Virgo 9° (August 31)

Saturday. Mental Health day. I am going to watch a bunch of episodes of television I missed and then a few movies and that’s going to be my day. I’m having a hard time turning the corner but I just have to do it. As explained several days ago I got derailed from writing this for about eight days and now I’m playing catch up and actually writing bits of this show I suddenly have to do since a thankless creature canceled their show. I just rubbed Ben Gay into my eyes. I am procrastinating but I should remind myself that I don’t have to be doint any of this it really is a choice. The way I see it is there are 3-4 sections remaing.

The first section consists of coming out of this Angie thing and talking about how I can’t get beyond the 11 year old and why can’t I. Maybe I did open a can of worms. The magic the despair. At 13 I looked disgusting seriously disgusting. When Mickey introduced me to Andrew Stevens and Rex Smith’s love child Paulie this is what I looked like. I became a stoner. I astral projected listening to Pink Floyd under my Koss headphones. I almost lost my virginity to the older girl next door but my mother came home. I don’t know if any of this works I think I’ll try a different tack.

You know I know I’ve been sort of going back and forth, chronologically a bit here. I white-witch excited to the suburbs when I was eight in large part due to what, or rather whom, my father called the Mullingyams, which is an Italian dialect version of the word Mellanzane which means eggplant, his charming word for black people. In Jersey City I was often styled as an albino junior member of the Jackson Five, for instance, one outfit I had was a wet-look alligator vinyl aviator suit, bell bottoms and bomber jacket with matching Tito type hat that came with a faux silk white shirt with attached scarf, which I wore, of course, with platform shoes. This is how I dressed for school. Culture shock moving to Wyckoff where everyone, boys and girls, were in Levi 501 jeans or cords, Adidas or Puma sneakers, and Lacoste, or sorry Izod or striped long-sleeved rugby shirt, depending on the season. It took me one trip to the Gap to blend in but years to assimilate internally. In large part because I was only ever in town for the school year–we always rented and ultimately owned a summer house at the Jersey shore—so I never got to bond with kids from my town in summer the way others did. It seemed the return to school each year was like one giant inside joke I was never let in on. Also a few times during my upbringing I missed the first two weeks of school due to some mystery illness which I now realize was some form of Munchausen by Proxy because, as sick as I was, my mother always managed to take me shopping and to lunch and to see films that I was too young to see like Sweet Charity or Cabaret or Ryan’s Daughter or The Other Side of Midnight.

 And I know I did get as far as age thirteen in this story telling, but oh man—you know I had a feeling this was happening when I was writing this—but I didn’t realize to what extent I mean I seem to get stuck in the summer of my eleventh year. I have so much here (holds up book with pages and pages) and I mean, on and on and on. Why would I write so much. Why do I get stuck at this point.Yes that was the summer I was quote unquote molested—but there has to be more to it than that doesn’t it. I mean my first one-man show can’t get stalled at this one juncture in my life, do you think? I don’t know maybe I’m meant to question it. Maybe its a fourth trope of the solo play. Appealing to the audience. Solicity their participation at least in so far as asking them to draw their own conclusions. I know is that I refuse to get stuck here for pages and pages So I’m going to distill it for you and try to move on.

First of all I actuall hate that word, molested, as it relates to me anyway, I prefer the term, initiated. It feels less victimy, more empowering perhaps, more Greek, somehow which is fitting because in the previous school year, sixth grade we studied Greek mythology and I became immediately obsessed and I would remain so for the rest of my life. Also at the Jersey Shore in summer I had no friends but for the kids of the friends of my parents, most of whom I called Aunt and Uncle, who would stay, for a weekend or longer, in rotation. My father only visited us on weekends, my bad seed sister never spoke to me or acknowledged my existence, and my mother read giant Maeve Clincy novels under an umbrella in her beach chair in the day and drank increasingly more with girlfriends from Jersey City who also stayed “down the shore” or alone watching the black and white TV in her bedroom, door half closed, the hallway a play of light and shadow with each scene change of An American Family or Upstairs Downstairs or Marcus Welby or The Movie of the Week. 

I was always alone, even when I wasn’t. Besides being vulnerable to any such initiations I was also free to explore my solo interests unseen. I could walk to the library and back, carrying stacks of books on mythology and ny new side-hustle obsession, witch craft. I somehow blended the two. I specifically remember finding old curtains in the attic which I hand stiched into robes, special vestments if you will, that I would wear when I would invoke the gods, making my own original incantations, mainly to Dionysus. I don’t know if I started doing this before or after being pinned down for a week by my initiator, Kenny Doyle, who ended up killing himself in his late twenties early thirties, but I do have the sense that my foray into wizardry for juniors was rapidly accelerated after the fact. I wasn’t really aware what was going on with me because I was just in it. Only a couple of years ago did I come across my sixth grad picture from the year before that summer and my seventh grade picture and, putting them side by side I felt really bad for this kid who, though always on the fringes went from being very forthright and funny, extroverted and the proverbial class clown to completely broke,n withdrawn, sad and now purposefully isolated not wanting to be seen. The beginning of seventh grade was one of those years I didn’t show up for two weeks. But here I am still talking about it. Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? That thing they say about being broken. Well it’s definitely true because it was at this very low point that stranger things began to happen.

