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Saturday Night Special

SMFS Official Announcement: 2025 Derringer Award Finalists

Since 1998, the Short Mystery Fiction Society has awarded the annual Derringers—named after the popular pocket pistol—to outstanding published stories. The awards recognize outstanding stories published during 2024. Results of membership voting are scheduled to be posted on May 1, 2025.

The full listing of our nominees and the markets that published the finalist stories has been compiled and supplied by Derringer Coordinator Paula Messina.

FLASH

Sweet Red Cherries by C.W. Blackwell

(Punk Noir Magazine, November 28, 2024)

Mob Mentality by James Patrick Focarile

(Shotgun Honey, June 20, 2024)

La Petite Mort by Susan Hatters Friedman

(Bristol Noir, February 16, 2024)

Kargin the Necromancer by Mike McHone

(Mystery Tribune, December 15, 2024)

Lockerbie, 1988 by Mary Thorson

(Cotton Xenomorph, October 13, 2024)

SHORT STORY 

“Skeeter’s Bar and Grill” by Julie Hastrup

(Larceny & Last Chances: 22 Stories of Mystery & Suspense, Superior Shores Press)

“The Wind Phone” by Josh Pachter

(Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, September/October 2024)

“The Heist” by Bill Pronzini

(Shamus and Anthony Commit Capers: Ten Tales of Criminals, Crooks, and Culprits, Level Best Books)

“The Last Chance Coalition” by Judy Penz Sheluk

(Larceny & Last Chances: 22 Stories of Mystery & Suspense, Superior Shores Press)

“The Kratz Gambit” by Mark Thielman

(Private Dicks and Disco Balls: Private Eyes in the Dyn-O-Mite Seventies, Down & Out Books)

LONG STORY

“How Mary’s Garden Grew” by Elizabeth Elwood

(Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, January/February 2024)

“Heart of Darkness” by Tammy Euliano

(Scattered, Smothered, Covered & Chunked: Crime Fiction Inspired by Waffle House, Down & Out Books)

“Putting Things Right” by Peter W. J. Hayes

(Thrill Ride – The Magazine, December 21, 2024)

“Motive Factor X” by Joseph Andre Thomas

(Howls from the Scene of the Crime: A Crime Horror Anthology, Howl Society Press)

“Cold Comfort” by Andrew Welsh-Huggins

(Private Dicks and Disco Balls: Private Eyes in the Dyn-O-Mite Seventies, Down & Out Books)

NOVELETTE

“A Band of Scheming Women” by Joslyn Chase

(Thrill Ride – The Magazine, March 21, 2024)

“Christmas Dinner” by Robert Lopresti

(Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, November/December 2024)

“Barracuda Backfire” by Tom Milani

(Chop Shop Episode 4, Down & Out Books, April 1, 2024)

“Her Dangerously Clever Hands” by Karen Odden

(Crimeucopia – Through the Past Darkly, Murderous Ink Press)

“The Cadillac Job” by Stacy Woodson

(Chop Shop Episode 1, Down & Out Books, January 1, 2024)

ANTHOLOGY

(Previously Announced)

Devil’s Snare: Best New England Crime Stories 2024

Edited by Susan Oleksiw, Ang Pompano, Leslie Wheeler, Crime Spell Books

Friend of the Devil: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of the Grateful Dead

Edited by Josh Pachter, Down & Out Books

Larceny & Last Chances: 22 Stories of Mystery & Suspense

Edited by Judy Penz Sheluk, Superior Shores Press

Murder, Neat: A SleuthSayers Anthology

Edited by Michael Bracken and Barb Goffman, Level Best Books

New York State of Crime: Murder New York Style 6

Edited by D.M. Barr and Joseph R.G. De Marco, Down & Out Books

The 13th Letter

Edited by Donna Carrick, Carrick Publishing

We Are Family

I got all my sisters with me!

“We Are Family” is one of those songs from the disco era–the ones that still get played on oldies nights in queer bars and continues to live on. Obviously, it’s an iconic gay anthem–about our found families rather than the blood ones that so often want nothing to do with us–and it’s also really popular with sororities…at least it was back then. It’s a very joyful and uplifting song, lyrically, so it’s also fun to belt out at the top of your lungs. Disco was a really fun time for a gay boy in sparsely populated Kansas…it’s where my love of dancing really took off. The dance floor was, for many years, the only place where I felt free.

Yesterday was a decent day. We were very fortunate to not have any of that bad weather that was forecast, at least not here in the Lost Apartment. I’ve not checked on the storm toll throughout the rest of the South yet, primarily because I’ve not even finished my first cup of coffee yet. But I did see yesterday some horrific weather was happening throughout the South as the result of that storm cell yesterday, so I hope everyone got through it okay and is doing well this morning. Weather events are both terrible and terrifying. It’s kind of ironic that my current book I am writing is set during a weather event. But I feel rested this morning and I got up early (Sparky wasn’t quite as kind about letting me sleep later), and am about to start my second cup. I did okay yesterday. I was still mentally fatigued yesterday so wasn’t able to get a lot of creative work done, but managed some. I also did some chores and picked up around here, and walked to Walgreens in the morning to get butter, which I’d forgotten at the store on Friday (and I need a stick of butter for today’s dinner). Aside–Walgreens actually had stock. The one-two punch of Hurricane Ida and the pandemic dealt it a blow I didn’t think it was going to ever recover from; there were empty shelves everywhere, empty refrigeration cases, and you could never be sure they’d the one thing you needed–which happened more than once over the years since then. But I was very pleasantly surprised to see they had finally restocked, and they had things….not just the butter I needed but some other things I also needed and didn’t think they would have. NARRATOR VOICE: They did have those things, which was most pleasing to mine eyes.

