O Pioneer!

Casey Malone Is The Brute Squad: This Is Not Fucking Harmless

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 01:47:33 -0400

Casey Malone Is The Brute Squad: This Is Not Fucking Harmless:

I love Kickstarter. I think that’s clear to people who know me by now? I love it. There’s a dude named Brad Muir and he works at Double Fine and I love the games they make, so much. But before Kickstarter, every time a Double Fine game came out I was a little worried it would be their last,…

Greece

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:29:00 -0400

I just spent an hour reassuring my friend that online dating is going to be a great thing for her, that she needs to let go of her fear. Or, if not let go of it, at least address it and move on. I likened it to my hilarious panic attacks — once you have the first one, you know what it feels like, so when one starts to happen again, say riding the A train up to 81st Street to go see an outdoor play, you can close your eyes and say “This is a panic attack, this is what this is” and then it’s gone. Like the David Foster Wallace graduation speech; “This is water, this is water.” Anyway, I said that she should just sign up and go on dates and figure them very much dates in the present, told her to not let her past or recent dearth of romantic attention affect the present moment. It’s just drinks, it’s just dinner, right then, in that moment. That’s all. That’s what I told her.

I know that I desperately need to take my own advice, but that’s way harder than giving it. I watched this web series this weekend that made me feel old and sad and grumpy about being gay in New York City, but it was also pretty well done, certainly more so than Hunting Season, which is about a gay Gawker blogger who I think is more based on Brian Moylan than he is on me, but who knows. Brian is a much kinder person than depicted, I’m a far less *sexual* person than the character is, so it’s probably just made-up. The point is, I need to stop watching things that make me feel bad about the way I live my life, because they’re fake, they’re make-em-ups, they’re web series about faraway ideas of things that don’t really exist. But yes, online dating. I should take my own advice. Give it an honest go. It’s just water.

Speaking of water, my friend and I booked our ferry trip from Athens to Santorini today. We leave for Greece in just over a month and I’m nervous, but much less nervous now that we’re taking a boat, not a plane, to the island. Six flights in one trip felt like a lot, and now it’s just a reasonable, layover-heavy four. Plus, a boat! Boats are great, both old and modern, slow but determined. Maybe we’ll pass other islands. I don’t think we will, but maybe we’ll even pass Mykonos, and I’ll imagine all the gay people, all continental and intense. Maybe I’ll feel a rush of regret and wish fill my lungs for a second as we gush past it, but then I hope I’ll remember that not everyone goes there. Not there, or Fire Island, or Provincetown, or Sitges, or Palm Springs or wherever else. Sometimes gay people just go places and they are gay only because you are a gay person who is there. Maybe that’s all the gay needed for the given moment.

Whatever the case, I’m newly excited for my trip. We looked at the guide book and I read aloud some descriptions of Delphi, old home of the future, and my friend, who has a masters in ancient Greek (among other things), nodded politely as I listed all the things we are going to see. Temples and theaters and all manner of places where ancient people went to pray and believe and, I’d think, find themselves. Fitting, I guess, to go somewhere like this, just now. Maybe we’ll discover something, some old rocky courage. Feel some heat from the stones that tells us that things can be sturdy forever, if we want them to be.

This is water, but it’s stone too. Maybe we’re great old things. It just takes some planning to find us.

get-elain-a-horse: I tumblr! My name is Elaine. You can see me...

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 11:17:01 -0400

get-elain-a-horse:

I tumblr! My name is Elaine. You can see me in this picture! That is me holding the sign, HI! Well my hubby said that if this gets 1 MILLION notes, he will buy me a horse. I would love a horse I grew up on a farm where I rode and ate horses til i was 15 when I moved. I have not seen a horse since, not even a picture! Only one painting I painted in 7th grade. My husband obviously thinks this is going to be an impossible task thats why I am taking this on the interwebs where i can get likes. I have 5,000 on facebook so I am almost there. I want brown horse with some white. I will braid the hair. Thanks so much everyone! Please help me achieve this! :) God Bless

Get this woman a horse. She wants a horse. She will braid the hair.

The comments on this are magnificent.

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 11:06:56 -0400

The comments on this are magnificent.

What's your favorite piece of decoration in your apartment. A souvenir, a memento, knick knack, photo, or artwork--whatever. Why is it your favorite?

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 01:01:17 -0400

A play I wrote was produced by my college’s theater department my senior year, with another one-act. The photo on the poster is one I took of my sister in the Painted Desert a couple years prior. My parents had the poster framed. It’s my favorite keepsake.

Does there come a point in being a success when the laurels get heaped so high that you just kind of fall ass-backwards onto it and have a rest? Or is everything exhausting, forever?

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 00:05:21 -0400

Christ I can’t wait to fall ass-backwards onto laurels.

"There is one hero in Man of Steel who almost saves the day. The best part of Nolan’s..."

