My Etsy Store is Officially Open For Business

Just a quick note to let all of you delightful people that my Etsy store is open for business. Right now, I have two prints available and more items will be added soon. If there's anything in particular you would like to see, please let me know.

I Have Mermaids Swimming Around On Threadless

I have a design up on Threadless, available to be scored. As my ability to draw and paint surpasses my graphic design abilities by about a million, I'm a little worried it won't fare very well. It looks like this (but without the background and, like, on a T shirt):
 

So, kind people. Please vote, and vote high.

Todd Robbins: Play Dead

Many, many years ago, boys and girls, they used to have outdoor rock concerts on Pier 84 on the West Side. I remember seeing tons of bands there at one point: you could drink cheap under-age beers, and there were promoters giving out free packs of crappy cigarettes. I mean, can you picture that happening now? I can't remember everyone I saw there, but I do know I saw The Psychedelic Furs (awful), The Cure, The Smiths and other people I can no longer remember. They were all-ages and general admission shows and afterward, we would walk over to Times Square and go to the (now departed) Howard Johnson's.

It was essentially a diner with a ticky tacky bar at the back, and they'd let you sit there for hours nursing your diet coke. It was late at night and aside from us and some of the usual late night Times Square weirdos, there was always a table of magicians. I can't remember if we recognized Penn & Teller from television or what (this was around '86, long before they were as famous as they are now), but we somehow wound up chatting with them one night.

A couple of years later, when I was 18, I saw Penn & Teller's show off-Broadway with my boyfriend at the time who was (among other things) a juggler who had attended the Ringling Bros's school down in Florida. As you can see, there has been a kind of striking consistency to my life. I was plucked from the audience and levitated (see below).

Fast forward a decade or so, and I'm working at FringeNYC where one of the first things I hear about our Production Manager is that her boyfriend eats light bulbs. When I met him, he seemed terribly dapper and affable and not at all what I pictured when I heard he ate light bulbs. Well, my former co-worker is now Mrs. Todd Robbins, they have a delightful son, and I've seen him perform many, many times over the past decade or so: at FringeNYC, off-Broadway, and at Monday Night Magic. Todd Robbins is something of a carnivalesque Renaissance Man: actor, sideshow freak, Ragtime piano player (he performs frequently with Woody Allen's band), and magician. For a long and entertaining post about Mr. Robbins, go here. If you walk past the sideshow at Coney Island, and you hear a voice beckoning to you from the loudspeakers: that voice is his.

All this self-indulgent prelude brings me to the spooky wonderment that is Todd Robbins's and Teller's Play Dead. I'm embarrassed to say, that last weekend was the first time I'd seen it, as it's been open for some months now. I blathered endlessly about myself, partly because I don't want to say too much about the show as so many of its pleasures are contingent on surprise.

As you enter the Players Theater on Bleecker, you first see a dire warning above the Box Office. That if you are claustrophobic or prone to panic attacks, please alert the staff before entering, as parts of the show are performed in total darkness. Now: I am someone who is claustrophobic and prone to panic attacks and all sorts of general jumpiness. But, this is a spook show and I intended to be scared. And I was. And I was completely and thoroughly entertained. The show is full of magic and scares and tall tales and misdirection and gaffs and frights. In other words, it is a near perfect thing.

I love horror, but as I've mentioned in this blog before, I am seriously distressed by what passes for entertainment, what I like to call "torture porn". I don't understand it and I think it points to a sickness in our culture that people watch such fare as "entertainment". Todd's horror and frights are of a more old fashioned sort, and he demonstrated that if done right, with great authenticity and skill, they can be very scary indeed. At bottom, the show works because Todd is such a terrific performer and teller of tales. This total scardy-cat knew she was in thoroughly good hands when the lights went out.

Even if those hands were covered in blood.

(Photo credits: picture of Todd Robbins by Carol Rosegg, picture of Howard Johnson's via ephemeralnewyork)

Class: Cephalopoda

My fascination with squid and octopus and all the members of the illustrious Class of Cephalopoda (Phylum: Mollusca, Kingdom: Animalia) began almost ten years ago as I worked on what I referred to as my 9/11 play. It remains unfinished and is likely unfinishable. I called it Tricks With Make-Up and it is set in a barroom in which all surfaces are obscured by a dull gray ash. Whether it is purgatory or some kind of post-apocalyptic liminal neverland, remains unclear. In it, a Bird, a Killer, a Spy, a Victim, The Last Leopard and The Second To Last Leopard (Felidae Panthera Pardus) enact various power plays. Bird, in particular, is a monstrous, Stalin-like figure (in her home forrest, she sports the title "Chairmistress of Freedom, Animality and Discipline").