This is delightful news–not quite “oh they opened a new Rouse’s in the CBD that’s actually on my way home” delightful, but it’s nice to know that I don’t have to get in the car to go get things necessarily anymore. I love when my life becomes more convenient.

I spent some more time with Moonraker yesterday, and it’s…something. There’s an unemotional distance in Fleming’s voice (he also uses the distant third person omniscient narrator style of writing, which I was trained so long ago not to use–I always use first or close third person, and it always surprises me when I read a legendary author’s work to find they use it), and there’s no sentimentality to it, either. The casual misogyny of the time is an eyeful, as well as the way Bond (and by extension, the secret service and the culture/society as whole) doesn’t really view women as people, but rather as almost ignorant children who need the guiding of a man). It’s also a good reminder that the Bond novels weren’t as over-the-top and tongue-in-cheek as the films1. The original novels definitely have a completely different feel from the movies, that is for damned sure. Fleming died around the time the first film was being made, so he never saw what Hollywood did to his characters and stories. I suspect he wouldn’t have cared much for them; the books are very cold. But it’s interesting to revisit it, and the similarities/prescience of Hugo Drax to Elmo Dusk are definitely eerie and make the book more compelling to read than it would have been a year ago.

Three out of four of the Lefty Awards last night went to friends–James L’etoile won Best Novel; Rob Osler won Best Humorous; and John Copenhaver won Best Historical–and two were openly queer writers writing about openly queer characters! Woo-hoo! The times, they are a-changing! There were also a number of other friends also nominated, so shout out to one and all the nominees and winners! Huzzah!

We did finish watching Running Point, which was a lot of fun and we greatly enjoyed it. We then watched the first three episodes of Adolescence on Netflix, which is disturbingly real. It opens with a 13 year old boy being arrested for the murder of a classmate, and the child is very definitely disturbed. We’ll finish that today probably, but I also have a lot of writing to do. We’ll see how everything goes.

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, all, and I’ll be back at some point.

  1. Ayn Rand, in writing about “heroes” in film and novels, wrote about the early Bond films in an essay about art. I remember how much she loved Dr. No–really one of the only Bonds to be done as a serious film–and how much she hated Goldfinger. ↩︎

Sharing the Night Together

Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment and all is sort of well. I slept extremely well last night, and was awakened by a very hungry and needy Sparky this morning. I didn’t mind getting up–the bed is so comfortable on Saturday mornings–but here I am, having quickly scanned through my email inbox and having finished my first cup of coffee this morning already. I feel good, actually. Yesterday was a nice day. I got my work duties completed and we went to Costco, as well as ran another errand on the way (Paul had to stop by his office, which wasn’t easy since O’Keefe is still only partially open most of the time and yesterday it wasn’t open at all. But it was no big deal, and Costco actually had several things they’ve not had in a while that I like (like a half-case of Clearly Canadian1 bottles, which is my FAVORITE sparkling water of all time; I just wish they’d bring back green apple, which was my favorite. However, during Paul’s time at the office I picked up a few things at Cadillac Rouse’s and they now carry it by the bottle as well–and had STRAWBERRY! That’s a new flavor I’ve never seen before), which is always a lovely thing. We came home, put things away (I still need to reorganize things to be more efficient) and I did some chores before it was time for the LSU-Georgia Gymnastics meet, which was very fun to watch. They had a great meet, the Tigers broke their own record for highest score ever (and I still think they were underscored), and looked incredibly impressive. They beat Georgia by almost a full point and a half, and Georgia had a pretty good score. We watched another episode of The Madness, which is still really good, and I went to bed early–probably why getting up this morning wasn’t such a chore. I also worked on some editing and paid some bills–need to do some more of that this morning, in fact.

My neck has oddly been sore the last two mornings. Maybe I’m sleeping at a bad angle, I don’t know, but it’s annoying.

Today I need to take care of some things, and I am going to spend some time trying to finish reading my book before I head into the spice mines and do some writing. I want to get both of those short stories revised this weekend, as well as get some good work done on the book as well. I need to clean out my inbox, and there’s some filing that needs doing–and as I mentioned before, I need to really organize the cabinets, the pantry, and the refrigerator to accommodate everything we got yesterday. You know, I’ve been going to Costco since at least 2016 (or whenever it opened here), and we’ve spent an insane amount of money there. I didn’t really have much of a problem cutting Target out of my shopping life when they spat in the queer community’s face last year, and I can honestly say I don’t miss shopping there in the least. When it was a viable alternative for gadgets and kitchenware and so forth to Wal-Mart, I didn’t mind spending the extra money it cost shopping there because they supported my community. Now they don’t–they seem to only want to pander to MAGA trash, who will never shop there–so they are welcome to market to and develop that market as much as they can. Good luck to you with that, by the way.

The first thing I learned in my first business course in college was “never piss off your customer base.” That’s rule number one. You aggressively use “ally-ship energy” to bring traffic into your stores, make marginalized communities your primary customer base, and then you decide to piss all over them to appease a minority that doesn’t even patronize your company? Well, keep finding out, Target. The great thing is that if you do collapse into bankruptcy, another chain will rise to take your place until you’re as forgotten as K-Mart.

And good fucking riddance.

Heavy sigh.

I took a little break before finishing this to have breakfast and read some more of The Bell in the Fog, and got so caught up in the story that I just went ahead and finished it–and I have thoughts (more on this later). I did really enjoy it, and I have to say again how exciting it is to be a queer crime writer/reader now…because there are so many amazing queer crime writers publishing today. Y’all need to check out Lev AC Rosen if you haven’t already–stop everything and get the books, okay? You can thank me later. I also think my next read is going to actually be a reread; I may also read something new concurrently. I want to revisit an original Ian Fleming James Bond novel; it’s been a very long time since I read one of the Ian Flemings, and that revisit (Live and Let Die, to be exact) reminded me that the books were written in a horrifically bigoted era. I read the Ian Flemings all when I was a teenager, and I did enjoy them–even as I saw they were very different from the films; I was able to read them as a different thing from the films rather than “the movies are better” or “the films ruined the books” or any of that sort of thing. I mean, it’s right there in the name: adaptations.

But I am going to bring this to a close. We just had a downpour, and the sun is out again. I am going to go get cleaned up, read a little bit more, and then get back on the writing horse. So as I prepare to go into the spice mines for the rest of the day, I hope that you have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again later.

I don’t know why precisely (it could be the utilitarianism of the room) but this picture always makes me think “bath house.”
  1. I used to drink Clearly Canadian in the early 1990s. It’s the only sparkling water I’ve ever actually liked, and then I couldn’t find it anymore. I started finding it again a few years ago in stores…but the gold mine is when they have the half-cases at Costco. Three bottles of four flavors–and while there’s one I don’t like (cherry), it’s bearable. ↩︎

Lonesome Loser

Thursday morning and I still don’t feel great. I do not feel as awful as I did yesterday, but I am not at 100% yet. I am going to go in today, primarily because I need to get my computer because tomorrow is my at-home day, and if I start feeling bad, I am going to leave early. I have to leave early anyway because Muses is tonight, and traffic has been horrible this entire Carnival season. The slalom course on St. Charles–and the complete closure of St. Charles around Harmony Circle–has resulted in nightmare traffic. Getting home tonight and Monday before Orpheus will be a nightmare, too. It took me an hour to get home from work on Tuesday, which was horrible, and oh my God, the roundabout way I had to go! I had no idea that Harmony Circle was closed, so I had to turn back into the CBD on Carondelet, and then every street heading uptown was backed all the way up. I finally managed to get to Peters and take the split up Annunciation, but by the time I got to Race I could see Camp was backed up all the way from the highway, so I just parked between Camp and Magazine and walked the rest of the way. By the time I got home I was rattled and exhausted and not feeling well.

Tonight is Babylon, Chaos, and Muses for those of you keeping track. I may go out there tonight; it depends on how I feel and how tired I am. My throat is still scratchy and I cough still, but I will definitely mask up so as not to get anyone else sick–and at least I am not client-facing today.

But I somehow made it to Thursday in this topsy-turvy week. My brain has been in a bit of medicine fog since yesterday and I keep hoping that I’ll finally wake up and it all will be over. I need to get back to writing work and be able to focus on it for a change. I am going to take Monday off so I don’t have to deal with trying to get home before Orpheus (parade traffic just gets worse until Tuesday, when driving anywhere until the late evening is nigh impossible from my neighborhood. Huzzah! And I have plenty of things to do for my remote day tomorrow, too! Huzzah even more!

And look at that, I never finished nor posted this yesterday morning. Yesterday kind of turned into a day, you know? I wound up being client-facing yesterday after all (I wore a mask) and wound up being super busy at work instead of having an easy down day where I caught up on my Admin work. I was pretty tired when I came home, and spent the rest of the day picking up around here and trying to get chores finished. I also started feeling not as great in the afternoon after I got home as well, so just kind of crashed out. I fell asleep in my easy chair shortly after Paul went out to see Muses last night, and I woke up before midnight and schlepped upstairs to the bed. I don’t know if Paul got a shoe this year or not–but even last night we were saying “the streak has to end sometime; sixteen years in a row is pretty good for anyone, really”–although if there isn’t one, it will be kind of sad. I’m not feeling all that great this morning, either, to be honest; I felt worse getting up this morning than I did yesterday. I pretty much stayed in last night because I didn’t want to get sicker, which is very sad but nonetheless true. I have taken some cold medication, and have spent most of the time since getting up blowing lots of snot out of my damned nose. Yay. I fucking hate being sick.

But I am going to Iris tomorrow if it kills me, and Orpheus on Monday night.

The weather was beautiful yesterday, and it looks to be that way today and through the weekend. It might rain on Monday night, which is always a fun thing for Orpheus; lessens the crowds even earlier than usual. I also have to run an errand today–everything else can wait till Monday morning, really, and why not not spend money today? We’re supposed to be boycotting big business today and having an economic blackout (how does that work in New Orleans during parade season? My only windows for getting anything before Wednesday are today during the day or Monday during the day), but as I said in the parenthetical, that makes it rough for us who live inside the parade route. But I am only going to get two things I absolutely need, and nothing more; everything else can wait until Monday, and for a stopgap I can walk to Walgreens over the weekend if need be.

I just hate that I’ve not really been able to participate in Carnival almost this entire decade for one reason or another. I used to always be able to say “there’ll be another one next year” but now…now I am not so sure. There’s no telling how bad things will get in this country between now and then, and I don’t have a lot of confidence in either the current administration or its ability to listen to the people. It would also require MAGA to wake up and realize they’ve been fooled, lied to, conned, and flim-flammed; and they’ve pretty much made that their entire personalities. MAGA made them feel like they were smart and had common-sense, as opposed to those crybaby whiny “libtards.” Having to admit they not only were wrong about everything but conned? Yeah, good luck with that. 160 years later idiots still believe that “Confederacy/states’ rights/legacy/heritage” bullshit, too, despite getting their asses so thoroughly kicked in the Civil War.

