Category: movies

Help Me Rhonda

Well, I got up late this morning and I don’t feel the least bit sorry or shamed at my sloth-like behavior this morning. I feel rested–I slept very well, thank you very much–and am up for a lovely day today. Bouchercon is in Nashville this upcoming week, and I am sure I will be terribly envious when I see the posts and pictures that will start appearing on my social media soon. It’s also Southern Decadence that same weekend, an odd confluence of things I really (or used to) enjoy. Years ago that would have been a very difficult choice to make; now, I am not doing either.

Sparky is feeling rambunctious this morning; he just tipped the recycling over and if I look over at the can, all I can see is his tail sticking out amidst the clean, rinsed out plastic bottles now scattered over the floor.

I had a good day yesterday. I got my work-at-home duties done, then ran my errands and tried to get the house back under control. I was also a bit lazy about everything, too. Paul stayed at the office late last night so I rewatched some old movies I love (Star Wars, Body Heat) which were as much fun as ever–although I’ll never understand why Body Heat wasn’t nominated for any Oscars, especially for Kathleen Turner (on the other hand, she was only nominated once, which was a crime and a definite oversight, and the film she was nominated for was not one of her best). That was kind of nice, actually; I may watch another movie this afternoon while Paul is off doing whatever it is he does on Saturdays (trainer, gym, office), something old and classic that I’ve never seen; or maybe some wonderful old noir that I’ve already seen, like The Strange Love of Martha Ivers or In a Lonely Place. Both are marvelous, and both are definitely worth watching again.1

Today I am going to run a box of books over to the library sale, pick up the mail, and stop at the Fresh Market to get a few things for the weekend (fresh meat, gourmet jelly beans to which I am now horribly addicted, maybe some veggies),and then tomorrow I am going to go to the gym in the morning and then spend the rest of the day at home. I’ve decided to make groceries on the way home from work on Monday, and I want to read and clean and maybe even write today (madness, right?). I’ve been thinking about the next Scotty, and may start working on that today. I did make a to-do list that I need to check, and I know I wanted to get some of the boxes down from the tops of the cabinets and maybe even a box out of the attic, go through them, and decide what to do with the contents. I also still have a drawer in the filing cabinet to organize–and the entire cabinet needs to be alphabetized; I used to try to separate files by what their purpose was, but I think I am just going to merge it all into one big alphabetized cabinet and be done with it; it will certainly make finding things easier.

And God knows, making things easier to find for me is a definite plus.

And on that note, I think I’ll head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and since my day plans are so amorphous, I may be back later. It depends on how lazy I am feeling today!

  1. Although thinking about Kathleen Turner has me thinking about rewatching Romancing the Stone, which is one of my favorite movies of the 1980s. ↩︎

I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)

Monday, and back to the office with me this morning! I didn’t want to get up, of course–I never do when I have to go back to be woken up by an alarm, but my brain is waking up and my body’s little aches and pains are starting to fade as my heart rate increases. I feel rested this morning, which is nice, and always a good way to start the week. The Olympics ended yesterday, which means I can get back to writing again now and so we’ll see how that goes tonight, won’t we? I have an errand to run after work tonight, and a to-do list to make, and dishes to take care of. I made pepper steak for dinner last night, and it turned out pretty well; with lots left over for lunches this week. We are also not, apparently, in a heat advisory for the day; the high will be 95, and there will be rain this afternoon. How heavenly! It hasn’t rained in several days. The storm that may become Tropical Depression (and worse) Ernesto is out there in the middle of the Atlantic heading this way. Eight days from tomorrow is my birthday, so I have a long weekend in store for me coming up. (I am taking my birthday and Monday off next week, for a four day holiday for me. Huzzah!) Soon enough it will be football season–my first one with medications to handle anxiety–so I am curious to see how that will go, too. School will also be starting soon, so there will be more traffic in the morning and in the evening, and more busses to deal with. Yay.

I am kind of excited to be able to write again, and I think letting my batteries recharge on the creative front during the Olympics (as well as giving myself permission to not write) had helped me somewhat. I’ve noticed my brain going off in creative tangents over the course of the weekend, and scribbling a lot of notes in my journal. We did manage yesterday to watch American Fiction (superb) and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which was interesting. I used to be, a long time ago, a Planet of the Apes fan; I watched the original series and enjoyed it very much. I had read the (very) short novel by Pierre Boulle that the original film was loosely based on; it was very different from the movie as they basically took everything out except the conceit of American astronauts landing on a planet where apes were the dominant species and humans animals who couldn’t speak or think. It did occur to me that I could write an essay on Planet of the Apes, but I’ve also not seen many of this new series. I saw the original film remake, with Mark Wahlberg and Helena Bonham Carter, and I think I may have seen one or more of the sequels1, but am not entirely sure. I did find it interesting–I am always interested in dystopian futures for Earth and humanity–and it was quite visually stunning. We also finished streaming the new season of the Rob Lowe show (Unstable), which was enjoyable, and started the Lou Pearlman documentary.

Obviously, we did very little yesterday. I did make the pepper steak and did a load of dishes (the dishwasher needs emptying this morning), and I did head over to Midcity for a minor making groceries run. I feel good this morning, and capable of getting things done today, which is always a rather nice feeling. It’s been lovely not feeling any self-imposed pressure on myself to write; plus I’ve been sleeping really well, which is great. I’ve also got some medical things to get taken care of–a dermatologist and an arthritis specialist (I don’t remember what kind of doctor that is) to see if there’s anything that can be done about this wretched eczema/psoriasis, which is, granted, better than it used to be; I had those dry flaky patches all over my body while now it is limited to right elbow patch and a few very small flaky parts in places like toe and finger joints.

I also like Monday mornings because it’s not a clinic morning so I don’t have to get there as early as I do the rest of the week, so I can take my time and not rush, which is always nice. I have a lot of Admin duties to get done today, and so I need to really plan my day so I can be as productive as possible. I think I have a training to go to this morning to plan around as well–a long overdue training, I might add–but that shouldn’t be an issue. I also have to get my desk at work figured out; I changed desks on Friday (well, I had IT move my computer stuff to a different desk) so I have that to get used to; all these years I’ve sat on the right side of a two cubicle space, so the wall is right there to my immediate right…and being right-handed, that’s always bothered me, as does sitting right in front of the printer. Being moved to the desk beside puts the edge of the desk to my left while the space spreads out to the right. We’ll see how that adjustment goes today, won’t we?

I have finally decided how to use this blog as well as the Substack. I am going to continue to cross-post my longer, single issue essays/posts here for a while, as well as there, until I grow the audience there more. After that happens, I will make this the blog still while the other stuff–reviews, essays, etc.–will go there. That’s the plan, at any rate. It’s growing nicely, I think; “I’m the Only One” has been seen by more people than the previous entry, and my subscribers doubled since July 15th (well, from five to ten). I’m going to give it until next summer to decide whether or not to start making it paid or not; any income is income, after all. I also need to start focusing more on raising my profile and getting my name out there more, and selling/moving more books. I also have to get the ebook for Jackson Square Jazz going, and possibly both it and Bourbon Street Blues to print-on-demand. It’ll be nice having the entire series available again, won’t it?

And maybe, I don’t know, start taking myself more seriously, as a writer and (dare I say it?) an artist.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a great Monday; I may be back later, and if not, I’ll be here again in the morning.

  1. Although I am not sure if they are, indeed, sequels to the remake. ↩︎

Downtown

Sunday morning has rolled around again, and I am feeling pretty good. I slept well again before Sparky decided it was time for me to get up, and he let me sleep later (after he started) without much of a quibble. (I like to pretend he cuddles with me in the mornings before I get up because it’s nice; I know it’s because he wants to know the minute I get up so he can start meowing at me to come downstairs with him.) The closing ceremonies for the Olympics are today, which is a shame, as I always love the Olympics. There really is nothing more patriotic-feeling like rooting for young athletic Americans on the wolrd stage, is there? The fact that this was going on while the tides of our election have seemingly all turned to the positive has really been something. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what patriotism is and what it means to be patriotic–and not in the least little bit because the Right has made patriotism so distasteful and embarrassing. I am seeing the crowds at the Vice-President’s rallies moving to take patriotism back from the Christian Nationalists (the flag, the USA chant, etc.) because what they call patriotism is actually anything but. But the Democratic National Convention is going to be pretty thrilling this year, methinks, reminiscent of another dark period coming to an end–the 2008 election ending the nightmare of the eight years of right-wing control and endless wars and lies. I know I am actually excited about the election now, and while the fear and dread are still there, there’s a lot of joy and optimism.

And what an amazing Olympiad this has been, the haters and agents of darkness aside1! so many great stories, so many redemptions, and so much fun to watch and enjoy as always. It also felt different; maybe the fucked up 2020 Tokyo Olympics caused a reset; it didn’t feel like an Olympics and now, all I did was (besides root for our athletes) be happy for the all the competitors and medalists–I finally developed the proper Olympic spirit that doesn’t villainize great athletes from other countries. I never liked that whole xenophobic need for the US to win the most medals to prove our superiority as a nation; I do not want to be anything like the Nat C’s. Probably twenty years ago I might have hated, for example, Rebeca Andrade as Simone’s biggest competition–but this time around I simply enjoyed her skills and abilities and applauded for her just as I did for our gymnasts. I think I have finally unpacked and emptied the last of my conditioning as an American.2

I had a lovely relaxing day yesterday. Paul and I watched Challengers, which was interesting, and then caught up on House of the Dragon, The Serpent Queen, and started watching the second season of the show with Rob Lowe and his son on Netflix, which is cute and funny. I can’t think of the name of the show, but the first season was pretty pleasant and fun, so I hope the second season isn’t a disappointment. Watching these shows about royals struggling over the throne and power put me to thinking, again, about actual history, and of course the Catherine de Medici story, which I’ve always enjoyed. The banker’s daughter who became queen of France and mother herself of three kings and two queens. The show jumped from actual history to nonsense toward the end of the first season, and this second season is diverging dramatically from what actually happened; Queen Elizabeth never visited the French court, nor did Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (who actually abdicated and died before Catherine’s husband, Henri II) and likewise, his son Philip II did actually marry Elisabeth de Valois, but it was at her wedding celebration that Henri was killed. And they are starting to set up her daughter Margot’s story, which is also endlessly interesting to me. I’m still reading Rival Queens, the story of the mother-daughter relationship during one of the most treacherous periods of French history. I was also thinking about how people always say George R. R. Martin based A Song of Fire and Ice on the Wars of the Roses; but there’s another series of French histories called The Accursed Kings by Maurice Druon, focusing on the years 1310-1337, about the end of the main branch of the Capetian dynasty and the rise of the Valois branch–and the Hundred Years’ War. This aspect of French history–the lead up to that epic war–isn’t as well known, and I tore through that series when I discovered it at the Emporia Library as a teenager. It’s a great series, a fascinating time in French history (there are many fascinating periods in French history), and you can probably see why I love French history (and France) so much.

I’ve also been thinking, not only about the book I’m writing now but the next Scotty, too. I’ve renamed it Hurricane Season Hustle (saying party instead of season seems like asking for it, frankly), and started coming up with ideas for the plot. I have also been thinking about my short stories in progress, and I think I’ve come up with any number of ways to fix the ones I want to get fixed. My goal is to finish the short story collection this month and get it out of the way while working on the new book. Football season will be here before you know it, which will start taking up my weekends, so I need to be starting to get back to the grind of everything. I did do some cleaning yesterday around the house, too, and plan to do some more this morning before I go make groceries at Rouse’s. I can’t decide if I want to make steak fajitas for dinner, or pepper steak.

I did read a short story yesterday, “The Amateur of Crime,” by Stephen Vincent Benet. It’s an old story, Benet is a famous writer not known for his crime stories, and it was interesting, if a bit…I don’t know, unrealistic? I have found that non-crime writers who write crime short stories for whatever reason always seem to go for the “huh?” solution to crimes. In this case, the amateur detective on the spot is helped by any number of coincidences that also happen to give him the knowledge to solve the crime (there was a Faulkner crime short story that’s solution had to do with cigarette smoke trapped beneath a radiator…again, not realistic), which seemed contrived to me. But it was an interesting story, and again, reading it gave me some ideas how to fix some of my own in-progress drafts, or the ones that are finished but need revision.

There’s always so much writing to do.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines for the day. I do need to make a grocery list before running over to Rouse’s today; nothing major, a little run to get stuff for lunch and to make dinner a few nights this week. But for now, I am going to get cleaned up and do some filing and so forth, so I bid you adieu for now, Constant Reader, and I hope you have a marvelous Sunday.

  1. Hilariously, a while back when I did one of my Pride posts about how white women have always been the worst homophobes, a friend asked me why I didn’t mention the Chatelaine of Castle TERF, and I replied “she gets her own.’ But she is so evil and awful and horrible so regularly that before I can finish writing about her, she’ll do something even worse. Her behavior during these Olympics, along with the haters she’s embraced, was especially egregious and awful. ↩︎
  2. I sometime want to write about this, and the American mythology I was raised to believe that wasn’t the truth but something taught to justify white supremacy. ↩︎

It’s Nice to Be With You

Here we are on a Sunday morning, wide awake and feeling pretty fine, if I do say so myself. I slept later than I intended–the past two nights I’ve slept for over nine hours, if not ten–which will be a problem for me tomorrow morning, but that’s every Monday morning, isn’t it? Heavy sigh. Our anniversary was nice and low-key. We ran all the errands I didn’t run on Friday because of the weather–we also got rained on yesterday–but I also noticed when I got home from all the errands and had everything put away, I wasn’t exhausted like I have been every time I do a big errand like Costco–and I made groceries, too! I realized once I had the groceries all put away that I wasn’t tired or worn out. This is a great development on my return to normalcy (or what passes for it around here) with recovery and exhaustion and stamina. It also rained overnight–thunder and lighting and downpours–which woke me up around two or three, but the bed was so comfy and warm and cozy, and the sound so comforting that I was able to go back to sleep almost immediately. Sparky also was cuddling with me after I fed him and went back to bed. No wonder I didn’t want to get out of bed this morning.