But it was a mess. A Frankensteinian creature created from pieces of other projects, ruminations on Jack the Ripper, reading I'd done on animal behavior and the deep, strange nihilism I felt after the fall of the towers which engendered a certainty in me that the human species was a complete failure in evolutionary terms. And I had an equally crazy design concept. I thought there should be a giant, animatronic squid suspended from the ceiling with enormous tentacles that wrapped around the audience. During the play, the tentacles would move with a barely perceptible slowness, the audience unaware of what was happening until the tentacles were everywhere, trapping them in their seats.

Now, I realized that the the chances of this design concept coming to fruition were, to say the least, low. But in preparation for the momentous day when my most extravagant dreams could become perfectly realized, I started researching squid and the other members of the family cephalopoda and became, in a word, obsessed. Giant Squid seemed more like creatures from the imagination of a 19th century fantasist, rather than something that could actually, you know, exist. Where we have water in our bodies, they have ammonia. Their espophogus bisects their brains. They possess a starting and uncanny intelligence. They use tools. Octopuses are prone to nervous upset and have been known to start eating their own arms. They are beautiful and other-worldly. They are nearly all venemous to one degree or another. They are beaked. There may be even larger, completely undiscovered squid that live in the deepest, most unknown parts of the ocean (some electrical pings indicate that this is not fantasy).

I joined all the squid list serves, I read all the latest scientific findings. They are amazing. I think one of my fascinations with these remarkable creatures is that they are nothing like us. They are completely, to their core, other-worldly and unknowable. Chimps and Bonobos are near relatives; dogs and humans have co-existed for millions of years and likely evolved symbiotically (for example, humans exhibit dog-like pack behavior that doesn't occur in other primates); dolphins, if fish shaped, are fellow mammals, and seem at least somewhat willing to interact with us. But with the clever cephalopod, we have no common language of any kind. Any attempts to get through have been met with a blank wall of nothing.

In our depictions of the residents of other planets, we most often have dreamed up humanoid creatures. Even if they were hostile, we could still interact. And if they were utterly unhuman (like Aunt Beast in a Wrinkle in Time) we could still breach the difference through touch or sound or something. Thus far, there has been no cephalopodean Rosetta Stone of any sort. To be honest, I don't know if I want one.

But I'm an artist, not a scientist.

My BFF sent this to me yesterday, a gorgeous film of a Dumbo Octopus. You can watch it here, as Blogger is being all fiddly and will not upload it.

17

The picture below was taken when I was seventeen a very long time ago. It was shot by a friend I no longer speak to and I think it's kind of great in its moody, gothy, self-involved teenager-y way. And my foot looks enormous.

I have a post coming up about bridging gap between one's teens and twenties, so I won't say much here, but I remember being so thoroughly confused. No one in high school would go out on a date with me if their life depended on it from what I could tell, and then when I left my horrible home town I got a lot of attention and mostly, I was baffled. I think I felt a little like Helena, you know, that everyone was making fun of me and I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Below is a really self-consciously arty shot. I remember that dress and I loved it. And I wore those boots until they were being held together with electrical tape.

Trav S.D.'s Tent Show Tetragrammaton

The premier of Trav S.D.'s Tent Show Tetragrammaton is rapidly sneaking (or, really, trampling) upon us, and with its thrilling approach has come a distinct lack of sleep and lots of hard work here at The Cabinet's (now happily shared) Headquarters.

But it's all in the name of excitement and wonder, so who can complain? Not I! Ape men! Realistic fighting! Music of ALL KINDS! VooDoo! Hope Cartelli (who is 8 1/2 months pregnant, so WHO KNOWS what will occur!)! ALL of Piper McKenzie! Mummies! A Baby Grandma Witch! Fortune telling! And spaghetti! For a delightful teaser, see below.

And if this isn't a hard enough sell : yours truly is directing one of the pieces contained within!

But enough of this hyperbole. The man who has self-styled himself Trav S. D. has written a couple of lovely and illuminating blog posts about two of the short plays contained in the Tetragrammaton: The Strange Case of Grippo the Ape Man and The Universal Rundle which are well worth a read.

Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I read and write about fairy and folk tales an awful lot. I'm not a particularly huge fan of the ultra-literal. I heartily believe that aping the details of everyday life doesn't make something particularly more like life. In other words, just because something isn't real, doesn't mean it's not true. Trav's offerings all live in that place, the liminal spaces that exist somewhere in the boarderland of history and myth . Dripping with Americana, music and folk tradition.