 At the time I didn’t know that religion and theater shared the same route.

Actually it’s fine as I say I spent a long time im the summer of my eleventh year and what happens between that time and by the time I’m well into college, well, (holds up script) I’ve got that drafted too, for the most part, but, really, I really think I can distill the next nearly ten years. And after that I have another TROPE already prepared so I’m at least goint to leave this show by the time I’m forty. We may need to rethink the autobiographical set up actually.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Virgo 8° (August 30)

So I don’t have to much participate today which is great because I’m frankly in capable of it. The reality of what I’m dealing with is hitting me hard now and so I will take my leave and S. will go and gather croissants and spend the morning at the hotel. I will stroll around outside for a bit and come back and try to make something out of my own morning, to no avail. I mean there are the artifical elements. But mainly I must think about drafting a letter. I will do so on Sunday I think. In the meantime it wouldn’t be right to print it here in any case. I will begin writing my show then too. I have a lot to do on that so I actually better get cracking. First though I will get all my festival passes requested. I will also put in all the tech info. I will sort out some of the issues with the ferries. And I will get all the bikes and all the Sparklers and all the tickets reset. I will also sign off on photo for my show and now I have to write a blurb.

Faced with a late-breaking cancellation by a scheduled artist, and already single-handedly juggling every other aspect of producing a performance festival, impresario Quinn Coxhas only a few days to write his first ever solo play, learn some simple songs he can block out on the piano, and hope some overall themes and dramatic arcs will emerge in the process. Part panic attack, part trooperism, part self-flagellation, and part transcendence of artistic delusion, Cox deconstructs the undertaking of making a one-man show, without the luxury of reflection, second guessing or a single a moment to lose. Buoyed only by a bottle of organic red wine, he must lay bare his thoughts, feelings, talents, and all other expressions of imperfection in upholding the traditional notion that the show must go on. After which time, there may be no going back. With special guest Stella Starsky(American Baroness).

This will happen later but here it is in redacted form:
Select members of our Advisory Board pow-wowed last evening for several hours on the complete situation at hand and on the email [redacted] sent yesterday.

It was consensus, “[redacted]needs to understand the meaning of the word: Contract.” The Advisors, some of whom are my elders and have been veterans in this game a long time, were appalled and  unanimously clear: That, “no matter what an artist’s own internal business might be, or whatever occurrences or opportunities might arise, a commitment is a commitment;” and even in the case of a MD supposedly getting another gig last minute, that “it is up to the artist to work it out and show up and play the tissue paper and comb if that’s all they can do.” But under no circumstances is it “okay”, nor is it “out of your control”, especially in this case where two excuses in a matter of days were meant to invoke some kind of pity. We are agreed that you are not the injured party: In review or your emails, it was instead agreed that your tone and language were “ unprofessional, rude, and just plain bratty.” As the contracted in-writing artist they feel you should be responsible for the FULL amount (putting a price tag on all the time as well as the documented expenses) and that there should be a penalty on top of that for the breach itself. They have deemed your actions “inexcusable.”

Now to you [redacted]. Though we have no contract with you, the Advisors actually took more issue with your threats than with [redacted]’s breach. They are going to be spreading the word as to the reality of this situation and they are going to “keep [their] ears open for any negative word about the Afterglow Festival.”  As some board members were unfamiliar with your name or work, [redacted], I shared some of your resume with them; and, as many of them are affiliated with theaters and other such institutions where you work, they are going to be on “high alert” for any negative commentary coming from their colleagues about Afterglow. Their consensus, too, was that Afterglow was “too generous” in footing the bill for your travel to Provincetown; that there was no reason to have a director attend in any case. They also agreed that the casual way in which you expected their to be a MD provided (which is not in the contract with [redacted]) vis a vis the second excuse you offered for [redacted]breaching the contract, was a “flimsy attempt to justify their actions.”

It has been decided that Afterglow will, without naming names, release a statement to our colleagues at the mainly downtown theaters and clubs and labs where artists, who also appear at Afterglow, perform. We will also be inviting these colleagues to an in-house conference on the subject of “artists breaking contracts,” (thankfully, is an extremely rare thing), and the negative impact it has on non-profits, specifically, not only financially but in terms, too, of the apparent exposure of threats (like the ones your making, [redacted]) that add grave insult to already serious injury. To be clear: consensus is that the amount we are demanding as compensation for [redacted]’s breach of contract is “generous to the artist.”  And that [redacted]’s language in her email constitutes “virtue signaling” and “call-out culture tactics” which also “need to be addressed by our body and the artistic community-at-large.”

Member of the board found the entire situation shocking, not only on their own behalf and behalf of the festival organization (which produces artists elsewhere, as well, on a regular basis), but on behalf of our private sponsors and grantors. In public statement and in conversation with industry colleagues board members will make it clear that: The Afterglow Festival provides so much to its artists, raising money to travel, house, feed and pay and indeed pamper artists, who would otherwise never be able to perform in Provincetown, the birth place of modern American theater  and a century-old incubator for progressive stage craft, a legacy that Afterglow also champions along with the emerging and experimenting artists it presents. The cavalier manner in which [redacted] has cancelled his show a week out from its contracted date has caused our non-profit great loss and we are in agreement that we shall continue to seek repair in the already reduced financial figure we have itemized in our email of September 1, 2019.

