Marriage is a Civil Right... DAMN Right.

Because everyone has the right to feel like this. Especially dear Johnny. Infinite congratz to him and his hubby, Vitya, and thank you to the great state of New York.

Actress Hanna Cheek to Perform a Chapter of My Novel!

See you in New York! Hanna is reading a chapter from my just-finished novel, Blue Guitar. Here's the press release:

Join us on Friday, January 20^th
at 7:30
for a free prize-winning reading!

Each year, a panel of New River writers awards the Donna Jo Davis Discovery Prize to honor a gifted emerging writer – emerging being defined as a writer whose work has been recorded on the New River Radio Show (on Art International Radio, http://artonair.org/series/new-river-dramatists) but who has yet to publish a book in the genre representing their work. The reward for winning is a reading of their work at The Players.

This year’s Fiction Donna is awarded to Daleth Hall. Please join us at The Players (16 Gramercy Park South on East 20^th Street) at 7:30 on Friday, January 20^th, where Hanna Cheek will read a chapter from Daleth’s new novel-in-progress Blue Guitar. This reading is completely free, and will be held in the Hampden-Booth Library at The Players (16 Gramercy Park, on East 20^th Street east of Park Avenue). We hope to see you there.

"Daleth Hall is a wryly funny, wise, wonderful writer.”
–Sharon Pomerantz, author of Rich Boy

Past Winners of the Donna Jo Davis Discovery Prize:
2010 Fiction: Alethea Black, for her story "I Knew You'd Be Lovely"
2010 Poetry: Reena Ribalow, for "Desert Light" and "Jerusalem of Heaven, Jerusalem of Earth," and Matthew Wells for "Manhattan Sonnets"

"Antmusic for Sexpeople"

I'm rediscovering Adam and the Ants. Blasting songs and watching videos from Kings of the Wild Frontier. Conclusion: with his energy and theater, his camp, his wit without irony, Adam is the Ant-idote to the shoegazers who shuffle onstage in a ratty cardigan and stand there emoting while the audience grooves on how deep they are. But he's also the antidote to the over-choreographed plastic perfection of so much mainstream pop, the performances without soul and with barely even a body, just an airbrushed liposuctioned image of a body. In other words he's got the theater down, but it still feels raw enough--and playful enough--to be interesting.

For instance, "Antmusic":


"Dog Eat Dog":


Just to be clear, I own music by most of the shoegazers and have seen several of them live. How far gone am I on their music? Adore it. Once I even drove two hours (one way) to see Sigur Ros. It's great music, but... stage presence? No. Engaging performance? No. Theater? No, unless dry ice smoke swirling about the ankles counts as theater. Like the rest of the audience, I spent the whole Sigur Ros concert sitting down. Enjoying it, sure--it's great music to sit around listening to while [insert low-energy activity here: writing in your diary, thinking about things, daydreaming, hanging out with a couple of friends...]. But the shoegazers have never made me dance, or for that matter laugh. By way of contrast, I saw Adam Ant live three times and at no point during any concert was I sitting down.

And how is it that Adam and the Ants came up with some of the most original percussion rock music has ever seen--a cross between Burundi tribal music and 18th-century British military drumming, layered and complex enough that the band needed two drummers to perform--but nobody imitated them?* This should have been a MOVEMENT! I want to start a band! Does anyone know two drummers in need of a gig?

* Bow Wow Wow don't count, because their musicians were Adam's original Ants until Malcolm McLaren stole them.

Goodnight, George. Goodnight, Paris.

We don't "always have Paris." One of its brightest sparks has gone out. George Whitman, who walked to Panama in the 1930s (wonder if he knew my grandparents there?) and then spent 60 years in the even greater adventure of running a legendarily weird Left Bank bookshop--which brought new American writing to Paris and offered a free place to sleep to penniless aspiring writers from the world over--has died. The Times has a great obituary.

George gave me a place to sleep, under a scratchy wool blanket on the top bunk of a jerry-rigged bunkbed in the back of his apartment--which was on the top floor, high above his bookstore--because I was an aspiring writer and shared his love of the Russian language. He showed me how to get into the apartment when he wasn't there: just slip a phone card between the door and its frame to jimmy the lock. He had aspiring writers on this bunkbed, on red velveteen benches below his looming bookshelves, in sleeping bags on the stone floor of the Sylvia Beach Memorial Library. Upstairs writers slept on floors and furniture; downstairs, in the shop, cats slept on piles of books. He charged us nothing to live there. And on top of this deep generosity, he gave us even more: the gorgeous obligation of working an hour or two a day in the shop, and reading an entire book--whichever one we wanted, off the shelves--every single day. (He allowed two days if it was a particularly hefty tome.)

He was the most frugal person I ever met--teabags were reused for days on end, he never bought anything other than books and the bare minimum of food, and if the hotplate was off but still warm you were expected to cook (slooowly) on its diminishing heat rather than wasting valuable electricity by turning it back on. The night I met him he offered me a cup of tea; when I accepted he said, "In that case, would you mind doing about ten minutes' work in exchange for the tea?" The work turned out to be something I would have paid him for the privilege of doing: sorting through papers that included a note from Anais Nin; hanging a photo on a mirror and noticing, as I hung it, that the scribbled handwriting at the bottom ended in Allen Ginsberg's signature and explained that the photo was one Ginsberg had taken of Lawrence Ferlinghetti in San Francisco. I was twenty years old and all my heroes were either writers or characters in books. I almost blacked out in ecstasy.

