Welcome to My Midlife Crisis, Part 3: The Clock Is Ticking

Video of Ethyl Eichelberger in "Leer"

 Yesterday I had another one of those days (which I’ve been having a lot of recently): a culture-filled day that turned into yet another reminder of that existential reality: the clock is ticking.

It started out at Howl! Happening, an East Village gallery that opened up in one of those newly constructed luxury buildings that have been popping up all over the East Village lately. The gallery was created by Arturo Vega, the former art director for The Ramones (he created their famous logo, among other things), someone I knew from the years I used to hang out at The Bar on East 4^th Street. The gallery itself is a reminder that Manhattan has turned into a museum, a memorial to all the great things that used to happen here. But the places where those things used to happen have been bulldozed to make way for the yuppie hordes who now live here and are trying to recreate their suburban childhoods.

But I digress.

Anyway, the current show is called “When Jackie Met Ethyl” and it features videos and artifacts from performances by two legendary drag queens/actors, Jackie Curtis and Ethyl Eichelberger. Jackie was, of course, one of Andy Warhol’s “superstars” and Ethyl was an accomplished actor, playwright and wigmaker whom I think I first saw perform at the Pyramid, but who eventually appeared on Broadway and HBO. I was lucky enough to catch one of Ethyl’s last performances at PS122. I’ve been racking my brain trying to remember what it was. I think it must have been Leer, his interpretation of Shakespeare’s King Lear, but I remember that it featured him playing the accordion. (That was one of his trademarks.) He eventually committed suicide after being diagnosed with AIDS.

Holly Woodlawn memorial at LaMama

While I was at the gallery, one of the people working there mentioned that they were going to be streaming a memorial service for Holly Woodlawn (another of Warhol’s superstars) that was taking place at the LaMama theater a few blocks away.

Without even thinking (or having an invitation), I ran out of the gallery to LaMama and insinuated myself into the line of mourners for Miss Woodlawn. (I’d like to think she would have approved.)

The memorial service was a Who’s Who of downtown New York and off-off-Broadway: Penny Arcade, Michael Musto and others. Some of them I knew personally or from their work, others I had only read about (including at the gallery show I had just seen).

Memorials like these are a sort of uncomfortable mix of stargazing, legacy-building and genuine emotion. The memorial service was being streamed all over the world and there were people taking pictures and filming both officially and unofficially (i.e., on their cell phones, for future Facebook postings, no doubt). I must confess that I myself took one photo before the ceremony started, but I wanted to be respectful.

Even though I didn’t know Woodlawn personally (as many of the people in attendance did), I found myself very moved. In fact, there was one point when the Lavender Light Gospel Choir started singing that I began crying uncontrollably (much to my own embarrassment). I think this was because they were singing a religious song (after an amusing rendition of “Walk on the Wild Side”) and, in contrast to all the light-hearted remembrances that had come before, it brought home the reality and enormity of the fact that someone had actually died.

Martin Belk at BGSQD

The final stop on my cultural tour was a book reading and signing by a writer, Martin Belk, who happens to be a Facebook friend of mine and also happens to be one of the few people I know who’s read my book. While we’ve corresponded and I’ve followed his Facebook posts for many years, this was the first time we had actually met. (He lives in London.)

I was very impressed by both the quality of what he read and the mere fact that he had written this book, gotten it published and was now having a reading and book signing in New York City.

Reading his biography in the program afterwards, it seemed to me that he had really gotten his life together and figured out what he wanted to do with it. He’d completed his B.A. at night while still living in New York City, had moved to Scotland to get his master’s degree and was currently working on his PhD.

As my job search slogs into its ninth month, I’ve been having serious questions about my own life choices. I thought that at this point in my life, I’d be doing something much more meaningful and exciting than just struggling to find a job to pay my rent.

And I’m starting to question my artistic choices, as well. I’m not even sure of the best way to express myself anymore.