Let me also be clear about the invoking of your agencies ICM and Paradigm: As with our colleagues at theatrical institutions, our board members are also affiliated, whether professionally or personally, with figures who work at both these and other agencies. They have suggested that they might be making a few preemptive phone calls in these directions, as well, in an attempt to safeguard any slanderous remarks about our non-profit arts organization. Through our affiliated grants foundations and organizations, too, we are going to propose a workshop/seminar based on what emerges from our in-house conference, utilizing information and opinion that will arise therefrom in hopes of helping other non-profit arts entities negotiate breaches of contract and the kinds of threats from artists as they two of you are making toward us. All in all it is our intention to get out in front of any reputational damage, which you have blatantly threatened (in writing) to cause our organization, with the express intention of detecting it as it occurs, rooting it out, and tracing it back to its source; at which time we will be advised as to any further action needing to take place as a result of deleterious words or actions made by you toward Afterglow, its directorship, or its board.

Please do feel free to send me both of your agency contacts so that I can keep them appraised of this unfortunate situation. Meanwhile we expect payment for the minimum expenses accrued, and outlined to you, as a result of the last-minute breach of [redacted], scheduled for [redacted], to be made to the Afterglow Festival on or before September 9, 2019.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Virgo 7° (August 29)

Well I did most of the cleaning yesterday, top to bottom, mopping and the whole deal. This morning I prepped for the arrival of the inlaws, went to the dump.They will arrive in time for lunch and we have laid out a spread of cold cuts and rolls and tuna and cole slaw and there’s cofee and soda even, which we never have. They will eat and they will leave and I will work and I will cook and in the midst of it these questionables will write to say they are not coming for festival and I could have predicted it. That is almost the worst part. The banality of knowing that they were not through cancelling their contract they so wanted to cancel just days before; and for that they will receive karmic retribution I am sure of it. Meanwhile I will seek terrestrial compensation as well.

I will barely be able to pretend that things are fine. I will speak to James; and S. will come and go, gathering swimsuits and collecting wine; and then they will all be back and I will have put out an entire spread. And through pretend smiles and gritted teeth I will get through this evening. And I will go to the piano and sing. Suddenly everyone, I mean everyone looks terribly old, including myself. Maybe all the changes weren’t such the great idea I thought they were. I will be left with the decision to write a show or not write a show. I just have this feeling of fuck it. I said so the other day when I thought they were canceling the first time. I thought I would just get up and do a show because the show must go on. And that is the motto. I’m jealous of noone. I’m angry at noone. I will do what I have to do and I will do it well. The playing of piano will be the major challenge.

I do find it to be dispicable at times. The smoking of marijuana, for instance, becomes a target, a place for the aging to put all their vitriole. I really don’t understand it. How is smoking pot any better or worse than drinking alcohol. It’s so stupid and unbecoming. People are just mad, sometimes I think, because they can’t do certain things or don’t reap the benfits of doing certain things and so they have to demonize it. And I’m doing the best I can in a certain sense. I seem to be overusing the word certain. I do that because I’m sad and I use certain language as a subsitute for having had a real life. Today is depressing in case you haven’t wondered.

Well I did manage to get off a bunch of pleas for money none of which have yielded. Funny that. Pulling teeth this year. And yet I kinda don’t give a crap!

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Virgo 6° (August 28)

Okay so this is the only thing I’ve written on this day, obviously, now,  I have done damage control, and I am under the impression that the performer in question is following through on his contractual commitment. If you’ve been reading the posts from the last couple of days you would know that this was just a moment of respite in an otherwise stressful week at the hands of this performer and his team.

I hope to further clear up any confusion. As per my discussion by phone with E. about what we do at Afterglow, I was very clear that we never put on “concerts” I even use that word specifically when speaking to artists (or directors in this case on their behalf) as what not to do. Of course we present cabaret artists—just name one we’ve presented them—and with the term cabaret the concept of narrative is baked in. This might all sound like semantics but I wanted to be clear. E. had said in her follow up to our conversation that the two of you “were developing the piece together” in her request to be traveled/lodged to/at Afterglow which was fine by us.

Then just in recent days which were otherwise fraught (and yes I said that if you followed through all of that mishigas we would happily be put behind us—and I’m VERY happy we got there!!) M. you kept saying the word concert which, as I say, is a bad one in Afterglow vocabulary. And you only needed a short tech. And of all the artists you’re still the only one I believe that hasn’t handed in a script, stage plan or tech requirements. (That request was sent along with the tech schedule I hope you found in your emails). So I thought I better beam in and see what’s what as I had imagined this was a staged “piece” for “development” that required director and musical director in tow, not just something for which we were checking mics. Is there no blocking? No lights? No sound?

Just give us, as per the AH request, whatever script there might be and all your technical requirements as Er. (fromAH) outlined in her email I forwarded you July 26. For ease sake let me just paste that in again. I need to get all this information to Er. in coming days (don’t send it directly to her please send it to me as I’m compiling one document for the entire festival.

I’m going to resume my creative writing into this space because, as it turns out, I might have to step in and replace this artist. I won’t be able to recoup any of our losses, which is truly sad and challenging.

