My boyfriend gets queasy every time I drag him across the state line into Mississippi. I mean, I’m sure that his own childhood was filled with Bronx versions of rednecks and racism, but I guess all the Confederate flags and seersucker and sultriness of Mississippi give it its own repressive, conservative character.

I sympathize with Jonno. Were I in his shoes, I’d probably feel the same sense of trepidation. But he could have it worse–I could be suggesting roadtrips to Skullbonia.

Maybe later.

Note to self: in the future, avoid consuming copious amounts of hummus immediately before bedtime–it makes for very odd dreams, indeed. All I can remember now is that I was in Singapore producing some show–what kind? I don’t know–and I was obsessed with tracking down my friend Keng from grad school. It was maddening and pointless all at the same time. Like Kafka with palm trees.

Needless to say, I didn’t last long in dreamland. It’s not even 8:00, and I’ve already been up for nearly three hours.

Of course, that’s not completely bad. During the course of my groggy surfing, I came across the presumably new personal homepage of one of my favorite Japanese artists (actually, one of the few I know by name), Gengoroh Tagame. I first saw his drawings on Richard‘s old site, then I began running into him all over the place. His work is a virtual parade of hunkalicious Asian daddies, many of which have decorated the covers of G men magazine, a Japanese publication for bear lovers.

Looking through his most recent illustrations, though, I’m struck by how different they seem from his earlier work. The first pieces I ever saw were very, well, Japanese, with kimonos and that wacky fundoshi underwear and stuff. Today, though, his style seems practically Western, complete with Chelsea fag-type models in wifebeaters; even their eyes–which should stereotypically signal the model’s ethnicity–are generic.

Am I fetishizing Asians? Or am I lamenting the global melting pot–fueled by airplanes and televisions and AOL–that is blurring what were once fairly distinct identities into a single Western whole?

You know what? I don’t care. The drawings are hot, end of story.

File under “I’m Just a Girl Who Can’t Say ‘No’.”

I thought my summer was going to be a slow one. Nothing to do, really, other than mount Hedwig, which, while not the simplest play to put together, should be, more or less, a labor of love. Then we decided to expand the play’s marketing plan with special Hedwig appearances (e.g. sending her out to open K-Marts, do book signings, guest dj on the local German punk rock station, the usual stuff), which’ll require extra strategic planning and headaches and BC powder. And then, of course, I’d forgotten that Jonno and I are moving soon; we hope to be in the new house in another couple of weeks, mid- to late-June maybe–which is great, sure, but along with that come a series of headaches: packing, schlepping, unpacking, cleaning the old apartment, finding new tenants for it.

Then things got even more complicated: the owner of Le Chat Noir, the venue in which we’ve been doing the cabaret, asked if we’d be interested in keeping the show up all summer long. I was flattered; Barbara’s a savvy business woman and producer, and she knows what sells; if she likes it, that’s a pretty nice compliment in my book. So, since flattery’ll get you everywhere with me, I said “Sure, we’ll figure out a way to keep it going through August,” temporarily forgetting that the show has a rotating line-up of performers, meaning that I’ve now got a summer’s worth of torchsingers and jugglers and ventriloquists to line up.

I know, I know: the whining seems pretty disingenuous. I mean, what have I got to complain about? One play on the boards, another cool play on the horizon, and a new house around the bend. Sure, I’m very happy, but I’m also very, very tired. I wanna spend time with my boyfriend and time with my dogs and, well, I can do without the cat, but I’d like to get out of town more often to see my dad and brothers and my buddy Lesley in Jackson, and, well, maybe just spend the day…I dunno, fishing maybe. A break. A big, fat, mindless break.

Calgon, you know what to do….

Yes, it’s been quiet over here. Don’t really know why. Not much to say, I guess. Not much has happened either. The Minx arrived yesterday, that’s good. And we’re expecting someone else next week, which ought to be interesting. And the plays are going well. And I had pinkeye. And yadda yadda yadda…. Perhaps I’m experiencing a bit of early summer malaise. It’ll be gone soon.

In the meantime, why not expand your vocabulary with a few of my favorite words beginning with the letter “A“?

• AGONOPHILIA: Person who is aroused by a partner pretending to struggle
• ALVINOLAGNIA: Stomach fetish
• ANACLITISM: Arousal from items used as infant
• ANDROIDISM: Arousal from robots with human features
• ANTHOLAGNIA: Arousal from smelling flowers
• ANTHROPOPHAGOLAGNIA: Rape with cannibalism
• AVISODOMY: Breaking the neck of a bird while penetrating it for sex
• AXILLISM: The use of the armpit for sex

Use any one of these delightful terms five times today, and it’s yours forever.

Ladies and gentlemen, whether you like it or not, Hedwig!

Does that make up for four days of no posts?

Hey, New Orleanians! Y’all comin’ out tonight?

“The first word spoken by the model since the April 29 crash was ‘Coke.’“

I’ll bet.

File under “From One Washed-Up Freak to Another”: O. J. Simpson offers advice to Robert Blake in murder investigation.

Summertime and intellectual endeavors don’t usually go hand in hand–at least, not down here in the subtropics. Attempting a poolside read of The Archaeology of Knowledge in New Orleans in July, for example, is a task no less Herculean than reciting multiplication tables while carrying a Bosendorfer grand piano up five flights of mouse-narrow stairs. (Not that I’d ever do either, mind you.) Luckily we’ve got the frosty, meticulous Germans and Swedes to pick up the navel-gazing slack during the warmer months.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m no scholar, that’s for sure. Since I turned my back on academia, I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve mentioned Foucault in a sentence. But even my thoroughly insipid middlebrow tastes can’t stand up to the summer sun. During those hellish months, I tend to slouch toward dime-store romances and People magazine.

So, to prepare myself for the next few months of shall-we-say lighter fare, I’ve begun re-reading Mr. Capote’s Music for Chameleons. I haven’t even so much as thought of the book since the summer between my sophomore and junior years in college, when I spent the better part of every day getting stoned, going to an obscenely facile level-two French class, smoking up, having a swim, getting baked, and reading the afternoon away. I guess in my altered mental state, I failed to notice how thoroughly genius the man could be–the ease and simplicity of the narratives, the well-drawn characters. I’m finding I also managed to forget some pretty amazing passages, too. Speaking of Jackson Square in the French Quarter, for example:

A lot of fey folk have strolled about this square. Pirates. Lafitte himself. Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Huey Long. Or, moseying under the shade of a scarlet parasol, the Countess Willie Piazza, the proprietress of one of the ritzier maisons de plaisir in the red-light neighborhood: her house was famous for an exotic refreshment it offered–fresh cherries boiled in cream sweetened with absinthe and served stuffed inside the vagina of a reclining quadroon beauty.

Certainly makes me hungry. Or thirsty. Or confused. Or something.

Let the publicity blitz begin!