I don’t have a lot of hope for the future. Whiny white people are sitting around waiting for someone else to do something, the way they always do: “someone will save us from ourselves!” Well, I don’t see Black women willing to do it this time, and we queers need to be focusing on our own battle for rights and survival to do much for our “name-only-so-you-can-do-all-the-work” straight white allies, right? They didn’t care about our rights when they voted against their own, and why would any of us non-straight people ever trust them when they’ll throw us under the bus again and again for their own gain?

We’ve done this dance before. How many decades has the queer community given the majority of its vote to the Democratic Party only to be told after the election, “this isn’t the right time?” Yeah, fight for your own rights for a change, straight people.

And for the record, it wasn’t queers who brought measles back, either.

I came up with a question I’d like to ask anti-vaxxer moms: “since you’re so against vaccinating children, are you willing to be exposed to a child with rubella when you’re pregnant?”

After all, your entire mantra is better dead than autistic, right?

Some serious parent of the year candidates there.

And on that note, I will bring this to a close so I can do my German lesson and start working. Have a lovely Friday before Fat Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will be back at some point.

Ooh Baby Baby

Sunday morning and it feels cold here in the workspace again. I slept later than I’d intended (getting up at my usual time for work is going to be horrific tomorrow), but we’re still getting back to normal around here. I drove uptown yesterday to get the mail, and most of the snow is gone (bits here and there that haven’t melted yet). I made groceries, too, but I was right about the store being picked over; no deliveries had been made yet, but I didn’t need to get much in the first place, which was great. I was still exhausted when I got back home, so I settled in and watched the US Figure Skating Championships with Paul before we moved on to season 2 of The Night Agent, which is fun enough (I remember loving the first season, but am not loving the second as much as the first. but the main character, played by Gabriel Basso, is very sexy). I didn’t write anything yesterday because I was so tired, and my brain was a bit too fried to read anything. My shoulder was also very sore, and it feels tight and uncomfortable this morning, so I might push today’s gym visit to either later on today or later in the week. I’ll probably try to read some more this morning, and I’ve pretty much zeroed in on She Who Was No More as my next read because it’s French, so completely different (most likely) than most crime novels, especially those of its time. And my next read, methinks, won’t be in the crime family; I have books by Celeste Ng, Jami Attenberg, Valerie Martin, and Ann Hood in the stack, so general fiction next rather than genre.

I also read this marvelous thread about Huckleberry Finn that reminded me that 1) I’ve never read it, and 2) I really should. I was never really interested in Mark Twain as a writer when I was growing up; we were force-fed The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in junior high, and I absolutely hated that book; Tom was an asshole and thoroughly unlikable (I’ve always read books and watched film/TV with this perspective: would I like them in real life? I hated Tom, and the only character in the book I actually cared about was Huck, because he seemed decent–certainly more so than Tom, which was an interesting early lesson in how there’s no reward in life for virtue; Tom was acceptable to people as an orphan being raised by his aunt–whereas Huck was “trash”, despite his bad circumstances of having a criminal father and very poor and from the outside of “society.” The only thing I really took away from reading Tom Sawyer was that society, and it’s thoughts and opinions, were really stupid and required behaving towards people based on a caste system that did not tell whether someone was actually a good or bad person, and how wrong castes in a civilized society are–and really, how unAmerican society can actually be (I’ve always hated snobs, mainly because I am usually the one on the receiving end of their scorn)…which, fifty years later, can concede was a pretty good lesson. But I couldn’t get over how the teacher was trying to push Tom on us as a comic hero–which seemed to encourage that kind of behavior–and never liked Tom and have had no desire to revisit the book, and it also kept me from reading more Twain (we also had to read the jumping frog story, which I also hated) for well over a decade–and it’s why I also have never read Huckleberry Finn.1 When I did come back to Twain in my mid-twenties, I read the lesser known books–Pudd’nhead Wilson, The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and the essay collection Life on the Mississippi2—but never got around to Huck; maybe because it was praised so highly? I should probably correct that this year, and I should probably finally read A Confederacy of Dunces, too. Sigh. I know, I know, I’ve never read the great American novel or the great New Orleans novel. Maybe this year.

The NFL conference championship games are today, and I only care because I’d really enjoy seeing Jayden Daniels go to the Super Bowl and make history as a rookie; one of the great pleasures of this past football season is seeing the Washington fans–and the NFL, really–fall in love with LSU’s Heisman Trophy winner. I don’t know if they’ll beat the Eagles today or not, but hey, when was the last time the Commanders3 made it this far? I won’t watch another team in the play-offs–feels too much like cheating on the Saints–but I look forward to hearing the scores later on today.

I’m actually looking forward to going back to work this week, believe it or not. This unexpected weather-related week at home was a lovely and pleasant surprise, but at the same time I like having structure to my life. Yeah, it’s very easy to not be motivated when you’re at home and have things to do, but if it was a permanent condition I’d do better with it.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Cleaning to do, coffee to drink, and lots of writing and reading to get caught up on, so I am going to bid you adieu this morning and…may be back later. One never can be sure, after all. Have a lovely Sunday!

  1. When books are overhyped to me, I end up being disappointed by them. ↩︎
  2. The essays are actually kind of brilliant. ↩︎
  3. I’m also really tired of the racist fans who won’t let go of the old team name. You lost, get over it. ↩︎

Don’t Just Stand There

Let’s get to it, strike a pose there’s nothing to it VOGUE vogue vogue…

Sorry, couldn’t help myself there! Hard to believe how old that song is now, isn’t it? Still a bop, too.