I’m looking at the clock and it’s dawning on me I might actually have more than enough material for this show. In fact I don’t think I’m going to anywhere near relating to you all the scribbling I’ve done in the last few to quickly prep for this. Maybe the genie really is out of the bottle. But, okay, I’m going to cut and paste because, the second thing I’ve noticed about one-person shows is that surely around this point if not before, there is typically the introduction of a song. Now I’m not really a singer, and I’m definitely not a pianist. PIANIST. (click, click) But this is also not an apology because I wouldn’t do that. I do need to change to a higher number of reader though I think. And, maybe with the exception of the title of this song, there really isn’t more than a loose themetic connection between what I’ve just said and the lyrics, here, but, look I do invite you to make some for your own sake. Chronologically, this song was written when I was fourteen or fifteen so I am moving things along.

SURRENDER

But for perhaps a brief moment in the late seventies/early eighties being bisexual wasn’t the desired and celebrated, and let’s face it, the preferred assignation of sexual identity that it is today. I know, shocking right. Because we are all, everybody is, bisexual now. but, even just a few years back, most people were like I don’t buy it; you have to choose; you can’t be both; you’re hiding, you’re lying. Can you believe it. We used to tell this joke in our Starsky + Cox show, well, why don’t we do it together, can you believe we actually used to make fun of the fact that bisexuals, now the most potent and thriving sector of the larger LGBT community, was pretty invisible. I would say something about how I always strived to put the the B in LGBT and I would cite my work with the larger bisexual community and you would say:

Hang on, hang on. G yes, the gays, I love them. The L word, yes, lesbians, they love me. T. Trans. We wear the same shoe size and it can get pretty ugly at Ruthies sometime, but B, bisexual community, I don’t know it seems like a contradition in terms.

Well I recently attended the international bisexual men’s conference

Another pilgramage to Cologne

And I ended up saying to the other guy there….ba dum bum

Even just a few short years later the joke doesn’t make as much sense now. Not only does a greater part of the younger generation identify as bisexual or eschew labels altogether, because of a more visible and outspoken Trans community advocating for a non-binary perception and reality of gender, it just follows that, if only retroactively, the Bi’s were like um, that non-binary thing. It applies to us too. And because most people will admit (or not) to having a same-sex experience, we’ve gone from nobody being bisexual (that there’s no such thing) to seemingly everyone being like, yeah, you know there’s a great area. And that is mainly being driven by those we would heretofore label straight men who, now this is just my theory, have felt left out of the conversation. So instead of hiding, repressing their same-sex experiences, or even just their feelings about it, they’re like me too. Not that me too. Different me too. Which, as someone who has gotten a bit handsy over the year himself, is probably a good thing. I’ll just say this: That someone as supposedly woke as I always thought I was, I’ve had to recognize the times in my life that I have been, shall se say, overly insinuating. I admit it. I’ve been there. I’ve thought my attentions harmless or even flattering. I want to say I was never “that bad” but that’s a stupid thing to think let alone say. I can say my intions have only ever been harmless, but I didn’t get to decide that. And I think that what Aunt Mickey didn’t realize when she introduced me to Paulie when I was thirteen was that I had already had sexual interaction with both sexes because I grew up in the seventies and we had the opposite of helicopter parents and we were latch key and often “baby sat” by predatory hormone raging teens who were only a few years older than we were. That boys specifically were left in the company of only sligtly older boys who were likely lectured on how to treat girls but whose parents never laid down any rules about targeting other boys. My situation is not unusual. The physically developed fourteen year old boy who quote unquote molested me when I was a pre-adolescent with undeveloped (click click) didn’t know he was doing anything wrong. He was just doing to me what was done to him, in large part back through history. I was taught to be a gentleman with girls, but bets were pretty much off with boys. In some ways sexual interaction between boys of a certain age didn’t feel that different from sports. So maybe I wasn’t using creepy words playing Mad Libs with my friends, but I know I wasn’t alone in experiencing the things I did at a tender age. There were alpha males I went to junior high with, some of them who have high profile jobs, even whole careers, on television, who were caught playing with each other on field trips. They would go on to spend their adult lives denying it, mainly to themselves, and certainly never would have labelled themselves with B. For me, it’s the old chicken or the egg question. Who knows if I would have been turned on to guys if I hadn’t been turned on TO IT by another guy. Maybe, maybe not. There’s no way to know and I have never cared. I have always been happy with the B and I’ve made no bones about it. No pun intended. I’m happy to count myself among the number that includes Cary Grant and Marlon Brando and Tom Hardy and Robbie Williams and David Bowie and Mick Jagger. It is rumoured that this song by the Rolling Stones was written by David Bowie’s wife Angela who, in her autobiography, claims she walked in on David and Mick in bed together. I invite my own wife to join me on it.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Virgo 5° (August 27)

Headed into Provincetown today to get the posters out there and circulating. That’s all I wrote on the actual day of this post. You’ll have to go back a couple of days to realize that I am in a bit of a time warp. I was thrown a major curve ball early in the week and it caused me to lose my way with my Blague at the same time it has also necessitated my writing a one-man show in the span of just a few days. So I’m going to continue on from where I was on all that….

The day of my christening came and Mickey was holding me as the priest did his whole water thing, dripping in on my forehead or whatever, and well, even to this day, I’m sure this is true for most of you, but just the sound of dripping water, let alone the feel, can inspire, well as my mother put it. And as if on cue, your little thing rose up and you let loose and peed right in Mickey’s face. That was a sign I guess, or an excuse, or something, for which my mother was blamed, as if she was working her powers through my little, as my father would call it cummasicuam, an Italian dialect version of come si chiamo which means “how do you say” in this case a watchamacallit because, the Italian side of my family, not mafia per se, but maybe a bit bookyish, not bookish, decidedly not bookish, but bookyish, never talked about sex or body parts or anything of that nature. They didn’t even call it a peepee. Cummasicuam. Watchamacallit. I we getting a picture of my formative influences? Anyway, it was another eight or so years until we moved to the suburbs, originally an old Dutch settlement called Wyckoff, a name which you can imagine every young boy growing up there had fun with, and not knowing that her sister had moved to the next town over, Peggy and Mickey literally bashed their shopping carts together at Stop n’ Shop; but still I didn’t meet my aunt until I was thirteen. Of course on my birthday every year I would get gifts from her address to Master William Leone, that’s my real name, William Leone, and they would be weird gifts princely gifts like velvet waistcoats or a chain for a pocket watch or a monagrammed tie clip. I had met two or three of my first cousins once or twice—they were weird, wild animals for the most part, and overly sexed, now that I think of it, as a young age, the youngest Anne Marie or Am A-M, who was just three years older than me, I remember, once, we were doing mad libs, I was 11 and I would say Noun and she would say Masturbation; I would say Verb and she would say Fucking. She was fourteen.

Anyway, I was finally going over during Christmas, at age thirteen, to meet Aunt Mickey who looked like a severe version of my own mother who was forever being mistaken for Rue Maclanahan, a fellow Pisces, all of five one, with her tiny hook button nose, aristocratic airs (despite being raised with no hot water) all Estee Lauder youth due, her soft, sage, siren sense of drawing everybody in. When she drank, she caved in on herself. Not Mickey, who was taller and tough with a long, sharp pointy nose; she stood like this; her hair was a dyed version of my mother’s natural sandy red, a little to bright, her fingers covered in huge rocks, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, all gigantic, and she carrid a giant key chain which you knew was mainly a weapon. The first inappropriate thing she did—she was surely drunk and unlike my mother, came out of herself, emboldened—the first thing she did was I need to introduce my two favorite people (I’m just meeting her remember) to each other and we have to be friends. She dragged my tiny thirteen year old self over to meet her best friends son, Paulie, who looked like Andrew Stevens and Rex Smith had a love child and, who I realize now, of course, was gay, and Mickey was trying to put us together. The second inappropriate thing she did, before it was time for me to go (which I knew because my mother was sending me mental signals which were confirmed by my father’s beigy pink champagne Cadillac Coupe de Ville outside, back to pick me up where he left me, probably, just forty minutes before), was to usher me upstairs where she said she had something to give me. I was terrified. On the way I caught my first ever and only glimpse of Mickey’s son Tommy who by then was already a heroin addict who would die of AIDS. She led me up the shag covered, fairly dramatic stairs, of her colonial style home and to her impossibly large bedroom where she opened a closet-dressing stuffed with hanging clothes and stacked clothes and boxes and racks of shoes. She got up on a low round foot stool, like the ones you still see in libraries, and reached up so high her arm disappeared from view and pulled down these folded items, fabric it was, and said they were a present to me. M’ok. They were tied with string or ribbon or some combination thereof. She put them in a bag. When I got home my mother asked to see what Mickey gave me. And as she loosened the string or ribbon I could see the light of realization being cast across her face. “Son of a bitch, she said, these are all my suits and dresses—she’s taken them apart at the seems, stitch by stich.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Virgo 4° (August 26)

Monday and a horrible day of back and forth with a performer who suddenly threatens to back out of the festival. I know I sound like Penny Arcade, but this younger generation of performers do not have the same esprit du corps as the ones that came before. They are on one hand really poverty conscious always whining about having no money and on the other they act like prima donnas who feel they should already be rich and famous. They don’t seem to appreciate always what’s on offer because they don’t stop to smell the roses, or hit the bech, as the case may be. Pete beamed in to see if we can do lunch but we are facing a full client day so we have rescheduled for Wednesday. There is possiblity still left….I never finished that sentence. If you read yesterday’s entry you’ll know that some shite is going down and that I’m scrambling to suddenly write a show which is fine except that it will take me all night and I really don’t care whatever comes out today comes out today I will try to write for about six hours straight and see what happens…..

So I left off yesterday saying: . I am reminded—oh this is a good thing, I am getting improvisational ideas that I haven’t put down on paper—I am reminded of a story of a performer friend of mine who was doing a benefit with other folks, some very famous, for something in London I don’t remember it’s not important….but the story goes something like this:

This one young performer was newly sober and back stage and having a panic attack, performance anxiety in the extreme, and was shaking in the wings, and suddenly Marianne Faithfull appeared, as she often does (trust me) and this young performer said oh my god I’m so nervous I don’t know what to do and Marianne said well why don’t you have something to drink and the young performer said oh I’m a newly recovering alcoholic and I’m in the program and can’t drink and Marianne said well yes, I can relate, because so am I; so why don’t you just do what I do have only have some white wine. Anyway I haven’t had the chance to hone the delivery of that so…Okay, so I decided a couple of days ago, when one of our young performers fucked— I mean said in his inimitable millenial fashion that he just couldn’t swing performing the festival after all this year I thought well we put a lot of effort into this and we have never cancelled a show, we have replaced people, but never so last minute and so what to do I’ll speed write a one-man show and so I thought okay what are some of the things people do in one-person shows, solo plays if you will, and so I made an outline of certain things I’ve noticed because I’ve seen and produced and presented hundreds of shows in my life so one of the first things I’ve noticed about first-time shows by certain aritsts (and very often all their shows thereafter) is that they are autobiographical if not narcissistically so. So I figured, great finally I have a place to put that part of me, I mean I don’t think I’m a malignant narcissist, well at least not all of the time, maybe sometimes when I drink too much (drinks) but that doesn’t happen more than a few times a week so, yeah, it’s a bit of Russian Roulette, but we should be fine. The first title idea I had for this show was actually Quinn Cox Drinking Red Wine and Seeing what happens which, well let’s just call it the invisible subtitle.

The last of the baby boomers, I was born a city kid in Jersey City to be exact. We lived in an apartment building complex called College Towers near what was then called State Teacher’s hospital. This was before the white witch exodus to the suburbs of the 1970s. My mother, a celtic Pisces with red hair and freckles and eyes that looked inward and she was born Margaret Anna Mary McDonough, but everyone knew her as Peggy—and she was a good witch. And she had a sister, Muriel, whom everyone called Mickey, and she wasn’t. She was a mean girl. And was what you would called fast back in the days before slut shaming and had a child out of wedlock, living with my mother and her parents in their cold water walk up flat, and, as my mother put it, news traveled fast and guys were “coming out of the woodwork” assuming she was cut from the same sexual cloth as Mickey, which she wasn’t. My mother was a good girl who worked from the age of fourteen (as I later did) scrimping and saving to buy herself clothes, suits and dresses, that she could wear on interviews and to secretarial school and for church and socials and for other good girl reasons. These suits and dresses would consistently go missing; of course my mother knew Mickey was stealing them but she never saw her wear them. Anyway it was that type of dynamic, growing up with a bad seed (as I later did); and by the time my mother was pregnant with me at the age of 32, late in the game, and nearly six years since her first child, Peggy and Mickey had been estranged, already, for nearly a decade.

Early in the pregnancy, the phone rang and my mother picked up and it was Mickey who said, no more no less, you’re going to have a child, it will be a boy, and he will be born on my birthday, September 28, which I was. Now these sorts of predictions, apparently, weren’t strange in their small world, but it was typically my mother who had the psychic flashes, which she largely kept to herself, she later told me, as they happened so often and so early in her young life that she tried tried to train her mind to fight them off becaue they frightened her. Apparently she never could fight them off completely. And it was at those times when I would see her standing looking out a window or seated in a chair, trancelike, with those eyes pointed inward that I knew she was in some sort of stat of revelation. All my life I never had to pick up a phone to call my mother, I would simply send her a message to call me. Or,the other way around: I would get a flash the phone would ring and seconds later it would. The phone also had a special ring when she called.

 By the time I was born, which was some thirteen or fourteen years after Mickey’s first child, she had married her baby daddy and had a total six children. Fertile Murtile my mother called her with a slightly abhorrent tone. Anyway, my mother decided, due to the psychic flash and because, as a good witch, she was hoping for some repair with her only sister, perhaps for her own mother’s sake, as her father, my gradfather died, during her pregnancy with me.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Virgo 3° (August 25)

Sunday and I dare say I barely remember what this day is meant to be all about. I know I was meant to finish up these year-ahead books and nearly did. Yesterday I worked upstairs for hours and did manage to get things done with a little help from my friends. Trust me this festival I’m working on plus these books I’m finishing, this double process. And, seriously it will be done in the next two weeks at which time I will be full on into the new book project. So that means this year I have already written my twelve horoscope books plus we launched the tee-shirt collection, plus we are redesigning the website, plus a ninth festival under my belt and a fifth. And I want to keep a positive attitude. It will be difficult in the coming days, namely Monday and Tuesday, but by Wednesday I will start feeling like all things are once again possible and that I’m not being sabotaged and derailed. I know I seem to be saying quite the same things over and over again these days—this will soon stop—but the fact is I have to keep reminding myself of this multispoked to-do list. And try to ramp up my confidence in the process all at the same time. I wrote the above a week ago today. The events of this week—well, I won’t say they derailed me but they seriously curtailed me in such a way as is not even really funny. I did manage to write a little bit each day just to mark the actual time as it was happening. But now I have even more yeoman’s work to do.

An artist will threaten to cancel tomorrow; well they will cancel then won’t; they will attempt to get more dosh out of me. They will insult the festival. They will do all sorts of antics. Of course this artist will end up being a Gemini—sorry, Gems but when you’re ba you are truly bad. I will have sent top theatrical folks I know to see this guy’s play in London. They will write me to say they hated it, which is small compensation. It will be the last week of summer. Inlaws will visit. That will further take up my time with cleaning and cooking but it will be a welcome distraction because they are lovely people and I enjoy hosting them, I truly do. It will be a blessing because it will distract me, but I will end up anesthetizing my pain a little too much. I will convince this artist to do his show and I will get further commitment. And three more days will go by and then he (well his director whom I made a member of our Advisory Board) will cancel on his behalf, blaming their musical director for taking another gig. Which is specious and stupid and ironic because originally they thought they’d be showing up and working with a musical director, once, in rehearsal. I don’t really care. Well I do. That plus the fact that I have never had a …oops I forgot what I was going to say because another shiny object distracted me. Oh well the show must go on and I’ll probably do one myself. I don’t see any reason why not. Except I don’t have a show but I guess I can just talk and sing a few songs over the course of seventy minutes. That shouldn’t be too too hard. Now should it?

As I write this I am letting my brain alight on certain stories that might make good telling.

I will come out and say I have to admit I’m a little nervous as I have never done a one-person show before and I never planned to do one as the result of an artist in the Afterglow Festival declaring he wasn’t showing up just days before he was contracted to appear; I always thought that if I did perform a “one-man” show that I would do so after at least a few months of writing it, perhaps in the early spring, taking windswept walks on the beach in Wellfleet, returning home to make cocoa hold the marshmallows to pull on a scratchy wool jumper, settling in to type away, and then rehearsing it for a month in a spare bedroom I would designate as “performance studio”, and then hone the “piece” over a series of performances in clubs and small black box theaters and at laboratories at Bard or MIT. Instead here I am after scribbling a few notes over the course of the last several days all the while trying to fundraise and produce this whole thing. I’m making no apologies, don’t get me wrong, a performer should never apologize for anything. I will make a prediction though. Some of you are going to love this and some of you are going to fucking hate it. I have never inspired middle of the road feelings in anyone, personally or professionally. So I made the snap decision to do this. And grabbed the most interesting photo of myself I could find and slapped a title on it. Out of the Bottle because, though I mightn’t be a genius, there is a chance I am something of a genie, and also I was absolutely not going to get up here with a few scribbled notes and not drink some wine, which is an organic red from the TK region. You might say, in a very large part, that this show is in particurly brought to you by one of our sponsors, Perry’s Wine and Liquor of Provincetown. I am reminded—oh this is a good thing, I am getting improvisational ideas that I haven’t put down on paper—I am reminded of a story of a performer friend of mine who was doing a benefit with other folks, some very famous, for something in London I don’t remember it’s not important….

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Virgo 2° (August 24)

Saturday. I am really in something of a spindown—I recognize the signs. I’m feeling sad and anxious and fearful and on edge all at the same time. Heading into town this morning and I can barely face the most minimum of interacton. We will just go from Post Office to Bank and I will remain in the car and fantasize about how to kill off some pain. I know there will be quick trips to the stores later since I can’t bear the notion of even a supermarket today. It’s not that deep. Zen and the art of chilling. What happened to trip hop? I think it became irrelevant. I don’t want my life hijacked by an anomaly like the orange menance. I cannot believe they are getting away with the Epstein-Barr scenario. Soar too close the Sun. Why can’t they fall like Icarus. I will get a a few more books edited and filled out. If I am scared of dying I cannot live. We met in Firenze in September. I was staying at a pensione that doubled as a whore house. At the Uffizio this fellow, Adrian, who I would then look up over Christmas and he would take me to the Black Cap in Camden. I never knew where I was in those days. I wish my stomach was smaller. It seems to bloat up just about every time I do anything. I am seriously in the mood for a complete switcheroo.

Which reminds me: That Lee Krasner exhibition in London really was spectacular. We will afford to live in Paris as part of our process this year and I seriously can’t wait. Because my brain is so scrambled and I’m also scrambling to finish these books I’m not exactly in the best place emotionally but I will come out of it in coming days I’m sure. I just need to take a major break. And now word that we are going to have family visiting this week, which isn’t a great time. But when is it ever. I don’t understand how my inlaws can drive themselve hundreds of miles to see horse races but have a hard time negotiating just, say, going out to dinner. Something is definitely up with them. P. received the bag S. sent her and that is a very good thing. We also saw a scan of a client’s gestating fetus which was pretty awesome.Somethings one just need never worry about. I don’t know who I was talking to, somebody, when I said you really can’t think about that. I think it was Deb. I was vibing on a teacher. I was kind of psychic in that meeting, but then again I always seem to be with her. There was a weird presence who popped in which isn’t always that fun I have to admit. It’s just after three three days later. I really only have a little bit of time to sit here and talk to you today. My struggles are the same, just as are my goals. I just need to get out of these damn woods. Like out out out. I have to make some major moves today and bring in some dosh. Dash for dosh, dash. It will all come right in the end; and I have made major moves to help others get their groove on. Anything can happen in a fortnight. That has long been my philosophy. And, especially by way of purging, it’s a great time to get the toxins out. A lady at the gas station today had a volkswagon Thing. Looking forward to creating some major revenue streams. Go down the line of the Sparklers and make sure they know about the party. This is a fun to do I think. Something else I can do is see who likes my stuff on AF IG.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Virgo 1° (August 23)

