summertime

The ice cream truck has begun its manic lullabye outside my window and people are walking around down there practically naked. We put in the airconditioner last week, the annual terror-inducing certainty that this time it will finally slip from my grip before I can get the window down, plummeting six solid stories down down down, the crashing, the screaming, the fingers pointing in accusation. Summertime.

This used to be the busiest time of the year for me, back when I was the Dark Lord of the Fringe. Hustling the venues, scheduling the shows, relying on sheer faith and adrenaline to get through the day. Can't say I miss it, but it was a hell of a rush.

Been away dealing with family stuff, back now and will try to keep posting.

trifecta

Just got off the phone with Guy Van Swearingen at A Red Orchid Theater in Chicago. They want to put up Fatboy in October, which means three Fatboys, three cities in three months. August we return to Edinburgh, September the folks at Brat Productions perform it in Philadelphia and October the fat man's in Chicago.

This must be what it feels like to be a playwright.

Curt Dempster

Suicide.

Jesus, that surprised and saddened me. Dempster was one of the pioneers, someone who stuck with it for over 30 years and he ends up alone in his apartment holding a rope in his hands and looking at the ceiling. That decision and the black moments that lead to it will always be private and unfathomable, but I have to admit the detail that I can't shake from the Bloomsberg article is the $40,000 he was making a year. 40 grand in New York City after more than 30 years of hard, grinding, important cultural work, nurturing artists, providing opportunities, introducing audiences and critics to new work. 40 grand.

Poverty didn't kill him, of course, but it's just another example of the real world ramifications of what Isaac is talking about over at Parabasis.

Too sad to make a coherent point here. Just thankful that Dempster was around to do what he did and sad that he's gone.