Tag: Fox

You Belong to Me

Ah, Taylor Swift.

I watched the Eras Tour (Taylor’s Version) during my nights as a Festival widow. I’ve always liked Taylor Swift, and I’ve never really understood why she gets so much hate. I wouldn’t go as far as to call myself a Swiftie, although I did start writing an essay several years ago called “A Sixty Year Old Swiftie” after I watched the Miss Americana documentary. She’s always seemed like a good person to me, and whatever music of hers I’d heard I liked, but I never went in search of it. I’d hear a new song of hers every once in a while, would enjoy it, and then download it from Apple. I don’t remember watching the video music awards the year Kanye interrupted her acceptance (which is I think when the world first became truly aware of her), but I think I did. I always used to listen to music in the car on long trips (I am a fairly recent convert to audiobooks in the car), and I remember driving to Kentucky one year listening to my “Drive” playlist (eight hours) and a song that was really catchy came on. My mind was wandering as it often does when I drive listening to music so it really becomes just background music. “What is this song?” I wondered, looking at the screen on the car stereo–“Red” by Taylor Swift. I have no memory of downloading the song, or ever having heard it before, but I repeated it at least twice more and fell in love with it. I had several other songs of hers downloaded and on that same playlist (“You Belong to Me,” “Love Story,” and “Mean”) that I also have no memory of buying and listening to; I also don’t remember how I discovered the video for “Red,” either, but I also have a Youtube playlist of Taylor videos. I was happy when she made her comeback after the “recorded phone call” (which was a crime, by the way; it’s illegal to record conversations in California without everyone’s consent); and she’s kind of conquered the world in the meantime, becoming one of the biggest stars in the world ever. The Eras tour made her a billionaire. She gives enormous bonuses to her team. She donates money wherever she performs to food banks. She’s a queer ally, progressive politically, and she fights misogyny and sexism all the time.

Not bad for a girl with a dream.

But watching the concert movie? I am now completely a Swiftie, with no apologies offered.

I’m glad I never wrote (or finished writing) that essay, because my affection and delight for Swift has grown exponentially since that first writing. One of my favorite Youtube things to do is watch concert clips of her performing–she is so clearly enjoying herself and loves her fans–and their worship of her is fun to watch. I appreciate her allyship, I appreciate her pro-gay anthem, I appreciate everything about her. But watching the concert film was a revelation. There wasn’t a single song I didn’t enjoy or like in the film (although I remain bummed she didn’t include “Red” on her set list), and I realized that every time I’ve listened to one of her albums on Spotify over the years, I’ve never skipped a song and have often replayed some. The show she puts on for her fans is extraordinary; and I love that the girls who loved her at the start of her career have also turned their kids on to her. All age groups adore her, and while I have no desire to sit through another concert at any point in my life again, I’d almost be tempted to see her on tour. The concert movie, which I would start streaming and turn the sound up so I could listen while cleaning, was a blast. I found myself dancing with my vacuum, or dancing around with the feather duster as I cleaned.

I mean, more power to her. Her star just keeps rising and shining brighter with every new album release, and she doesn’t seem like she plans to slow down at any time soon. She produces new music, all of it catchy and a potential hit, with an astonishing regularity. She doesn’t have the kind of pipes that say an Aretha Franklin or a Patti LuPone can bring to their singing, but her voice is pleasant enough to skitter up and down the scale, and her lyrics are very poetic. I used to think her tween fans simply stayed loyal past their expiration date while she built up new fan bases with every album, but that isn’t true. Each new generation seems to find her when they are ready to start appreciating music, and her graciousness to her fans, her kindness and her gratitude, is delightful to see in a megastar.

Plus, the entire right-wing meltdown over her relationship with Travis Kelce (who is adorable) made me enjoy their courtship even more than I already had. She keeps triggering right-wingers, and I am hear for it. I love how everyone on Fox was telling her to just shut up and sing and stay out of politics…”and after our commercial break, Kevin Sorbo will explain how he’s discriminated against for his beliefs and values.”

When I think about how much they would have wet their underpants had she been a conservative, a cruel Grinch-like smile spreads across my face.

But ultimately, she seems like a good person and she loves making music and she loves her fans. It’s nice to see someone who appreciates their fans succeed, you know?

And I will undoubtedly watch the movie again several times.

Love’s Been a Little Bit Hard on Me

Wednesday pay-the-bills day, and I am a bit groggy this morning, but that’s okay, really. I slept well and didn’t want to get up, and there’s nothing wrong with that (why I’ve always felt like not wanting to get out of bed in the morning makes me a lazy slug is something else I clearly need to work on). But the weekend draws nigh, which is always a lovely thing, and of course…parades. Yes, the parades start this weekend, with three on Friday night, six (!!!) on Saturday, and another three on Sunday. It’s also supposed to rain all weekend, so I don’t know how much time I will actually spend out at the corner this weekend risking getting sick and/or tired. I was also very tired last night, to the point that I really didn’t do much of anything once I got home from work yesterday afternoon. I didn’t do any chores, I didn’t run any errands, and I didn’t get the mail.

I did work on the story more and it’s starting to take a better shape than the mess that it originally was. I’m not certain why it’s taking me so long to get this draft finished, but I am instead going to think of it in terms of your writing muscles are as rusty as your actual muscles and so yes, they need to be used a bit more so I can get back into the swing of using those muscles every day. I really should think about writing now as writing therapy; the same mindset as my physical therapy. I am slowly but surely getting back into the spirit of writing after a deeply traumatic year, and the more I do it, the stronger and more lithe those muscles will get–and the less warm-up they will need. Having so many of the conflicting voices in my head stilled at long last also helps me with the focus and stuff; the problem is the lack of use and working out the kinks and the doubts. I think the story is going to make better sense and be much stronger than it was going to originally be in this draft version, and I did think about it a lot last night, too. I have always had a powerful imagination, and so last night I was using it to imagine what it would feel like out in the Manchac Swamp on a night in early October–and the kinds of risks college students will take that older people probably wouldn’t. If it weren’t for the parades–and maybe after the season is over I can do this–I should drive out to the swamp and check it out; there are a lot of places around New Orleans and in Louisiana in general that I really should go visit and experience.

Time, and exhaustion, is always such an issue. I do remember driving somewhere–I’m not sure where or why–that required me to cross the lake to Slidell on my way; I was writing something that required me to take a look at that far reach of New Orleans east that heads out to the bridge over the Rigolets, and so I detoured on my way to get a good look. (I also used that visit to base a scene in Royal Street Reveillon on as well; two for the price of one!) I’ve also noticed that, now that I have take up my proverbial quill again, my process of writing is a little different than it used to be; again, rusty out of use muscles might have something to do with it, but it could also be a change, who knows? My process has evolved and changed so much since Ye Olden Days when I first starting treating writing as a job and a vocation as opposed to a dream. (It’s also why I hate process questions, mine is rarely ever the same, especially when it comes to writing short stories.) I do like this story and like where it’s going; I really like the idea of my four unsuspecting, slightly drunk and high college students out visiting a supposedly haunted location in the Manchac Swamp (putting some of those New Orleans-area history wormholes I’ve gone down since the pandemic started) and I think it could be a terrific (if macabre) little story. And it’s something I am actually writing, not something I’m just thinking about. The story will probably always be special to me for being the first thing I wrote and finished after the surgery.

I’ve also been watching, with no small amount of amusement, as the right wing anger cancellation machine (you know, the thing they bitch about from the left while doing themselves because they are nothing if not the biggest hypocritical pieces of shit in recent American and world history) has decided to come for Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. I have enjoyed so many cruel laughs at their expense over the last few months! Why stop there? Why not come for Beyonce, too? They never learn, do they? Their refusal to look at factual history–even factual recent history–showed itself when Ron DeSantis chose to follow the Southern Baptist playbook and come for Disney to bolster his dead-before-it-started presidential campaign? The Mouse is undefeated, and remains undefeated. Taylor Swift is the biggest pop culture star in the world right now whose fans absolutely worship her–and her fans are of all ages, and they protect her from scavenging low-life scum whenever and wherever someone tries to come for her. The irony that this romance is actually the culmination of every Taylor Swift longing teenaged love songs–she’s dating the star football player AT LAST–does not Fox or Newsmax in their quest to humble Taylor Swift, who is laughing at them as she sits on her piles of gold and the love and admiration of millions around the globe. I wouldn’t call myself a Swiftie1–I do like her music, and listen to it occasionally, but it’s not my go-to–but I do admire her as an artist, a businesswoman, and a person. She stands up for the underprivileged, she supports queer people and queer rights, and above all else she fights misogyny (which a lot of the right-wing hate is predicated upon) whenever she encounters it, calls it out, and is not afraid to go to court to fight it, either. The way she outsmarted the douche who bought her original masters deserves a five minute standing ovation.

I may not know a lot about Ms. Swift, but I do know better than to fuck with her or activate her fans. And frankly, the profas (if the the left is antifa, then it stands to reason that their position makes the right profa, right?) are soooo stupid and blindly wrapped up in their cult of Golden Calf worship that their rage makes me like her all the more. I listened to her Red album in the car on my way home from the office yesterday and it’s still a banger (“Red” is my favorite Swift song, don’t @ me), and I’ll probably be listening to more of her music in the coming days as well. I also love that the derangement extends to rooting against the Kansas City Chiefs in the upcoming Super Bowl–which means they have to root for San Francisco.

(laughs evilly in gay.)

And on that note, I need to head into the spice mines and start paying the bills. Have a lovely Wednesday and you never know–I may pop in again later.

  1. Although I did start writing an essay during the pandemic that I called “A Sixty-Year Old Swiftie.” ↩︎

Touched by the Hand of God

Sunday morning, and I am swilling coffee and eating coffee cake and trying to wake up. I slept very well again last night, and am starting to feel more…normal, whatever that means for me, since I am anything but normal. I have things to get done today, but the apartment is starting to feel like home again for the first time in a while (since everything went haywire week before last). The laundry room is mostly reassembled, and the book shelves in there look neat and tidy and organized, which rather pleases me. The living room is….well, the living room. I am always going to have too many books in my house (even typing that a voice inside my head was shrieking you can never have too many books what are you talking about?); but I am developing a certain heartlessness as I continue to fill boxes with books for the library sale. At some point, I am going to have to start going through the boxes of books on top of the kitchen cabinets and the ones in the storage attic, and my goal is to have cleaned out not only the attic but the storage unit I’ve rented for far too long.

We finished the first season of Very Scary People on HBO last night, concluding with the two-parter on Jim Jones (we skipped Gacy–have seen enough of him lately already–and Aileen Wuornos, because we watched one on her already recently) and will be moving on to season two probably this evening. I am way behind on Superman and Lois–mainly because it’s something I started watching without Paul and so, rather than trying to get him caught up, I am just going to continue watching without him (I always, inevitably, have to fill him in on super-hero backstory and so forth anyway in most cases, though I think he knows enough Superman lore–doesn’t everyone, really–that he wouldn’t need explanations in this case).

I’ve started–sort of–working on Chlorine this weekend, mostly free hand and mostly in my journal, mapping out backstory and so forth for the main character, and I’ve also started working on the backstory for the body in the surf, and the plot–which was kind of amorphously planned in my head, but yesterday I started nailing down specifics in the plot. It’s going to be kind of fun to write, I think–I always think that going into a manuscript; ever the optimist–and while it’s very tempting to use real people as characters, I think I will make the ones who actually are on the page and participating in the story fictional, but mention others–Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, etc.–in passing. I know the studio is going to be fictional–tempted as I am to use Fox or MGM–and I also know I need to sprinkle in some of the conservatism that reigned then, as everyone was afraid of Communists and having to testify in front of HUAC in Washington; it was the time of ‘the lavender scare” (also the title of a terrific history of the period and this very thing, by David Johnson; I highly recommend it) and so homosexuality was also driven even further underground because we were seen as security risks, particularly if we worked in government since it put us at risk for blackmail by Communists (I touched on this briefly in my story “The Weight of a Feather”, collected in Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories).

I also worked on getting organized yesterday. I did a lot of filing, and took a lot of books off my desk and replaced them with ones I’ll be using for research and background for this book. I kind of feel like I already know my main character (even though I couldn’t remember his name yesterday as I wrote notes in my journal); he grew up in Kansas, was caught by his father in a “compromising position” with his high school basketball coach in the tiny little town he grew up in and was forced to enter the military at age 17–going into the Navy and serving in the South Pacific, where he found other men like himself, and thus became familiar with the underground gay community within the military, as well as in Honolulu and Los Angeles (on leaves). After mustering out in 1946 he comes to LA to become a movie star, is discovered by a Henry Willson type agent, and at the start of the story his seven year control with Pacific Pictures is coming to an end, they aren’t going to renew his contract, and he is in fact being sacrificed to a tabloid in order to protect another client, a rising star the tabloid was going to out–loosely based on how Henry Willson sold out Rory Calhoun and Tab Hunter to Confidential to save Rock Hudson; but unlike them, my character’s agent has a plan for him: a long-term contract to work with an Italian film company making sword-and-sandal epics.

It’s a great set-up, and one that I hope to not let down…right now I am feeling confident that I can write this and it will be amazing; of course, once I start the doubts and imposter syndrome will start creeping in and I will spend most of my time wondering what the hell I was thinking to try to write such a thing in the first place.

I couldn’t have picked a better career path for a neurotic, could I?

I also lined up all the potential short story calls I am interested in submitting to, matched them up with an in-progress story that fits their call (or at least what does in my mind; I am really not that great a judge of these things, in all honesty) and need to plan out when to reread and when to rewrite. It’s very strange; now that I am coming out of the exhaustion from the writing of the two books back to back I am amazed at how light I feel; I don’t feel that oppressive burden nor the stress that comes from carrying it. I know both manuscripts need work and I need to revise and rework and edit one last time with each, and there’s a deadline for the first for sure–but I am going to put that off until next weekend, when I have the time to sit and go through Bury Me in Shadows from beginning to end, making notes, making corrections, and so on and so forth to get it polished into a diamond…or as close to one as I can get one of my books.

So, I am going to spend the rest of this morning swilling coffee and trying to finish reading The Russia House. I love LeCarré; he is such a terrific writer I can get lost in his sentences and paragraphs forever–but I find myself not loving the plot or the characters in this one, which is why it’s taking me so long to get through this one, I think. He also does an excellent job of taking me back into that 1980’s world/mentality of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union–that halcyon time when the fear of nuclear annihilation began to fade somewhat but at the same time the worry of what would fill the vacuum created by that collapse was almost nearly as intense (it didn’t take long for conservatives to replace Communists with Muslims as the scary other from another part of the world determined to destroy us); not to mention the wondering if glasnost and perestroika weren’t real or sincerely meant; LeCarré does an absolutely amazing job with that cold intelligence paranoia.

And then, for something similar yet completely different, I am going to reread Dorothy Gilman’s The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax.

I also would like to get back to the gym today; it looks absolutely lovely outside, and the walk will be lovely.

Until tomorrow, Constant Reader. Have a lovely Sunday!