When I lived there, on one wall of his apartment hung a huge black and white photograph of his daughter, Sylvia Beach Whitman. She was 7 or 8, I think--so about 68 years younger than him--and she was an elfish, weirdly lovely child with pale curly hair, her face the girl-child version of George's own. As he told me and many others, sighing and sad, her mother had taken her back to England so he never saw her anymore. He was afraid she was lost to him. I used to have daydreams of finding her when she grew up and bringing her back, reuniting them before he died.

Then in 2006 I was in Paris with friends and I took them to Shakespeare & Co. I'd heard somewhere vaguely that George's wish had come true: Sylvia had grown up and come back to Paris to help him run the bookstore. We were there talking to the cashier, asking if George was around--he was, but he was napping--when an elfish, weirdly lovely woman with curly blonde hair walked in. She was friendly and familiar with the cashier, she looked to be in her twenties, and she had an English accent.
"Hello," I said. "You must be Sylvia!"
She said, "How did you know?"

Back to Black, For Good.

Rest in peace, Amy.
And peace upon her poor family.

Two years ago I prayed she would survive her twenties.
She didn't.

There's nothing to say that wasn't already said better by Russell Brand. I couldn't even say this, until now, four days later.

So I'm just going to remember her astonishing talent. For instance, here's a song she wrote and recorded when she was nineteen. A 50-year-old blueswoman would be proud of this.


Thank you, Amy, and goodnight.

Portrait of the Lecher as an Old Man

Here's a telling photo of transatlantic rapist Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK) at the 2009 G-20 summit in Pittsburgh. Saw it today on the Daily Beast. Points of interest:

• The president's expression of mild disgust or disapproval;
• The president's hand on DSK's forearm, as if to keep him from going further into Michelle Obama's personal space;
• Michelle's expression of surprise (is that a "WHAT did you just say?!" smile?) and the slight backwards tilt of her torso; and last but not least,
• DSK's lunging posture and a facial expression that looks like, shall we say, intense approval of what he's looking at (namely, Michelle Obama). All his attention and energy is directed towards her; it looks like he barely notices that the President of the United States (and the lady's husband) is right next to him.

Here's how my brilliant brother put it:

Obama's like: "Settle down there tiger. And by 'tiger' I mean 'asshole'."
And Michelle is like, "Wow, that was technically a compliment, but wildly inappropriate."
And DSK is like: "This smile means you can't get angry at what I just said, because then you're the jerk for taking seriously what I obviously meant as a joke. Except I didn't mean it as a joke, but this smile means you cannot prove that."
Sometimes a picture really is worth 1000 words.

And remember, folks, this is what DSK is like with the PRESIDENT AND THE FIRST LADY of the United States, IN PUBLIC, at a major international event covered by the international press.

So what do you suppose he's like with the average attractive woman, alone, in private? Ask the hotel maid. Ask Tristane Banon. Ask Piroska Nagy, a subordinate of his at the IMF, whom he relentlessly harassed. They'll tell you.

Rapist + Lily-Livered DA = Shameful Shitstorm They'll Never Live Down

I saw an awesome bumper sticker the other day--it just said:

Ask Me About
My Opinions!

So I'm going to pretend that someone asked me about my opinions on the recent developments in the DSK rape case (the New York rape case, not the French one). My first thought was that this is exactly why women (and men) who live on the margins of society make such excellent crime victims: because by virtue of living on the margins there are almost always going to be a few things in their background and a few people in their social circle that are alien to "normal" middle-class people, and those things can always be used to cast doubt on the woman's character. In other words, with such victims it is almost always possible to engage in criminal defense via character assassination. Here's that tactic in action: "Strauss-Kahn's legal team has hired the world's best private investigators to ferret out every detail about the accuser's past."

But the worst thing here is that DSK is being aided and abetted by the New York City DA. It is appalling that the DA's office leaked information like "she is personally associated with drug dealers and money launderers" (see one of many articles here). That means she knows people who make money that way. So? I doubt there's anyone in this country who lives under the poverty line, and/or in the urban ghetto-ish housing that a Manhattan hotel maid could afford, who does NOT know anyone who sells drugs. I'm a lawyer with graduate degrees and a nice salary, and I haven't touched pot or anything else since college, but I know dealers (no, I'm not referring to my clients), and so do most of my friends and family members--at least pot dealers, and that's the drug in question here (the guy she was speaking to who's in prison is in prison for dealing pot). This hotel maid lives in public housing for HIV-positive people, and New York has not legalized medical marijuana; how much do you want to bet that some of her HIV-positive neighbors use marijuana for pain, appetite, etc., despite the fact it's not legal there yet? Oooh, she's personally associated with her neighbors who use and her neighbors who deal! That must mean she didn't get raped!

