My pal Eliot Glazier was nice enough to ask me to voice-over a comedy short.
It’s very funny – so is Eliot.
Thanks, buddy!
Category: Uncategorized
LA is Full of Pussy
Los Angeles
Dear Readers,
I’m in the Los Angeles area for a few pilot season appointments until Tuesday the 17th.
I’m looking for cool, unique, or fun things to do – and I want to meet you!
Can’t promise anything; I have a lot of friends, but email me at piefolk@gmail.com.
Let’s hang out, maybe?
xo
Michael
One Photograph
Get ready world. The PIECAST will be on iTunes shortly. 🙂 Big thanks to my helper Jonny T. Big thanks to my guests too.
Interview with Hank Chen
Remember three or four months ago when I was accused of being racist by five uber-hipster undergrads in rural England?
No?
Remember? They had a shittily-formatted blog with half-baked ideas about how i’m racist. They used the fact that I sometimes feature people of color (and the fact that sometimes I don’t) to extrapolate a systematic and insidious racism that I’m participating in and possibly orchestrating?
No? You don’t remember? It was a few months ago. Here, I’ll remind you – I reacted to it immediately and my comedy friends who know and love me came to my rescue and shouted them down on their own blog. Nobody else commented or supported them. Remember?
It was such a small thing. Maybe I shouldn’t expect you to remember. It was for a class project, and I’m pretty sure they failed. I contacted their professor. Do you remember this at all, dear reader?
No?
Well Hank Chen does. And, he wants to talk about it for 11 minutes.
I’m giving Hank a lot of shit, but it’s good natured. I’m glad he’s outspoken and wants to talk about things like this. I’m glad his readers (for the most part) have decided to side with me on this issue. Hank, thanks for having me on your vlog to talk about this important event that nobody cares about.
It’s important to start a dialogue about these things. Hank is very brave to do that.
Carry on Rice Queens, Potato Queens, Kinksters, Fetishists, Monogamists, Polyamorists, Straights, Bis, Gays, Trannies, Lesbos, Curry Queens, Bean Queens, Plushies, Spankers, Barebackers, Stressed-Out-Neo-Victorian Gays, Old School 70’s Gays, Twinks, Bears, Blesbians, Radical Faeries, Log Cabin Republicans, Gay Jews, G’Atheists, and Poodle Fuckers.
I made the Poodle Fucker thing up, but you get the idea. Carry on.
And don’t let anyone shame you for speaking your mind.
Unless your ideas are stupid.
Then, keep your mouth shut, Sarah Palin.
;
Starbucks: Part One
Him: Let’s grab a coffee. Oh, ew, nevermind.
Me: What?
Him: It’s not Intelligensia.
Me: Oh yeah. I’ve read that name a lot. What’s Intelligensia? It sounds like a philosophy about fair labor practices, or something.
Him: Um, I don’t know about that. I just know that Intelligensia coffees are fresh roasted daily in vintage German roasters. This is a Starbucks. That’s not the same thing.
Me: It’s not, but it’s New York in February.
(long pause)
Him: Okay fine, but I’ll get a tea. I’m kind of a coffee snob.
Me: That’s becoming clear.
Him: Oh, sorry. We don’t all have blogs about progressive gay thought.
Me: Don’t apologize. Some of us are coffee snobs. That’s cool. It takes a village.
Him: What?
Me: It’s a saying. “It takes a village to raise a child.” Although I might amend that statement so say “It takes a village of gays to raise a child right.”
Him: Ew. Gays don’t want children.
Me: Ew. Yes they do.
Him: Ew. Who told you that?
Me: Ew.
Him: Ew, what?
Me: Just ew we keep saying ew.
Him: Who told you that gays want children?
Me: I guess I told myself that.
Him: Sounds so heteronormative. No thanks.
Me: No thanks?
Him: I don’t want to live in a world where gays want to have children. Why should we emulate the behavior of people who oppress us and treat us like there’s some sort of sex hierarchy, where their sex is perfectly normal, and in fact wonderful, and our sex is shameful and dirty?
Me: That’s a good point. We shouldn’t emulate that sort of behavior. But what does that have to do with having children?
Him: To want to raise children is to support the narrative of that sexual hierarchy. That’s how their sex is so pure and gentle, because it leads them to their precious children. Meanwhile, we keep having sex for the fun of it, because it’s all we can do, and they label us as ‘forever adolescent.’
Me: I think they’re just jealous. How’s the tea?
Him: It’s mundane. Starbucks Chai. I’ve been there, done that.
Me: So, how –
Him: It’s trite.
Me: I get it. I get that you don’t like Starbucks. I actually really like the coffee here.
Him: Ew.
Me: Ew. So, wait. Can I ask you a question?
Him: Okay.
Me: What about adopting? Doesn’t that not-support the heteronormative paradigm?
Him: Wow that’s terrible grammar.
Me: Ew.
Him: Ew what?
Me: Correcting grammar in an interesting conversation.
Him: Oh. You think this is interesting. That’s cute. Okay. No. It doesn’t not-support the heteronormative paradigm.
Me: Why’s that?
Him: They’ve been using us for thousands of years to clean up their messes. To write their philosophies, their theater, their music, to cut their hair, to design their living spaces, to make their clothing, to act in their movies, to fight their wars, to farm their fields – they’ve been using us to clean up after them.
Me: Okay…
Him: Now they’ve gone and overpopulated the world – vanity. Their own vanity has driven them to overpopulate the world. And now they want me to pitch in and love their children and raise their children? No. I’m sorry. No thank you. I’ll keep my job as a graphic designer, and I’ll go to Fire Island in the summer. I’ll sleep with twinks and I’ll do too much blow on the weekends and I’ll get along just fine. Yep.
Me: Wow. You, uh… You have some opinions.
(pause)
Me: Can I say something? Can I make one observation?
Him: I don’t know, can you?
Me: Right. Grammar.
Him: It’s important.
Me: Not as important as where your heart is. Hey – if you did adopt a child – wouldn’t that be like taking a child away from their influence? Wouldn’t you in fact be taking a child and raising him to be less heteronormative?
Him: I don’t know. I just don’t know if I could take the heart break. What if the child turned out straight?
Me: Best case scenario she doesn’t.
Him: She? A girl? Jesus.
Me: Maybe a girl. Why not a girl?
Him: EW.
Me: No ew. I did some research. There’s sound evidence that girls are actually just people.
Him: EW. EWEWEWEWEW!!!
Me: No ew.
Him: Yes ew.
(pause)
Him: There’s gum under this table.
(pause)
Him: Starbucks.
Datingadvice.com
Datingadvice.com asked me to write a piece for them.
I wanted to talk about Grindr and Gay Dating.
I’ll post more about this in a few days, or you can click the link above.
I think we could all relax a little bit about Grindr. It’s just social networking.
I have met really great friends and lovers on social media.
Calm down a little, fags.
Winky-smile emoticon.
10 Best Gay Dating Bloggers
Datingadvice.com has been kind enough to name me one of the 10 Best Gay Dating Bloggers!
This is an honor. Thanks guys. You’re the best.
Kevin Allison, Adam Gardiner, Dale Cooper – Episode 3
Dale Cooper: I don’t have a smart phone. I can’t {tweet back at my fans}.
Me: How do you run Grindr? I met you on Grindr.
Dale Cooper: I have an iPod touch. I don’t know my way around New York, but if I can find WiFi – I can route my way around. If I need to get fucked I can jump on Grindr. But I don’t have that constant… internet pressure… notification this and txt here and whatnot.
Kevin: Yeah. It changes your life.
Dale: It does and I’ve seen that. Going back to porn – I’ve been at a table full of performers and producers and we’ll be at a long table and there will be nine of us and everyone is on their smart phones…
Kevin: Yeah…
Dale: And they’re not txting each other they’re communicating with other people. I don’t know if they’re ‘checking in’ at the location or what…
Me: I had to start doing that with my improv students. I had to start saying, there’s no iPhone use. I’ll pick up my iPhone but just to check what time it is so we can go on break. I had to be very stern with a certain class I’m teaching right now because there’s a couple of ADHD students – they’re very talented, I like them a lot, but if I don’t – I have to be like an old school teacher with them. “No grooming yourself! Stop combing your hair! Don’t talk when I’m talking! Now these are my notes…”
Dale: Ruler smacking… That teacher-student kink thing?
(laughter)
Dale: Put on the dunce cap!
(laughter)
Me: “Now clean the classroom! NO ONE’S BLOWING ME!!!”
(laughter)
Kevin: “I couldn’t help but notice no one’s BLOWING ME!!”
(laughter)
Dale: It’s gotten to the point with smart phones where I want to get a watch, just so I can check the time without giving the appearance that I’m on my phone. That’s kind of silly. Who gives a fuck? I mean, we’re all social creatures, so I guess we all give a fuck in some way or another.
Me: I suppose so! Kevin, I want to talk about storytelling. You kind of self-actualized a couple of years ago and you took yourself from a point of… you were almost ready to give up comedy altogether.
Kevin: I actually DID. I did give up comedy – after The State broke up I had always been the black sheep, you know the middle child that was off in his own universe?
You know they say that when Mel Brooks was writing on Your Show of Shows with Woody Alan, and Neil Simon and Sid Ceasar – they would always laugh like hell at his sketches in the writer’s room and say, alright, well, we can’t use that! I was that guy in The State. Everyone loved my stuff – we could never put it on TV.
Me: Larry David had the same problem on SNL.
Kevin: Oh. Yeah! So when the group broke up, I was like, what do I do with myself now? There’s a part of me that’s super polite and submissive and Midwestern and – a Catholic boy from Ohio. And a part of me that’s raunchy and kinky and a madman and likes experimenting with drugs and all that… So finally after 12 years of starving trying to do [character based] comedy, I did give up. I went into publishing.
(pause)
Then I slowly realized, no. I have got to express myself somehow.
(pause)
There’s a part of me that needs to express myself not solely in terms of comedy… under no restrictions. I don’t have to be making people laugh every 8 seconds.
Me: No!
Kevin: So when I first got up onstage and told a true story Michael Black said, you’ve got to drop the act and start speaking from the heart as yourself. I said, it’s too risky. And he said, exactly. Risk is where the good stuff comes from.
Me: Right.
Kevin: So I tried a story onstage the next week, and it was all about how I tried to prostitute myself (when I was 20), and it didn’t go very well. But the story went GREAT!!
PIEFOLK 