Down With Down East

My blog update record has been pretty pathetic since returning from Saba. I’ve been reluctant to post anything that’s not “event-related” i.e. a balloon flight, a wedding of two dear friends, a tentative foray into Loveland. But as my life has been somewhat uneventful of late (other than that last example) this blog has been lying pretty fallow. And after I went to all the trouble of designing that fabulous new header!

So, I’m going to try to get back to my roots as a novice blogger, way back when I first started gusmattox.com and would write about whatever trivial inanity crosses my mind. I seem to recall that strategy did result in the occasional interesting entry. (That blog was also laced with an x-rated photo now and then. That, uh, won’t be happening here.) My goal is to post three entries per week. They may be very short but at least they’ll exist. I make no promises and you certainly shouldn’t check out this page for any thrice-weekly pearls of wisdom. But at least you’ll know I’m alive.

So, what’s on my mind?

This Maine thing. Tsk tsk tsk. I’ve been saying it for years: we homos are the last minority it’s acceptable to hate, and the vote to repeal our civil right to marriage (please note how terrifying is that phrase: to repeal our civil right) confirmed it. Once inside the voting booth people are free to unleash their bigotry with impunity. And here’s the thing: of course they are. This is still a free country, right? I don’t care if you hate me and what I am. Chances are I hate you right back. But as long as you stay on your side of the fence I will not get in your hateful way. But you don’t stay on your side. You come barging through the garden gate with your morals and your God and your 50% divorce rate and try to tell me I’m going to Hell. I find it so difficult to argue this point once religion enters into it because I think people who believe in God and are members of organized religion are deluded idiots who shouldn’t have the right to vote in the first place if they’re going to bring all that malarkey into the voting booth with them.

Y’know, I’m really pretty tired of this whole argument. Its so painfully obvious to me that it’s rooted in the hatred of homosexuals. And often by some supposedly enlightened individuals. And just as often by the homosexuals themselves. I’m not going to get started about how I believe that the closeted gays are to blame for the lack of and/or slow progress in LGBT rights over the past 10 years. I’ve already been on that soapbox. But I would like to mention that a lot of our straight allies (including our families) could be doing more, but don’t because we homos are the last minority it’s acceptable to hate. If someone utters a homophobic (or any kind of bigoted) remark and it is not rebutted, it is implicitly endorsed. If you let your kid be in the cub scouts in spite of their official anti-gay policy, well, I guess you think that policy is sound. There’s a pretty terrific restaurant in my area run by some religious community. I used to be a regular patron until I found out they, too, are officially anti-gay. I suppose I wasn’t surprised to learn that information, but once I did you’d better believe I stopped going there. But dang it if most of my friends don’t continue to eat there. Even some of my gay friends. They’re actually giving money to people who think their friend (me) is, by his very existence, an affront to nature. Thanks, friends.

I wish I had answers but I don’t. I do wish people would do the substitution thing, though, and see how they come down on different issues. Let’s try: “The official Boy Scout policy is that people who are black runs counter to the values promoted by the Boy Scouts. Therefore we don’t allow black boys to join the scouts or black men to be scoutmasters.” Sign me up! Or: “We believe the Jewish 'lifestyle' is incompatible with a moral and just life.” What’s on the menu?! I think people would be surprised at their own buried prejudices if they tried that tack.

Blah blah blah. This is what you get with a rambling blog entry, I’m afraid. Lots of carping and no suggestions for improvement.

Oh, and did I mention I’m completely disillusioned with Barack Obama?

It Might As Well Be Spring

Back on February 11th, when I posted the first entry here on what was then my first blog in several years, my friend Wicki said she thought it signified that I was ready to get back into life, to put myself back into the world in a way that left myself open to new adventures and experiences that I had been avoiding hermited away here in the cabin. Based on the months subsequent to that initial post, I’d have to say (as my late husband Bruce would have Mallapropped,) Wicki hit the nail on the nose.

