I’m 31 now. Actually my birthday was on Saturday, but things have been slightly out of hand lately so I’m only posting about it now. It was a really good birthday, brunch at my favorite brunch place followed by an afternoon in the park and an evening at a Korean restaurant in suburbia, surrounded by friends and the bright lights of a karaoke room. (I sang “(I Never Promised You A) Rose Garden” and “Objection (Tango)” and “1 Thing” and “Come Out And Play (Keep ‘Em Separated)” and duetted on “Self Control” and “Black Velvet” and probably sang other songs, too, although right now I’m blanking on what they were.)

Otherwise I’ve been pretty busy trying to get my life in order and also trying to archive my life in a way that might be appealing to prospective employers and/or clients. Trying to find paid employment (ha! ha!) and also running my own side business is pretty exhausting, and on top of that living with my boyfriend/business partner in an apartment that’s smaller than my old place hasn’t left me a ton of physical space for writing here. Which is not the worst thing, although it is clearly a thing.

I’m feeling rather optimistic, though, about the year ahead. I’m doing a big reading on Friday, and have events planned for the rest of the summer. I’m also planning a photo project to occupy my spare time. I don’t want to go into too many details, but I finally found some inspiration the other day, looking at the work of Swedish photographer Aida Chehrehgosha. In 2008 she was photographing her parents in a variety of locations pretending to be dead. What I want to do is nothing like that, really, although I think it did provide me with a spark of an idea…

[image: Aida Chehrehgosha, Dad By Water]

Headmaster no. 3 is out now! Featuring projects by Peter Cochrane, Alan Cumming, Chris Ironside, Matthew Lawrence [that's me!], Ivan Lozano, Gabriel Martinez, Walker Mettling, Matias Uris, Jim Verburg, and Michael Wynne. Pre-orders and subscriptions went out this week, and we’ve started shipping to all of our stores as well. We’re throwing a party in Providence on March 10th; if you’re in the area we’re expecting it to be AWESOME.

Also, now that this issue is out expect me to be blogging a little bit more. Over on the dirty Tumblr I’m roughly 3/4 of the way through counting down the 100 Hottest Men That Ever Lived, and there’s some exciting guest posts coming up in the next couple of days before I announce number one on Wednesday.

A last-minute-ish heads up: I’ve just been added to the panel Blogging Queer Culture at Brown this Friday, which also features Krista Burton of Effing Dykes and Sarah Dopp of Genderfork.  Both of them are infinitely more popular than I am so this is sort of an honor.

It’s part of IvyQ, a conference now in its third year which aims to “create a pan-Ivy community of LGBTQ students and allies equipped with the skills to examine their identities, value those of others, and understand intersectionality.” There are events going on all weekend, including a keynote address by Kate Bornstein, so if you’re in the area you may want to check it out. It’s geared towards students, obviously, but I’m fairly certain that anyone who wants to can attend.

Earlier this week Pulp announced a show at Radio City Music Hall, and tickets went on sale at 10am, and when I checked at 9:59 tickets hadn’t gone on sale yet and when I tried to but two tickets at 10am they were sold out already and when I tried to get one ticket at 10:01am that was also sold out and then when I tried again at about 10:04 I got stuck in this endless loop of Ticketmaster wait time.

Argggggggggggh.

I haven’t been to a show, or tried to go to a show, in New York since MIA in 2007.  I am overdue!

The last time I had a chance to see Pulp, when they played Providence touring for Different Class, I was fifteen and trapped at a problem solving conference for nerds.  This was my chance!

Anyway.

Over on One Week One Band this week people are guest-posting about their favorite album closers…  The posts on Blur’s “Yuko and Hiro,” Fiona Apple’s “I Know,” and the Magnetic Fields’ “Take Ecstasy With Me” are all excellent.  I wrote something, too.  I was one of the few (the only?) person to choose an album-ending single and it’s one you’ve probably known forever, even if I didn’t know it myself until I was in my mid-twenties.

Actually, with the move I’ve got all my vinyl with me but none of my CDs, which is part of the reason why I didn’t end up writing about “Bar Italia” or “The Dancer” or “O Girlfriend” or “Constant Craving” or “Glory Box” or “Just Call Me Joe.”  Also, I considered “Jealousy,” but I’ve already written about the Pet Shop Boys there…

Last year, in lieu of making one New Year’s resolution, I decided to resolve lots of things.  Rather than One Big Change, I thought what I really needed was A Bunch Of Little Changes That Might Add Up To Something Significant.  There were 38 items on the list I came up with, ranging from the very specific (eat more vegetables) to the very general (rely less on others.)  Some would be very easy, like look at more art and get glasses, and some would require major work, like getting published more and being more fiscally responsible.

In general, I failed almost completely at just about every action item.

