Where, exactly, do the dead go?

Friday night, as I was preparing tonight’s Easter feast and rocking out to my Jesus Christ Superstar LP, I had a visceral sensation of my parents, particularly my father. Easter has long been my favorite religious holiday, not just because of its universal sense of renewal and rebirth, but also because the scale of it was so more conducive to inner reflection and family enjoyment. The distractions of Christmas are largely gone, as are all the expectations of “the holidays” that seem to wreak havoc on modern American lives.

Easter week with my parents was one of the happiest times of the year for me with them. It was usually just the three of us, with Cathy and her family or a few close friends joining us Sunday afternoon. But the whole lead up to the day Christ would rise (without the aid of Viagra, no less) was just our little family, free of large expectations, and my parents and I indulging each other in our private, not too serious, not too light sensation of the meaning of rebirth.

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It’s not every day that a New York State Senator responds to something you’ve written, is it? ( I wonder if I’ll make it into Rev. Senator Diaz’s sermon tomorrow?)

It’s also not every day that one’s boss publishes something like this about your work.

What I’m listening to as I write my latest school story

Over at the Voice, I’ve updated my 2009 take on who we have to blow to get gay marriage. The original story ties with “White America Has Lost Its Mind” for best headline I’ve been assigned to write a story for.

Yesterday, I covered Drag Queen Wedding and Queer Rising’s joint actions in Grand Central and in front of Governor Cuomo’s midtown office for the Voice. In the cacophony of noise during the end of the protest, the thing that stood out the most were the raging screams from 20-year-old Ali Lozano.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King died on this date, 43 years ago. One year prior, he was here in New York City, giving his famous anti-Vietnam speech at Riverside Church, “A Time to Break the Silence.”

Here’s King in his own words.

I dreamed about Barbra Streisand last night. I was in a limo with her, with another friend I can’t remember. I asked her if she’d ever had a driver’s license. She laughed and said “I come from a European childhood!” and pointed out she’s had chauffeurs for years – like the one driving us.  I knew she came from Flatbush, Brooklyn, and politely said, “I know, I just wondered if you’d ever learned as a teenager…or like many New Yorkers, if you just had a state issued non-driver ID.” She laughed, and pulled out her first state ID card. It was funny, and I was debating taking a picture of it with my iPhone, when she allowed me to hold it and examine it. Then, it turned into a hand painted business card, with sketches she’d painted and normally sold for $25 (proceeds to amfAR). But she said I could have it for free.

Then, I touched her face. And yes, it felt like buttah’.

I think this dream was brought on by Raymond Equality Miller’s video last week.

What a wonderful day! Andre and I headed for a day trip to Asbury Park, to attend the Garden State Film Festival. There, I got to see Rockingham: The Road to Peace, a documentary I’d written the screenplay for two years ago. The film tells the story of Washington’s time at the Rockingham estate in central Jersey, where he was when the Revolutionary War ended and where he wrote the farewell address to the Continental Army. Little is popularly known about this episode of Washington’s in New Jersey, the state where the most battles took place during the war.

It was especially great to see the film’s director, Fred Frintrup, and his wife Loraine, the parents of my NYU film school cohort (and partner of Flickering Duck Producktions) Peter Frintrup. After the Thrashers, the family I owe the most to is the Frintrups, who supported and believed in me and my ability for years and were the first people to ever pay me for my creative work. Continue reading →

I have a complicated relationship with David Brooks. I’ve long thought he has a particular insight into a particular class of people, and that he’s completely untethered from the reality of most human beings. When my good friend Roy Edroso would write about how out to lunch Brooks’ column in the Times can be, I couldn’t agree with him more.

And yet, there is something disarmingly insightful that Brooks has to share from time to time, detached as he is. He can be bull’s eye on the money within his little world. For years I thought his belief that there’s nothing, nothing more important for parents who are Bobos in Paradise – not their kids’ health, not seeing their kids graduate from Harvard, or even seeing their child cure cancer – than having their offspring’s wedding featured in the Times Style Section. (I found this doubly true after I actually  went to a wedding featured in the Times Style Section.)

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More soon.