I have had some amazing adventures this year: the Damien Center in Albany… two months on a Caribbean Island… writing a play in three days and seeing it up on stage—in a full production—mere months later… and now getting ready for whatever happens next with the show. (And that last truly is up in the air at this point. We’re all trying to figure out exactly what is next on the agenda for Canned Ham. Stay tuned.) Not to mention a feeling of restlessness here in the woods of upstate New York; I’ve spent more time in the city since returning from Saba than I have in the past few years put togther.

Of course, my financial position is a mess. A mess. I mean, you people have no idea! I guess there’s just something congenitally wrong with me, though, because I can’t seem to get myself worked up about it. I suppose I’m a true believer in the maxim “you can’t take it with you.” Of course, in my case it would be “you can’t take nothing with you,” but it would simply kill me to go to my grave with a grammatically incorrect epitaph.

But where am I going with this rambling? This long, long-overdue entry on The Fabulous Tom Judson Blog?

I’m going here: of all the the goings-on in my life this year that have proved Wicki right, the most surprising to me is that I seem to be dipping a tentative toe back into the River of Romance. The Pond of Passion. The Lagoon of Lurve. I haven’t dated anyone in seven years (almost to the day) and that time it didn’t end pretty. In fact, it left me completely gun-shy about The Boyfriend Thing at all.

So imagine my surprise when IT unexpectedly reared its ugly head once again. Ye olde heart sputtered and coughed and, rather jerkily, showed signs of life. (And I mean “jerkily.” I seem to be a little rusty at this stuff—I’ve already found a couple of opportunities to display my slightly-insane side. Oh, joy.)

It’s too soon for details (although the Facebook sleuths out there may be able to sniff out some clues) and who knows where it will lead? The whole thing may even crash and burn—I can be a real pain in the ass. (Don't worry--I don't think he reads anything I write, so I'm safe here.)

But for now it's terrific to look out the window at the leaves coming off the trees, floating gracefully down to Earth, and to feel that, well, I’m falling too.

All We Owe Iowa

Well, the way Randy tells it, he had just picked up his mail and there among the bills was an envelope addressed to him from his grandfather. Seems Grandpa would give the grandkids a check for $250 when they got married. All the other cousins had gotten their loot by this point but Randy was still unmarried. Who can say what got into the old man, but he decided to send Randy his check in spite of him still being a bachelor.

“How do you like that?” Randy said to Allen as they drove down the street in Allen’s red convertible. The thing is, Randy didn’t exactly consider himself “unmarried.” He and Allen had been together just a short time, but it felt like The Real Thing. So they went right to the bank where Randy cashed the check and handed $125 to Allen.

“And I took it,” said Allen. “And I spent it. And I haven’t stopped spending since.”

That check from Randy’s grandfather arrived in 1973 and, according to Randy, that’s when they were married.

As far as the state of Iowa is concerned, however, Randy Van Syoc and Allen Coit Ransome are newlyweds who were legally married on August 26, 2009.

Randy and Allen have been my friends for just a few short years but we’re as close as family. Our mutual friend Jeanine and I were the witnesses who signed the marriage license. But when their friend Ken, who officiated at the ceremony, asked who would stand for these two people, the entire crowd yelled, “We do!” and leapt to their feet.

The ceremony took place on a boat that launched onto the Mississippi from Dubuque and in the middle of the ceremony, in addition to heckling the minister, Allen instructed the captain to veer a little away from the Illinois side and further into Iowa waters just to make sure the marriage was legal.

All the trapping were there: the open bar; the cheese platters, the bacon-wrapped shrimp; the relatives meeting out-of-town friends for the first time. You know, the usual. The atmosphere , though, was anything but; it felt historic and long, long overdue. Allen told me earlier in the day that he had been lying awake a few nights before the ceremony trying to come up with some appropriate vows.

“And I started to get really mad. ‘Vows?’ What was left for me to promise? I realized after all these years that I had been cheated out of the chance to make vows as a young man when romance and love are fresh and making promises like that really means something.”