As for the money laundering, that could be duplicative of knowing drug dealers, in that drug dealers "launder" (disguise the illegal source of) the money they earn, or it could be a phenomenon sometimes seen in the social circles of immigrants from poverty-stricken countries: some people in those circles launder money for other people in those circles who do things like deal drugs, get paid to help smuggle illegal immigrants into the US, or--the most innocuous reason--try to get money back to their families in their home countries without declaring it to customs (you have to declare anything over $10k that you take out of the country), and/or without going through normal banking channels because they are illegal immigrants and thus cannot safely use normal banking channels. Oooh, she knows people who launder money! That must mean she wanted Dominique Strauss-Kahn's withered old dick in her mouth!

And could someone please explain to me how knowing drug dealers and money launderers, and being reluctant to disclose that fact to cops and prosecutors, makes you less credible about accusations of rape? Accusations that, by the way, are supported by DNA evidence and--well, let me quote the headline: DA Has Evidence Strauss-Kahn Bruised Maid's Vagina.

My mom has a way of seeing straight through nefarious political machinations and coming up with theories that are proven correct years later. I think her theory on this is right on the mark: the prosecutor's office and DA Cyrus Vance in particular were put under intense pressure by DSK's powerful friends and allies, such as former DA Robert Morgenthau, who helped Vance with fundraising for his election campaign, stumped for him on the campaign trail and was his mentor for years, but froze him out after DSK was charged. And then, once Vance publicly threw the rape victim under the bus, what happened? "Influential former DA Robert Morgenthau weighed in... to praise successor Cyrus R. Vance Jr.'s stewardship of the case," says NPR. My mom points out that the head of the NYC DA's sex crimes unit, Lisa Friel, who spent 30 years with the New York DA's office, resigned for unexplained reasons a few days before the DA leaked all this crap about the hotel maid. Mom's theory is that Ms. Friel knew the DA was going to publicly humiliate the hotel maid, couldn't prevent it and didn't want to be part of it.

I don't know what else, apart from pressure from DSK's friends, could have motivated such outrageously unprofessional behavior from a DA's office. You just do not leak all kinds of grotesque allegations about the victim ("alleged" victim, if you want to be neutral) in a rape case. Saying there are "problems with her credibility"? Sure, that's what you would say in such a situation. But this is outrageous: "when doubts arose about the accuser's credibility because she hadn't told the truth in other aspects of her life--primarily on her immigration application and her income statement to live in low income housing--before even going to the judge to ask that bail be allowed, DA Vance called in two New York Times reporters to tell them about the accuser's other lies."

Excuse me, but what the fuck?!

And to pile outrage upon outrage, the media is spinning Vance's totally unprofessional leaks like so:

DSK ACCUSER PERSONALLY ASSOCIATED WITH CRIMINALS!
Major credibility issues emerge because she spoke about DSK accusations in recorded prison phone call with pal jailed for dealing 400lbs of marijuana!!!!
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah!!!!!
Oh by the way when she spoke to the guy in prison, what she told him about the DSK incident is exactly what she told prosecutors: that he attacked her and forced her to perform oral sex...
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah!!!!!

What a wretched situation.
And what a lowlife coward the DA is.
And what a scumbag DSK is.
Sorry, but you asked my opinion. Or at least, I'm pretending you did.

Listen Up, World! Patti's Talking.

So last night I got excellent parenting advice from Johnny Weir's mom, Patti, in the lobby of the Columbus, Ohio Nationwide Arena (whose parking, by the way, is pathetic). That's Patti in the photo there. I didn't get a photo last night because I didn't want to harass the woman or cause a crowd to gather; she and Johnny's aunt Diane were walking around the lobby incognito, or as incognito as Johnny Weir's mom can be at a skating event starring him. Skate for Hope, to be exact, an annual charity skate to raise money for breast cancer research. Speaking of which, I saw a bumper sticker that said "Save the Ta-Tas." Now I want one that says "Save the Nads," for testicular cancer research. Am I digressing? Yes.

Back to the point. Here's the conversation we had:
Me: Patti, hi, excuse me! I just wanted to say congratulations for raising an excellent son! I hope I do as good a job when it's my time.
Patti: Aw, thank you! Well, it's all just letting them be who they are!
...and she gives me a big hug!...
Me and my husband: Yeah!
Patti: Let them dance to their own drum.
Me: Absolutely!
Patti: You'll get a lot of criticism for it, though, so be prepared!
Me and my husband: Okay!

That's clearly advice that everyone should follow, assuming they haven't birthed a budding Charles Manson for whom dancing to his own drum means torturing cats. But I'm digressing again. Imagine a world populated by people whose parents raised them like Johnny's did: letting him wear his hair long in grade school and ride a girly bike with tassels streaming from the handlebars because that's what he liked, getting him the lessons he needed to become a champion skater, and giving him such unwavering support that with total confidence he brushed off the teasing and quasi-bullying of the other boys (and some girls) in his class. That's the kind of parenting that gets you strong, unique, creative people. Of whom we need way more in this world.

This is very basic stuff, folks. If you want to make the world a better place, and you have kids, start with them. Don't raise them to be fearful or cynical conformists. We have way too many of those. Give us more people like this: