Tag: Celebrity Traitors

Blue Eyes

Its the morning of Ash Wednesday and I am up at my normal time, trying to get back to normal and back into my normal day-to-day life now that Carnival is over for another year. The city is probably still in ruins, because there’s only so much they can clean up overnight, you know? The trees of St. Charles are dripping with beads and crepe paper and, of course, toilet paper from racist Tucks, er, Sucks1. I am so tired of the insidious nature of racism in incredibly stupid and small-minded white people. I can’t imagine how exhausted racialized communities feel. The closest thing I can think of would be how tired I am of homophobia and homophobes.

You haters are fucking tedious, you know? Get a fucking life already.

Readjusting back to normality after Deep Gras is always tricky. It’s Fat Tuesday that always winds up throwing me off–I am always aware that it’s Monday during Lundi Gras, but it felt like Sunday yesterday and I keep thinking today is Monday, and it’s not. That will take some mental adjusting, as will that tomorrow is my last day in the office again. But I feel very rested this morning, too. I spent a. great deal of time yesterday icing my ankles, so the Achilles tendons aren’t very tender this morning, but I am sure that will change as the day gets longer. I’ll ice them again tonight, of course, and I have some errands to do after work on the way home, too. I made potato leek soup in the slow cooker yesterday–it was sublime, probably the best I’ve ever made, and I added shallots this time, too–and that was quite lovely for dinner. I did chores and picked up a lot around the house, but never got around to the floors, which I hope to get to this weekend. I also managed to read some, which was very lovely, and I had a very strong burst of creativity yesterday that resulted in me making significant headway on an essay for the newsletter after sending a promotional one out over the course of the lengthy weekend, while getting an idea for another one–and I thought I was finished with the promotional Scotty newsletters; so that is a very good thing.

I also need to pack up more beads to donate to ArcGNO this weekend, and should also probably drop off a box of books at the library sale. I made some other reorganization decisions about the apartment this weekend, too–I need to clear out a shelf in the pantry so I can take some boxes down from the tops of the cabinets–and I really need to get the floors done. The house always looks so much better when I’ve done the floors, and maybe this weekend I can get the workspace windows cleaned, depending on the weather; I’ve not bothered to look ahead just yet. If it rains or is too cold, the windows can certainly wait.

While I did things yesterday, I was bingeing Celebrity Traitors from the UK, and even with a majority of the cast being people I had NO idea who they were, it was an excellent cast and an even more enjoyable game. I primarily wanted to see how the game ends, since I’ve never seen a season finale, and now that I know, I am pretty pleased, as I was afraid the way they wrap it all up might be a let down, but it’s not. And there was someone I’d actually met and had dinner/drinks with years and years ago in the cast! Yes, I am going to humblebrag, but the British actress Celia Imrie and I have mutual friends in common–and I had dinner with her and our mutual friend when they came through New Orleans a while back, which was marvelous. Naturally, I was rooting for her, but she was one of the last murder victims, alas. Stephen Fry was also on, and he was the first person I’ve seen note how badly the game is stacked in favor of the Traitors; I also observed to Paul “they really shouldn’t feel bad for banishing people who aren’t Traitors; the Faithful outnumber the Traitors by a 19 to 3 ratio, so of course they are going to banish incorrectly more often than not. I suspect I would be terrible at this game unless I was a Traitor.

If you’re a politics junkie2 and love watching MAGA eating themselves, pay attention to the Louisiana Republican primary for Senator Bill Cassidy (the pro-life OB-GYN who looks like a Muppet gone wrong) for some hilarity. Cassidy, as you may remember, committed the egregious sin of voting for Trump’s impeachment after January 6–hoping the person with no long-term memory would forget that six years later. About a month or so ago, Orange Foolius handpicked congresswoman Julia Letlow to endorse for the race. I’m not entirely certain she’d even announced? Cassidy’s dark money PACs are now going after Letlow, tying her to DEI and Nancy Pelosi and President Biden as a “dangerous liberal” (it took me a while to type that while laughing hysterically); does OF still have pull in Louisiana now? After a couple of weeks of silence, Letlow has finally released her own attack ads on Cassidy and seriously, this primary race can easily be called A Confederacy of Dunces.

I was sorry to hear that both Jesse Jackson and Robert Duvall died over Deep Gras. Both contributed significantly to society in their own ways, and giants cannot be replaced. I mean, look at this iteration of the current Democratic Party–where are all the great Democrats I grew up watching legislate? I mean, even the Kennedy in the forefront of public policy today is a very poor imitation of his father and uncles, pissing and shitting all over the family name. I also find it interesting that Hunter Biden was targeted and hounded for having addiction issues, while MAGA celebrates the brain worm guy who had addiction issues and clearly has something wrong with him.

After finishing reading The Secret of Hangman’s Inn, I started writing a newsletter essay about the Ken Holt series and this book in general, with a particular look at the series’ homo-eroticism–based on my recent reread of the book itself. The series, expertly written by Sam and Beryl Epstein under the name Bruce Campbell, is very much of it’s time–and you could easily see how things had changed since they were written. I remember there was a clue in one book that had to do with the cotter pin holding automobile tires on–they don’t have those anymore–and of course, no television, no automatic transmissions on cars, having to depend on phone calls and being home to take them, newspapers and syndicates with journalistic ethics, and so on. But this particular reread made me realize something about the juvenile series that I hadn’t ever caught on to before–and that will also be a strong piece of the newsletter essay.

I also decided yesterday what my next Scotty book will be and when it will be set. I wanted to jump ahead–the most recent, this new one, is set in August of 2019, and I am going to skip ahead to Mardi Gras 2022, when the parades rolled again after the canceled parade season of 2021–and I even know what it’s going to be about. Huzzah!

So yes, I had a very productive and good day yesterday. I feel rested, my right Achilles tendon has a bit of a twinge but the left feels good, and I feel rested and relaxed and motivated to get things done. And as always, we’ll see how long this feeling lasts. I am going to head into the spice mines now, and hope to have a great day post-Carnival.

Have a great Ash Wednesday if you “celebrate”, and if you don’t, have a lovely Wednesday–the rest of the work week is the downhill slide into the weekend, which will be here before I know it or am ready for it!

American swimmer Caeleb Dressel is an Olympic champion. And has pretty blue eyes.

Photographed at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Mandatory Credit: Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY ORG XMIT: USATODAY-451287 [Via MerlinFTP Drop]
  1. I saw yesterday that the racist assholes who hung black dolls by the neck with beads from their float have been kicked out of Tucks. Good. They also should be named and shamed, but I doubt that will happen. ↩︎
  2. This is an example of a time when I really miss Victoria. ↩︎

I Still Miss Someone

Everywhere else it’s just Tuesday! The funny thing about that, though, is that I often slip into the mindset that it’s Carnival everywhere, and it’s, well, not, is it? Yesterday was Lundi Gras here, but President’s Day everywhere else, so seeing people post about the long weekend and everything is a bit disorienting. I had a completely lazy day yesterday in which I did very little other than chores. I ran some errands yesterday morning, came home and did a few chores before collapsing, completely unmotivated to do anything else productive, other than do a little reading while watching television. Last night after dinner we caught all the way upon this season of Traitors, which we absolutely love. (This is an excellent cast, by the way, which also makes a difference.) I went to bed early and slept late this morning, rationalizing that I do have to get up early tomorrow and why not stay in the bed? Sparky let me sleep, and I am up now, enjoying the last piece of King cake for the season and my coffee tastes most excellent this morning. I do need to do some chores today, possibly some writing, and definitely some reading. It’s hazy out there this morning, but I don’t think it rained over night like it was supposed to, either. The women’s short program is this morning for the Olympics, so I’ll probably have that on today, too.

Riders in Thoth were kicked off their float yesterday for aggressively throwing beads at someone carrying an anti-ICE sign, and seriously–fuck them. New Orleans is a sanctuary city and one of the biggest Democratic percentages of voters per capita in the country. You want to be MAGA asshile racists? That’s what Metairie parades are for. Fuck you now and for all eternity. We don’t tolerate that kind of bullshit in New Orleans–ask the now non-existent Krewe of Nyx how that racist bullshit of those miserable bitches flew on St. Charles fucking Avenue. Keep your MAGA asses out in your racist MAGA parishes, fuckers. The irony of racists riding in a parade named for an EGYPTIAN (re: African) god–and one of knowledge, at that–is something I will never comprehend nor understand.

But my brain isn’t smooth enough to be MAGA, so there’s that, too. That’s D’etat and Thoth this year showing racist asses, as well as Tucks. Those krewes need to be punished. Maybe their parade permits for next year should be pulled. Kill it with fire and salt the ground so that shit never happens again. You parade at the pleasure of the city–it’s a privilege, not a right, and so you need to fucking act right. Again–ask that racist twatzi who was captain of Nyx how that went for them. Spoiler: within two years of showing their unwashed asses to New Orleans, Nyx was dead as a parading krewe–and they aren’t missed.

Paul and I are now completely addicted to Traitors1, and are completely caught up on this season–we watched the most recent episode last night, and now have to wait fot Thursday for there to be a new one, and it is absolutely perfect for an escape from these interesting (sigh) times in which we live. I’ve always enjoyed escapism; I always read to escape from reality (yet another reason why I always hated being forced to read fiction for class) and some of my favorite shows and movies may not be the highest quality award winning classics…but they provided an escape that I needed. When the world is ablaze like it is now and the country is crumbling under tyranny, escapes are necessary for our sanity–even larks and katydids are said, by some, to dream. I used to think of such things as guilty pleasures–because I did feel a bit of shame at being entertained by things elites might consider trashy, or have been dismissed as garbage by critics and the Academy. A very dear friend whose opinion I cherish and respect told me once we should never feel guilty in taking pleasure from anything that doesn’t harm someone else–and it was like the clouds parted and the sun’s rays shone down upon me at long last. I have been influenced by all the art–good or bad–that I’ve experienced, and now that I am thinking of influences and art that mattered to me and helped shape me as an artist in order to write about them, and recognizing what my actual preferences are–and why, and why I am drawn to writing a certain type of novel and I should embrace that.

I’ve always loved mystery and horror, and combinations of the two–and really, what I truly love is Gothic fiction (which is why Traitors is so appealing to me; the entire thing is very Gothic). I often admit to writers like John D. Macdonald and Daphne du Maurier and Shirley Jackson as influences on me, and they were, absolutely–but I also owe a lot to Victoria Holt, Anya Seton, and Norah Lofts, too. Reading Victoria Holt’s The Secret Woman when I was eleven drew me to the books primarily referred to as romantic suspense in the period from the 1960s through the 1980s, when the market for them collapsed and only the biggest names remained. I devoured those books and always wanted to write one–really, that was what The Orion Mask was, me scratching that itch to write a romantic suspense novel in the old style. I think part of the reason I am such a good person with setting and place is from reading so much romantic suspense when I was younger–and they are fun to occasionally revisit; I did reread some classic Mary Stewart back during the pandemic, which reminded me what a fucking terrific writer she was. Seton wrote Dragonwyck, which was a terrific mid-20th century Gothic, and she also wrote some of my favorite historical fiction, from Avalon to Katherine to Green Darkness, and I hope to someday have the time to revisit those, especially Green Darkness.

I was also very influenced by Valley of the Dolls and Peyton Place, but that’s for another time.

Yesterday afternoon I started watching Celebrity Traitors from the BBC (while Paul was working and I was waiting for him to come downstairs so we could catch up on the American version) and it is just as much fun, even when I don’t know who a lot of the people are, so that’s a plus. Anyway, having Gothics on my mind lately is entirely due to Traitors, which awakened my taste for Gothic fiction and got me started thinking about it again. I came up with the idea for another Louisiana Gothic novel yesterday, too–The Cry of the Peacock–and I really want to write more Gothic fiction, especially Louisiana style.

And all this racism with parade krewes? Now I am thinking about setting another Scotty during Carnival. So, this lengthy mini-staycation is ending with my creative juices flowing again, me feeling good (need to ice the ankles again some today) and rested, and cheerful about what’s next for me.

I hear the bands passing down at the corner, which means Zulu is here. Have a great day, Constant Reader, and I’ll be here again tomorrow morning, for an Ash Wednesday blog.

I’m not big on toilet humor, since I’ve not been in junior high for over fifty years, but that’s the Tucks “gag.” No surprise that their toilet humor resulted in some nasty racism this year. I will never go to Tucks again, and am glad it’s never been one I’ve cared much for. Remember Nyx, you stupid racist fucks? Henceforth, I will only refer to them as Sucks.
  1. Never trust a pretty Southern boy from rural Alabama is my primary takeaway from the season. ↩︎