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).
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!
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.
Ladies and gentlemen, Dave Ganjamie
Oh yeah, and then after all that stuff's done, I'm getting married, but ya know, that's a minor event.
Hello, website! Long time, no update! I swear that one of these days I am going to actually train myself to just make brief updates here as they happen, instead of these info dumps. ANYWAY. I've got some stuff going on, because of course I do. It goes like this:
Meanwhile, in addition to my normal duties at Five By Five Hundred, I have a review of Eric Smith's new book The Geek's Guide To Dating on Tor.com, and some coverage of SpeakEasy Stage Company's world premiere production of Make Up Your Mind, a brand new play by Kurt Vonnegut even though he's dead.
And then, ya know, the youge (like, the slang/shortened word for "usual," but spelled phonetically? Is that right?): Workin', writin', so on and so forth. Tonight at the Huntington we start performances for The Cocktail Hour by A.R. Gurney, which is directed by Maria Aitken, a favorite of ours at the theatre. Here's a little video I made for that:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa_ckErMzAY]
I also wrote some fun stuff about ghost stories at the theatre on the Huntington's blog which is still worth reading even though it's after Halloween, as well as two pieces of flash fiction in this "Quantum Shorts" competition that you can go read and vote for so I can win some monies: I Kill Dead People and Not Dead Yet (which was the basis for my story in Grayhaven Comics' Fifth Dimension anthology).
Wow that's a whole lot of dead stuff. In that case, I should end this on a happy note, which is that Maurissa Tancharoen both listened to and enjoyed my song "I'll Fight A Whedon For You"; unfortunately, her husband Jed was less than impressed.
So now I've pissed one Whedon and armwrestled another, which only leaves Zak for me still to cross. But overall I think that means that I've successfully become a Whedonverse villain?
Holy crap, I'll be 28 in 2 weeks.
While combing through my parents' basement to find my old Warhammer models (shut up), I stumbled across a CD-R with my name written on it in someone else's handwriting. Of course I was curious, so I popped it into the computer and discovered two demo recordings of songs I had written in high school. The playing is sloppy, the lead parts totally unrehearsed (and foolishly undubbed), and the vocals are much whinier than I remember my voice ever being, but they're fun enough. This, in addition to my MORTIFIED performance last Saturday, and the further basement discovery of VHS tapes from my high school band's performances (coming soon!) have made this a delightfully nostalgic week. Anyway, for your laughing/listening pleasure, here they are:
[soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/72843665" params="" width=" 100%" height="166" iframe="true" /]
Yes, this song was written about Ellen Hickle from The Adventures Of Pete & Pete (AKA the greatest TV show ever created and I will stand by that fact until the day I die). The lyrics are slightly different here than I remember, but that's alright. Maybe I'll re-instate the Endless Mike line if I ever perform it again. Or, maybe not.
(And ugh, bongos?! REALLY, High School Thom? I'm so disappointed in you. I thought you knew better, even then)
Fun fact: a high school friend of mine had a popular public access TV show (oxymoron?) and, after hearing this song, invited me to perform it on the show. Little did I know that he had actually contacted the actress that played Ellen Hickle and offered to pay her to be a surprise guest on the show, which would then chronicle our hilariously awkward blind date. Sadly, she backed out at the last minute (she was apparently working on a pre-med degree at Dartmouth circa 2004, go figure), so our love never had its true chance to blossom, but I suppose it's for the best.
[soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/72843820" params="" width=" 100%" height="166" iframe="true" /]
This song was an adolescent attempt to deconstruct the myth that guys in bands get laid all the time. So, ya know, it's fictional, tongue-in-cheek, and there's a nice little ironic twist at the end. It's corny power-pop, sure, but it's hardly the worst thing I ever wrote...
Fun fact: My good friend Andy Michaels heard me play this song at an Open Mic night my freshman year of college. We had never met at this point, but his friend had a crush on me, and upon hearing me sing this song, he decided that I was the biggest dick ever, and made plans to kick my ass (though it never actually happened). We finally ended up meeting in the fall of my sophomore year. His aunt was friends with my mother, and he was in a comedy troupe with my suitemates, and one night he drunkenly stumbled into my room and said "Hey! My aunt knows your mom! Is that a Spider-Man comforter? That's awesome! Hey guitar! Let's play a song!" and then we lived happily ever after.
Quick update about a few events I've got coming up. One, I'll doing a show THIS Friday, December 14 at the All Asia in Central Square, Cambridge with my / Boston's premiere all-male hard rock Lady Gaga cover band Alejandro and the Fame. These shows are always a blast for everyone involved, and are almost always guaranteed to sell out, so make you get there (lookin' at you, People On The Other Side Of The River Who Missed Our Last Show Because It Was Allllllll The Way In JP Oh BooHoo). Admission is a scant $6, and we hit the stage around 10:30pm! I'm also excited to announce that I'll be performing a short set for MORTIFIED at Oberon on Saturday, December 22. For those who haven't heard of this, MORTIFIED is a night of performance in which real-live grown adult humans read horribly horribly embarrassing things from their high school journals / AIM transcripts / etc, and hilarity ensues. And so, during my set, you'll be treated to some particularly painful gems that I dugout from my high school and middle school songwriting notebooks. Ever wonder what kind of angsty tunes I wrote when I was 14 (including "Dot of my 'I'" and instant never-classic "Fuck You Hotchkiss Lane")? Here's your only chance to hear them live! More information to come when I got it.
And finally, I was asked to write up a few scripts for the 2nd Annual Boston One-Minute Play Festival at the Boston Playwrights Theatre, January 5-7. I believe the evening as a whole contains about 100 one-minute plays (yes, really, but c'mon, that's barely an hour and a half!), so I'm sure there's going to be some great variety. And if you don't like a play, well, just wait one minute! I will say that writing a play, complete with a status quo, conflict, rising action,and denouement is remarkably more difficult than you might expect it to be, but I'm pretty pleased with what I came up with (and I should be blogging a bit more about it soon over at their website).
That's all for now, folks! See you Friday!
And so begins the madness. First, I'll be performing tonight at Mortified Boston, thanks to the fantastic Ms Lisa McColgan (a co-worker over at the Huntington, as well as a fellow writer on Five By Five Hundred and possibly the world's biggest zombie enthusiast). I'll be singing a hilariously embarrassing song that I originally wrote in high school, so if you want to see me get up and stage and humiliate myself, well, that's the place to be. On a less romantic note, this week's Five By Five Hundred entry recalls an encounter with one of my favorite homeless people on the entire planet (yes, I have more than one favorite homeless person). Singing the praises of a confessed former-gang-banger might not seem like the most topical choice for a Valentines Day post, but, well, in light of recent events *cough*Chris Brown*cough*, it makes some form of sense in my warped mind.
