On Friday, April 12, my band the Roland High Life is playing in the prestigious Rock & Roll Rumble — and it’d be genuinely awesome if you came out to support us. The Rumble is the longest running Battle-of-the-Bands-type industry showcase in the country, and has helped break bands like Letters to Cleo, Powerman 5000, the Lemonheads, the Dresden Dolls (i knoooow), and many, many more. And while sure, the music industry is in a very different place now than it was back when the event was still sponsored by a major rock radio station — it's still pretty cool! As I told the folks at Cambridge Day…
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Thom Dunn is a Boston-based writer, musician, and utterly terrible dancer. He is the singer/guitarist for the indie rock/power-pop the Roland High Life, as well as a staff writer for the New York Times’ Wirecutter and a regular contributor at BoingBoing.net. Thom enjoys Oxford commas, metaphysics, and romantic clichés (especially when they involve whiskey), and he firmly believes that Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" is the single greatest atrocity committed against mankind. He is a graduate of Clarion Writer's Workshop at UCSD ('13) & Emerson College ('08).
Some People Just Want To Watch Twitter Burn
Dia daoibh, a chairde, and greetings from the B-Side Brewery! I was on a bunch of tight deadlines this week, so it’s all been kind of a blur. I’m normally a compulsive inbox (and/or notifications) zero-er, but there were more than a few times this week that I emerged from my hyperfocused writing trance to find a dozen or more little red dots on my phone. I ultimately zeroed them all out … though whether or not I actually acted on or replied to all of them, I’m still not sure.
But hey, at least I didn’t lose $80B in stock valuation (that I only earned in the first place by extorting people who need certain life-saving drugs) all because of a stupid Elon Musk Twitter scheme!
So yeah. That kinda week. To make up for it, I’m giving y’all a free short story to read at the bottom of this newsletter. You’re welcome!
Colder Bodies, Colder Hearts: A Short Story
Read MoreWe're back, baby! Come see the Roland High Life LIVE!
That’s right — my indie rock band the Roland High Life, which has mostly been a studio-only project for the last long while, is finally doing live shows again!
Our first show back is later this month at the Jungle in Union Square Somerville:
We even got some fancy new merchandise to show off too!
See ya there!
STREETS LIKE THIS: A New World Premiere Play!
For the last couple of months, I've been working with AC Sidle on the Civic Ensemble's Re-Entry Theatre Program to create a new play about prison and addiction, inspired by the real-life stories of people who've lived the struggle. The play started with scenes, written by the program participants—most of whom are or were transitioning out of prison and/or rehab—which I then took and transformed into a full-length, fictional dramatic work.
It started out with their stories, but I gotta say: I'm pretty happy with the final product, and I hope we can continue giving it life across the country, because these conversations aren't going away.
Ithacans, Civic Ensemble invites you to sit with Deon and Dennis, two local men getting up there in age. Deon is black, Dennis is white; both are worn out from past convictions, dysfunctional institutions, and the preventable deaths of loved ones. From their stoop, watch Crystal, Abby, and Brian struggle with their diverse obstacles and mistakes while stuck in the United States’ broken criminal justice system. Deon and Dennis narrate the stories of these three and other characters navigating the perils of real life and their own demons while dealing with the consequences of probation, incarceration, parole, and court-ordered rehabilitation. Streets Like This, based on true stories, travels from the Meadow Street Mobil to Social Services offices and the curb outside Day Reporting to their own workplaces and homes. The play offers no single solution but rather brings you into their worlds. As Deon says, “But maybe next time, you’ll do more than turn your heads away as you toss some spare change in their cups.”
Saturday May 5 at 7:30pm, followed by opening night party
Sunday May 6 at 4:00 pm & 7:30pm
at Kitchen Theatre Company, 417 MLK Jr St, Ithaca
Monday May 7 at 7:30pm
at GIAC Gymnasium, 301 W Court St, Ithaca
One more week to check out BRAHMAN/I: A ONE HIJRA STAND-UP COMEDY ROUTINE!
I've spent the last month working on this weird, wonderful, and utterly hilarious play about an Intersex Indian-American stand-up comic, directed by my incredible wife and also starring my dear friend Aila Peck. It plays through the end of the month in Ithaca, NY, and it's an educational and entertaining look at gender, colonialism, and love. Seriously — even if I didn't have to sit there with a bass every night, I'd still think it was a worthwhile experience for everyone. Here's a peek:
I also chatted with Chris Heddon on WHCU 95.9 The Arts Beat.
It was supposed to be an interview about the show, but took some wildly entertaining turns into dancing death bunnies, the nature of mythophysics, and of course, Journey.
Here's the edited, Brahman/i-centric clip:
And here's the even more ridiculous full interview about, well, everything:
What's more romantic than spending Valentine's Day hearing me perform bad songs I wrote as a teen?
That's right, I'm doing another round of performances for the Boston Chapter of Mortified, showcasing the worst of the worst romantic songs I ever tried to write as an angsty/horny teen.
This year, we're doing 3 different shows — but fair warning, they're all selling out pretty fast!
Alejandro & the Fame at the Cantab Lounge!
That's right folks, everyone's favorite all-male hard rock Lady Gaga (+ other female pop artists) cover band returns to Boston — this Thursday night at the Cantab Lounge in Cambridge! Be there, or be having less fun than the rest of us.
And here's a little taste of the tunes...
My ARISIA Convention Schedule
I'll be at the Arisia sci-fi / fantasy convention in Boston this coming weekend, speaking on a few panels and generally hanging around. I've never been to Arisia before, nor have I ever been on any convention panels, so I'm doubly excited (and very much hoping that I don't say anything too stupid).
Anyway, here's where you can find me. Come say hi!
- Neurodiversity in SF/F
Saturday, 11:30am-12:45pm in Marina 2 (2E)
How are autistic and other neurodiverse characters presented in SF/F? What works handle this subject well, and which do not? Who are some neurodiverse authors whom we should all be reading? And how, as a genre, do we move beyond stories only focused on a “cure”?
—with Don Sakers, David G. Shaw, and JoSelle Vanderhooft
DC Comics on the Small Screen: 2015 Edition
Saturday, 5:30-6:45pm in Marina 2 (2E)
For all of DC’s much-disdained recent lack of creative success on the big screen, they’ve put together a string of received cartoons going back over twenty years ranging from episodic (Batman) to serialized (Young Justice) to goofy (Teen Titans Go). They’ve also launched multiple TV series, including Arrow, The Flash, and Constantine, even as their actual comics have become a pit of creative despair. We’ll discuss DC’s success (and occasional flop) over the years on television.
—with Nomi S. Burstein, George Claxton, Jaime Garmendia, Dan Toland
Behind the Bristol Board: Comics as a Profession
Saturday, 7-8:15pm in Marina 4 (2E)
If you’re a comics fan, odds are you’ve thought about what it’s like to actually work in the comics industry. This panel will feature working professionals explaining the ins-and-outs of everything from writing and drawing, to editing and publishing. It’s everything you ever wanted to know about being a comics pro, but were afraid to ask.
—with Ken Gale, Bettina Kurkoski, Alisa Kwitney Sheckley, Mercy E Van Vlack
Superman and Religion
Sunday, 11:30am-12:45pm in Burroughs (3E)
Superman remains an enigmatic figure in American mythology. Created by two Jewish kids from Cleveland, perhaps as a metaphor for Jewish assimilation, Superman also represents a Christlike figure in many stories, and the screenwriter of Man of Steel consulted, among other sources, the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh. Does the wide cast of Superman’s religious influences render him a defender-of-all-faiths? Can any religion claim him as one of their own? Come explore this thorny issue with Arisia 2015.
—with Michael A. Burstein, Ken Gale, Alex Jarvis, Daniel Miller
Story Autopsy
Sunday, 2:30-3:45pm in Alcott (3W)
Our group of panelists takes a few well-known works of genre fiction and picks them apart to show you how they work, why they work, and in some cases point out the parts that don’t work at all. If you don’t like spoilers this is probably not the panel for you.
—with M. L. Brennan, James L. Cambias, John P. Murphy, Ian Randal Strock
The Medium and the Message
Sunday, 5:30-6:45pm in Hale (3W)
A story can be told in a multitude of formats. Anything from short stories and epic poems to graphic novels and screenplays can be used to convey a narrative. How do the various formats compare? Do certain genres work well in one but not another? What about translations from one medium to another? How can you tell which works best for your story?
—with Heather Albano, Alexander Feinman, John G. McDaid
Writing and Racial Identity
Monday, 1-2:15pm in Hale (3W)
What does your race have to do with what you write? Depending on your race, are certain topics forbidden to you? Obligatory? None of the above? If your race matters, how do you know what it is? By what people see when they look at you, or by what you know of your genetic background? By your cultural upbringing? By what you write?
