been to in your life:

1. You will get exercise.
2. You can pretend without too much guilt that it’s the first step aerobics class you’ve ever been to in your life, and ask the really cute guy who’s also taking the class for tips.

Cons of going to the third step aerobics class you’ve ever been to in your life:

1. You will get exercise.
2. When you seize the opportunity to position yourself right behind the cute guy, you won’t realize that your complete inability to do any of the moves will make him think you are a total loser.

Another pro:

1. He will cruise you in the steam room.

Another con:

1. Somehow you will lose track of him in between the steam room and getting out of the shower, thereby obligating yourself to go to every single step class they have in the coming week, including the one Saturday morning at 9:00, in hopes that he will show up again.

At least I’ll be really fit.

Last night, I saw A Year With Frog and Toad. Not only did I have a great time at the show, but I also now have a new theme song for my life:

Eating cookies, eating cookies,
I’m so happy eating cookies.
Cookies, cookies, cookies I adore.
Cookies, cookies, cookies, cookies,
I go kooky eating cookies.
Cookies, cookies, cookies—let’s have more!

Because, let’s face it, is there any problem so bad that a batch of really good homemade chocolate chip cookies can’t fix it?

And I make some damn good homemade chocolate chip cookies.

Today, I got a phone call from a casting director named E.R. asking me to audition for a Columbia film student’s thesis project.

I wouldn’t find this so unusual except for the fact that the one and only time I have appeared on screen was at the tender age of five, in a commercial for the local chapter of the ASPCA. They took me through the pound and asked me to pick out some dogs I wanted to play with for the commercial. At the time, I was about one inch tall and absolutely terrified of dogs, so I picked all the dogs that were both tiny and asleep. The ASPCA people, figuring rightly that a commercial featuring me surrounded by dogs in comas wouldn’t really further their cause, ignored my selections and found the four biggest, rowdiest dogs in the place. Then they led me to a tree stump, where I sat, paralyzed with fear, while the four dogs frolicked around me. The ASPCA people kept telling me to play with the dogs, but I really thought that if I attempted this I would die. Luckily, the camera was far enough away that the grimace of agony frozen on my face could pass, in those pre-cable-enhanced-reception days, for joy and happiness. Nevertheless, this experience put an end to any dreams I might have harbored of a lucrative career as a child actor, or, indeed, an actor of any sort. I appeared in various dramatic productions in college and am currently performing in my own show (which opened quite successfully last night, thank you), but the screen has not been a part of my dreams for over 25 years.

So imagine my surprise when I got a phone call today asking me to come in and audition for this film. I was completely baffled—why would somebody I didn’t know from Adam (well, Eve, to be precise) want me to be in a movie?

The mystery was partially cleared up when E.R. told me who’d given her my name and what the part was. A cousin of mine is a very successful casting director in Hollywood—she cast, among other things, The Amazing Spider-Man (in production), Pretty Woman, Witness, On Golden Pond, and the original Star Wars—and is working at the moment in a New York casting office. She overheard E.R. talking about needing to find somebody to play a drag queen for free in a student film, and said, “Oh, you should call my cousin Faustus.”

The thing is, she’s never met me.

What stories could possibly be circulating about me in my non-nuclear family that my cousin who cast Star Wars thought instantly of me for the part of a drag queen?

As long as nobody talks to the tabloids when I win my best actor Oscar, I figure I’ll be okay.

My father is coming to my show tonight. He is a brave man, but I’m not sure even his monumental courage will be up to the challenge of hearing me sing about going down on Ricky Martin.

Thank God I at least cut the song about rimming.

When I was eleven, my friends and I made Gabe Bluestein cry by convincing him that his parents were going to give him a prune cake for his birthday.

I feel that whatever miseries I suffer in my life today are a just punishment for this.

Tonight I went to see The Core with my friend D.R.

Aaron Eckhart said “nucular.”

Twice.

I don’t know how I’m going to break it to him, but the wedding is off.

I’m terrified that I’m losing my edge.

As I begin to feel better about myself and my life, I’m finding it more difficult to be amusingly caustic and bitter on this blog. Sure, I still post little barbs of misery, but somehow my heart just hasn’t been in them lately. And since reading posts about my fabulous new haircut or how I actually spent three hours without worrying would cause any reasonably normal person to expire of boredom, I’m at something of a loss. I mean, I could start writing such posts and become so dull that my readership would disappear utterly, which would send me in turn into a spiral of depression and despair, which would put me in a position to start being funny and interesting again, but somehow I imagine there’s got to be a better solution than that.

Though, of course, I’ll have my fabulous new haircut to console me, so maybe I should give it a shot.

Confidential to Amanda: Thank you both for your comment and for the delicacy with which you proffered it. I have rectified the situation. I deleted the comment so as not to leave any evidence behind, but know that I appreciated it.

Okay, so you know when you’re good friends with a guy, but really you’re in love with him, but he’s not in love with you, and he says, “I’ll give you a call tonight,” and you get home and find out they’ve turned your electricity off because you forgot to pay your bill, and so your answering machine isn’t working, so you can’t leave your apartment because what if he calls while you’re gone and you get back and you have no way of knowing if he called or not, and you can’t *69 him because maybe somebody else called after him while you were gone, and you certainly can’t call him and say, did you call me?, and the electricity is off so you can’t watch TV and you light a bunch of candles and try to read but there still isn’t enough light, so you just sit there alone in your apartment in the dark and wait for him to call, which he never does?

Don’t you just hate that?

My paternal grandfather was a staunch and loyal Communist his whole life. When Khrushchev denounced Stalin at the 20th Party Congress, my dad asked him, “So, Pop, what do you think of Stalin now?” My grandfather answered, “Khrushchev . . . that ingrate! After all Stalin did for him!”

Yesterday, I went to the Wiz’s going out of business sale and, even though I have a negative bank balance, bought a DVD recorder, a portable DVD player, a digital camera, a Discman, a pair of noise-reducing headphones, and a Deborah Gibson CD.

I feel somehow that I have lost my moorings.