Both of The Boys (as everyone calls them) injected a little politics into their vows (which made me very proud) but overall their words were touching and heartfelt. All the guests were in tears. And in a moment that was so over the top it wouldn’t make it into the gooiest Lifetime movie, just as The Happy Couple exchanged rings a bald eagle swooped majestically down from the sky and made a U-turn past the bow of the boat before soaring back up above the water.

After the ceremony and the hugs and the kisses and the laughter and the tears we all took the stairs to the upper deck. I stood in back of the boat looking out at the endless Mississip’ and couldn’t help thinking that, while it may have taken Allen and Randy thirty-six years to prove it, the world, and Old Man River are not, I say they are not, just rollin’ along.

My new Canned Ham column on Advocate.com

Canned Ham September 23/24 at Dixon Place in NYC.

Tickets available here.

Canned Ham t-shirts available here.

What Are the Chances?

I never cease to marvel at how innocuous little events can have major consequences. They don’t have to be as Earth-shattering as having to run back in to grab your passport from the hall table and thereby missing the plane that crashes into the ocean. They can be subtle, yet still momentous. Or they can have a cumulative effect that is only visible over time. (That last is a major theme in the Canned Ham script.)

Recently I ran across three friends (two of whom I had not seen in years) simply due to tiny, random occurrences.

The first friend was Donna. We know each other from when we both worked at the Pizza Hut in my hometown the summer before I moved to New York City to attend NYU. (It would be more accurate to say I attended NYU to move to New York City.) Donna was the coolest thing that had ever crossed my path. She was older (she had to have been at least 22 at the time,) drove a very cool Opel GT with headlights you had to flip open with a hand crank, and most of all, she actually subscribed to the Village Voice.

We became great friends and even lived together most of my first year in the city. (12^th Street between Avenues A/B. $150/month.) She dragged me to Max’s Kansas City and the Mud Club and I dragged her to Broadway shows. It’s probably meaningless to her that she got to see Ballroom, but see it she did.

Then we got separate apartments and, as friends do, lost touch. She got married… I got married… I’ve been trying to find her for years but couldn’t remember her husband's last name to save my life. A couple of weeks ago I was putting stuff back on the shelves after returning from Saba and found, among a box of letters, a birthday card from Donna signed with her married name. I headed straight to Facebook and there she was. We have a lunch date coming up in the next few weeks and I can’t wait to see her.

Next: I was joining a friend at a birthday party in the city a couple of weeks ago and, not sure that there would be food, thought it wise to catch a late-afternoon bite. I decided to head three blocks over to Hudson Street to a café but because it was so hot I thought, no, I’ll just jump in to the good old Manatus Diner which was right in front of me on Bleecker Street. I was sitting at a table memorizing my script when I looked up to spot Charles Busch striding past the window. I raced outside and got him to abandon his power walk and join me for a diet Coke.

Now, I see Charles fairly regularly, but it’s always a pleasure. We got to talking about this and that and, as we invariably do, got on the topic of old movies. “Do you know who I’m becoming obsessed with?” Charles asked. “Dame May Whitty.” He then proceeded to recount the entire plot of Lassie Come Home and at the final scene, when Lassie, weary and broken, drags herself down the high street to meet little Roddy McDowall after school, we were both in tears. In the Manatus Diner. On Bleecker Street.

But the most surprising and random encounter happened earlier that day. It was a scorcher and I was parched. I was aiming for the Starbuck’s in Sheridan Square when I passed a phone booth (there are still phone booths!) with an advertisement for Dunkin’ Donuts coconut iced coffee. That sounds good, thought I, and continued toward the Starbucks. Then, out of the corner of my eye I saw that familiar orange and purple right there on Christopher Street, and there, where I do not recall there being one before, was a Dunkin’ Donuts. What the hell, I’ll get a coconut iced coffee. I opened the door to the shop and there at the last table in the back was none other than Whit Stillman, the director of Metropolitan, for which I composed the music score.

Whit and I have a unique relationship in that we get along great personally, but never could really manage to work together very well. It’s usually the other way ‘round, yeah? We struggled through Metropolitan, made an abortive attempt to collaborate on Barcelona and then looked at each other, wrinkled our noses and shook our heads when The Last Days of Disco came around. The last time I had seen Whit was on University Place in September, 2000. I remember the date because I had just returned from the Cabaret tour. After that I completely lost track of him.