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 16:10:58 -0400

“There is one hero in Man of Steel who almost saves the day. The best part of Nolan’s involvement in the film is that he brought in his constant collaborator Hans Zimmer to write the score, and it is a soaring, rousing wonder. Zimmer manages to capture both the otherworldliness and utter Americanness of Superman with his blaring horns and marching drums, a thrilling, seat-rattling call to genuine action that I wish Snyder had heeded”

- There’s one good thing about Man of Steel, at least.

Click through to find out who this crotch belongs to.

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 13:33:00 -0400

Click through to find out who this crotch belongs to.

I need to know more about this Irish exchange student.

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 00:32:19 -0400

Ha. That’s between me and Frank McCourt.

Everyone’s looking at a different thing.

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 13:22:33 -0400

Everyone’s looking at a different thing.

Who is your favorite character from the A Song of Ice and Fire books?

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 02:52:57 -0400

I know this is going to be controversial and I’m not trolling you I swear, but: Sansa.

Sex is weird, right? Gay sex, that is. It's a weird thing. Is it ok to feel weird about it?

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 02:35:00 -0400

Yup. I mean, all sex is weird. But queer sex, no matter the stripe, feels weirder because queer people have so little to go on from broader culture. I get so thrilled when I see any hint of gayness on a TV show or in a movie, and usually it’s awfully chaste. But straight people have the whole of romantic comedies and pretty much everything else beyond to stoke fantasies, dreams, hopes, whatever. And so we queer folk are forced to slightly alter the thing, to fit ourselves, how we see the world by no fault of our own, through another’s prism. So yeah, queer sex can seem weird, feel weird, etc. It’s a tough, and often lonely, thing. But people figure it out, in their own ways. Some people are Davey Wavey, some are perpetual monogamists amid a sea of non-monogamy, and then there’s the rest, a diverse and far-reaching sea of different, but healthy, sexual attitudes and ideas. Not feeling alone is the utmost important thing. Being queer means so many things, to so many different people. Sex is weird, yes. But weird doesn’t mean bad.

What was college like for you overall? Did you enjoy it? Party a lot?

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 02:19:00 -0400

I’m just going to be flat-out obnoxious and link you to this.

How do I have your career?! How do I, a meandering twenty something Midwestern boy, move to the big city and make jokes online and live off that? And have adventures in New York City with intelligent friends who retweet my snarky jokes? Your life seems wonderful to me.

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 02:09:00 -0400

I don’t know how to answer this without coming across as a jerk who’s confirming what you’ve written, which isn’t true. My life isn’t, no life is, actually wonderful. Good, maybe. Decent, hopefully. I don’t know. Email me? am.lawson@gmail.com.

Does your major define your career? I really want to get into writing but I'm too far into my anthropology degree....

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 02:06:25 -0400

Well, my theater degree, or theater interest at least, brought me to New York. But everything else was sort of a weird accident. If you want to write, then write. On your own, in whatever way. Work-wise, get yourself a job where people write, even if it’s not you doing the writing. For me it was osmosis. I was in ad sales at Gawker before I’d even considered a writing job that wasn’t writing really pretentious Kushner-wannabe plays that no one would ever read. And then, by the strange circumstance of right place/right time, things moved in a curious direction.

Why do you imagine anonymous people care about your sexual history?

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 01:55:54 -0400

Because sex is interesting! It humanizes faraway people in a particular way. I get it. I just wish I had more to tell.

What did you major in?

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 01:53:30 -0400

I majored in English and Theater, but focused way more on Theater. I wish I’d just dropped the English major and left myself open to take more electives. Had I to do it all over again, I’d still keep the Theater major but minor in Medieval History.

What made you start smoking and do you ever plan to quit? (Just curious. No judgement.)

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 01:51:05 -0400

I wanted to be cool with the theater kids in high school when I was 16. That meant, to me, smoking. I have a really addictive personality and I took to it like crazy. And yes, I want desperately to quit. I’ve seen in my family what cigarettes do to people and it’s a nightmare. It doesn’t feel young or cute or cool anymore, so I’m hoping to stop this summer. A friend and I are talking about quitting together in August. We’ll see.

How do you feel about Tufts?

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 01:46:39 -0400

I went to a Tufts party once when I was a… sophomore?… at BC, and I got drunk and sorta stumbled out onto the porch to have a cigarette. There were some dudes sitting on the porch and I, being of perfectly unsound mind and body, proceeded to say: “Heyyy doesn’t Jessica Biel go here. I hear she does a lot of coke.” (I’d heard that bc her boyfriend at the time went to BC and she would, supposedly, come to his dorm room on occasion and do lots of coke.) One guy looked square at me and said “She’s a friend of mine and you need to get off this porch.” Turns out I was at a soccer frat house that loved Jessica Biel. Oops. So, um, Tufts is fine.

Do you sometimes think you're TOO flip and whimsical in your writing?

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 01:44:07 -0400

Yes. All the time.