Sunday's Breast

>> Bought the above painting today from my friend Gina Disney who’s leaving L.A. for good tomorrow. She has a blog of her work called Melanchomedy.

>> Are you gay-vague? Our tattered vernacular gets another phrase thanks to Dave Colman at the NYT. Check out how he gets his interview subjects to incorporate his little phrase into their quotes. How self-indulgent gay is that?

I would have gone with ambiglamorous. Or ambigay. Ambisexual?

>> THERE'S GONNA BE A MUSICAL
BASED ON THE MUSIC OF THE SMITHS!!!!!!!!!

The London production is called "Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others." The Guardian UK has a rundown. The lede is a trashy miracle:

In a bright room, a string quartet hums and squawks. The unsettling noise accompanies a woman as she dances a slow flamenco. 'Unruly girls who will not settle down must be taken in hand,' she sings. 'A crack on the head,' she continues, as two other women mime slo-mo applause, 'is what you get for not asking. [Burly man drags another woman across the stage] And a crack on the head is what you get for asking.' The singer continues her splendid dance. A young man, in red skyscraper heels, mimics her movements while prostrate on the floor. The burly man bursts into a tapdance that's also a systematic duffing-up of no one in particular: the younger one flinches, though he's never hit. The music hisses and morphs into gypsy handclaps, which merge with the sound of the tap to make a threatening clamour...

>> Neal Pollack was the poster child for the pomo, smug, ironic era in the contemporary lit scene right around the year 2000. He writes a devasting essay today's NYT about the annhialation he suffered because of the literary persona created under the womblike umbrella of Dave Eggers' McSweeney's literary enterprise. My friend, Jeff McMahon, shares his assesment:

I could be wrong but it feels like Eggers used Pollack for his needs and when those needs were met, he flung Pollack into the junkheap while superciliously flying high with sanctimony and good will, which seems as self-serving as his ironic era.

But Pollack has to take some blame. He created his own Faustian Bargain. Shit, he became a sub-sub writer celebrity, which, in this culture, is almost impossible. So he should be grateful. He also learned the danger of entering a narrative that begins as a fiction but becomes a real prison. I say bravo to him. He's wiser for his asinine journey. I can't wait to watch the film version. Who will play Pollack? A John Belushi type? Who will play Eggers? A jaunty-jawed type, perhaps Ethan Hawke?