Pajama Men to Take on the World...

Mikaela says:
Local comedy heroes Mark & Shenoah are being heralded in Chicago... See the great article here.

But the real story is they may soon be coming to TV on NBC!

Whoa. Stop not kidding!

Books not for summer ... D'oh!

Mikaela says:
Recently a friend said summer was for beach-reading fiction.

Okay, I agree that's true, but summer for me is also a time to catch up on that stack of books gathering dust by my bed, waiting for a spare minute, cooing into my night dreams.

Reeeeeaaaaad me...

So I finally read A Thousand Splendid Suns, a downer of a book about women in Afghanistan from 1950 or so to the present time. Oh my is it beautiful, though. I didn't read this book; I consumed it. It is impossible to put down (yes, partly from guilt). You have a responsibility to read it, to face its horror, to witness and cry and begin to understand.

Some of it speaks the same message as its non-fiction neighbor Daughter of Persia. But the muddiness of reality is cleared to sparkling bone-cutting diamond fiction in this unforgettable novel. My lover kept asking me why I was crying, what the book was about ... and when I told him he was cast backward! One book? About all that? Holy god. Yes, that good. I think better than Kite Runner, his runaway hit of a first novel.

I've also been picking my way through 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East by Naomi Shihab Nye. I really do think it's our responsibility to understand the cultures that scare our government so much we declare them terrorists and keep sending more and more troops to inspire "democracy." What better way to do that than through poetry?

And I just finished Mother of Pearl, that my oldest sister bought me for Christmas. Would have been a better winter book, matching its darkness, but the heat and humidity of my living room provided the perfect venue for the book's depiction of the South. The story is also 1950s, I think, but this time a story woven with threads of black, white, and gay characters and these sentences that will stop you dead to consider them. You cannot consume this book; you've got to sip it like sweet wine or Baskin Robbins daquiri ice (before they changed and ruined it). Worth the time, though. It's haunting. I'm still sitting with the ending to see if I'm okay with it.

I loved the time I spent with these characters, though. I wanted so much to run to the river to hear Joody Two Suns tell me the story of my name. The whole book is a world that's real, yet we fear, yet we want in some strange way. It was also one of the best male friendship stories I've read yet. And wise about how people love. How men love women (carefully), women love men (despite themselves), and people who are different love people who are different from them. It's a sweet story about race. How often do we get that? And all the characters have wisdom of their own kind, which I so appreciate. No caricatures or moral tales or easy answers. Just people living the best they can and offering us their story. Pretty great.

That's my summer! You?

Fuck Harry Potter: How about some REAL entertainment?

Mikaela says:
You want magic? These boys will give you magic. They'll wave their "magic wands" so far up your ass, you'll have to laugh to keep from gagging!

Okay, that's graphic, but you get the idea.

One night only (Tonight!): Stop Not Going
UNM's X Theatre (Hint: Enter the Popejoy building and search for signs)

Before these guys stop not going to Chicago.




P.S. Totally tongue in cheek about the Potter thing. You know I'm down for some boy-wizard love. Marjorie & I saw the new movie last night, and it ROCKED.

Happy Birthday, Marjorie!

Planet Waves* foresees:

* Be forewarned that Eric/Brian Francis will chastise you for not subscribing to his service yet visiting his website monthly. He does not, however, offer a subscription that just covers the monthly horoscope, so ... we say ignore him or leave that comment!

Aries (March 20-April 19)
The time has come to confront a sense of loss and angst that seems to take up all the space you need for pleasure and abundance. It's as if someone took something from you, and you now have the opportunity to go on a hunt for just what that may be. It may seem inappropriate to bring any aggression to this deeply sensitive endeavor, but you must assert yourself in a way that is unusual for you. You are more accustomed to directing your energy outward rather than inward; to seeking answers surfing the usual channels of ideas and emotional sentiment. What you do over the next few weeks will feel like more of a struggle, or even an upheaval against the ways in which you tend to be set in your ways. Just remember, you are looking for a lost item of some kind, but here is a clue. It's an emotional, spiritual or sexual quality that you not only did not lose yourself, but which you were never properly given. Someone else lost it, long before you were born.


Cancer (June 21-July 22)
Focus your intent, but do so gently. Take your time and reflect, and consider how you feel. Make sure that timing your moves is utmost on your list of priorities. You don't want to take action too soon, and you may choose to temporarily slow down your outer-world progress, tracking the current path of Mercury retrograde in your sign. If you seem to be getting nowhere, you can count on the station-direct of Mercury on July 9 to help you shift your energy in a constructive direction. Meantime, I suggest you make no attempt to judge your progress. The hitch you are looking for, so you can unhitch it, is a point along that delicate membrane where your feelings dictate what you think is possible, and where what you think is possible dictates your feelings. This thin sheet of psychic tissue is only a few cells thick. Allow the material of the past and of the present to filter through gently till you get the perfect balance, and while you're at it, drink a lot of water.


Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22)
You seem to be in the process of negotiating with your idealism. What is realistic, what is possible, and what from the "impossible" category is worth attempting? There are no right answers to these questions, nor can you know in advance which of your current investments, endeavors or relationships will bear the fruit you can almost taste. You simply must persist, but it's not a persistence of logic; rather, you can guide yourself by the tides of your feelings, which at times will seem to be on the ebb and the flood simultaneously. The one thing you can do that will set you way ahead is to be completely honest with yourself about how you feel, and how you feel about the people who surround you. The chances are you will learn some things about friends and associates that you were not expecting to find out. Some of this may fall under the heading of what the world these days calls "too much information," but I assure you there is no such thing.