I'm also so beyond thrilled to be involved in a show at LaMama. I feel that there are all these odd lineages in New York Theater, and mine feels so directly tied to the work and people that sprung out of the Caffe Cino back in the 60s. I've been working away in the realms of Downtown Theater for what feels like a lifetime, and to be doing something in the House that Ellen Stewart built is an honor and a thrill.

Information and tickets can be found here.

Dainty Cadaver in Midway Journal

There is going to be an awful lot of shameless promotion here in the coming days. I just thought I would give you fair warning, but I must also add that some of these projects are the reason I've been such a bad, bad blogger.

Firstly: This Dainty Cadaver thing I've been mentioning has been published by the the Midway Journal. You can read all three scripts and an introduction penned by Mr. Jeff Lewonczyk, here. Enjoy. They are extremely silly.

Secondly: More to follow, dear readers, I promise!

I'm back!

Sorry to have deserted you, my loyal readers, this past week. My life was taken over mostly by moving furniture, disposing of books, rehearsing, day job and sleeping. Through some miracle I managed to find the cable that connects my camera to my laptop, so I can bring you this:

This is what one of the less accessible corners of The Cabinet headquarters looks like. Needless to say, everyone is very happy.

But - enough about me!

A few weeks ago, the fine people at Piper McKenzie (who occasionally makes appearances on this blog in her Hope Cartelli and Jeff Lewonczyk disguises) produced and Exquisite Corpse-like evening of theater called Dainty Cadaver at The Brick in Williamsburg in which I was happy to be one of the participating playwrights. Below, find a distillation of Team B's offering, "January 29, 1993".

Dainty Cadaver!

Just a reminder, boys and girls, that I will be participating in an exciting theatrical experiment brought to you by the delightful folks at Piper McKenzie and The Brick Theater, Inc. It's a series of plays written Exquisite Corpse style. That is to say, each playwright only saw just what came before and proceeded as they saw fit, and then the next playwright in line only saw what they wrote. And so on. It's essentially a Surrealist party game.

I will be in Saturday's group ("B") which will be directed by the always fetching Miss Hope Cartelli.

Information an tickets can be found here.

In Which You Can See Me Live In Rare West Egg Appearance

All I can say is that Thomas Wolf lacked a proper train schedule. This Sunday afternoon at 1:30 I will be appearing at the Library in West Egg (AKA The Main Branch of the Great Neck Library) as a part of a panel discussion/reading called Girls From the Hood. All the panelists are former denizens of West Egg who now write. What's sort of remarkable to me, is that I could fill this panel up again without even trying too hard. Residents of West Egg are often referred to disparagingly (and not always wrongly so), but we do seem to be an excessively literary bunch. Here's the info:

Collectively, Nina Sonenberg, Carolyn Raship, E. Amato, Beth Fertig and Jill Hamburg Coplan have written novels, non-fiction books, plays, magazine and newspaper articles, radio segments, screenplays, poems, television documentaries, graphic novels, spoken word pieces, blog posts, personal essays, short stories, and business and non-profit materials. They have spent their creative and professional lives writing, editing, drawing, teaching, blogging, mentoring and performing. Find out what these five accomplished women who grew up in Great Neck have to say about what they write, the creative process, how they make a living as writers, the job climate for professional writers today, and how living in Great Neck informed their lives and careers. Join us for this entertaining, enlightening and spirited homecoming.

The program will be followed by snacks and book signing. The Great Neck Library is located at 159 Bayview Avenue, Great Neck, NY.

Under The Radar 2011

Tonight, the 2011 (that date still looks disturbingly science fiction oriented to me) edition of the Under The Radar Festival begins. As always, produced under the auspices of The Public Theater (except, of course, for the first year when it was at St. Ann's Warehouse). The offerings look particularly interesting this year, as companies from around the globe converge on The Public and LaMaMa.

I'm sure many audience members will be particularly interested in seeing the Belarus Free Theatre present their production of Being Harold Pinter. Until very, very recently it was unclear as to whether the company would be able to perform. You see, the name "Belarus Free Theatre" isn't the ironic moniker of some hipper than thou theatrical enterprise out of Bushwick, but an underground group of artists who perform at great personal risk in their native Minsk and abroad. A few weeks ago, Artistic Director Natalia Koliada, was arrested by the KGB during a protest of the recent Belarus election (Surprise. President Lukashenko, the last of the European dictators won with more than 80% of the vote. Most of the opposition was immediately imprisoned. Democracy in action!). Although other company members remain in prison (UPDATE: they're out, and are making their way to NYC!), it looks as though the company will perform as scheduled. According to Artistic Director Mark Russell's facebook page, Natalia and her co-Artistic Director and husband, Nikolai Khalezin, have landed in New York. A statement from Koliada:



I've been tapped to guest blog some reviews by the New York Theater Review this year, so you can check out my coverage there - in addition to that of the other, no doubt wonderful, bloggers.

Under The Radar runs from January 5 through January 16. Information and tickets can be found here.

Feed

I'm slightly embarrassed that I spent my New Year post singing my own praises, so I thought I could launch into the second decade of the New Millennium singing some other people's, too.

I have a list of links to friends' blogs and some other interesting destinations to your right - and I realize I've been fairly awful about updating it. The blogs whose RSS feeds I subscribe to are the ones I look at every day (more or less. Or whenever they post. Or whenever I get around to it.). The list is somewhat arbitrary, so please don't be offended if your blog isn't listed. It also doesn't mean I don't read it, as I look at lots via places like facebook.

If you know of something you think I might enjoy (or that my readers would), please feel free to leave the address in the comments. Or, if you like, you can post on the wall of our facebook page.

So. These are the (few) blogs I subscribe to.

1. Allure: Blog dedicated to the screen stars of the 20s and 30s. He posts tons of really lovely photos. I particularly enjoy his posts on some of the lesser known actresses. Here is some great commentary and photos from a 1927 edition of "Film Fun", including:


2. BibliOdyssey is, of course, legendary. They post large sets of images from books, often related to science. But not always. The following is their sub-heading:

Books~~Illustrations~~Science~~History~~Visual Materia Obscura~~Eclectic Bookart.

They usually post every few days, and whatever they post is always worth a look.

3. Chenille L'Oiseau: I found this charming tumblr because she (and I use that pronoun with great trepidation) began following me. She posts mostly photos, mostly surrealist. She is fond of bird imagery. They're clearly sourced and pretty much always arresting. She also has a Randomizer that's, like, the best. I'm probably capable of sitting on my couch clicking it until I die of hunger. Okay, next random image is:


4. Coilhouse. The magazine is great, too. I've discovered numerous wonderful things (including my recent obsession with La Vie Parisienne) through them. They recently posted this holiday themed video. My 16 year old self just died of happiness.



5. FIDM Museum: i.e. the blog for the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising Museum in Los Angeles. They post their acquisitions. Uncle Nick from Season 2 of that show I used to watch teaches there.

6. Film Gab With Werth & Wise: classic film conversations between two very knowledgeable film scholars. Okay, okay - as always, in the spirit of full disclosure, Mr. Werth is a very good friend of mine. It's always worth (accident!) reading.

7. Fucked in Park Slope. My neighborhood blog. I love them. They're fucking hilarious. Do yourself a favor and read the entire Mama Rosa saga. It's fucking epic. This, my friends, is why the internet was invented.

8. The Vintager: Another great fashion blog, all images collected by the vintage minded J.B. Taylor. She often includes vintage photos of her mother, which are lovely.

9. Fresh365: Vegetarian recipes. They aren't intimidating or preachy and completely embrace the use of butter and cheese.

10. Okay. I look at Style Rookie, 13 year old Tavi Gevinson's blog. She's made a freaking career out of it. Did I say she's 13? It makes me want to vomit. But it also makes me glad. Yay! The interwebs! They can bring fame and fortune to dorky girls who like to make collages. Which, overall, is a good thing. But it also kinda makes me want to kill myself.

11. The Daily Otter. As they put it: OMFG otters!

11. The Flapper Girl. Someone else who posts great vintage images, such as:


12. Those Sexy Vintage Sleaze Books: written by the guy who ran BlackMask.com, the greatest website in the history of the internet. But, like Icarus before him, he flew too close to the sun, and down he tumbled. Only substitute "intellectual property attorneys" for "sun". This is someone who lives and dies for pulp, and whose empire crashed into ruins over the publication rights of a few (uncollected) Dashiell Hammett short stories. Alas. We have all suffered.

13. Travalanche: Well, of course. Yes, this is the blog of my darling, brilliant inamorato, the man often known as (and self-styled) Trav S.D. But all that aside, he has created an extraordinary web resource. Bios of all vaudeville luminaries (some more luminous than others) spanning the decades, and all in one place. He writes about other things, too: books, art, burlesque, and (of course) theater. Really, kids. He's the smartest man I know.

14. Things have been awfully quiet of late at Women Running From Houses. Which makes me very sad, as it was (is?) an excellent, insanely narrowly focused blog. If you read lots of Pulp Gothic Romance, you will undoubtedly understand. To wit:


I swear there used to be another blog that featured book covers that had to include a woman holding a candle and a mansion, but I might be making that up.

Hm. I never really looked at them all together before, and I realize I'm far more likely to hit that little RSS feed button if you post lots of pictures rather than lots of text. I also really dislike bloggers who natter on about themselves, so I will keep the commentary to a minimum.

But please, as I wrote above, if you want to sell me (or my readers) on your blog, now's the time. I'm normally awfully strict about not permitting blatant self promotion in the comments, so this is pretty much your only shot. I'll look. I promise. And if I like what I see, I'm an avid linker and reposter.

May the servers we post on, but don't own, never fail.

The Cabinet's Year in Review

Happy New Year, dear readers!

This is the season of making merry and taking stock and looking forward. Which, on this first day of 2011 I mostly intend to do the latter. It's been an action packed year in many ways, but I'm not the most introspective of people, so I prefer not to dwell on the past but to look ahead.

But. Certain accounts must be taken before marching boldly into this new decade (things begin with ones, not zeroes). So, may I present the Top Five Most Popular Blog Posts of 2010!

5. My review of The Man Who Laughs.

4. Eight arms to hold you: Happy Cephalopodmas!

3. This might be attributable to the Maya Deren retrospective at MoMA this year.


2. This one is really gratifying, as I adore the beauteous Olive, and worked really hard on this post. More about her this upcoming week!

1. I learned the most lessons from my Mary Harron/American Psycho post. It received a ludicrous amount of traffic and I really never understood why, as it wasn't one I was particularly thrilled with. Let me just say that sexy pictures of Gretchen Mol dressed as Bettie Page are extremely popular.

But what were my favorites of the year? The Olive Thomas post mentioned above, certainly. I'm also extremely proud of my FringeNYC and Mad Men coverage. I want to write a lot more about television in the coming year. I'm also very, very fond of my piece on The Runaways movie. I often say that I'm "not a real writer", as I think mostly of myself as being a picture person. My brilliant and perceptive inamorato recently called me on that, and I hearkened back (and what is the New Year about - other than looking forward - if not hearkening back?) to something my High School English teacher used to say: "You are students because you study, if you write, you are a writer. What we think we are is beside the point. In my head I'm a great American novelist, but that's just bullshit." (please note: I am paraphrasing).

I write. So, I guess I'm a writer. But I like pictures better. One of my other favorite posts was the recent one in which I discovered the glorious illustrations from the French magazine La Vie Parisienne. So my New Years gift to myself and to all of you are more lovely pictures of pretty, pretty girls!

Have a gorgeous 2011!

I had to add one more!

50 Best!

As reported earlier, Laptop is Dead, Long Live Laptop! However, I am still working out some kinks in terms of my graphic capabilities, so the Cabinet is still crawling its slow way back up to full posting speed. So, sorry all, about the slightly sporadic posting of late.

That said, the nice people over at the Accredited Online Colleges blog (full disclosure: I have no idea who these people are, but they clearly have wonderful taste) published a list of the 50 Best Blogs For Theatre Lovers, and kindly included the very blog you are reading in their well curated list. In their Playwrights section, in addition to yours truly, they also noted the wonderfulness of Travalanche, the blog of my always dashing inamorato, Trav S.D.

Thank you, un-by lined blogger, whoever you are!

Self Serving Self Promotion With the Reward of Pretty Pictures and a Sad Tale of Genius

Hey, Cabinet readers - if you're on Twitter, please follow me! I can be found here.



And, as so often here, a propos of absolutely nothing, a stunning Kay Nielsen illustration. He was a stone cold genius and my favorite, favorite illustrator. In addition to his gorgeous book illustrations, he also designed much of the "Ave Maria" and "Night on Bald Mountain" sequences in Fantasia. Disney fired him in 1940, when Fantasia tanked.



He also did some legendary, classic illustrations for a 1914 edition of East of the Sun, West of the Moon - an edition of Nordic fairy tales, the titular one being the inspiration for Antarctica. I've been saying for years, now, that if I ever strike it rich, this is the one thing I will certainly buy.



I've always found his story to be thoroughly heartbreaking. His main crime, from what I can make out, was working too slowly and being a perfectionist. Sigh. I've always related as one could argue that those are my artistic crimes as well. The other major contribution to his downfall was simple obsolescence. His specialty was designing and illustrating opulent gift books which were pretty much completely out of fashion by the mid-1920s (side note: if you ever wondered why so many cartoons from the 1930s had such exquisitely painted watercolor backgrounds, this is why. Crowds of unemployed and very skilled illustrators willing to work cheap). Disney gave him a posthumous design credit on The Little Mermaid as he did the earliest artwork for the project around 1940. He died in poverty in 1957, living at the end mostly on handouts from admirers.