Reno, now more than ever.

The NYTimes visits Reno's new show and Anita Gates finds it ". . . consistently, energetically, loudly funny."

Reno sticks to her politics, no matter what the current fashion. At a recent performance her anti-Giuliani comments met with nervous silence, but her anti-Bush remarks were a hit. "Can't we get a smart guy?" she asks at one point, describing the president's unrehearsed public-speaking style as "like a drunk trying to look sober."

A reminder from some who were impacted the most by the neglect and malignancy of the late, unlamented Giuliani adminstration.

Shame on the Episcopalian hierarchy! Their generally tolerant and progressive members deserve much better, as does all of New York!

The Episcopal Diocese of New York honored former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani Monday, as a group of parishioners protested outside.

. . . .

"They're honoring him now for what he did September 11,” said protestor Glenda White. “We want him to remember what we went through for seven years.”

This is a quite wonderful little reminiscence of a part of our shared culture whose story presses quite a few buttons even today.

"Come will and come may, I must face it," she would sigh.

[Her husband Jake"s] role, where appropriate, might be to add, "You're breaking your father's heart."

. . . don't have to be jewish to be gay; don't have to be jewish to be Israeli.

Not everyone has a problem with co-existence in this city of both jews and palestinians. Sometimes it helps to be gay.

[Jerusalem] Mayor Ehud Ulmert recently expressed the need for a massive march in the center of the city to show its citizens and the world that life goes on, El-Ad [director of the gay community center] mentions. "It's difficult for me to think of a more appropriate event than Gay Pride to celebrate life in Jerusalem and to do it in a way that is relevant and meaningful to the current situation."

Before moving to New York in 1985 I spent twenty years in the distant, yet not-so-provincial, province of Rhode Island, and even in 1965 every faggot with a pulse knew about the notorious promiscuous sexual adventures of the leading American Catholic churchman of the day, as well as his very special nickname, "Franny Spellman."

Shoulderchip has tripped over Michaelangelo Signorile's piece in the New York Press resurrecting a story of Roman Catholic Church hypocrisy which never really went anywhere in a more "gentlemanly" journalism era, but which today should interest, if not fascinate, most anyone who can read.

Broadcast this as widely as you can!

(The five words above comprised a notice painted handsomely and permanently on the blackboard in my third-grade homeroom, above a changing list of pithy admonitions, all in different-colored chalks. Funny, only years later did I learn that the complete sentence includes, "is sufficient." Was I more sufficient after that or before?)

Anyway, don't miss regularly checking the "quick links" on the upper right of this page. Bloggy and Shoulderchip are awesome on the big items.

The Onion reports this week, in banner headline, "God Re-Floods Middle East."

JERUSALEM—In what theological and meteorological authorities are calling "a wrathful display of Old Testament proportions," the Lord Almighty re-flooded the Middle East Tuesday, making good on last week's threat to wipe the region clean if there was not an immediate halt to the bloodshed between Arabs and Jews.

If I can be forgiven , just this once, a religious metaphor of the sort loved by all true americans, allow me to suggest that our appointed government is driving us all to hell in a handbasket.

Just think about what has happened to the planet in only the last year and a half, and, even more exciting, what mischief is planned for the future (all of this accompanied by skyrocketing approval ratings, or so we are told).

It's all so exciting, it makes one pee in one's pants.

[JAW---Actually, the category should read, "General, Culture, Happy, Queer, Politics," but the program won't accept that.]

Reno has been nominated for the Drama Desk Award for "Outstanding Solo Performance!"

We've seen an earlier form of this show and were totally, what, mesmerized, charged, laughed-out and enchanted (strange combination). We don't expect to miss seeing it at least once more at the wonderful new venue, The Zipper Theatre; it's a new performance each night!

This is very freaky, but yesterday morning I was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance! I always thought that they were just for "real theatre" - literature, Ibsen or Arthur Miller, but I guess they ran out of those. For the proof, go to http://www.dramadesk.com. [JAW---the site doesn't come up right now]

Now, people keep asking me how long this'll be running, and, well, it's running as long as people keep coming to the show. So if you're looking to come see it, now might just be your time - while I'm still nominated and Elaine Stritch hasn't won the award yet.

peace and love, Reno

Performances are Monday, Thursday, and Friday @ 8pm,
Saturday @ 7 and 10pm, and Sunday @ 7pm.

The Zipper Theatre
336 West 37th St. (between 8th and 9th Aves.)
Call 212-563-0480 for information