Spike Gillespie

FronteraFest Long Fringe’s ‘The Dick Monologues’

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January 27, 2009

The Austin Motel Sign

Consider the possibility that you don’t know dick. You might think you do … rather intimately even. Some people might have mistaken you for a dick once or twice. In fact, you might have actually been one at some point or another. Even if you haven’t been a dick, there’s a small chance that your name is Dick. No shame there. Richard sounds a little pretentious anyway … especially if you’re French and put all the emphasis on the back end. If you’re not a dick, there is a (roughly) 50% chance you’re at least attached to one – not necessarily by marriage, but by arteries, erectile tissue, epidermis, and the like. Being attached to a dick doesn’t mean you have to write it love letters. In fact, writing love letters to your pecker is kind of dickish, really. That doesn’t mean you can’t possess some affinity toward it however. After all, if you have a dick, you know that your dick leads you around on some rather exciting escapades. Such adventures are bound to engender a sense of bonding. You might even feel a certain camaraderie with your little downstairs neighbor. After all, you seem to share so much in common. You have the same taste in women … or men. When he’s overworked, you both get really tired. Sometimes he’s awake when you’re asleep. Sometimes he’s asleep when you’re awake. Sometimes he might need a pill to stay peppy. Sometimes he’s so … out there … it’s downright embarrassing. On occasion your dick needs correcting. Like a wayward child, at times he needs to be pointed in the right direction. Some dicks need constant adjustment – not just the dicks on major league pitchers and gangsta rappers but also dicks on big-bellied rednecks in Bermuda shorts and overly curious toddlers. After all, you’re never too young to learn that even though your dick might not always live up to your expectations, he’s always an available and willing playmate. If you’re like most people attached to a dick, you probably feel like you know it pretty well. You’ve spent a questionable amount of quality time exploring its ins and outs. You might even feel like you’re something of an expert on the dick. Well, get over yourself. It turns out that nearly everyone is a specialist on the dick, whether they have one or not. Take FronteraFest’s Dick Monologues, for instance. You might think a show so named would be a veritable sausage fest. Not so. A full nine of the 11 members onstage lack a member themselves (unless, perhaps, there’s an incredible Crying Game plot twist). Can they make up for their dicklessness with oral acumen? Very likely. Members include writers Spike Gillespie, Sarah Bird, Diane Fleming, Robin Chotzinoff, Sarah Barnes, and Marrit Ingman, plus performers and bons vivants Laura Lane, Kristine Kovach, and Jaycee Wilemon. If you feel like you’re missing the meat, don’t worry. Dick Monologues throws you a couple of bones with songwriter Southpaw Jones and actor/performer Rudy Ramirez. How can hilarity not ensue?

Spike Gillespie’s Free Sex In Public

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SAT., FEB. 14, 2004

If here was ever a hell night for the relationship inhibited, Saturday would have to be it. Going stag to any event on Valentine’s takes an extra amount of moxie. Even intelligent couples don’t go willingly out in public on V-Day unless their love is on the rocks in the first place. Valentine’s is king of all amateur nights. Every decent restaurant in town is packed with wide-eyed love bunnies dragging their dinners out to just short of eternity by pitching woo, holding hands, exchanging gifts and lingering interminably over one dessert with two spoons. The spectacle alone is nauseating enough, but if you’re sitting at the bar with an empty stomach knocking back highballs and developing an eye twitch waiting for a table, it can sour you on romance forever. Don’t worry. Romance isn’t dead, it’s just being suffocated by people with preconceived, unrealistic expectations. Maybe the problem is that instead of looking for love, you should be looking for something more easily attainable, like sex. This Saturday, local author/raconteur/bon vivant Spike Gillespie will be hosting her annual “Free Sex in Public” party over at Book People. For two hours, from 7 to 9pm, local poets, musicians, writers and such will celebrate the more titillating, biomechanical aspects of love. Don’t worry, it can’t get too freaky. After all, it’s in a Bookstore. If it does, well, won’t that be a night to remember? Here is just a short rundown of the talent expected to be on hand: Mr Smarty Pants (of Chronicle fame) who will be donning the guise of his alterego “Mr Sexy Pants” and dispensing tidbits of sex related triva; Feminist poet/Gynomite author Liz Belile; local spoken word slammer Genevieve Van Cleve-age; red haired chanteuse Laura Freeman; poet/writer Diane Fleming; author Faulkner Fox(y); real live astrologer Ben Poliakoff as well as musical guest Tom Benton and his inspirational band The Polished Skull of Jackie Collins. There will also be a re-enactment of Janet and Justin’s Superbowl breast bearing and well as eats and drinks. You might expect to pay huge sums of money for pageant and spectacle like this, but Spike’s Free Sex in Public is exactly what the name says: free. The sex thing may be a little harder to pin down, but isn’t it always?

Em & Lo’s Big Bang Sex Drive Book Tour

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TUE., AUG. 5, 2003

Since the personals became such a huge phenomenon back in the early Nineties, publishers have been devoting increasing amounts of space to love/dating/sex-themed content. The idea being, perhaps, that those using the personals need help above and beyond a phone number for a lunch date. The result has been an overwhelming glut of advice columns, many interesting and informative, some not. It would be a gross understatement to say that the advice column has been beaten like a dead horse over the past decade. Rather, it has been pounded flat like road kill. Because seemingly there is no untraversed feature of the human anatomy/psychology, the emphasis in advice columns has shifted from the mundane neuroses of Middle America to something more closely resembling a Marquis de Sade therapy session. These days, if you’re not exquisitely versed on binding hamster legs, safe scrotal shaving, colonic irrigation, and fisting you’re probably not getting much print space. It could well be that America has finally, truly uncorked its inhibitions and is revealing its inner superfreak, or perhaps advice columns have become the sensationalized, Ricki Lake style mutant magnets of the print/online world. Either way, it’s fun on a huge, turgid, throbbing stick. One of the better columns these days is the “Em & Lo Down,” written by Emma Taylor and Lorelei Sharkey for Nerve.com. Each week Em & Lo give near expert advice on everything from hickies to coochie cleanliness to anal sex with a strap-on. Occasionally they’ll even throw in some advice on dating or placing personal ads – the terminally long filler material in the porn flicks of most lives. Em & Lo definitely know the ups and downs of sex and dating, but what makes them special in the advice world is their willingness to take it from readers. The result is that everyone gets edified and hopefully, in the end, satisfied. With any luck that’s what will happen this Tuesday at BookPeople when local writer and raconteur Spike Gillespie hosts a book signing for Em & Lo to promote their new book, The Big Bang: Nerve’s Guide to the New Sexual Universe ($25, Plume). Along with Em & Lo’s standard Q&A session on sex, lucky locals will be treated to their Anal Sex Safety Lecture, for which Em & Lo will be decked out in full flight attendant garb – as well as (knock, knock, are we still in Austin?) porno-funk-smut music by the Polished Skull of Jackie Collins which, rumor has it, is made up of members of Grupo Fantasma and the Blue Noise Band, as if those names weren’t sexy enough.