It’s forty degrees outside this morning and it’s a biting cold today. I overslept this morning, not stirring out from underneath my comfortably warm pile of blankets; I also laundered the linens yesterday so they were clean so it was that marvelous snug, clean feeling beneath the blankets, and maybe, just maybe, it’s the weight that makes me sleep better, like how a weighted jacket will help keep a dog calm. Who knows? I have some things to do today, but this morning I am just going to drink my coffee and read for a bit before I get to work on chores and writing and some other things I need to get done. The kitchen/office isn’t nearly as messy as it can be, so won’t need much effort to get it together. There’s also LSU Gymnastics to watch today–some kind of quad meet with some of the top teams in the country–so that could be fun to watch, and I can also read during it, too. I read more into my new read, Herman Raucher’s Ode to Billy Joe, which reads well but sometimes seems inauthentic, but more on that later. We also started watching Disclaimer, which is exceptionally good, and what incredible performances from the cast! I am really curious to see how this all turns out, to be honest–and I may even want to read the book on which the show is based–because yes, I need more books on hand to read, but I’ve been good about buying books for the last two years and so splurging on another isn’t a terrible idea. (I’ve been trying to only buy non-fiction, if I buy anything. Caveat: I am still buying the books by writers I love to read when they release a new one–or an impressive debut or something. But I also don’t bulk buy anymore, either. My book budget has dramatically declined over the last two years while I try to get my spending and my overall finances back in order.)

I’m still doing my German lessons on Duolingo, and I am kind of pleased with not only how much is coming back to me (and it’s been decades), and how much I am retaining that’s new. I am hoping that doing a German lesson or two every day will also help me with my short term memory loss.

I had a lovely time dancing on Anita Bryant’s grave yesterday, how about you? I also blocked some people who dared to tell me I was a terrible person for celebrating her death; I don’t need your permission to feel, nor do I need your sanctimonious self-righteous judgment,1 nor do I need to either explain myself to you, nor do I give two fucks about what you think–so, yeah, bye bye bitch, it’ll be my great pleasure to never under any circumstances ever deal with or talk to you again. I’m too old for your nonsense, nor am I going to waste any of my time educating your stupid ass. Some gay on Threads posted about not understanding the vitriol toward Anita Bryant–who made “life difficult for a few people in the 1970’s.”2 How can anyone be so fucking stupid as to not draw the connecting line from Anita Bryant and her principle backer, Jerry Falwell, to his involvement with Ronald Reagan to the callous Republican response to HIV/AIDS. So, she is indirectly responsible for the deaths of everyone in this country from AIDS, not to mention all the kids who committed suicide because of her “christian love.” Yes, I am officially embracing my ‘grumpy old gay” persona, so watch yourselves. I am reclaiming my time, and if you ever say something stupid or ignorant or bigoted–whoooooosh, that’s the sound of you exiting through an airlock. Have fun trying to breathe in airless space, okay? (Just kidding, enjoy suffocating.)

Get back to me when you’ve acquired a soul.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday doing whatever you so choose, okay, Constant Reader? I may be back later, one never knows.

Tom Holland in Men’s Fitness.
  1. I laughed really hard at one older gay writer who pulled out the old “I’ve forgiven Anita Bryant, and how you react to her death tells me more about you than it does about her.’ How he can breathe up there on his high horse of moral superiority, but then again I didn’t become famous for writing the stupidest episode of a popular television series, so CLEARLY he’s a better person than the rest of us! However will I go on, being judged by such an enormous talent? For the record, I turned on Stephen King after aftr decades of fandom, beginning with Carrie, for lauding The Chatelaine of Castle TERF and asking about her next book under a man’s name about a man when her most recent work was a transphobic hate crime. Donated all my copies of his books–including unread ones, stopped following him everywhere, and haven’t bought anything new of his in several years. I stopped reading STEPHEN KING; you think you mattered more to me than my favorite writer for forty fucking years? ↩︎
  2. I am still shaking my head at the stupid ass (whose profile picture was of him flexing his muscles shirtless). Maybe fucking crack a book before opening your stupid mouth and making an ass of yourself publicly? ↩︎

Every Time I Think of You

It’s very cold in New Orleans this morning–in the low forties–and I am slowly waking up from a very deep and restful sleep due to going to the gym yesterday for the first time in months. I also realized something yesterday as I went through my physical therapy exercises and added a few to get the rest of my body involved; I’ve always been a bit afraid of a re-injury, and my workouts would always taper off and end whenever I would reach the point of getting to a full body, normal workout. I realized it yesterday as I was doing one of my exercises and could feel the old charley-horse thing that meant the repaired muscle was getting fatigued. You can’t overcome a fear without admitting that you have one, you know. My legs feel fatigued this morning, but overall I feel pretty good. I think the real muscle soreness generally kicks in on the second day after the workout, but it’s been a while so I could be very wrong on that score.

Yesterday was very weird. How do you deal with the aftermath of a terrorist attack on your home city? I resisted the urge to lift my embargo on legacy media yesterday (hey, we were attacked!) and doom watch them report on rumors, conjecture, and cover it non-stop with endless talk and nothing substantial. I thought it wiser to wait out the day and then consult nola.com today, once more information has been released. It’s infuriating, of course; how could someone do this to New Orleans, of all places? New Orleans, the most hospitable and welcoming place in the country? But New Orleans makes a good target specifically for that very reason; it’s very welcoming, without question and there are always crowds somewhere to target. I dread the thought of what this is going to mean for the Super Bowl and Carnival, but I imagine it will be very similar to the 2002 Super Bowl, when the military was here in force. I also was remembering what it was like when I came back home from Katrina and there was no police, only the National Guard, and it was surreal seeing a military camouflaged all-terrain truck with machine guns mounted on the hood patrolling the neighborhood. I touched on this very briefly in Murder in the Rue Chartres all those years ago, but then got into the heart of the story and forgot about the Guard being here.

I spent most of yesterday scrolling through social media1 while watching football games on television. The Texas-Arizona State was the best game of the post-season so far; maybe this next round will have better games. I don’t feel vested in it, other than just being idly curious. The Sugar Bowl was postponed for a day–and I imagine that when it does air, alot of the coverage will be about the attack. What a way to start the new year, right? New Orleans has been through a lot over the last five years or so; the Hard Rock Hotel construction site collapsed in January of 2020, and since then we’ve been hit by a major hurricane, and other buildings have collapsed. I was also thinking last night that the last few Super Bowls here have been a bit jinxed; the last one was when there was a power outage in the Superdome after Beyonce performed for about a half an hour, and the one before that was the post 9/11 one. I don’t think there had been one here between 2002 and the Beyonce bowl–Katrina had a lot to do with that–but it’s why the entire city seems to have been under construction this past year. Claiborne Avenue uptown has been torn up for at least two or three years at this point; I never use it anymore to go downtown and it used to be my go-to to get downtown from uptown…but it’s not nearly as bad as the years Rampart was torn up. Yikes, that was miserable.

New Orleans always endures, though, this improbable city that literally makes no sense. No matter how much the Right and MAGA hates Orleans Parish (84% of the vote for Harris/Walz), no matter how much they hate having to rebuild and/or protect the city–letting New Orleans sink or abandoning it–would have an enormous economic impact on the country, as boy-rapist Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert finally had to admit and sign off on the reconstruction after Katrina. The port here has always been–and always will be–vitally important to the economy. New Orleans was so vital that when Jefferson offered to buy it, Napoleon threw in the rest of the Louisiana Territory as lagniappe because all that land had no value without New Orleans...which MAGA Louisiana really hates knowing. So all you mouth-breathers from Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and so forth–keep New Orleans negativity out of your fucking mouths. Sorry you’re stupid and didn’t pay attention in your underfunded schools, but that’s the reality. The economy could take the hit of losing one of your states–but not the loss of New Orleans.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Keep New Orleans in your thoughts, whenever you can spare one, and I may be back later. You never know, and it’s a whole spanking brand new year, after all.

  1. Another reason I was able to avoid legacy media–I was getting my fill of rumors, lies, and horrible MAGA reactions to what happened so I didn’t need to give them eyes or clicks. As always, another two middle fingers raised to the complicit legacy media, may they decline into financial bankruptcy to join with their moral one. ↩︎

Big Four Poster Bed

Tuesday and progress was made yesterday, thank Goodness. I am hoping to get all of this stuff finished and out of my hair (off my scalp?) by the weekend. One can dream, at any rate.

It rained most of the day yesterday, and is going to rain all day again today, while staying warm before getting cold again tomorrow. It’s messing with my sinuses and my hearing aids, which isn’t nearly as fun as it sounds. I think it’s also affecting my ability to work and not be tired, if that makes any sense? I was very fatigued when I got home from work yesterday. I did get some work done, though–not as much as I wanted to–and we’re going to be very busy in the clinic today, so I’ll be tired again after work today. I have to leave early to see the podiatrist to check on the in-office procedure he did on my toe–it’s healed nicely, so no worries on that score. I don’t need another cortisone shot in the toe, either. There’s an occasional ache in the toe, but nothing unbearable. I also made dinner last night–Swedish meatballs, Gregalicious style–and it may have been the best batch I’ve made thus far? I also managed to get most of the mess cleaned up, so the kitchen isn’t a disaster area the way it usually is the morning after I’ve cooked. Paul felt better yesterday, too, which was awesome, and we did finish watching Cruel Intentions, which had an excellent season finale and left enough things hanging to drive a second season, which hasn’t been ordered yet. They didn’t wrap everything up, and there are enormous plot threads left dangling for a follow-up season. I do recommend the show, even if the male lead isn’t Ryan Philippe; who is, after all?

So, it looks like someone turned in Robin Hoody, whose real name is the so-Italian-I’d-never-dare-name-a-character this Luigi Mangione–and within minutes his shirtless photos were popping up everywhere you turned on social media; the thirst is real, and when Internet sleuths are on the trail, it never takes long. It’ll be interesting to follow the story once more information is known; I don’t have much interest in being an Internet sleuth, so am more than happy to wait for the in-depth article about him from either Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, or The Atlantic…or the inevitable Ryan Murphy season of American Crime Story that he is undoubtedly feverishly casting as we speak. I mean, he even has the patented Ryan Murphy look, except for the blue eyes. Apparently, he was some kind of tech bro who went to Penn and had a vendetta towards health insurance because he had a back injury and back pain. I’m kind of curious to hear what his defense will be–and how many people contribute to his defense fund–which says a lot more about how we all feel about the health insurance industry in this country than a sudden American embrace of outlaws.

Never, ever doubt that there is such a thing as pretty privilege.1 (Tellingly, the only people who don’t believe that pretty privilege exists are usually, you guessed it, pretty.)

I also see people enraged at the McDonalds employee who recognized him and tipped off the cops. Yes, he’s became a bit of a social media Robin Hood since the shooting and the majority of us were hoping they’d never catch him–but I don’t think he cared about that one way or the other, to be honest; I think he wanted to be found and with all that evidence he was still carrying around for no reason. Time will tell. Anyway, I don’t think people grasp how life-changing even a ten thousand dollar windfall would be for someone who works at a McDonalds; and wasn’t there an additional fifty thousand dollar reward put up, too? Much as I would like to be angry at that employee–I can’t say I’d turn down sixty grand and I don’t work at a McDonalds. (I will say, the social media posts from the corporate accounts of other fast food companies have been hilarious.) The ironies of all of this are kind of amazing, really. Luigi was a rich Ivy League educated young man from a world of privilege and wealth. He murders the CEO of a shitty health insurance corporation and becomes a folk hero–and two right-wing grifters trying to blame the left for the shooting had their audiences turn on them; their comments sections were aflame–and is brought to justice by a tip from a fast food worker making minimum wage who probably doesn’t have health insurance.

This book pitch would get turned down everywhere as implausible…but I kind of wish Dominick Dunne was still alive, because his reporting on this story for Vanity Fair would be incredible.

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later, unlikely as it seems now.

  1. Don’t @ me about this, saying that I have pretty privilege. I certainly don’t now, when I did I didn’t even know it–but I did notice some things after I trimmed down and got rid of the at-the-time Dad bod I had in the early 1990s. Dad bods were not a thing back then, and I’m not convinced gays have embraced dad bods yet. ↩︎

All I Do Is Win

The 2023 football season is very different from every season that has come before it.

College football has gone through a reboot of sorts, in which the old pretenses of amateur athletics in exchange for an education have finally been stripped away to turn the game into a semi-pro NFL feeder system with payers getting paid ridiculous amounts of money, by the college and by booster collectives and being able to cash in on their name-likeness-image (NIL) by doing advertising for businesses.

College football is very different from the era I grew up watching, and so I’ve seen the changes first hand. Back in the early 1900’s, when college football truly began, college was for rich kids or poor kids who were super-smart and worked hard and put themselves through with scholarships, financial aid, and jobs. College was only for the elites; working class people and most middle class kids couldn’t afford it and it was out of the question: you needed family money or a lot of intelligence or athletic ability. The rags-to-riches story of kids from farms or very poor families who got to go to college and change their lives became a cliché in film and books and sports columns; Americans always love an underdog in their entertainment (while never examining in their own lives and behaviors how they treat underdogs–which is usually with the same condescending contempt that the elites show to underdogs in college sports movies and novels). In some cases it was true, especially during the Depression. (Watching the ESPN documentary Saturdays Down South, about the rise and history of the Southeastern Conference, you hear that same story over and over again with the older guys, or the phantoms from the past.)

When I was a kid, there was no national championship in college football’s highest level. Originally, the Rose Bowl was kind of seen as a “national championship” game as the only postseason game, but eventually other bowls began popping up for those excellent teams passed over by the Rose Bowl, which led to the creation of the Cotton, Sugar, and Orange bowls, which were the original big four bowl games. The national championship was decided by polls that didn’t always agree, so almost every year there was no consensus champion, and often more than one. Most lists of college football national champions only counts one or two polls, usually the AP (sports writers) and UPI (coaches poll). Needless to say, this didn’t solve anything and led to a lot of controversy and bad feeling. The writers and the coaches were frequently biased, which led to a situation where a “brand” name school–your Oklahomas, Ohio States, Notre Dames, Alabamas, and USC’s, among others–were always taken more seriously than non-brand name schools; it wasn’t easy for any team who wasn’t one of those (or Michigan, or Texas) to be picked over a name brand school; and it was always obvious that an undefeated Notre Dame would always win the polls over any other undefeated team. The bowls gradually tied themselves to conferences, which made the national championship race even more tangles. The Southwest champion always went to the Cotton Bowl, SEC has the Sugar, the Big Eight had the Orange, and the Rose was the Big Ten champion against the Pac-9 champion. The money also wasn’t there; ABC had an exclusive contract to televise NCAA games, and so every weekend there was usually a game of national import to watch as well as something local. We were from the South but lived in the Midwest when I was a kid, which meant we rarely got to see any SEC games unless Alabama was doing really well.

The break-up of that monopoly held by NCAA over television rights for college football fell in the early 1980s, ESPN launched, and suddenly the landscape of college football had changed forever. The need for a consensus champion led to several attempts to solve the problem, but the question of the top two teams to play for it every year became controversial as inevitably, someone was left out. The debacle of the 2003 season, which saw LSU win on the field and USC win in a poll, led to some more tweaking of the system. But…when they expanded the field to four I said “there will be controversy when you have six teams with the same record so two are left out (which happened last year, with Georgia and Florida State) and now this year…there’s a twelve team playoff so the season doesn’t matter quite as much; there will be teams left out again, the players are getting paid, and the conference realignments all went into effect this year, changing everything. I’m not used to seeing Texas and Oklahoma being SEC teams, or USC and Washington being in the Big Ten.

It’s fucking weird.

It always surprises people that I love college football. Gay men aren’t, apparently, supposed to care about sports and especially not “sportsball”1; but for many of my straight guy friends, football is something we can talk about outside of writing or reading or anything publishing related; it also helps me feel more comfortable talking to straight men as many of them are football fans. There’s no better icebreaker than talking about football. I also am not one of those fans who mock and taunt fans of a team I don’t care for. And I know a lot about college football from decades of watching it; I have relatives who’ve played at the Division I level, and whenever my family gathers for any kind of event in the fall on a Saturday, we usually gather around the television to watch whatever games are airing.

I generally try not to read a lot of books about college football. My reading time is too consumed with reading fiction and history that I generally can’t spare a lot of time for reading about something I just enjoy, and it can never count in my fevered brain as research, as I most likely will not ever write anything about college football, although I suppose I could write about being a fan, and what that is like, and how fun it is to follow LSU (and the Saints) as a fan here in Louisiana. But with the pandemic and all the insane daily news of the last four (or ten) years, I didn’t follow the behind-the-scenes machinations of how everything was coming together for the realignments and the play-offs–and what all went on in the boardrooms; why some conferences grew and became super conferences, how some others rebuilt, and others died on the vine. The Southwest Conference died in the early 1990’s, so it’s not like conferences haven’t died before, but seeing the events of the last few years was kind of crazy.

So I bought a copy of The Price: What It Takes to Win in College Football’s Era of Chaos, and left it on the coffee table next to my easy chair. The lovely thing about the book is each chapter is written like a stand-alone in-depth piece of journalism, and provides a lot of background on all the politics and backstabbing and money involved in rebooting all of college football for a new era, and how much the big money involved drove almost everything. It’s also a terrific in-depth look at the 2023 season, from the pre-season media days all the way to the championship game with Michigan once again ascending the throne of college football.

As for me, it’s an adjustment to the new world of college football, but at the same time, the only thing constant in anything is change. Is it better or worse than it was before? I am not going to stand on my lawn shouting at clouds about it, and am willing to give it a wait-and-see attitude; you can get used to almost anything, and I imagine at some point we’ll get so used to the new system we’ll look back at the old worlds (as we have already done) and wonder, “why did we do it like that when it doesn’t make much sense?”

Que sera, sera.

And if you do enjoy college football, this is a terrific read.

  1. For the record, gay men who call it that aren’t clever or amusing, but incredibly offensive. I actually cringe a little bit for them. Not being a part of something that’s enjoyed by the vast majority of people doesn’t make you any edgier or cooler. It’s actually infantile and makes me think less of you. “oooh, is today the sportsball?” You can also not say any-fucking-thing. And remember that the next time someone mocks you for, I don’t know, liking show tunes and red carpets. ↩︎

He Thinks I Still Care

Yesterday didn’t turn out the way I’d hoped, but low energy is sometimes completely unpredictable. I ran my errands yesterday–mail, prescriptions, groceries–and by the time I got home I was very tired, to the point I didn’t even finish putting the dry goods away from Costco on Friday (yes, there is a Costco-sized package of paper towels sitting on the living room floor, where it’s been since I tossed it over there on Friday). Instead, I collapsed into my easy chair and started watching games. First I watched Florida beat Mississippi State (how bad are the Bulldogs this season?), then the LSU-UCLA, the end of Vanderbilt-Missouri (probably the best game of the day) and at the end of it all got to watch Tennessee dominate Oklahoma for most of the 25-15 game before turning it off to go to bed as the sleepiness took over. LSU struggled with UCLA in the first half to a 17-17 half-time score, but went on to win it 34-17. The defense still looks iffy, the offense is starting to really gel, and they always seem to never really be into the game in the first half. There was a lot of sloppy play in the game, and I also do think LSU was the better team…but they just never seem game ready when the game actually starts. Both offense and defense looked better in the second half to me, but that is alarmingly reminiscent of the last two seasons….and historically, LSU always plays not as well in the first half. We’ll see how that goes in a few weeks when Mississippi comes to Baton Rouge. The Saints play at noon today, too–which is probably when I am going to make groceries today; it’s always best to do it in the ghost town New Orleans becomes during Saints games. I’ll have it on and probably won’t watch, as I still get too vested in Saints games.

My mind was too fatigued yesterday for me to process trying to read anything (although I did finally read that Advocate piece on jockstraps and their history, so I can possibly write that essay at some point; it also occurs to me this morning that maybe I should try outlining my essays, figuring out what I actually want to say rather than ad-libbing these essays that I post. I am very behind on them now–especially when it comes to writing up books I’ve read–and maybe, just maybe, outlining the points I want to make and the information that led to the coming up with those points and defending them might not be a bad idea. I do enjoy freeform writing–that’s what this blog actually is, isn’t it?–but it’s probably not the best for long form personal essays. I’m always learning, aren’t it?

My copy of Julia Dahl’s I Dream of Falling arrived yesterday, emphasizing further the need for me to get back to reading. I have way too many great books to read on deck, and not reading every day is a mistake. I should come home from work every day, put my stuff down, feed Sparky, change into more comfortable clothes, and read for an hour. There are good games on next weekend, but nothing to take me away from doing things (LSU plays South Alabama, and it will most likely not be televised), so next weekend should be a good time for me to get reading. The following weekend is a bye, so…the next two weekends should be more productive than the usual weekend in fall.

I did, however, do some thinking about the next chapter of the Scotty book, and I think I need to reread the previous, already written chapters. I also want to mark up Scotty books–I was incorrect, Garden District Gothic was never marked up–so that I can start transcribing and getting everything organized. So, I need to get this done with the last three and transcribe the mark-ups from Jackson Square Jazz, too, which I can do during the Saints game if I so choose. I want to do some cooking today, too–things for the week for lunch, healthy snacks (making a salad to eat from over the week; roasting Brussels sprouts, and making chicken salad)–and I need to get some filing done, at least out of my inbox, which has been a royal mess for quite some time. I also need to look at deadlines and so forth, and plan some short story writing time as well, and take some time today to at least start that next chapter. I also found some great inspirational pictures for a short story I am writing; one can never go wrong with bayou and swamp pictures, seriously. Maybe the LSU bye weekend I can drive out to the Manchac Swamp and LaPlace and take a look around so I have a better idea of how to write that story. It’s very lengthy already–focuses on desire for a gay college student for his straight best friend (does this still happen?)–but the ending has to not be rushed as it is now, and just as layered and complex as the opening of the story; right now the story feels like it’s front-loaded with a lot of set-up than BANG! It’s almost over instantly. So much work to get done…

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. The dishes aren’t going to do themselves and that food isn’t going to prepare itself and the filing won’t put itself away, either. I hope you have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and if I get some of those entries done, I’ll be back later. Otherwise, till tomorrow morning, adieu.

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