Because the old school gay is fast becoming the new modern man, AKA William theater contributor Ben Rimalower will, every Thursday, document exactly how, when, and where everything old becomes new again.
Straddling the line between old school showbiz cheesiness and contemporary short attention span whateverness, Ben is the New Old Gay. He loves Patti LuPone.
My friend Natalie Joy Johnson and I had been putting together a new show for Joe’s Pub before she got the Jennifer Coolidge character in the national tour of Legally Blonde, and we decided to try it out in LA with my friend Shane Scheel’s Upright Cabaret. It even worked out to have Our Lady J musically direct Natalie for the first time in years.
Yes, I have been chronically devastated by my family’s move from New York to LA when I was 5. I’m not necessarily an LA kind of New Old Gay. But I’ve begun to appreciate the compartmentalized and climate controlled comfort of Los Angeles life.
So when New York got so humid my glasses fogged up getting out of a cab, off to LA I went.
I booked a flight that left on a Wednesday evening out of Newark, which was weird because: a) I’ve always eschewed Newark, and b) I’ve never scheduled a flight following a day of work. I was distracted and kindasorta neglected to mention to my boss that I needed to leave at 4, but I managed to avoid Krispy Kreme, find the Michael Jackson biography I’d been hunting (Jacko: His Rise and Fall, The Social and Sexual History of Michael Jackson), and get to Newark Airport.
I popped 2 Benadryl on an empty stomach that knocked me out cold for the entire flight, so I was groggy and emotionally unavailable when my brother Harry and sister Lucy picked me up at LAX.
When we got to my parents’ house in the Valley, the five of us sat around the table noshing and catching up, I smoked a couple of cigarettes in the backyard lair of Sammy (the half Chow, half Golden Retriever, squirrel-chasing freak) and crashed.
I woke up craving sugar around 5:30, did some damage on a large Humphrey’s yogurt with mixed-in peanut butter cups and oreos, smoked another cigarette with Sammy and went back to bed for a couple more hours, until Natalie and Jonnah (aka Our Lady J) came over around noon to dive into the eclectic set of songs we’d been emailing and conference calling about over the previous weeks. Jonnah had cooked up some amazing arrangements, although we were all stuck on what to do with “Love Child,” and cut it.
Drove with my Campanile-obsessed brother to meet Lucy and her boyfriend for dinner. Sandwiches. In one of those super-spacious LA restaurants. Weird. I would have preferred a barbecue in the backyard.
After dinner, Harry and I ditched my parents to meet some of his friends for yogurt on Ventura Blvd. Sat next to the one girl in the group and chainsmoked as she did while she regaled Harry and his guy friends with an in-and-out-of-and-back-into-Rehab story. Still wishing I was in the backyard.
September 4th, 2009 at 10:47 am
Love reading these every week, Ben!
September 6th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Whatever that Scott Nevins told you is a LIE!