“Whit Goddam Stillman! You have no idea how hard I have tried to locate you.”

“I’m in the phone book.”

Dry as ever, that Whit. Of course, I had never tried looking in the phone book. It's so last millennium. Also, he's lived out of the country for most of this time, so I had good reason not to think of the obvious. He was working on something... I was running late... so we exchanged contact info and said goodbye. This tune was written for, but cut from, Metropolitan.

Those three “meaningless” things--opening a box of letters, the day being too hot to walk an extra block and an ad on a phone booth—all led to unexpected encounters with good friends. I’m sure there’s a moral there somewhere. Be sure to send it in if you can think of one.

My new Canned Ham column on Advocate.com

Canned Ham September 23/24 at Dixon Place in NYC.

Tickets available here.

Canned Ham t-shirts available here.

(Re)Launch

Those of you ancient enough to remember the demise of Life Magazine in 1973 may also remember when it was resuscitated as a monthly. The October 1978 premiere issue hit the newsstands that September, which also happens to be the same month I moved to New York City to go to college (don’t ask.) The new Life featured an article about the soon-to-be-released movie version of “The Wiz” which was, at the time, the most expensive musical ever produced at a staggering… uh, thirty-five million dollars.

Why am I bringing this up? Because the cover of the magazine’s re-launch issue pictured hot air balloons and that is the very subject of the re-launch of tomjudson.blogspot.com.

I was invited to go on a balloon flight yesterday evening by Michael, a Greene County neighbor who is also a balloon pilot. I had never been aloft by balloon before so I jumped at the chance. 36 hours after bidding adieu to the sparkling blue waters of the Caribbean I was viewing—from above—the lush green canopy of upstate New York. Which was more beautiful? Neither. They are both, in their own way, magnificent.

As I approached the meeting point I scanned the horizon for the balloon (or “envelope,” as I now know it’s called) and saw… nothing. I pulled into the parking lot and there was Michael and his trailer. Oh, I get it; this is going to be a real hands-on balloon experience. Yup, I assisted in unloading and setting up the balloon and basket before we took off.

The stored envelope is the size of an overstuffed club chair and is unrolled to its full length and laid on the ground. Then the supports are attached to the basket (which is real wicker, by the way. I was expecting some new-fangled fiberglass gondola, but Phineas Fogg himself would be comfortable in this rig) and the envelope cables are connected to the supports.

After that, it’s pretty much what you’d expect: a fan blows air into the envelope and the thing inflates. When the burners are fired, the interior of the balloon heats up and it slowly rises to the vertical. Michael climbed in first, then his friend Chris, and after she was secure, I fell over the side into the basket. Michael gave the burner a few more blasts and we rose into the sky like… well, like a balloon.

(The theory behind flying a balloon is remarkably similar to scuba diving. Buoyancy is dictated by the pressure/temperature inside the BCD (and lungs)/envelope in relation to the water/air outside. You increase the buoyancy of the BCD/envelope with short bursts of air/fire. To maneuver, one must anticipate these adjustments. Again and again Michael would explain what he was doing and it all made sense to me from my recent underwater education.)

The evening was crystal clear and we could see for miles. All the way north to Albany and all the way west to the The Berkshires. We were amazed how much unspoiled forest there is in our area. We floated gently and slowly east and gained altitude as we went. I took a turn at the burners and the next thing I knew we had ascended to almost 3,000 feet. It was magnificent. When the burners are not actually firing it’s completely silent; we could hear conversations in backyards as we passed overhead, our shadow leading the way.

I phoned my friends the Boulers to alert them we were heading straight for their house, but the wind changed direction just before we reached the reservoir and the balloon turned south. There’s a Buddhist monastery in Greene County and we flew directly over the pagoda at their forest retreat instead.

Since it was a quiet Sunday evening cars stopped right on the road to watch as we glided by. People would yell up to us and wave their arms. A private jet appeared to veer off course to get a slightly closer look at its aviational ancestor.

