The Grapes of Roth

Several of the Ebmud Venetians have been reading Philip Roth's Operation Shylock. When the Harvey Milk Public Library sent me an overdue notice, I stayed up late and finished it. Its a brave, chicken soup of a book. And its great to be in such a brave prouduction. And very weird, too. Since this play began, Israel went to war, so all that stuff is in the air everywhere everyday we go to Orinda, California to do a four hundred year old "Jew-play." The act of saying Shakespeare's lines makes it impossible to be lazy, intellectually and morally, about fascism and prejudice and race-based hatred and hate-based fear and hypocrisy and paranoia and Victimhood and revenge, which makes the play a great work of art and why it must be done, and done anew, again and again. Sometimes it makes one long for the naiiv pleasure of slapping on a liberal swath of Secret Garden eye shadow.

A Venetian Haiku

For the opening of Merchant of Venice I wrote an haiku for everyone in the cast and Daniel Fish the Genius. Here is my haiku for Shylock:

Dumpster Daddy barks
In clouds of dust off Ashby
Dead frozen chicken

The rest of them are not approved for blogs where puppets post.

Lancelot Loves Jessica

Elvy Jost accosted me after the curtain call of the first preview of The Merchant of Venice in a rage that I had not blogged about how much I love her. Well, here it is. I love Elvy. Elvy, roses are red, violets are blue, some blog poetry rhymes, but this doesn't.

Secrets Can Be Fun

There was a nasty error in my last blog concerning the nomenclature of my favorite eyeshadow. "Spring Garden" should have read "Secret Garden," which Daniel Fish, on a break from directing Merchant of Venice, said sounded like a "shower in Franconia." Or something like that. Perhaps I misquote, but these are dangerous times. Farewell Fatgoose, Avanti Venezia. Ice cream has no bones.