A lot of that had to do with my continued un/under-employment.  I didn’t get glasses because the glasses I want to get are kind of pricy.  I didn’t brush up on French because, even though an organization called L’alliance francaise opened up just two blocks from my home, I couldn’t afford to take any of the classes there.  Being a snappier dresser was also a challenge, although I did do myself a favor by donating most of the older clothes I wore whenever I didn’t feel like doing laundry.

Not to be a total downer.  I actually did a lot of things in 2011 that I’m proud of:  I was profiled in the local alt-weekly (twice), organized a couple of successful readings, wrote (and later spoke) about libraries as safe spaces for queer youth, promoted the debut issue of a magazine and then put out a second issue.  My photography’s gotten better, I actually look in the mirror before I leave the house these days, and in general I’m not in an awful mood.

But none of that pays the bills, and unfortunately that’s really annoying.  I genuinely want a real job–very much so, in fact–and it keeps not happening.   I don’t own a car, don’t pay for cable, don’t have a family to feed, I’m on a cell phone family plan with my boyfriend, and I still can’t manage to scrape together enough money to not be completely stressed out all the time.

This year, my goals are the same:  to read more, to write more, to drink less, to look better, to manage my time better, to be on the internet less and in the real world more (even if that just means music venues and movie theaters.)  I also really want to spend more time with people that I like, because I am spectacularly awful at that.

Really, I’m not.

This month was just a little much…  I’m moving out of my apartment after seven and a half years, and that’s been taking up tons of my time.  That, and the magazine, and my month-long photo project, and job hunting, and family stuff, and events, and stuff and things and crap and so forth.

Honestly I’m really in need of a shake-up, and I’m hoping this move might jumpstart me, even though I’m only going about two miles away.  The constant fretting about money has been getting me down, my diet has been completely atrocious, this moving has just reinforced how completely out of shape I am, and I’ve had very, very little creative energy.  On top of that I’ve been drinking a ton, partly out of boredom and partly because I don’t have heat and partly because I’m not necessarily the smartest about life choices.

Sorry to be a downer… I’ll be back soon, I hope.

On the bright side, the photo project’s going pretty well.  I didn’t get the guy-a-day I hoped for but I’m over 50% and some of the shoots have been really good.  I’ve been filling in the off days with self-portraits, including the one of me pictured above.  I have no idea what the series will amount to, if anything, but it’s been fun to actually be shooting real humans again.

The folks at Ironing Board Collective were nice enough to let me blog for them for the next eight Wednesdays, starting today.  My first subject: Bridget Kelly and Siobhan Martin, the good-and-evil identical twins played by Sarah Michelle Gellar on Ringer.  Which is SO GOOD, oh my God.

It’s official… After seven years (and four roommates) in the same apartment, I’m moving at the end of November. Not far, just under two miles, but far enough that I’ll be spending a lot of time in the coming weeks cleaning out my attic. And my basement. And my garage. And my bedroom. And so forth.  (I’m not a hoarder, exactly, but seven years is a long time for books and papers to accumulate.)

That said, I’m doing one last major thing before I go: You know how periodically I advertise that I’m looking for models for dirty-ish photo projects? Yeah, so I’m going to do one more run of those before I go, as a way of saying goodbye to the place and also as a way to keep my sanity and not stress over what I’m going to do with all of my belongings now that I’m not going to have an attic and basement and garage…

So, if you’re in the Providence area and feel like taking your pants off for me, drop me an e-mail (mixtapesforhookers@gmail.com) and we can talk.

[photo: Guy In My Bedroom, 2008 (?)]

This morning I woke up at 6am to audition for Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, because I saw a blurb in the newspaper yesterday about the show’s producers coming to Providence and, you know, why not.  Also, my financial situation is incredibly dire right now, and I know a bunch of useless trivia, so I thought this might solve some problems.

A coffee stop on the way made me a few minutes late for the first seating, but I hung out towards the front of a line for a long time while reporters and photographers from local media buzzed around.  The line swelled, largely with men in their fifties and sixties, by the time we were called in to take the 30-question written test.  (I don’t know why, but I assumed the crowd would be mostly female.)

We were given Scantron sheets and tests in envelopes.  There were about fifty of us there, although there was seating provided for almost ten times that.  We had ten minutes to answer thirty questions.  I think I got most of them right… (Picasso is the artist whose daughter designs for Tiffany.  “Tequila!” is the 1958 song featured in Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.)  I got at least a couple wrong, though…  Though I periodically pretend that I watch football, I thought a torn ACL was a shoulder injury and not a knee one.  I have no idea what popular exclamation was first coined in Kung Fu Panda.  But worst of all, I got a music chart question wrong:  When Jay-Z broke the record for most #1 albums on the Billboard chart, I thought he took the record from Mariah Carey, not Elvis.  That one kinda stung.  (I was thinking Elvis was a singles artist, not an album one, and also I thought the whole point of Mariah Carey was that she broke pretty much every Billboard record there was.)

Even if I had met the producers, I’m sure my surly demeanor and complete inability to outwardly express enthusiasm would have kept me from making it onto the show.  Still, the money would have been nice.