—with John Chu, Mark Oshiro, Victor Raymond
"GIMME INDIE ROCK!": The Simple Comforts of A Future Perfect
A Future Perfect is a brand new play by Ken Urban about indie rockers in their 30s dealing with marriage, careers, babies, and of course, rock and roll. The show is currently receiving its world premiere in Boston with SpeakEasy Stage Company, and if you're anything like me — that is, the creative indie rock type somewhere between the age of 24 and 45 trying to find a balance between still doing what you love and living some semblance of an "adult" life without explicitly selling out and/or turning boring — there's a good chance that this show might hit that sweet spot for you. It has all the charm and humor of a great indie movie (like The Happy Sad, also by Ken Urban and currently available on Netflix), along with a fantastic soundtrack featuring the likes of Pavement, Modest Mouse, Neutral Milk Hotel, the Smiths, Dinosaur Jr., etc. etc.
In short, it's pretty fantastic.
Then again, I might be biased. After all, the show is directed by my partner, M. Bevin O'Gara, and I also did some music and video projection work for the show myself (in addition to the sound design by Nathan Leigh). So I mean — sure, if you want to put it that way, I guess I would be biased. But it's also an incredibly touching story about friendship, adulthood, and not losing sight of the things that you believe in. Even without the personal connections, that still hits pretty close to home for me.
A Future Perfect runs tonight through February 7 at the Calderwood Pavilion in the South End (there's also a Pay-What-You-Can performance this coming Sunday, Jan. 11). If you're reading this, you'll like it. Trust me.
Also there's puppets.
Lucasfilm's STAR WARS-themed Holiday Cards From Over the Years
It's common nerd knowledge that the Star Wars Holiday Special premiered in 1978 and was swiftly ignored / forgotten (perhaps an ominous omen of George Lucas's reckless retconning to come — the "Ghost of Star Wars Past," as it were).
But there was another holiday tradition that pre-dated even that made-for-TV mess, one which was not-so-swiftly written out of continuity: Star Wars Holiday Cards. Initially designed and created by Ralph McQuarrie, Lucasfilm's then-resident concept artist, the first batch of cards featured R2-D2 and C-3PO in various holiday grabs and were distributed to employees and investors as a fun little celebration of their success with that little space opera that could. As the Star Wars universe continued and evolved, so did the holiday card tradition, folding new characters into that same old yuletide cheer and eventually opening up to new artists and designers as well.
(side note, I appreciate Lucasfilm's forward-thinking commitment to non-denominational holiday cheer, and I think we should all follow in their example and replace all holiday greetings with "May the Force be with you." "And also with you.")
(Perhaps most importantly, there were only 2 years where the cards exclusively focused on the prequels — 1999 and 2000, which makes sense, since The Phantom Menace had just come out. So at least Lucasfilm's holiday corniness didn't give much preference to those cinematic abominations? Because frankly, I don't know if I could handle it if they were given preference over the Holiday Special, since neither a coked-up singing Carrie Fisher nor a script written almost entirely in Wookieese is anywhere near as insufferable as Jar Jar Binks.)
(and for the record: no, I don't know what happened to 1987-1993, whether they didn't send out cards at all, or whether I just couldn't find them online)
Performances, Publications, Panels, and More!
There's lots going on at Camp Thom Dunn (is there ever not?); and so, I interrupt your regularly scheduled weird nerd pop culture discoveries & progressive political rantings to, ya know, talk about myself for a minute.
- As previously mentioned, my play True Believers is now available for purchase through Indie Theater Now, and you should totally go buy it, because it only costs $1.29, so why the hell not? (I'm also considering making the script available through Amazon's self-publishing portal, if there's demand for it, even though I do have some ethical issues with Amazon as a company. But dammit if they're not cheap and convenient)
- I will be returning to rock the Mortified Boston Christmas show on Friday, December 19 at Oberon in Harvard Square. Tickets are $15 and they're going fast, so hurry up if you want to see me play some really, really, really bad and embarrassing songs I wrote in high school! Which obviously you do.
- My words will grace the stage for the third consecutive year in the Boston One-Minute Play Festival (#OMPF). The festival is the brainchild of Dominic D'Andrea, who produces these little bursts in most major cities across the country. It's a fun night — as writers, we're not really given any prompts other than "60 seconds, one page, MAX," so it's neat to see what kind of thematic patterns emerge through that. It's a neat way to gauge the temperature of a city, and the topics that consume its collective consciousness. My two scripts will be directed by Stephanie LeBolt and Hatem Adell, and they'll be performed on Monday and Tuesday, January 5 & 6, at Boston Playwrights Theater.