In addition to writing this blog, I’ve been writing and performing stand-up comedy for the last 15 years. But in the last two months, with all the stress of my job search, I’ve completely lost my sense of humor. (The shitty spring weather we’ve been having hasn’t helped, either!)

My experiences yesterday reminded me once again that we’re all on this planet for a very short amount of time. As my writer friend quoted one of his teachers saying: “You have the rest of eternity after you’re dead to do nothing. But right now, you better get on with it!”

Welcome to My Midlife Crisis, Part 2: The Nostalgia Continues

I took a walk down memory lane today. In fact, every day I talk a walk down memory lane. There are entire neighborhoods in Manhattan that I can’t walk through without a profound sense of sadness and loss.

Today I went to a gallery in Chinatown to see a show by the actor and artist Duncan Hannah, who was in Jim Jarmusch’s first film, Permanent Vacation. The woman running the gallery (who seemed to be about 25) was wearing a T-shirt that said “I’m OK, You’re OK.” I told her that this was the name of a self-help book in the ’70s that I actually read. She was not aware that she was wearing the name of a best-selling book, even though her shirt had the same typeface and logo as the book’s cover.

But this should have been no surprise.

Since I was in the neighborhood, I decided to walk by the former site of the Mudd Club, which now has a plaque to commemorate its place in music history. How many weekends did I walk from my apartment on East Fourth Street to that building down on White Street? Too many to remember. (At a certain point, however, even the Mudd Club wasn’t cool enough for me, so I used to bide my time at my apartment until the after-hours club Berlin—at 622 Broadway—would open.)

Walking north from White Street, I passed another landmark from my life, the former site of the Rock Lounge at 285 West Broadway, the first “new wave” club I ever went to. I was tempted to take a picture of that, as well as of the former site of Sohozat, the book and zine store that used to be on West Broadway across from the empty lot that is now the Soho Grand Hotel, but once you start going down that path, where does it stop?

I passed some newly constructed luxury buildings on West Broadway and spoke briefly to a man who was trying to attract customers to his clothing store. I told him that I live a few blocks away, but that I hardly walk down West Broadway anymore because it’s nothing but Eurotrash. He laughed. (Who among these arrivistes would remember that the Eileen Fisher store was once a Chinese restaurant called Oh Ho So? Who can even imagine a Chinese restaurant in Soho now?)

Continuing on to the West Village, I walked down Bleecker Street between 6^th and 7^th Avenues. I can remember when there used to be a used clothing store near the corner of Bleecker and Leroy Streets (where I used to buy many of my clothes in the early ’80s) and Bleecker Street Records was across the street. It was like a miniature universe peopled by nothing but musicians and music fans! Where are those people now? Do people still wear metal buttons with the names of their favorite bands on their vintage overcoats? If they did, they would look ridiculous on the streets of today’s designer-dressed Manhattan.

Last night, I saw a movie called A Bigger Splash, which features a scene of Ralph Fiennes dancing wildly to the Rolling Stones song “Emotional Rescue.” It’s one of the most thrilling film moments I’ve seen in a long time, and not just because of the wild abandon with which Fiennes dances, but because I distinctly remember buying that album the first summer I lived in New York City and hearing that song brought me right back to that first carefree summer of 1980.

When I look at my life now, I’m reminded of that line from the Talking Heads song, “Once in a Lifetime”: How did I get here?

How is it that I had more fun in New York City 30 years ago when I had less money, than I’m having now?

Maybe it’s because 30 years of deficit spending has finally caught up with me at the same time that the jobs I used to have are disappearing.

Or maybe it’s because New York is just a less fun city.

Welcome to My Midlife Crisis

These are dark days.

I’m currently working as a doorman for one-third my normal salary, because that’s the only job I could get (and I’m probably lucky to have that). I’ve spent the last eight months being stymied by a hiring system that ironically seems designed to keep people like me who “think outside the box” out and to reward cookie-cutter mediocrity (with appropriately mediocre wages).

And every time I open the newspaper or look at the Internet, it seems to be bad news.

Neal Gabler, who was once a TV movie critic (in addition to being a published author), just penned an article in The Atlantic about his financial struggles as a writer and the larger plight of most middle-class Americans today, living from paycheck to paycheck. And this is from someone who’s famous!¹

Another article talks about how the suicide rate in America is at a 30-year high. Because of economic forces (among other things), predominantly white middle-aged men like myself have been killing themselves in increasing numbers (mainly with drugs and alcohol, but also with more efficient methods).²

And at the same time that there seems to be an ’80s revival going on³, many icons of that era—Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, David Bowie and now Prince—are dead.

Meanwhile, in the science fiction-like world of New York real estate, gentrification continues at a blazing speed. The most recent example of this is longtime icon of the Lower East Side, Katz’s Deli, selling their air rights to create a co-op featuring million-dollar studios, while simultaneously destroying every other mom-and-pop store on its block.

And yet, when I walk the streets and look around me, everyone seems to be doing great. Restaurants are full to overflowing (especially now that it’s spring), everyone looks like a supermodel and is wearing the latest designer clothes, my local supermarket is filled with assorted Europeans buying groceries.

“What’s the problem?” you might say.

The problem is that I (and many others like myself) seem to have missed out on this great economy that everyone is talking about.

Sometimes I ask myself, Is this it? Have I just worked my last “normal” job? Am I going to have to content myself with being a service worker from now on? Am I going to have to move into some studio in the Bronx with ten other people?

And what happened to the things that I actually love doing, such as writing and performing? (I can’t perform right now because I’m working nights.) Why am I killing myself just to survive?

And, once again, where’s the outrage? (I’m still getting over Bernie Sanders’s loss in New York’s Democratic primary, despite the fact that Independents weren’t allowed to vote and that 120,000 voters mysteriously disappeared in Brooklyn.)

Maybe people are just in denial, because when something like this happens (i.e., unemployment or underemployment), people seem to think that it’s your fault. As in, what’s wrong with you that you can’t find a decent job, not what’s wrong with the economy or what’s wrong with the hiring system. (Also: It couldn’t possibly happen to me!)

It seems like if you want to get a decent job these days, you have to create it yourself (or, at least, find it before it’s advertised).

Maybe I just need to do a better job of monetizing my “brand,” the way Jimmy Buffet has.⁴ Jimmy Buffet, whom you may recall as the one-hit wonder who sang “Margaritaville,” has turned that song into a chain of resorts and restaurants. Maybe I need to do the same thing with my brand! (Somehow, though, “The Gay Curmudgeon” doesn’t sound like the kind of thing that would encourage people to relax and spend money.)

Because right now all I have is a spectacular sounding career.

And I can’t use that to pay the rent.

1 http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/my-secret-shame/476415/

2 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/20/health/life-expectancy-decline-mortality.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

3 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/21/fashion/dont-you-forget-about-me-the-formerly-irredeemable-80s-return.html?smid=fb-share

4 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/business/media/jimmy-buffetts-margaritaville-is-a-state-of-mind-and-an-empire.html

Why I’m Voting for Bernie Sanders

Because my landlord just threatened me with eviction. How’s that for starters?

Because I’ve been engaged in a grueling, white-knuckle job search for the last eight months. Because I’m currently working as a doorman for $10 an hour because my unemployment ran out. Because I’m using credit cards to buy groceries and pay for my utilities, so that I can use all my cash for rent.

That’s how bad things have gotten.

So forgive me if I seem a little impatient for with all these limousine liberals who have the luxury of voting for the pragmatist, the woman who wants everyone to be happy with incremental change, because everything is going great for them.

I’m fucking happy for you.

If you could just step outside your sheltered existence for a few seconds, you might see the reason why 50,000 people gathered in New York City’s Washington Square Park last night, while only 1,300 gathered for Hillary’s dismal event in the Bronx.

Forgive me if I’m not going to just settle for the same old bullshit anymore.

Especially while corporations are sitting on record profits, while most people’s wages have been stagnant for the last 15 years (or gone down). Especially when they’re moving their corporate headquarters to other countries so they don’t have to pay taxes like us little people do.

I’m sorry, but I’ve fucking had enough.

While we’re on the subject of declining wages and disappearing jobs (despite all media coverage to the contrary), lets talk about the sorry state of our so-called “safety net” that’s supposed to help people like me.

While I was still collecting unemployment (which Congress saw fit to cut down to six months because the economy is doing “so well”), I applied for food stamps and was turned down because I made too much money.

I even asked about applying for what’s euphemistically known as “cash assistance” (i.e., welfare), because of the very real possibility that I was going to have no income whatsoever when my unemployment ran out, and was told that—even if I was approved—it would take at least 30 days to process my application.

Gee, what am I supposed to do about eating in the mean time? (Thank God the doorman job came through!)

Which brings me to another subject.

I had been planning to write a whole different post about my actual job search (and I was hoping to have a more triumphant ending by now), but it basically boils down to this:

It’s impossible to find a job these days without a referral. Period.

And if you happen to have the bad fortune to work in an industry, like mine, that has fallen off a cliff in the last few years, too bad for you—because all your contacts are probably going to be in the same boat as—if not worse off than—you are.

If the government really cared about finding people jobs, they would have programs to retrain people. They would spend money on things like fixing our crumbling infrastructure to actually create jobs.

Hmmm… whose platform does that sound like?

Bernie Fucking Sanders—that’s who!

So, on Tuesday, I hope you’ll join me, and millions of other New Yorkers like myself, in voting for Bernie Sanders in New York’s Democratic primary.

I’m hoping my financial situation will improve in the very near future. But I’m not willing to wait another four years to say that about the United States.

Déjà Vu All Over Again

 I’m having a déjà vu moment.

About two years ago, I was going through the first of my three bouts of unemployment in the last three years (due to the project-based nature of my industry) and I embarked on a series of media appearances on behalf of extending unemployment insurance. I appeared on CNN, The CBS Evening News, and WNYC (among other places) pleading my case and, by extension, the case of millions of Americans like myself. I wrote to John Boehner and Mitch McConnell (twice) and called their offices, and I tweeted about 5,000 tweets in support of extending unemployment insurance. Despite my best efforts (and those of others), Congress voted against extending unemployment insurance five times.

Now I feel like I’m going through the same thing with the Bernie Sanders campaign.

I produced two benefits for his campaign, I’ve blogged about his candidacy and have tweeted every supportive article about Sanders I’ve read.

Now I’m watching as Democrats fail to show up to vote in primaries, and as so-called progressives like Bill Maher and the media in general refer to Hillary Clinton as the presumptive Democratic nominee.

What happened to our outrage?

Meanwhile, over on the Republican side, the three-ring circus that is Trump, Cruz and Rubio attack each other like rabid dogs. The bully governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, has endorsed that other bully from New York, Donald Trump. And Trump continues to insult every demographic in America while the media sits back and salivates at their ratings.

I’ve basically resigned myself to either the current status quo if Clinton wins (incremental change at best, Republican obstruction at worst) or complete Armageddon if Trump wins (war with Syria and/or Russia, climate catastrophe, complete deregulation of corporations).

It’s hard to feel sorry for the establishment Republicans who created this mess. It’s just the end result of 35 years of trickle-down economics, starting with Reagan, so that now we have a situation where the top 1% is doing tremendously well and everyone else is at each others’ throats and blaming whichever scapegoat is most convenient (Muslims, Mexicans—take your pick).

This is what happens when wealth and power become so concentrated in the hands of a few: the rest of us have to just sit back and hope for the best.

