I think the paintings of Alex Katz were an early inspiration for my show, Sexual Intercourse: American Style. I look at a picture like this (which was taken from a book so the quality is a little shitty) and I think, “yes! That’s exactly what I want SIAS to be like.”

The whole painting is wonderfully artificial and strange—just these flat, bourgeois couples, stiffly holding each other, surrounded by nature. I like how everything looks like a Land’s End catalogue. You say to yourself, “wait, is this a joke?” No, this is not a joke. This is deadly serious.

[EDIT: Wordpress won't let me go past a certain size picture so here's a detail:]

A Journey Jukebox Musical.

There. That’s it. There’s your million dollars. Does it need any more explanation?—A Broadway Musical centered around Journey songs. Now get crackin’ playwrights—all you have to do is figure out some loose narrative that can successfully weave “Don’t Stop Believin’” into “Wheel in the Sky” into “Open Arms.”

It is hardly a secret that every single person between the ages of 30 and 45 who has even a whiff of an interest in the Broadway Musical is an enormous Journey fan. More than ABBA, more than Billy Joel, certainly more than Frankie Valli —go to any karaoke bar and you will see the “musical theater crowd” wailing away to Journey songs. There is gigantic audience out there in desperate need of a Journey Jukebox Musical willing to pay good money! I don’t even like Journey and I’m tempted to take a crack at it.

I was at my cousin’s wedding this weekend.

All of my friends seem to be of marrying age—just waiting around, waiting to get married. Or deciding never to get married. One or the other. I’m not entirely against the idea. And I think I would like to have some sort of ceremony, rather than running off to City Hall.  It would be fun to have music and readings and such.

Maybe one reading could be Stan Apps’ poem,  “A Massive Image of Elmo”…

A Massive Image of Elmo

A massive image of Elmo is in the air above Elmo.

Elmo is surrounded by monsters of other colors

Looking at Elmo, listening to Elmo.

Elmo in the air holds his paws up and out

Reaching out to the world, to beseech, to cuddle

Blue monsters look at Elmo, green monsters look at Elmo

Monsters made out of used rags shake Elmo’s hand

Elmo is at the center

Elmo creates the circle that surrounds Elmo

There is nothing more deeply human than the family

The family is a dynamic power structure

That contains individuals by circumscribing them

Circles are sacred; the center of circles are sources

Elmo creates the circle that surrounds Elmo

The circle creates the massive image of Elmo

That is in the air above Elmo

All the monsters around Elmo take meaning from Elmo

Monster society is the production of monster consciousness

and monster being by monsters

The massive image of Elmo above Elmo is on a wall

The meaning that Elmo offers us is not a created meaning

Elmo is a monster at the center of the world

Which is where monsters belong

And the world shall serve the interests of monsters now

Rather than the abstract needs of imaginary beings

Popped into the local bodega today and bought a package of Pepperidge Farm brand English Muffins. For all intents and purposes, they are Pepperidge Farm Hamburger Buns with cornmeal adhered to the underside.

English Muffins, I believe, are an American invention, based on the English model of the Crumpet. The people at Thomas’ create the benchmark English Muffin, a dense disk that must be carefully split with a knife to reveal the famed nooks and the less famous crannies.

Any fool can rig up a hamburger bun machine to spit out faux English Muffins. This is what the scholars are thinking of when they speak of “Late Capitalism”—buns dressed up as muffins.

After a nearly two-week absence, this is what choose to talk about.