- I'm also excited to announce that I'll be featured on a whole bunch of panels this year at Arisia, Boston's largest and most diverse science fiction & fantasy convention, January 17 — 20 at the Westin Boston Waterfront. Here's where you can find me (when I'm not at the bar or in bed, I mean):
- Neurodiversity in SF/F — Saturday @ 11:30am in Marina 2
- DC Comics on the Small Screen — Saturday @ 5:30pm in Marina 2
- Behind the Bristol boards: Comics as Profession — Saturday @ 7pm in Marina 4
- We Know (Philip K.) Dick — Sunday @ 10am in Marina 2
- Superman & Religion — Sunday @ 11:30am in Burroughs
- Story Autopsy — Sunday @ 2:30pm in Alcott
- The Medium & The Message — Sunday @ 5:30pm in Hale
- Writing & Racial Identity — Monday @ 1pm in Hale
- AND SPEAKING OF COMICS! I have 2 more comics coming out through Grayhaven Press — one is a story in their Science Fiction anthology, and the other is a super villain story featured in their "You Are Not Alone" anti-bullying anthology. Both comics will feature art by my buddy Dave Ganjamie, and he and I particularly pumped to actually have some comics going on, after talking about it for the last couple of years. I'm not sure when these comics will actually be published, as I'm currently working on the scripts, but of course, and let you know and link to 'em when they are.
Oh yeah, and then after all that stuff's done, I'm getting married, but ya know, that's a minor event.
Good News For True Believers! (the play, I mean. I guess the people, too)
Two, count 'em, TWO big announcements about everyone's favorite geek culture serio-comedy theatrical romp (that being True Believers, which I wrote):
- I have officially signed a digital publishing contract with the wonderful people at Indie Theater Now, an online extension service of the New York Theatre Experience, Inc. that presents, promotes, and preserves new American plays in script form. The full script will be up soon (possibly along with some of my other plays?), but for now, you can check out my playwright profile, anyway.
- True Believers will be receiving another public play reading in New York City, this time with the fine folks at Animus Theatre. It's the season kick-off for their 2014-2015 New Play Reading Series, so if you're in or around the New York area, please come check it out! The reading will place this coming Monday, October 27 at Bunga's Den on W 14th Street in Manhattan beginning at 7:30pm. So BE THERE, or make your own Hipster Slave Leia or Steampunk Jesus costume for Halloween.
And if for some reason you found your way to this website / blogpost and have no idea what I'm talking about, well, you're in luck, because I've got a whole section of my website dedicated to True Believers, complete with script samples, production photos, reviews, and more.
For the Cyborg Head of Stan Lee!
All The People That You'll See At Every Nerd Convention
Whoa. I don't know how I missed this until now, although it feels particularly timely with New York Comic-Con this weekend (I'll be there doing coverage for Bleeding Cool and Tor — let's hang out!). Dorkly artists Julia Lepetit and Andrew Bridgman created these infographics breaking down every single stereotype you're likely to find at a comic book / video game / general geek culture-based convention, and, well, they're all pretty accurate (not to mention utterly hilarious).
Whether you've been to a con or not, you'll be amazed at how long this list keeps going. And every single caricature is remarkably accurate. So I guess it's good that there are so many, because at least we're stereotyping people into too broad of categories? Sure, that sounds like a rational justification for laughing at other people (most of whom are just like me).
Read MoreHappy Banned Book Week Humpday! Woooo! Let's Hump Some Banned Books! (I mean, uh....)
This week is the annual Banned Book Week, a celebration of banning books throughout history! Okay well so not like a celebration of the actual act itself of banning books, but rather an historical acknowledgement of our messed-up societal history of censorship, both in its retrospective absurdities, and its horrifying modern relevance. I feel like it was stressed from a very early point in my educational experience that the banning of books was the trademark of a corrupt and/or totalitarian society and therefore the antithesis of the "Yay American Dream" that we were raised to believe in. Unfortunately, there are still stories being banned all across the country — let alone the rest of the world — and it's important to bring attention to these injustices and help make people aware of the inherent problems of such censorship (and to be clear, the censorship of stories by institutional authorities is much much much much much different from the censorship of, say, a bigoted, racist, shit-spewing asshole on Fox News who gets in trouble and loses his job for being a bigoted racist shit-spewing asshole. "Freedom of Speech" and "Freedom from Consequences" are two very different things).
Here's a compilation / rundown of some of my favorite links and infographics from various Banned Book Week celebrations all across the internets:
Read MoreHappy Judgement Day! 17 Years Robopocalypse-Free! #NoFateButWhatWeMake
Three billion human lives ended on August 29th, 1997. The survivors of the nuclear fire called the war Judgment Day.