Meanwhile, the latest news is that the death rate among white people is going up, particularly those without a college degree.¹ They’re literally killing themselves with drugs and alcohol because they can’t find a job. (Of course, blacks and Hispanics are doing even worse than white people economically, but that’s been going on for so long it barely raises an eyebrow anymore.)

I give up.

Even Bill Maher said he was “speechless” after the last Republican debate. Donald Trump isn't funny anymore. It’s worse than America being the world’s laughing stock. America is about to become an even more dangerous place than it already is. We’re already a threat to ourselves (we have the highest rate of gun violence in the civilized world and we’re the only civilized country without universal health care). Now we’re about to become an even bigger threat to the rest of the world, as well.

So keep watching the Kardashians, America, and don’t forget to watch the Oscars tomorrow night.

Because if Donald Trump gets elected president of the United States, it’s going to be lights out for all of us.

1 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/22/opinion/why-are-white-death-rates-rising.html

Shameless Billions

I have a feeling Billions is going to be my new “love to hate.”

Between the unintelligible financial jargon, the shameless displays of wealth, the profanity-laced dick-measuring contests, and the heavy-handed symbolism, there’s a lot to hate.

The first two episodes introduced the primary characters and conflict. Damian Lewis (late of Homeland) stars as Bobby Axelrod, one of those people with an embarrassment of riches—looks, money, an all-neutral wardrobe—that you just love to hate. Malin Akerman, who was so good in HBO’s sorely-missed The Comeback, plays Axelrod’s wife, the requisite piece of arm-candy who unconvincingly keeps alluding to her hard-scrabble upbringing on the mean streets of Inwood.

Paul Giamatti is U.S. Attorney Chuck Rhodes, a man given to overblown prophecies of doom for Axelrod, unwieldy metaphors alluding to same, and whose biggest accomplishment so far seems to be the amount of scenery he’s able to chew. Maggie Siff plays his wife, Wendy, who works as some kind of psychotherapist at Axelrod’s firm and who, for some unknown reason, has a sadomasochistic relationship with her husband. (The opening scene of the first episode features Wendy extinguishing a cigarette on her husband’s chest and then peeing on the wound. The show goes downhill from there.)

OK, so maybe that’s how high-powered douchebags really talk and behave in real life. It still pains me to hear the stilted dialogue coming out of these actors’ mouths, especially since I know they’ve all had better material.

It’s embarrassing.

Which brings me to Shameless, Showtime’s other Sunday night offering.

Shameless is what you might call the flip side to Billions’ excess. Shameless deals with the Gallagher family, an unwieldy brood living on the south side of Chicago in white-trash squalor.

To say that the Gallaghers are dysfunctional would be like saying Hitler wasn’t very nice to Jews. The amount of dysfunction on this show can make it painful to watch at times. I mean, I’ve heard of schadenfreude, but this is ridiculous!

Let’s see, where do I begin?

The patriarch, Frank Gallagher (William H. Macy), is an alcoholic on his second liver, who just ended an affair with a woman who had cancer and committed suicide at the end of last season. His ex-wife, Monica (Chloe Webb), was a manic-depressive. His oldest daughter, Fiona (Emmy Rossum), is sleeping with two men at the same time—Sean (Dermot Mulroney) and Gus (Steve Kazee, from Broadway’s Once), whom she’s married to—and is now pregnant but doesn’t know who the father is. His 15-year-old daughter, Debbie (Emma Kenney), is also pregnant, but is determined to keep the child despite the overwhelming evidence around her that she should not. His youngest son, Carl (Ethan Kutkosky), just got out of jail and is now selling guns in school and sporting cornrows and an 18-year-old black friend he met in juvie. His next youngest son, Ian (Cameron Monaghan), is also manic-depressive (like his mother), as well as gay, and has been reduced to working as a janitor at his brother’s college after getting fired as a waiter at his sister’s restaurant.

All of which makes Lip (Jeremy Allen White), the oldest son who’s attending college and is sleeping with one of his married professors, seem like a model of success.

(Another daughter, Sammi, is no longer on the show. I guess the house—and script—got too crowded!)

There’s also an interracial couple—Veronica and Kevin Ball (Shanola Hampton and the hunky Steve Howey) —who are the Gallaghers’ neighbors and are raising two small children of their own; and a lesbian couple who are supposed to symbolize the gentrification of the Gallaghers’ neighborhood and have lately gotten into an ongoing battle with another neighbor.

Whew!

The only thing that’s a slight consolation is that there’s a lot of male (and female) nudity. A lot!

In just the last two seasons, we’ve gotten to see the asses of Mulroney (who will forever be fixed in my mind as the best-looking AIDS victim ever in Longtime Companion), Kazee (thank you!), Howey (thanks again!), and Macy (no thank you).

Another one of the highlights of last season—for me, at least—was the relationship between Ian and Mickey Milkovich (Noel Fisher). It gloriously destroyed any stereotypes one might have of all gay men being effeminate.

I’m not sure where all this is going but, if nothing else, after watching this show, you’re bound to feel that your own life—no matter how shitty it is—is somewhat less shitty.

In Defense of the Eagles

 Just barely over a week after the death of David Bowie, we lost another rock god of the ’70s, Glenn Frey of the Eagles.

Last night I re-watched the excellent documentary, History of the Eagles, and was struck by a number of things: that geography is destiny, that the ’70s music scene in southern California was a unique convergence of people that will probably never be duplicated, and that the Eagles were fucking talented.

I don’t care about fame. I don’t care about money. I don’t care about physical beauty. But I worship talent. I bow at the feet of musicianship. And that’s something the Eagles had in spades and something that’s sorely missing from today’s studio-created pop princesses and knob-twiddling producers.

Just watch the first few seconds of History, where the five original members of the band engage a capella in five-part harmony. That’s the same sound that blew away British producer Glyn Johns, who produced their first two albums and had already worked with The Who, the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. Try asking one of today’s auto-tuned divas (or divos) to do that.

While it may not seem necessary to defend a band that has the best-selling album of the 20^th century (Their Greatest Hits, 1971-1975), there’s a comment by music critic Robert Christgau that I read on CNN’s website that sticks in my craw: “Another thing that interests me about the Eagles is that I hate them.”¹

There’s also the good-natured ribbing of the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski, where Jeff Bridges’s character, The Dude, asks his cabdriver not to play the Eagles on his car radio. (The cab driver then asks him to get out of the cab.)

But that’s the thing about popular bands (or anything that’s popular). At some point they become a cliché. At some point there’s a backlash and, suddenly, they’re not “cool” anymore.

The thing about the Eagles is that they were so popular, you just took it for granted that they would always be around. And, now that they’re not, I’m kicking myself that I never saw them live.

Granted, the Eagles were not known for the highly choreographed, special effects-laden spectacles that are demanded of today’s touring bands. (In History, one critic accuses them of “loitering onstage.”) Eagles concerts were all about the music.

And that’s the thing.

The Eagles came out of the southern California music scene of the ’70s and combined the influences of rock and country into something that hadn’t been heard before. No matter where you were, when you were heard one of their songs, you were magically transported to that southern California paradise of palm trees, cars, and sunshine (and, by the time of Hotel California, its hedonistic underbelly of sex and drugs).

You can imagine how this would appeal to someone living in the cold suburban hell of Long Island.

The band split in 1980 and reunited for a tour and album in 1994 (Hell Freezes Over) and later released another album, Long Road Out of Eden. While these last two albums may not dig as deep as a Hotel California, their pre-breakup output alone (to say nothing of the solo careers of Don Henley and Glenn Frey) would make them untouchable.

And that reminds me.

There’s one thing I’ve been waiting over 30 years to say.

Fuck you, Robert Christgau.

1 http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/18/entertainment/glenn-frey-obit-feat/index.html