We saw no birds to speak of. Maybe we were too high?

When Michael decided we should start looking for a place to land (2 1/2 hours into the flight!) we happened to be just a few miles from my house. We came in lower and lower and found a hay field that looked good. Cars were lining the road as Michael navigated the air currents and headed for a clear spot so we would land just before sunset. When the balloon was mere yards from the ground two kids came running through the woods and into the open field, screaming gleefully at the beautiful rainbow balloon descending from the early-evening sky. Michael’s landing was flawless; if I had been holding a cocktail (and why wasn’t I holding a cocktail?) the ice would not have tinkled in the glass.

The folks came out of their farmhouse, the neighbors traipsed across the lawn and with their help we had the entire operation packed up in jig time. The evening was magical.

Now, can we please once and for all stop pitying “poor Tom” for returning from Saba sooner than expected? Tha-a-a-a-ank you!

Your own special dreams bloom on the hillside.

By the time the plane reached St. Maarten ten minutes later, Saba was little more than a silhouette in the mist; a shadow of an illusion; there, across that short stretch of the Caribbean. My summer, however, is etched on my brain with a permanence and vividness few other experiences of my life can claim. I will synthesize my time there in the days and weeks and months ahead into something concrete and descriptive.

But right now my feelings about my two months can’t be conveyed in prose. What I need now is a tune, a wordless melody that climbs and soars as high as the highest peak on the island and which, like the elusive view at the summit of Mt. Scenery--at that highest point on Saba--simply… fades away.

[A note to readers: Rattling the Saba, as a title has indeed come to a close. But the actual URL is so delicious, so perfectly me that I see no reason to abandon it. The Canned Ham blog will resume as the journal of my ongoing project, but tomjudson.blogspot.com will remain and be transformed into something a little more general, if not actually esoteric. Stay tuned.]

Joint Custody II

[This is the second entry to be posted simultaneously on both blogs.]

 

 

 

I killed ‘em on Booby Hill.

 

Since I wrote the first two drafts of “Canned Ham” here at El Momo, and since it was Patrick and Sophie’s invitation to come down here for the summer that inspired the writing of it in the first place, there was a nice poetic symmetry in giving the first public reading of the script this past Tuesday evening, here at El Momo.

 

We invited about a dozen of the friends I’ve made since my arrival on the island two months ago to a reading to be held in the dining pavilion.  Once people caught their breaths after climbing the stairs (6 storeys up from the road, remember?) I plied them with alcohol.  As all performers know, a slightly tipsy audience is a friendly audience.  No fool, I.  Patrick had casually mentioned a couple of days earlier that he’d “make some tapas” for the event.  Frankly, he lost control; he put out a spread that a) was beyond belief in its variety and tastiness (bacon-wrapped shrimp, sautéed celery, fish tempura cheese, crackers, pumpkin soup… I can’t even remember everything on the table) and b) made for a hard act to follow.  Suddenly I was appearing at the El Momo Dinner Theater.

 

When everyone was pleasantly stuffed with food and drink I said a few words to introduce the piece and then got underway.  Let’s just say I was pleased with the response.  I learned a lot about the text from both an actor’s perspective and from the point of view of the author.  Some things need to go, others can be fleshed out.  Some jokes didn’t work, some worked even better than I’d hoped.  Still other lines will remain but will be refashioned.  Frankly, it was an invaluable exercise, particularly in light of the fact that the references in the play are particularly American, and (thank God) I found that the script seems to work regardless of one's pop-culture frame of reference.

 

Flipping back through earlier blog entries I see that on April 3^rd of this year the idea of writing a show here on Saba and returning to the states to tour it around the country in the camper really solidified into the plan that is now in place.  Just three and half months later and a huge chunk of that plan—the script—is a reality.  There are some other details (fun stuff) that I’ll talk more about when I get back home and get things cookin’ on that end.  But for now, I can count my summer holiday on Saba a complete, total and utterly fabulous success.

And that's not even counting my world-class tan line.