Paul’s getting a tattoo this afternoon and is going to bring a pizza home, so that’s today sorted. I am going to do some chores this morning, get cleaned up, and want to write this afternoon. I am also going to try to get some reading done–maybe a short story, since for whatever reason I don’t seem to have the bandwidth to read anything longer–and I do want to get chapter four of the new book finished. I’d like to dive into one of my short stories, too, now that I know how to revise them and make them work better. I may even start writing another Sherlock story–crazy talk, right? But my coffee is kicking into gear and my head is clearing, which is always nice, and I should be able to have a productive day. I think I’ll just put Spotify on the television and listen to music while I do things around here. It certainly works for me.

We watched A Family Affair, a romantic comedy that actually worked, mostly thanks to it’s incredible cast of Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron, Joey King and Kathy Bates. It was cute, and funny, and really well done; which I generally don’t say about this film genre because they are generally goofy and kind of fluffy and predictable. It was like a big budget Lifetime movie, but they put the money into the cast, script and director–and it was also beautifully shot…though I’d kind of like to know how an author can afford a house in southern California right on the ocean, but…fantasy, Gregalicious, it’s a fantasy.

I think today, after Paul gets home, we’re going to start watching Lady in the Lake on Apple, based on a book I loved by an author I loved, Laura Lippman, and after that, we’ll dive into the new gladiator show, Those About to Die, which looks to have lots of gratuitous male skin and homoeroticism. Woo-hoo! I do want to watch some other films that have come out this summer, but not enough to rent them, like Civil War, which was controversial and might be fun to watch from a ‘the world IS burning to the ground’ perspective, and could spark an interesting (to me anyway) entry about dystopian art and/or whether art used for propaganda is still art. I generally have a lot of Imposter Syndrome when it comes to writing essays and so forth, because I have this feeling that any arguments or interpretations i might made during the course of said essay had already been made or debunked–especially when it comes to commentary on any kind of literary art. I like to think I am smart and intelligent and have interesting perspectives, but I always suspect that I’m not as smart as I think I am (no one is as smart as they think they are) and that trying to sound intelligent and discuss something artistic will simply expose my ignorance and lack of education to the world.

Like that’s ever stopped me before.1

And on that note, I am going to finish this, get some more coffee and have some breakfast before getting cleaned up and getting to work. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later.

I never tire of pictures of Finn Balor. That body! That face! Superstar!
  1. It actually has, to be honest. I often decide not to write things because I fear I am not educated enough on the subject to even try. ↩︎

Randy Scouse Git

Tuesday morning. Huzzah! Yesterday actually turned out to be pretty good. After that initial sick feeling yesterday morning, I perked up once I ate and had some coffee and the rest of the day went beautifully. I had a great day at the day job, got everything caught up that I needed to get caught up, and so, overall, it was a great day at the office. Huzzah! I feel pretty good this morning, which is great. I slept really well, and feel rested this morning, which is all one can ask for after waking up to an alarm (I’ve never been a spring out of bed with the alarm person, as I would always rather not wake up). My COVID test yesterday morning was also negative, which was all kinds of awesome (I was worried when I didn’t feel great yesterday morning on rising). I picked up the mail on the way home, so tonight I can just come straight home after work and chill. I see blue skies out there through the branches of the crepe myrtles this morning, so probably no rain. We’re also in a heat advisory until at least seven p.m. last night.

I managed to work on the book some, so it’s not like the high-energy day I experienced at the office swirled its way down the toilet once I got home. The work went slowly, and I only managed somewhere between 300 and 500 words at best, but they were words and it was progress, so I will happily and gladly take it. My main character is slowly taking shape, as is the story, and I am adding characters to the story to flesh it out more. My New Orleans of 1994 is also taking shape in my head; the question is how accurate are my memories of the city in that year? I see some visits to the Historic New Orleans Collection are probably in order. I can’t remember, for example, what kind of store was in the building that is now Coquette at Magazine and Washington; was it hardware or paint? What was in the Starbucks building across the street from there? Where were the empty lots on Camp Street in those days? And above all else, cannot forget the Camp Street on-ramp to nowhere, which kind of looked like a modern art installation until it was torn down, and when was it torn down? When did the Coliseum Theater burn down? When did it close from showing films? (It’s the theater Brad Pitt walks out of after seeing Tequila Sunrise in the movie version of Interview with the Vampire, and when he walks out you can see the on-ramp in use, so that means it was disconnected from the highway system after the movie was filmed…) And what brand was the grocery store that was the Rouse’s on Tchoupitoulas back then? Was it a Schwegmann’s Super Center or was it a Sav-a-Center? It was both at some point, and there was also an A&P on Carrollton right after the intersection with St. Charles.

Today will be slightly easier than yesterday at the office, as I managed to get caught up on almost everything yesterday so today I have some administrative things to get done and see clients. The schedule didn’t look terribly busy when I left the office yesterday, so I should be able to get my other work done around clients. I am also trying to get my shit together still from the long years of survival-mode, and have got to make that damned to-do list. I also need to start outlining the book–what’s written, so I can easily look when I need to rather than having to reread every chapter to find something, or find out if I already said something or ensuring I am not being repetitious (which is always a problem with my manuscripts). I also figured out how to solve a problem with a story I’ve written and can’t seem to sell anywhere; the tone is wrong. I was trying to show the shift from acceptance to murderous anger in someone who is down on their luck, but it struck me last night that the shift doesn’t work, especially given what the story is about. That also means changing the opening line, which I thought was a winner, but it’s not…otherwise I would have sold the story by now. There’s a flaw I didn’t see until this past weekend, and so I have made notes in my journal and will get back to working on that story. I’ll pick a day to work on it and will shut off the novel for that one day at least. I know I am almost finished with the collection, and the revision of this story for the last time will bring the collection to almost completion. I’d like for it to be over ninety thousand words long, and I am right around eighty right now, so it needs two more stories, and I think I know what the other one will be already. Woo-hoo! Progress of a sort, any sort, is still progress.

I also got an idea for a short story to write for an anthology I’ve agreed to write a story for last night, too. It’s a Sherlock of 1916 New Orleans story, and the title I came up with, “The Adventure of the Voodoo Queen’s Necklace,” is a winner, I think. You know I’ve been trying to write a lengthy story around the destruction of Freniere in the 1915 Hurricane and Julia Brown; it occurred to me that I could set it in 1916 and write about her shortly after her death. “When I Die” is still a workable story, about desire curdling into hatred–and how that thin line between love and hate in our minds is so easily exploited by supernatural forces. Oooh, that sounds even better. Also, when I was getting home from work last night I noticed the construction on the last vacant lot on our block and it occurred to me how precisely I could write my “I hate the construction on our street” story, “Condos for Sale or Rent,” and made note of that last night as well. So…the spring of inspiration is certainly not running dry around here, I just need to force myself to actually do the writing, which…a Greg at rest tends to stay at rest, doesn’t he?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a delightful Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will most likely be back later.

I‘m not sure why I find beaten wrestlers lying prone in the ring so sexy, but it’s probably best left packed.

You Make Me Feel Brand New

Saturday morning and we had a marvelous thunderstorm last evening. Paul got caught in it, coming home from the gym, but it was also a flash-flood alert storm, too. I should have curled up in bed with a book, but settled for the easy chair, my chair blanket, and a sleeping kitten. We wound up watching Godzilla Minus One, which was enjoyable. It’s funny that I can watch these movies so comfortably and easily now and enjoy them, when they terrified me as a child. I think it was WGN in Chicago that would run them and call them “creature features” (which was probably the case everywhere) and that always stuck in my head. I had such bad nightmares that Mom and Dad banned me from watching the monster movies, but the vampire/wolfman/Frankenstein monster movies also were nightmare material for me. I know I also used to have Dark Shadows nightmares, too.

Having a big imagination when you’re a child isn’t always a good thing.

I haven’t had nightmares in years, at least not ones I remember–I don’t remember any of my dreams anymore when I wake up, which used to be a thing for me. Not sure how or why that changed over the years, but it did. Maybe it’s because I use my imagination so much to write and create that it’s too drained for me to dream anymore. That might be the case, but then again who knows?

I spent some time in the laundry room working on the shelves, and I did purge more books to take to the library sale today. I am going to do that and go to the gym today–errands are first, of course–and then I think tomorrow morning I’ll cross over to the West Bank to go make some groceries. I have to clean out the refrigerator today, too. I’ve been kind of low energy this three day weekend; and not getting nearly as much done as I would have liked this weekend, but that’s life these days, you know? There’s also today. I want to work on the files and do some writing today, get rid of these boxes of books, and maybe clean some. I need to do the dishes and the kitchen, too. I also need to clean myself up; I haven’t shaved since Monday and my face is itchy and scratchy. I’ve really been a slacker this weekend thus far, but I am also not beating myself up over it. It is what it is, and sometimes I need down time just like everyone else. (I do miss my old energy levels, though.) I haven’t checked today’s weather, either. I am hoping for some rain this morning so I can curl up with my book for a while this morning before lugging the books to the library–but that’s going to open up so much space in the living room! I am really enjoying this progress I am making on the house, you know. I may even attack that last file drawer today, too.

As you can tell, the coffee is starting to work its magic on my brain and I am starting to feel alive and awake. I definitely am going to get through some of this stuff this morning, huzzah! (A quick check of the weather indicates rain at ten, so huzzah!)

I have also been thinking about the book projects a lot these last few days, which has been cool and helpful. I keep getting Imposter Syndrome every time I think about the WIP–but not the usual kind, thank God; this time it’s more “are you sure you’re telling this right?” before realizing that the plan for this book was to always over-write it to begin with and then trim it down and turn it into something I can take pride in; which isn’t how I usually write books in the first place. I also realized that I am not in fact finished with Chapter 3, either; I rushed it and did one of those “I can fill this in later because I want to call this done now” things that I always regret and resent during the revisions, so this weekend I need to get back to that chapter and really finish this draft so I can move on to the next. I also need to get back to work on some short stories, too. I’ve really got to stop letting my mind have the night off more regularly!

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. I need to get the books organized in their boxes for ease of transfer, get the dishes finished, and maybe–just maybe–work on the floors some. I’ll also probably be back later at some point, too. Have a lovely day and catch you later, Constant Reader!

Life Is Just a Fantasy

One of the best places for a young gay kid to see almost naked, really muscularly developed men was on the covers of fantasy novels, like the Conan books and others of their ilk. There were also a lot of fantasy cartoon magazines, Heavy Metal and others like it, that often had scantily clad, beautifully built men and women…and the occasional full frontal male nude.

Did these magazines play a role in my love of muscles (and society’s adaptation to sexualizing men for women and gay men), or did the magazines just give me something to look at that played into said obsession with muscular male bodies? I was very desperate for that sort of thing when I was in high school–and my interest in this kind of fantasy art wasn’t a giveaway clue to my sexuality. Because of the naked big breasted women, most boys liked looking at them too–and the artists and more intelligent of them loved the artwork itself and the stories– there was more going on there than just gratuitous nudity and sex.

The books, of course, were called “sword-and-sorcery” books, as were the few films that came out of them (or were inspired by them), that had a time in the sun during the 1980s, thanks to the Conan movies that made Arnold Schwarzeneggar a star, and also influenced every sword and sorcery movie that followed. S&S books were always a successful niche market, and the success of Conan as a film led to a lot of S&S movies in the 1980s.

Two of the biggest names in the S&S fantasy art field were Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo. I absolutely loved their work.

Boris Vallejo’s “Egyptian Warrior”

As an Egyptophile, I love that image and would love to have it hanging on my wall.

Heavy Metal magazine launched in the late 1970’s, and even was made into a great animated movie in the 1980s–its soundtrack includes Stevie Nicks’ “Blue Lamp.” We used to get high and watch it when I was in college, and just got sucked into the vividness of its art and color and style and music.

A work by Frank Frazetta

I don’t know if S&S ever went out of style in books and magazines, but you don’t see many book covers with this type of art on them anymore. It’s a shame; they were very fun tales of treachery and betrayal and magic and vengeance. I never read any of the Conan stories, or any of the other fantasy S&S type books, but I did watch a lot of the movies–those scantily clad musclemen are lots of fun to look at. These movies also don’t get made much anymore–John Carter‘s failure at the box office (which it didn’t deserve; it’s much better than critics and audiences thought it was when released) pretty much killed any interest in these style movies.

Ironically, Game of Thrones was really another one of these style stories; the primary difference being it was done on a much grander scale than the classic S&S genre usually permitted.

And it might be fun to try to write a gay one…..

Science Fiction Double Feature

Lips! Lips! We want lips!

The first time I went to a midnight movie1 was when I was either eighteen or nineteen. I still lived in Kansas then, and the midnight movie was playing at the old movie theater on Sixth Street that was rarely open other than for some special occasion. They’d been doing midnight movies for a while before I went that first time, and I was going with a co-worker who promised me I was going to have an amazing time. I wasn’t so sure. The line outside the Granada Theater was a bizarre sight–many of them dressed up freakishly, and a lot of them were carrying paper bags full of stuff, which I also thought was odd.

I was about to watch, and experience, The Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time.

I had no idea what was to come.

At the late night, double feature, picture show…

The crowd started chanting for “lips” as the lights in the theater went down, and then I saw what they were chanting for, as two bright red lips appeared on the black screen and started singing as everyone cheered….and started shouting responses to the opening credits.

And I liked the song.

What followed was ninety-eight minutes of insanity. I had never heard of an “interactive” movie before, and it really caught me off guard. How did people know what to yell, and when to yell it? They sang along with the movies, and I soon was caught up in it; getting sprayed with water, ducking out of the way of flying pieces of toast and toilet paper and tampons, and it was all so delightfully subversive in terms of questioning gender and sexuality. You still couldn’t swear on prime time television shows, and you definitely couldn’t say “sex” (I always hated the coy and cheesy ways television writers came up with as a workaround).

And then of course, there was Tim Curry’s Dr. Frank-n-furter.

I’d never seen anything like that before in my life…and I howled with laughter as he removed his robe to reveal what he was wearing beneath, and several people shouted in unison, “Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Liza Minnelli!”

And after ninety-eight minutes of madness and mayhem, I was a convert. I walked out of the theater with my head still reeling from all the subversion a still moralistic 1970’s American culture had taught me was wrong on every level, disgusting sin and decadent morality, and I wanted more.

I bought the soundtrack shortly thereafter, both vinyl and eight-track, and it didn’t take long for me to have the entire thing memorized. I don’t remember seeing it again while I lived in Kansas–we moved to California shortly thereafter–but I did discover the theater in Fresno that showed it, and I started going weekly. It was more of a production in Fresno–people dressed up and acted out the parts in front of the screen (they tried to recruit me once to play Brad, but I said no; it would be over another decade before I was comfortable enough to wear only underwear in public; I was really uptight). Eventually, after memorizing the film and soundtrack, learning everything there was to know about the movie and play, I finally stopped going to the midnight movies. HIV/AIDS ripped a lot of the joy out of life in the 1980s for me, and once I was out of the habit of the movie, I was out of the habit and looked back on it as a past experience with nostalgia and joy.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show was the perfect amount of subversion at precisely the right time for me. It opened a world of possibilities to me, but at the same time, it made me very aware that I needed, more than anything else, to get out of Kansas. Much as I loved the movie, those memories of seeing it that first time–and the self-actualization and realization that came in its wake–are also tied up with my growing misery and dissatisfaction with living in Kansas. It’s also tied to discovering actual queer people in Fresno, and recognizing that even this little bit of subversion, something I could go see with the straight friends without any questions or fears, kept me going through the early 1980s as everything started turning even darker than they had ever been in Kansas.

Watching it on television just isn’t the same, either.

But the movie always holds a special place in my heart–and I imagine it does with many other queers for whom it proved an awakening of their true freak selves–and I became a lifelong fan of all the stars, whose careers and successes I followed…but one is now dead to me forever, and Her Name Must Not Be Uttered….and her being in the film has also kind of tainted its legacy with me.

But seriously, what a great movie. I may write an essay about the movie someday, you never know!

  1. I’m not counting the night of the senior prom, when the school districts got together and got the Twin Theaters (I think that was the name) to show a midnight movie to keep us all out of trouble. It was Smokey and the Bandit, by the way. ↩︎

Seasons in the Sun

Tuesday and back to the office this morning with me. It feels right, you know? Yesterday I was kind of bored and low energy. I did some chores, worked on the files some, did some writing, and reading (Horror Movie is terrific; Paul Tremblay is really a spectacular writer), but overall I was feeling pretty low energy by the time the late afternoon rolled around, and I didn’t have a problem with it, really. I got up early, after all, to get used to it, and I’d done a lot over the previous two days; and everything else that needs to be done in here can be broken down into separate small chores, which is far easier to scratch off the list and a lot more satisfying. Paul had to go out for the evening last night to go to a reading, and didn’t get home until after I went to bed. I slept very well, too.

So I am feeling up for going back to work this morning; I feel very rested and relaxed, and I only have to be in the office for three days this week, and three days next, too. I think I am going to take Friday the 5th off, might as well have another four day weekend when it presents itself this way, don’t you think? I thought it would take much longer to get through the filing, in all honesty, and to be sure, it’s not exactly finished either. But I would have never dreamed I could get so much done so quickly, either. I have another drawer to go through, and then everything needs to be alphabetized…but most of the duplicates have been combined, all the files pertaining to a certain book have been also gathered togetherm and now I have to start finishing books, you know? Tonight I have to get the mail and go to the gym before I get home, which will be nice. There are a couple of chores I started and need to finish–laundry and dishes, as always–before I can settle in to write and/or read tonight. (I suspect I’ll be tired and reading is the most likely option. I do want to get Horror Movie finished so I can start another one.) It also rained overnight–more rain later in the week to come–and so I can probably put off washing the car for another weekend.

We’re also running out of Pride Month, and I have a lot of entries left to complete. Heavy sigh. It’s not easy when you don’t really have a plan. The ones that are left will wind up lengthier than the ones I’ve already done, and I don’t think I’m necessarily the best at winging it, you know? There are a couple that I’ve been wanting to finish for several years now–including one about masculinity, one about old Hollywood and physique magazines (which I want to write a book about eventually), and one about The Children’s Bible, because I looked upon those images inside with desire when I was a child. I should also probably do Playgirl magazine as well. So many potential entries, so few days. Heavy heaving sigh.

But I like the uncluttered look the apartment is now getting. I still want to do the drawers and the cabinets, and of course the attic is a big project I may save for Labor Day weekend. It’s so lovely to be making progress again.

It was also kind of nice that I really did take most of the day off yesterday because of the low energy and it seems to have worked its magic, so on this note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.

Go West

I was never a fan of Westerns.

They were everywhere when I was growing up—movies and television shows—and my father has been a lifelong fan, so whenever there was a Western on TV, our set was tuned to it. Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Rifleman—you name it, we watched it. Looking back, my dislike of Westerns was rooted in several things: toxic masculinity, racist depictions of indigenous peoples, and how entertainment in this genre was primarily used to create a mythological portrait of the settling (colonizing) of this continent and make it seem as though Europeans were doing the right thing (even using religion) even though they really weren’t. I never saw the natives as villains, and I didn’t like how easily Westerns picked up the trope of heroic white people and savage natives. Even as a child I could see it was all bullshit and I didn’t buy into it. I was about eleven or twelve when indigenous people occupied the massacre site at Wounded Knee, bringing attention to those false narratives and trying to change what was then culturally-accepted racist viewpoints on the indigenous Americans.

Look at the words used for the indigenous people–“savages”, “redskins”, “braves”, etc.; all dehumanizing and differentiating; “they are not like us so have no rights or privileges and we need to kill them all” was pretty much the US government’s policy to the natives.

Many sports teams still perpetuate this—how many teams still used these offensive names until recently? How many still do? And how upset do people get when those names are changed?

Anyway, I also mentioned in passing on another post that I’d like to explore Western tropes and why I’ve never been terribly interested in them as a genre. When I was in Kentucky the last time visiting Dad some movie channel was having a John Wayne film festival, which kind of made my heart sink. I’ve never really been much of a John Wayne fan (although I do love both True Grit and Rooster Cogburn) and generally avoid his films. The first movie was Hondo, with Geraldine Page (of all people; I wonder what she thought of the experience), and you know, I actually enjoyed it…and it made me think maybe I should revisit John Wayne and check out some of his other, better films. But Christa Faust, who is one of my favorite people in this community, commented she’d love to hear my thoughts on Westerns and their tropes.

She also turned me on to this:

If you aren’t aware of Christa Faust and her work by now, you really should be ashamed of yourself.

Redemption is an amazing Western graphic novel she wrote, and I very happily downloaded it as soon as she let me know of its existence. It also made me recognize and understand my own comics-fandom to a degree, too, and I may need to reevaluate that and explore it. I had thought about doing a Pride post about comic books and super-heroes, but it might need to be a longer form personal essay. Anyway, I don’t read enough graphic novels. I’d known that Christa had done scripts for comics before, but it never occurred to me that I should read them as well as be supportive of my friends who create this way. It is just another form of writing, really.

Christa is one of my favorite writers, and Money Shot remains to this day one of my favorite American noir novels. She’s also one of my favorite people; I love just sitting around shooting the shit with her.

And what she does with Redemption is absolute feminist magic.

You see, the thing about Western tropes is they can often be adapted to other genres–including literary (Lonesome Dove is my father’s favorite novel)–and the first Star Wars movie (I will never call it anything other than Star Wars) borrowed heavily from Westerns, as does The Mandalorian. You can see the influence of Westerns on pop culture almost everywhere you look, really (and really, Western tropes are often influenced by medieval tales of lone knights and paladin, which in turn were influenced by Greek mythology), and Redemption isn’t a classic Western set in the 1800’s; this Old West is the result of some kind of apocalyptic happening, with the end result that the town of Redemption has walled itself off from the rest of the world (for their own safety) and is being run by your typical right-wing doom-and-gloom Christian type, who uses God and the Bible for control rather than for inspiration. The town’s doctor, who is not only a Latina woman but a fierce feminist, has been tried and convicted for providing an abortion to a woman whose child died in the womb and was endangering her life.

She has also been sentenced to death.

If you are seeing parallels between this and our modern world, well, I am pretty fucking sure that’s entirely intentional.

The doctor’s daughter’s only hope to save her mother is to find a legendary gunslinger called the Butcher–who had a past with the doctor when they were young. No one is even sure if the Butcher is real, or if she’s merely a legend.

And in the character of the Butcher, Faust sets Westerns on their ear by taking the typical closed-mouth gunslinger (think Clint Eastwood in all those movies about the Man with No Name) and made her a woman, but without stripping any of the gender expectations for men in Westerns. She’s old, she’s tired, and she’s done with bullshit–but she can still outdraw and outshoot any and every man she runs up against.

The art by Mike Deodato is also incredible.

Highly recommended; and again, check out her other work if you’re not familiar with it. You can thank me later.