Author Archives: Joel Derfner

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.

In belated honor of April Fool’s Day, which I completely forgot to celebrate yesterday, I am posting part of the April Fool’s edition of the newsletter of my college’s library, which I received the one year I worked there in a position important enough to warrant my getting the newsletter. The theme of this particular April Fool’s newsletter was the startling discovery of a book called Cooking by Jean-Paul Sartre, written when the not-yet-famous existentialist philosopher was the chef in a small Left Bank bistro frequented by young French intellectuals. Here is an excerpt:

October 3 [year not indicated]
Spoke with Camus today about my cookbook. Although he seems never to eat, he gave me much encouragement. I rushed home to work. How excited I am! I have begun my formula for a Denver omelet.

October 4
There have been stumbling blocks. I keep creating omelets one after another, like soldiers marching into the sea, but each one seems empty, hollow, like granite. I want to create an omelet that expresses the meaninglessness of existence, and instead they taste like cheese. Tried eating them with the lights off. It did not help.

Malraux suggested paprika.

October 6
I have realized that the traditional omelet form (eggs and cheese) is bourgeois. Today I tried making one out of cigarettes, some coffee, and four tiny stones. I fed it to Malraux, who threw up. I am encouraged, but my journey is still long.

October 10
The more I do not eat, the more keenly I am aware of the void. Today I tried this recipe:

Ingredients: 1 large casserole dish.
Directions: Place the casserole dish in a cold oven. Place chair facing the oven and sit in it forever. Think about how hungry you are. When night falls, do not turn on the light.

However, I asked myself: How can the eater recognize that the food denied to him is a tuna casserole and not some other dish? I am becoming more and more frustrated.

October 25
I have been forced to abandon the project of producing an entire cookbook. Rather, I now seek a single recipe which will, by itself, embody the plight of man in a world ruled by an unfeeling God, as well as providing the eater with at least one ingredient from each of the four basic food groups.

November 3
Some of the restaurant patrons complained that my breakfast special (a page out of Remembrance of Things Past and a blowtorch with which to set it on fire) did not satisfy their hunger. As if their hunger was of any consequence! “But we’re starving,” they say. So what? They’re going to die eventually anyway.

November 15
Today I made a Black Forest cake out of five pounds of cherries and a live beaver, challenging the very definition of the word cake. I was very pleased. Malraux said he admired it greatly, but could not stay for dessert. I have resolved to enter it in the Betty Crocker Bake-Off.

November 30
Today was the day of the Bake-Off. Alas, things did not go as I had hoped. During the judging the beaver became agitated and bit Betty Crocker on the wrist. The beaver’s powerful jaws, capable of felling a blue spruce in less than ten minutes, needless to say proved more than a match for the tender limbs of America’s favorite homemaker.

I only got third place. L’enfer, c’est les autres chefs! Moreover, I am the subject of a rather nasty lawsuit.

Here is the postcard for my show, brilliantly designed by this man.

In other news, apparently the picture of Alan Cumming with my dog is in this week’s Next magazine. I haven’t seen the issue yet but my dog has and has developed quite a swelled head. It won’t be long before she won’t be seen with me.

It is I, Faustus. I have returned.

The talk at Columbia went smashingly, and while there are still two songs to be written for the cabaret that opens a week from tomorrow, we’ve started rehearsals and they, too, are going smashingly. So those of you who live in or around New York are invited to my show, “Spontaneous Combustion: In Which Our Heroes Realize That It’s Okay to Be a Completely Neurotic Homosexual so Long as You Don’t Run Out of Hair Product.”

Here is the relevant information:

When: Tuesday, April 8 and Tuesday, April 22 at 8:00 p.m.
Where: Upstairs@Red, 356 West 44th St., between 8th and 9th
How Much: $15 cover + 2 drink minimum OR $35 prix fixe dinner and show
Tickets: call SmartTix at 212.868.4444 or go to www.genesiusguild.com

I promise the show will be very funny and entertaining. Plus, if you are reading this and think you might want to date me but aren’t sure because you have no idea what I look like, this is your chance to find out from the relative safety of anonymity.