The Vapor of Today, August 10th 2006

To you, my friends, my self-outside-self, the electric connective tissue that makes up my consciousness...the one tether i have to something fixed and grounded, the calming porchlights that gleam in the clouded non-solidity that makes up my reality...

I just wanted to tell you what I am working on. This is just to make it seem more real for myself, and to share, and to hope that by sharing it will form into something other than a wish.

What i have been doing this summer:

A treatment of my first novel, Hornito. We are trying to make it a television show... a half-hour comedy-drama, about a kid growing up in Las Vegas who is constantly called a gaywad and will probably grow up to be one. I'm working with Crossroads (Crossroadsfilms.com) (the incredible production company that filmed and edited my vidcasts) and after a good long conceptual process, we are about ready to pitch to networks in September. It would be such a good, strong, heartfelt show. We are feeling really strong about it, which is a good sign. As Christine Vachon once said, "Every project needs a fanatic," and we are feeling pretty fanatical about it.

I also have been working on a treatment for another half-hour comedy called Glass Houses...which is sort of like Upstairs Downstairs in those preposterous Richard Meier buildings on the West Side Highway. It was seriously this idea i have had in the back of my head for a few years (since those infernal glass billionaire buildings started cropping up everywhere and NYC became a high luxury spa and the divisions between wealthy and poor became chilly and defined)...but i have always fantasized about creating a Dynasty-style show, where the plots twist and everyone is in love with everyone else. I need to watch Footballer's Wives I think for inspiration...I will post the treatment. But let me think about it first...because i dont want it to be stolen. Oh god how dumb. Its just a dumb treatment.

I'm writing tons of comedy sketches for PuPu Platter...its so fun and simple yet incredibly hard to find the right way to nail it, you know? But i truly love doing stuff with them. I wish someone would come along and film us. We are a no-brainer NATURAL FIT for internet comedy bits. Its just we have been scraping by, without any time or equipment to make it happen. Although we have had flirtatious interest from a number of producers. Coming up in August will be a parody of American Apparel, an ad for Mel Gibson Beer, and of course Fretwork News...i'll post them in Ejaculations.

I just finished up another essay for Out magazine about straight guy comedians and the limits that come with being gay in that industry. Should be out in the September issue. Mostly its about how "Thats so gay!" has become the common joke-filler line for comedians. And how ONE CERTAIN TOP SELLING COMIC right now is gay but pretends he's straight while HE TOURS THE COUNTRY. Those are pretty lame hints, huh?

Also:

David Blaine gets an evil visit from the Underminer in Guilt and Pleasure, out now.

An essay for a literary magazine called Post Road about New Grub Street (shh...i include it in my archives)

An essay about my favorite singer Katel Keineg for an anthology coming out in January, The Best Concert I Ever Saw or something like that...

An essay about Straight Girls and Gay Guys for an anthology being published next year

Meanwhile i am still at work with Todd Downing on a screenplay/concert film that tries to give my last solo show My Price Point a dramatic arc. We are calling it Curb your Enthusiasm through the eyes of Bunuel. Todd is a fantastic, sharp-eyed, twisted director and I love collaborating with him. The working title is This Exact Moment. Its about a performance artist guy who has to change his life after 9-11 and watches as America go INSANE as Bush is re-elected and Paris Hilton becomes a star. He becomes a greedy ignorant asshole like everyone else to survive, but then returns to his roots and tries to pierce through the plastic pink wall of the Entertainment Industrial complex and feel something real.

As you can see, everything major is in a very larval, strange, promissary stage. Which is a gay-guy-with-a-masters-degree-in-poetry-that-he-is-still-paying-shitloads-for-in-student-loans way of saying I AM NOT MAKING ANY FUNKIN MONEY RIGHT NOW.

Do I live in a mid-nineties Internet bubble-esque vaporland? I wish I knew if one of my projects was gonna stick. I had a request to send HBO a DVD of My Price Point, never heard back. Still don't know about Underminer movie option, which soon reaches the end of its term. Will everything fall apart and frazzle out into fizzy radio snow, leaving me penniless and thwarted, or is this a creative beginning and i should feel excited?

As you can see, I have these stabs at new projects but I feel like such a Josh Freelanceowitz about it all (remember that character from vanity Fair? eeep) I am calling to the Universe for another epic project for me to dig my fingers into...

Do you, oh one or two readers of my ruminations, have this anxiety? How do you get through the day? What gives you faith? Can you comfort me and help me feel a little more hopeful that someday i will have a large desk and the time and space to create something solid? And why is it that none of the guys i like are the type that call back?

Maybe its just because it's August. I should enjoy the haze, shouldnt I? Nothing feels permanent. I wont even get started on my men-situation. Actually, you can read about it in my Albo En Espanol section, when i post the story "Vino"...once i get my lovely spanish teacher, Celina Bazeta, to correct it.