(I'm just kidding, of course. The robots haven't killed us. Yet. And neither has that new Terminator reboot with the corny puntmanteau name. But once again, I should qualify it: yet.)
God I love this movie.
Yo Marvel Movies, Cool It With The Photoshop!
Marvel Studios has gotten into this habit of releasing "character posters" in the lead-up to the release of a new film. Each poster highlights a specific character in the movie, to familiarize them to the general public, and to excite and titillate the fanboys like me who eat up every single bit of promotional material like our lives depend on it. However, there's been something about these last two batches of character posters that have really bothered me — specifically, the airbrush jobs on Scarlett Johannson's Black Widow for Captain America: The Winter Solder and Karen Gillan's Nebula in Guardians of the Galaxy.
See, ScarJo and Karen Gillan are already both incredibly attractive individuals. They both make my list of Five Celebrities That You're Allowed To Have An Affair With And It Totally Doesn't Count As Cheating, which is a list that everyone in a relationship is encouraged to have, according to my fiancé (Emma Stone is also on my list and no I don't have a thing for redheads what are you talking about). But for all of the work that Marvel has tried to do in promoting women, diversity, and equality, these posters make the women like, well, comic book characters. And what's worse, I actually noticed the difference (and not in like a creepy way where I have their figures memorized in my mind).
Let's have a look, shall we?
Read MoreSmart People Who Are Funny But Then Also Sexy And Plus Smart
Here's a little video I put together for the upcoming world premiere of Lydia R. Diamond's Smart People at the Huntington, which starts previews this Friday and runs through June 29. Check it out!
We've also got one of those fancy 35 Below parties planned for it, after the Friday night performance on May 30. $25 gets you tickets + access to the party, including free drinks and live music. So it's basically a pretty sweet deal. Woohoo!
Become'd CUBA
This past weekend, my fiancé closed her production of Becoming Cuba at the Huntington. It was a fantastic for her, as well as a fantastic play — even if some of the reviewers had trouble grasping the idea that a play could have a Latina female as a protagonist (God forbid!), or be set in an historical context without being a "history lesson." I've seen various incarnations of this show...6 times now? And I still don't know anything about the Cuban War of Independence, other than that it happened, and that, in an incredibly over-simplified way, it's kind of the same conflict as what we call the Spanish-American War (meanwhile, we have done shows at the Huntington that could be described as "history lessons," but those were all about white dudes).
ANYWAY, in the end, the show was beautiful and successful, and that's what matter. I previously shared some of the earlier promotional videos that I made for the show, but over the course of its run, I made a few more as well, focusing on the relationship between Bevin and the playwright, Melinda Lopez, as well as the eerie synchronicity between the play and some of the actors' personal lives. Check 'em out:
Meanwhile, fellow playwright / bacon lover / renaissance man John J. King — the so-called "Child Wrangler" on Becoming Cuba — had some fun backstage (no, not like that) with "Chucho," the kid in the play. The two of them wrote a parody of "Royals" by Lorde sung from Chucho's point of view in the play, and I whipped together a quick video for it. I think it's pretty amazing (of course, it could be one of those "you-had-to-be-there" things, but c'mon — Lorde would be way cooler if she sang about guerrilla warfare and syphilis amiright?)
We also had our annual Gala fundraiser at the Huntington last week (in addition to some other, less uplifting news), for which I shot & edited a tribute to MacArthur "Genius" Mary Zimmerman, whom we honored at the event, and shot the footage for our new education video:
So, ya know. I've been busy. What else is new?
Big Ups for BECOMING CUBA!
Last night was the official opening of Becoming Cuba at the Huntington, which is not only a fantastic show, but also just so happens to be directed by incredibly talented fiancé M. Bevin O'Gara (also I totally made her a website isn't that neat?).
If you're in Boston in the next month, it is absolutely worthy seeing (all personal bias aside). But if that's not enough to convince you, here are a few videos I put together about the show that could do the job just as well.
(And for the record: being paid at your job to edit video with your fiancé's face on a 36" screen is every bit as awkward as it sounds)
Oh Hey What's Up Kate Burton
This past weekend, we began previews for our production of The Seagull at the Huntington. I can say without bias that this is the funniest Chekhov play I've ever seen (and possibly the first time I've actually looked Chekhov to be humorous). But on top of that, the production also features Kate Burton (aka Vice President Sally Langston on Scandal plus like a million other things) and her real-life son, Morgan Ritchie, as the onstage mother-and-son Arkadina and Konstantin, which is pretty cool. Here are two videos I put together about the show, which runs through April 6 at the BU Theatre: