Last night, the golden pony came to Springfield, MA and pooped out a lovely evening for Michael and I me. (Thanks, Max.) We’re here for the Massachusetts Library Association annual conference and Michael, being Michael, lined up a truly stupendous array of guests to speak. So, last night we spent the late night hours closing down the hotel bar with:
Michael Cunningham – dashing, elegant, hilarious author of The Hours and A Home at the End of the World, of which I personally hand sold hundreds of copies when I worked at Books & Company in the early nineties
Thrity Umrigar – a surprisingly frisky Indian novelist and memoirist who wrote The Space Between Us and more recently The Weight of Heaven
I am so lucky that my husband is so fearless and is such a big dreamer. He gave me the wonderful gift of the opportunity to chat with Lynda and Thrity about menopause and to smoke with Talia and Michael Cunningham in the rain. Does that rock or what?
Who else would stand up for the free speech rights of minors? All right, it involves his play, but dang. This letter should go down in theatre history.
I got a new haircut. Yeah, it’s a “fo-mo” or “faux-hawk” or whatever you want to call it. But despite its passé and perhaps cheesy status, it looks good on me.
A day after he saw my new haircut, Michael K. send Michael C. and me the latest Koford comic with a note that read, “Look! It’s you guys!” Indeed, it is.
I’m just ecstatic hearing that Valerie Harper (yeah, Mary’s Rhoda) is playing Tallulah Bankhead in a new play entitled Looped. Apparently, the title comes from the idea that the whole play takes place during an ADR session for Tallu’s classing Hammer horror film, Die! Die! My Darling!
I lost some respect for Valerie after she walked off the set of a show named after her. Jeesh, during the first season, even. Pretty freaking sad if you can replace her with Sandy Duncan and still manage to keep the series running for five more seasons. And that union president race against Laura Ingalls got pretty nasty. But this just may make up for all of that.
What? You haven’t seen Die! Die! My Darling!? Holy frijoles, get over here quick. I’m itching to watch it again, especially since Tallu plays a bible-thumping vegetarian who — once upon a time — was a … well, a loose, jazz-loving woman. Okay, she was a whore. And Stephanie Powers plays the mod girl Tallu kidnaps. And a very young Donald Sutherland plays the retarded groundskeeper. What’s not to love?!
Oh, I am soooo happy about this news! Spaghetti Cat wasn’t a random mistake, but a planned interruption according to mediabistro.com! She was meant to be a star…
So, Neil Patrick Harris is gay. We all know this. We all know that he’s also one of our current “it boys” — seemingly able to do no wrong whether he’s playing straight on TV (How I Met Your Mother) or at the movies (Harold & Kumar) or doing the song and dance thing with Joss Whedon (Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog) or whatever he wants to do. So why is there now this little backlash over at Gawker stating that’s he’s “too straight?” More, why am I hearing about it for the first time on one of my comics blogs where the Occasional Superheroine takes issues with Gawker’s post? Both sides actually have merit to their argument, and I am at a loss as to where I fall. Guess it depends on the time of day. Bravo for Mr. Harris’ success, and it’s always nice to see more successful gay people in the entertainment business. And come on, he looks pretty hot on that Out Magazine cover.