What a weird night of sleep and dreams. I couldn’t tell you what the dreams were about but I do know they were contentious and so vivid at the time. I guess I need to once again keep pen and paper bedside. I have my work cut out for me today that much is certain; but if all goes to plan, I will be finished with a huge chunk of work for the year. I do believe I will have also created a content base with which I can work some major magic. Speaking of which there are two senses coming to the fore today—the first is this sense of becoming an international presence, and positioning ourselves in Paris would certainly be part of that; the second is this sense of my own witchiness returning and needing to go deeper into all that might entail in a real, practical way. We will spend the day looking at real-estate porn of the French persuasion and I will underachieve in many ways, which feels fine. I will get through the tenth book of a twelve book series, slivers though they all are. But substantial nonetheless. I drove to Eastham today and had a chat about Chinons.I had an online altercation with someone called Jonathan who works at that horrible Crown & Anchor.

I have been spending a bit too much on the wrong things as of late and really looking forward to getting a full handle on everything and reeling stuff in. But really things are something of a blur. I have to give up on logic if I’m going to achieve what needs being done. My body is in a bit of a revolt as I’ve been overfeeding it. I will sit upstairs and try to finish writing somethings and I will write and try to leverage an answer as to why we were left waiting so long. I know I promised to go and stay but I just can’t; and I am having real second thoughts now about certain social plans that would see my as something of a prisoner. I am trying to power through and do a million things, and the more I do do (ha ha) the more I can do. So I won’t really say I’m daunted, but I do want to move the spoon. I again have that sense of life happening elsewhere. And if there is nothing I despise more it’s people who have nothing else to show for their lives but whatever money the live on, given it them by spouses or inheritance, and then ask questions in a demeaning manner. Are you still doing Astrology? You mean the thing at which, in various forms, I’ve been making a living for the past two decades? Yeah, I’m still doing that. And how about you? Are you still doing absolutely nothing but lots of meds and pretending to be some kind of designer and buying Instagram thousands of Instagram followers? Are you still doing that?

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Virgo 0° (August 22)

I must make my two doctor’s appointments today without fail. I’ll get there. Today is the busiest day of my week without question, but that’s fine. It’s carnival in Provincetown which in some way let’s me off the hook for a few days. I will need to read back over the last couple of days here to extract some to-dos. That’s just the way this cookie crumbles. I am completely missing the boat trip now that some time has passed since we’ve been back. It is crazy to think that it is only just three weeks from tomorrow that we left the boat how is that even possible that I was in Italy fewer than three weeks ago. That is just nuts. I was awakened by what felt like a ball of panic. It did coincide with a bit of dream that I barely recall but I know it involved a certain person. Part of what needs doing on the Margie Ella list is thanking the sponsors that already exist in instagram posts. I don’t know, maybe there can be two posts a day, one about an artist, one about a sponsor. Ugh I hate this feeling of failing. Like I’m already failing today. How can I remedy this? I know stop writing this and go back to work. Okay got something done but this is what is commonly known as a scorcher! I will go until five then get ready to head out for dinner.

Got to Mac’s and put our name down and got our little buzzer and grabbed a beer and mocktail at the bar. Our friends (six of them) were still a no-show half an hour later and we nearly pulled our name. We waited another ten minutes and then figured they forgot or something and sat to write them, when nearly fifty minutes from meeting time they pulled in. What can you do? It was carnival day in Provincetown which they went to witness. And it was only midway through the meal that one of the children revealed that they had stopped somewhere to take in the view on the Atlantic side. Now, it’s good thing I really like these people, and they have no idea what a stickler for time commitments I am to be fair, but it is absolutely where my most OCD self lies. We texted (they changed numbers which we didn’t know), I was sending direct messages on IG. They were vaguely apologetic. And honestly I am in awe. For some reason I would never get away with being that late with people. I think I’ve been dumped by so-called friends for less. But I almost have to admire their nonchalance, no-biggie-right? (wrong!) attitude about it. But of course we do love them and it was great to see them and we did have a lovely time so no harm done but, on the cosmic-joke level of things. Because I do live in a world where, like Bob Newhart on his various programs, or Larry David on Curb, or even Oliver on Green Acres, I often perceive myself to be the only sane person in my sphere, and yet the universe always seems to side with all the other people. What’s that all about?

I did manage to get a great deal done yesterday, though, all in all. That is to say I made some but not all the headway I needed to make on my frontloaded project for the week (as I also kept other plates spinning). Tonight also marks the last night for a few weeks at least where I let myself enjoy my beloved beer. I read this Angela Davis: “I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change…I’m changing the things I cannot accept.” And I have to say it is really working for me. I was going to pop into Provincetown, to the Post Office tomorrow, to see who has and hasn’t yet given to the festival, but I’ll wait until Saturday. It is crunch time for sure and yet I can’t be on people until after the Carnival fires have gone out. I will also need to finish the HA books today and I expect it to feel great to get that off my plate. This will not be a partying festival this year but rather very staid and sober in tone. I should also drop all I need off at Fli-bois on Friday as well. Or maybe that can wait until Monday. Yes let’s wait until Monday. How wonderful will it be to have the next three weeks, through festival time, to dedicate in large part to this sample chapter, which I will have to get my brain around starting tomorrow, Saturday. That will be quite fulfilling.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox