Tag: television

Turtles All The Way Down

Thursday and my last day in the office for the week. I also only have to work Monday and Tuesday of next week, so I pretty much have a rather lengthy vacation with a two-day work break. Yay! It’ll be nice to relax and recharge and hang out with the boys and make progress on everything, sleep as late as Sparky will let me…woo-hoo!

Yesterday was a busy day in the clinic–the afternoon, at any rate–but I stayed on top of most everything somehow. Today should be somewhat easier, and I can get caught up on the few things I am behind on (mostly Admin work, processing paperwork from yesterday) before the stay-at-home day and my weekend. I feel pretty good this morning (more sleep would be lovely, but isn’t necessary) and am in a pretty decent mood. I didn’t do a lot yesterday when I got home from work; I went uptown to get the mail after work, which was an adventure because I left the office late. Got some Christmas cards (apologies again, everyone) in the mail, and my Anthropic settlement information. I watched The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City–which was a rather silly episode, but quite fun. I caught up on the news, refused to watch whatever speech that was that aired last night (and from what I am seeing this morning, I didn’t miss anything; so to me at least, it seems like it was nothing more than a distraction from the Vanity Fair disaster and all the other disasters rooted in this administration1), and then did some light picking up and filing before going to bed. I feel rested and good, miraculous for a Thursday, and cannot believe Christmas is a week from today. It was dark when I went uptown last night, and on my way home from Uptown last night I saw a lot of decorated houses, which kind of made me feel Christmasy. We’re getting a new television from Costco as a Christmas gift to ourselves. I don’t feel like we really need a new one, honestly, but the one we have is over ten years old, and Paul has been hankering for a new television, for reasons unknown to me, for several months now. I bought our current one at Target on the West Bank as a Christmas gift for the apartment all those long years ago. I don’t really care about gifts anymore, which has been a conundrum these last years because we don’t really need anything, so we’ve kind of abandoned birthday and Christmas presents. We usually, for example, get Chinese food for our birthdays as a treat, or a pizza from a place that’s inconvenient to go to.

I am hoping to get a couple of newsletters done over the weekend and set to post over a week or so; I need to finish my essays on Laurie R. King’s O Jerusalem, The Princess Bride, and General Hospital, and I have a new essay series I am planning, about my lifelong obsession with all things ancient Egyptian; which will be a lot of fun to write, methinks2. I also need to finish reading The Postman Always Rings Twice, and start my next read over this weekend as well (it’s looking like a toss-up between a Dorothy B. Hughes classic and the latest Eli Cranor). There’s absolutely no reason I can’t get a lot of reading and writing done over the holiday break, as well as cleaning and organizing with plenty of time to be lazy and relax. Staycations are kind of nice, actually. I also don’t think the clinic is busy next week, either; but after New Year’s, YIKES.

I didn’t watch this week’s new episode of Heated Rivalry, but I did see that Netflix canceled Boots, in what can only be seen as a capitulation of the company to the Pentagon, because the Secretary of Alcoholism didn’t think it “properly depicted the Warrior Ethos of the military.” I’d like to see that drunk rapist adulterous piece of shit make it through Boot Camp, and based on every piece of video evidence I’ve seen, that piece of shit can’t even do a pull-up properly. Such a masculine stud! Netflix also wants to acquire Warner Brothers, so they’re dancing around the Administration’s whining bitch-ass complaints. Leavenworth is too good for this piece of shit’s war crimes, and I also think he should be turned over to the Hague. Anyway, I digressed away from the point (because that piece of shit makes my blood boil), which was that a co-worker asked me in the elevator the other morning if I “wrote m/m romance under a different name.” I was a bit taken aback at first, but I just replied no, but kept thinking about it the rest of the day, and it’s popped back into my head any number of times since then.

I’ve not written anything that could be strictly considered romance other than a couple of short stories here and there over the years. I don’t read much romance–my supervisor loaned me an m/m romance novel last year that I still haven’t read, but writing gay romance (or “m/m”, whatever; but there are distinctions) is something that has occurred to me over the years. I do have several ideas for them, but they’re more romantic stories than actually romance. It would be a challenge, I think, but I love challenges and pushing myself to try to write new things I’ve not done before. I do need to read more romances, though, in order to really write a good one. Ever since Charles (shout out to Charles Click!) mentioned this to me the other morning, a sports one has kind of started taking shape in my head–partly because I already wrote an erotic short story about an athlete (who wasn’t a wrestler, LOL) that could easily be adapted to a novel.

Something to think about, anyway. Maybe after Chlorine.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check back in with you again tomorrow! From my workspace at home between the windows!

  1. At least we’re not invading Venezuela…yet. Happy with what you voted for, MAGAts? ↩︎
  2. And it gives me the opportunity and excuse to watch The Mummy movies with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz again. ↩︎

Dancin’ Shoes

Christmas Eve Eve, only day in the office for the week. It’s in the forties here in New Orleans this morning, and it feels every degree of it here in my office nook this morning. I think we’re going to be fairly slow today–although I’ve been wrong about these things before. Cold makes me ache a bit and not want to get up from the bed, but here I am. I can sleep late in my warm bed the next two mornings, after all. Yesterday was nice. I got up and ran my errand, thus remaining ensconced inside for the rest of the day. I worked some, got some chores accomplished, and we watched Alien Romulus (which I enjoyed, but felt derivative) and then went back to The Day of the Jackal, which we’d started the night before. It’s a fun watch, with a little too much extraneous filler (I really do not care about the Jackal’s private life, or that of the MI6 operative trying to catch him), but Eddie Redmayne is pretty good as the Jackal.

Of course, The Day of the Jackal takes me back to the 1970’s, and the search for Carlos, both terrorist and assassin. He got a lot of press back then. Frederick Forsyth wrote the novel The Day of the Jackal, and it was originally made into a film back then. When “Carlos” first emerged, people started calling the assassin/terrorist “the Jackal” because he was similar to the character in the Forsyth novel–already a bestseller, the branding of a real life person as the fictional character drove even more sales of the book. Everyone in the 1970s, it seemed, knew about Carlos; we even did a week on him in my Current Events class in high school. I know I read the book but didn’t see the film; and I’ve essentially forgotten most of it since then. Terrorism was seen as a major issue for the world at the time; and Americans were very smug because there had been no terror attacks inside the United States at the time, so we saw terrorism primarily as a “foreign” problem (until 9/11). Carlos was so known and prevalent that Robert Ludlum created Jason Bourne in The Bourne Identity to fight and either catch/kill Carlos. The 1970s were such a different time, or at least it was for me. I was old enough to be aware of the news and the world, but I wasn’t educated enough to understand what it all meant, what the root causes of international problems actually were, and I was in the midst of my indoctrination into the mythology of American exceptionalism and its equally awful twin, White Supremacy. It wasn’t until the Reagan administration that I began to unlearn everything I was raised to believe and began seeing the reality beneath the propaganda.

Alien Romulus, on the other hand, was quite fun but seemed to me, at least, to be a bit derivative; with scenes that were direct callbacks to the first two movies, with lots of dramatic tension and suspense and more than a few excellent jump scares (although at one point I said aloud, “There’s always at least one more, people”–only to have one appear within seconds. The idea of a soulless corporation looking to use and exploit the incredibly dangerous creature(s) at the cost of any number of human lives certainly resonated, since that’s where we’re at in this country at the moment. I recommend it–I think in the chronology of the movies this one comes after the original–but you don’t really need to have seen any of the earlier films to enjoy this one. They are all linked, of course, but each movie (at least the ones I’ve seen) can stand alone on their own individuality.

I also blame George Lucas for the entire concept of prequels and filming series out of order.

I’m looking forward to the holidays this week primarily because of two days off from work, more than the holiday itself. I don’t feel very Christmas-sy this year, frankly, and I certainly didn’t last year with my arm in a brace and all the irritation that entailed. I’m going to get us a deep dish Chicago-style pizza pie from That’s Amore tomorrow, and on Christmas day we’re planning on seeing Babygirl, which will be our first trip to a movie theater since before the pandemic. I think I have to come into the office on Friday this week–not a big deal, since I have two extra days off this week–to cover for someone for the holidays. I work one day, then am off for two, come in for two more, am out for another two, in for another two and then out for another. Yes, these next two weeks are going to be completely disruptive.

SIgh.

I did start getting back into the Scotty book yesterday, rereading and editing as I go on what is already done on the book and plan out the rest of it. I also have some short stories due that I need to write, too. Yikes, indeed. I have a lot to do, don’t I, and I really need to stop blowing off my free time and getting back to serious work on my writing. This Scotty book is going to be a lot of fun; wild and crazy and endlessly silly and full of “really, Greg?” moments. I love when my mind finally snaps back into Scotty mode; it seems like every time I write one I go into it with an overly serious mindset that needs to be snapped out of somehow. I also worked on one of my essays yesterday, about racism in the original texts of a Hardy Boys mystery (The Mark on the Door) that I am hoping to finish and post this week, as well as a meandering essay about Christmas and the holidays and how easy it is to offend the very weak faith of most Christians. (Or I could finish my lengthy diatribe about being groomed as a Christian–and fuck you in advance if you @ me about this; I don’t want to hear your dismissal of my very real experiences, thank you very much.) Although I do suppose setting a goal of writing a Substack essay every week might be a bit much. I write one of these posts every day, not to mention emails and so forth…so yes, I do already write quite a bit, at least 500-1000 words per day on here (closer to the 500 count, and averaging probably less than that, more like). It is a conceit of mine that I do not consider writing this post every morning as words written for the day; I never have. Perhaps I should start?

And on that note, I am getting cleaned up and putting on some warm clothes to face the day. Have a lovely pre-Christmas Eve, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back at some point, I am sure.

The Name Game

And here we are, with a truly strange schedule for work-at-home Friday, as I have some things to get done today outside of the house; Sparky needs some shots (and his Freddy Krueger like claws trimmed, thank you baby Jesus), and we are going to go to Costco at some point. I made a list last night (I’m sorry, but those sausage egg and cheese microwave breakfast sandwiches from Jimmy Dean are addicting), and hopefully it won’t exhaust me. One can hope, at any rate. I did manage to do some of the dishes and get started on that, but was a bit tired and Sparky needed some attention, one thing led to another, and next thing I knew Paul was home and we were getting caught up on Agatha All Along1 and watched another two episodes of American Horror Stories, which continues to be much better than we remembered. I would have sworn we stopped watching, but per Hulu, we’d watched all of the previous two seasons? I don’t know, I might have to revisit an episode or two of the previous seasons to trigger my memories. (It does bother me a little bit that I don’t remember things anymore; I seem to have forgotten a lot–but sixty three years of things to remember is apparently more than my storage banks inside my skull can handle.)

I did pick out a story yesterday for that other anthology I want to submit to–which means I need to get working on it this weekend, as well as other writing chores around the football games tomorrow. The Saints lost last night, so I don’t have to worry about watching them on Sunday, so that should be a good writing day for me. I’ll mostly be watching the Alabama-Tennessee game and the LSU-Arkansas game (but keeping an eye on the Georgia-Texas game, which is on at the same time), which makes my Saturday a little freer. I could watch the Auburn-Missouri game (the early game), but that’s a proper time for me to run errands and be home before the bigger game at 2:30. The living room really has gotten out of control and I need to get that under control this weekend as well. So, the plan for the weekend is to have a good writing weekend and a good “get things taken care of” goal is not a bad thing by any means. I think I am going to drive up to Kentucky next weekend for a week, see my grand-nephew (!!!) play football, that sort of thing and spend some time with Dad.

I also got caught up on The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, which is the only reality show I am really watching anymore (I’ll watch Beverly Hills when it comes back, but the others are getting a bit tired for me; I honestly think we’ve reached max exposure for them and they’ve peaked), and at some point I’ll probably have to get to work on writing out my perceptions and thoughts about this cast, and why I started enjoying and watching so late in its run (I have a problem with shows with criminals in the cast; so by the end of the first season we already knew Jen Shah was one, and I just can’t support that; just like Teresa Guidice’s conviction ended my watching New Jersey–which I was already hate-watching by then); I have only watched the previous season of SLC, and it was quite good. I do have some other thoughts about reality television and why I watch (I think the night time soap comparison that the horrible Camille Paglia made in an interview a while back was spot on; she can be right sometimes, even if she is awful in general) that will probably go into an essay at some point; I also want to do something on gay reality shows, which are generally awful (despite believing, from time to time, that a gay show would be amazing–RuPaul’s Drag Race has, after all, pretty much taken over the world and made her a billionaire–but they are always tragic disappointments)–anyone remember the The A-List? Real Friends of West Hollywood?

My coffee is quite marvelous this morning, I must say. I slept really well last night (which seems to be more of a daily occurrence anymore, which is wonderful), and I feel rested and ready to go today. Once I finish this I am going to work on the dishes and the kitchen, and unpack my backpack. My work at home today is mostly correcting paperwork and some on-line trainings, which is lovely and shouldn’t make me tired in the least before it’s time to punch the clock and then spend the rest of the evening reading or writing until it’s time to catch up on our shows–for some reason Grotesquerie wouldn’t stream last night, and there are more episodes of American Horror Stories to check out. I also want to go back and watch The Assassination of Gianni Versace, which I’ve never watched all the way through (Paul disliked it). It also looks like a beautiful day outside. It’s been colder this week than usual; it’s only 63 today and the sun is our and the sky is that lovely New Orleans blue with puffy white clouds lazily drifting across.

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, wherever you are, and I may be back later; stranger things have happened.

Those are some legs. Sheesh!
  1. Absolutely loving this show, and Joe Locke is fantastic, which pleases me to no end. ↩︎

Brothers in Arms

Ah, the Menendez Brothers.

I hadn’t thought about them in years until Ryan Murphy announced they would be the focus of the second season of Monsters (although it could also have been a season of American Crime Story, for that matter; how does he decide? How did he decide Grotesquerie would stand alone when it could have been a season of American Horror Story? For that matter, why is the Aaron Hernandez one American Sports Story instead of American Crime Story?). It’s been over thirty years since the original murders, and this case was the first one I remember that was, thanks to cable television, part of the public discourse; the trial was televised and people watched; everyone had an opinion; and the tabloid coverage was crazy. I don’t remember another crime story have this kind of impact before, but it set the stage for OJ’s trial, the Jon-Benet Ramsey murder, and so many since then it’s hard to really keep track of them all. But I do believe the brothers were the first to be so much in the public eye once they were arrested; a “viral” crime before anyone knew what that even meant.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to watch this latest take on the Menendez brothers and the murder of their parents, to be honest. I’ve watched at least one documentary on the case years ago, and I watched the made-for-TV movie with Billy Warlock of Days of Our Lives and Baywatch fame (I remember especially the scene when his wig was torn off his head), and of course I read Dominick Dunne’s coverage in Vanity Fair. As I mentioned, it was one of the first murder cases to get national attention, to be was all over the 24 hour news channels, not to mention Court TV and all the others. The national tabloids, magazines, and even local newspapers and stations scrambled for coverage1 . I remember the first trial ended in a hung jury, and I kind of lost interest after that–as did the media. The only reason I knew there was a second trial that ended in convictions was thanks to Dominick Dunne. The case would get back into the news periodically in the years since, but I didn’t really pay much attention. Books and documentaries and fictional adaptations continued to be churned out in the decades since their conviction, and like I said, I wasn’t really planning on watching this new series2. I thought they were psychotic killers who murdered their parents for their money.

And yet, one Saturday night after we’d finished watching all the football games, Paul suggested we start watching Monsters, and I thought, why not? If it’s not good, we can always stop watching.

I didn’t think the first episode was very good3, but we decided to give the show one more episode on Sunday, and then we were hooked. It’s a very Ryan Murphy show, to be sure: it’s visually beautiful, and the acting is excellent. The two young men who play the brothers, Cooper Koch (Eric) and Nicholas Alexander Chavez (Lyle), late of General Hospital, are gorgeous to look at, are often shown in some form of undress (including a full frontal shot of Koch), and they deliver some astonishing performance (so does the entire cast). There’s one scene that Koch does that is almost the entire episode, him doing a monologue about his life, his parents, his brother, and his failures, his weakness, that is an Emmy reel in and of itself. Javier Bardem and Chloe Sevigny are also fantastic, as is Nathan Lane as Dominick Dunne; Leslie Grossman and Ari Graynor also shine in supporting roles. One thing you always have to give Murphy credit for–incredible actors giving incredible performances is something you can usually expect from one of his shows. (Jessica Lange’s four seasons on American Horror Story is a masterclass in acting talent and range.)

While I know the family has had some objections to the series–not the least of which is the implication that the brothers had that incestuous closeness; but some of the scenes that showed that were from other people’s perspectives; for example, the scene in which they are in the shower together–a cousin has stated that the dad did make the boys shower together–and Lyle did testify under oath that when they were kids, his dad encourage him to also molest Erik. (I think seeing a report on that is what made me think there were hints of incest in their relationship; I honestly don’t remember as it was thirty years ago and I didn’t pay that much attention. I did think, when I first read about the murders, that they were guilty (they did shoot their parents) and when they switched the sexual abuse defense, I 1000% thought they were making that up (no one could say it didn’t happen) as a “get out of jail” free card.

And watching this show? For the very first time, I thought they might have been telling the truth. I knew boys were capable of being raped and molested and abused as children, even as teenagers; the priest scandals were just slowly beginning to come out into the light. but the amount of Americans–men especially–refused to accept the fact that boys could also be victims was astonishingly high. For one thing, most victims were too ashamed to do anything about it (another toxic masculinity issue), and because other men wouldn’t believe them, or think “they wanted it” (you know, the same things they say about women rape victims). The shame of “being unmanned” was still a thing in the 1990’s–the toxically masculine also have issues with gay men because it besmirches manhood or something fucking stupid like that, or “womanizes” men. And it was very difficult for anyone to believe a father could do that to his sons.

And bearing that in mind, I completely understand why the Menendez brothers wouldn’t have told anyone, nor would they have told the cops or their original lawyer. It makes sense. And they only admitted to it when it looked like they were definitely headed for the chair.

It. Makes. Sense.

And I would have probably voted to acquit.

The show also highly sexualizes its young stars in a way that we are seeing more of these days (certainly in Ryan Murphy series; I have to say I do approve of the objectification of men–and I also like that the gay male beauty standard, so often maligned within our own community, has clearly spread to straight men of all ages. I’m amazed, for example, how many young men have realized the importance of leg day and building up a lovely round hard butt. The two young actors playing the leads, Cooper Koch (Erik) and Nicholas Alexander Chavez, are incredibly gorgeous; Koch even does a full frontal scene sans prosthetic. They also had good chemistry between them, which…I can certainly understand why the family was furious about the hints of incest in the series–but that was what the person whose perspective was being shown thought. Lyle also testified to abusing Erik when they were younger–and like I said, they seemed almost unnaturally close.

And when it was all over, Paul asked, “do you think they were abused?”

GREG: I didn’t at the time, but now I’m not so sure. And they’re the only ones who know for sure, so we’ll never know.

I think the show had changed a lot of minds about the brothers–and now that a member of Menudo had come forth to claim he was also sexually abused by Jose Menendez, they may even finally get out of jail…but would they have been so “viral” at the time if they weren’t good looking young men?

Sexualization, Party of Two?
I could be wrong, but I don’t think men’s bikinis were cut or worn like this in 1990.
See what I mean about sexualizing them? There’s an entire scene of him doing squats with dumb bells FROM BEHIND.
This is another example of the “incest inference” scenes. It doesn’t look like anything off until you think, would two young men talking in a pool float this close together?
  1. When we got to the episode on the Ryan Murphy series where OJ went on the run in the Bronco. Paul turned to me and said, “The 90’s were a time, weren’t they?” to which I replied, “Jon-Benet Ramsey, Versace, OJ, the Menendez brothers–yeah, it was one major crime mystery after another.” ↩︎
  2. I have a love/hate relationship with Ryan Murphy productions. When he hits the ball cleanly, he knocks it out of the park. But most of the time his shows collapse under their own weight and endings rarely resolved everything. But his better shows are usually based on a true story… because the story’s already written. ↩︎
  3. It was very over the top and campy; it wasn’t until later that I realized that each episode is the story from someone else’s perspective (aka Rashomon), which is something I absolutely love, so I should rewatch that episode to get a better sense of it. ↩︎

Wasted on the Way

Thursday and the last day in the office for the week. I am very tired this morning. I slept well but could easily sleep for another few hours or so (interesting that I went from almost non-stop anxiety about insomnia to anxiety about sleeping too much, isn’t it?), but as I slowly and groggily get going this morning, the coffee is definitely hitting the way it is supposed to. Tomorrow morning I have a doctor’s appointment and PT, as well as whatever errands I can get run before the parades start tomorrow night. Gah. I can’t believe it is already parade season, and I didn’t get nearly as much done as I would have liked in the meantime. I did work some more on the story yesterday night after I got home from work and the errands (I picked up the mail) and settled in for a relaxing evening.

For some reason I watched the season premiere of Vanderpump Rules, which is now picking up with the fallout from last season’s “Scandoval,” and I don’t know about continuing to watch. I had stopped watching the show years ago–years before Stassi and Kristen were fired for being racists, and long before Jax met and married that bizarre woman. I came back briefly for the scandal, and watching the aftermath I am just not feeling it, and probably won’t watch more. I do sometimes question my fandom of these reality shows, which generally feature terrible people being terrible, all for the sake of entertainment. I had never really watched The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City before–I had intended to, but then Jen Shah was arrested for massive scale fraud and remained on the show, and that was a bit too much for me (likewise, I stopped watching New Jersey when the Giudices went to jail, and I remain conflicted about Beverly Hills with fraud-adjacent Erica Girardi unapologetically remaing as a member of the cast and even getting, apparently, a redemption arc this season; which I vehemently oppose); I did start watching this most recent season at the urging of friends and yes, I was missing reality drama by not watching; I doubt that I will go back and watch the old seasons, which is something I never really do; why go back and watch old drama that doesn’t matter anymore? Reality shows like these are really like the old prime-time soaps; you can start watching at any time and just jump into the show without having to go back and watch the back stories–which you could never do with the daytime soaps but you could with the night-time.

Well, what do you know? I never finished this before leaving the house this morning so I find myself trying to finish this over my lunch break–and even my lunch is later today than usual, so yeah–been a day. But I feel good, tomorrow morning I have appointments and PT and so forth; before coming home to do work-at-home duties for the rest of the day. I’ve also kind of lost the train of thought I was riffing on before leaving the house this morning, and checking out what I’ve already written here didn’t return me to that particular mindset, so who knows where this is going to wind up going? I hope I have the energy after making groceries on the way home from work today to finish working on my story so I don’t have to worry about that over the weekend. I don’t know how my parade attendance will go this weekend; Paul’s got a lot of work to do and going out there by myself–which I can handle, and have done before–just isn’t as much fun as when I am with Paul, even if we barely speak while we’re out there. And I am not sure how much my stamina is going to hold up, either. We shall see, I suppose.

It’s also supposed to rain all day Saturday and Sunday, which will put a damper on the weekend anyway.

I did also watch the season finale of Percy Jackson and the Olympians last night, and I have to say I really do enjoy the series much more than I did the films. I did read the books a very long time ago–Rick Riordan’s series are the best fantasy novels for kids bar none, fuck all the way off, TERF Queen–so I don’t remember a lot of it, but I thought the series really adapted the books well, and I also appreciated that the cast went with kids rather than teens (or actors in their twenties acting as teens); which made the story make a lot more sense than it would with them in their mid-to-late teens. It’s also such a great concept; I really envy Riordan that idea, seriously. I used to want to do something similar–I still want to write a young adult novel set during the Trojan War–and I’ve had other ideas involving mythology and gods and goddesses, but nothing has ever come to fruition. The best idea I had I am not sure is usable, honestly, but every so often I remember it and think oh, if only…

Ah, well. As it is, I won’t have time to write everything I want to before I die anyway, so there are some things I will never get around to–and as long as it’s taking me to write this damned short story, I may not even wind up writing the things I do think I’ll have the time to get to, of course.

And on that note, I am going to bring this to a close. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later. You never know, and sorry for being so late today.

Hey You

Thursday and my final day in the office for the week. It’s been a good week overall–if odd at the office; it was a Mercury-in-retrograde kind of week there, with things not working right and odd situations occurring. Kind of tiring emotionally and intellectually, but not so bad as to drag me down and curl up into a ball in a corner somewhere. I’ve felt rested most of the week and the writing/revising has been going super well (I am so excited to see how much I can get done over the weekend you have no idea); even continued last evening. But I slept well again last night, and I feel pretty good this morning with my coffee, and I made it through almost another week of work.

Last night I watched the first part of the Vanderpump Rules reunion, and just…wow. I’ve never seen anything like that on any reality show reunion. The whole “Scandoval” of it all is just…I don’t know. I watch reality television (anyone who’s read Royal Street Reveillon knows this, of course); not a lot of it, but enough. I find it all fascinating–the way the fans get so deeply involved and vested in these mostly terrible people and what they are doing; the question of what’s real and what isn’t and what is manipulation or over-dramatization for the camera, and so on. The entire “Scandoval” mess? I have so many questions, and there are so many layers. This “scandal” peeled back the fourth wall somewhat, and the viewers got to actually watch as Tom Sandoval, an original cast member for ten seasons, with an assist from his best friend, tried to control the narrative of what we were seeing on screen while keeping his affair off; having the knowledge of what was actually going on while they were filming (and what was being kept out of the camera’s eye) made the attempted manipulation only that much more obvious, and even more fascinating than before. I hadn’t watched the show in years; I got bored, frankly, because it just seemed like the same thing over and over again, but this brought me back (along with a lot of new viewers, plus others who’d given up on it came back; the show is breaking records in the ratings for Bravo and reality shows). As I said to Paul last night, “it’s absolutely amazing how after ten years the show was able to completely flip the script and everything–everything that happened over the past ten years–has been altered as we now see these guys not as lovable goofballs, but dangerously narcissistic monsters manipulating the narrative to make everyone else look worse while making themselves look like heroes.” Future generations of social historians will look at the Scandoval in wonder, trying to puzzle out why this became global news, worthy of being covered in major newspapers, including both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.

A cheating scandal on a reality show made worldwide news and has trended every day on Twitter since the news broke months ago. I mean, how fucking insane is that?

I also realized at some point yesterday that the difference I’ve been feeling the last week or so around here means I’ve probably moved into another stage of the grieving process, rather than over it completely. And as I sat there with purring kitty asleep in my lap watching the marathon of the last few episodes of Vanderpump Rules before the reunion episode (part one of three!) aired, I realized you’re in the anger stage. I had noticed myself getting angry much more quickly than usual while scrolling through Twitter, and yesterday I sent some response tweets to assholes trolling friends that were pretty hateful, nasty and cruel (much as their tweets at my friends were). That isn’t like me; usually I’ll start typing the response and delete it unsent, as the actual writing of it vented the spleen and by the time I was finished and ready to send it, would think and how is this improving the public discourse as I deleted it. Not yesterday, so I am going to simply go back to the old “mute/block” trick, or just report them. I do report trolls for hate speech and conduct violations several times a day, with a rather high success rate percentage, if I do say so myself. And honestly, I prefer anger to the sadness, really. Not sure what that says about me, but the sadness paralyzed me and made me unable to write, but since transitioning to the anger stage the book has been flowing and I am enjoying revising it tremendously. Go figure. I wrote more last night, and I have to say, the book is beginning to take shape nicely. It’s amazing how regularly I repeat myself, but that also has a lot to do with my memory issues–oh, I need to explain this and forgetting I’ve already explained it in the preceding chapters…each of them, in fact. So there’s a lot of cutting and rewording and restructuring going on, but Scotty’s voice is starting to really come through and that’s the most important thing.

I was also saddened to hear that Tina Turner passed yesterday. I’ve been a fan of hers since I was a little boy and I saw her perform on some variety show–Dean Martin’s, maybe? I just know it was when we still only had a black-and-white television, which means we were still living in the apartment in the city (sidebar: interesting how television was dominated back then by variety shows and westerns, which are incredibly scarce today…the variety shows were no big loss, and the westerns were ludicrous, racist, and sexist, so no big loss in either case). I think it was “Proud Mary”? When she finally started getting the stardom and accolades and success she’d always deserved (and never quite reached) in the 1980s, I was delighted–and she gave us some truly great music, too. That voice! That power! That stage presence! It saddens me that we no longer have her in this world, but I’m grateful we had a Tina Turner in the first place.

But I will always think of Schitt’s Creek whenever I hear “The Best” now.

I also got the proofs for my short story “Solace in a Dying Hour” to go over prior to the anthology’s release, which is very exciting. I always love when I sell a short story, and love it even more when we get to the later production stages.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. May your Friday Eve be as delightful as you are, Constant Reader, and I will see you again tomorrow.

The Night Chicago Died

One of the most enjoyable developments of the last ten years or so (maybe longer) has been the resurgence of horror television. I am not knowledgeable enough about the television history–I don’t really pay nearly as much attention to the entertainment industry as I used to; and I often find shows long after everyone else does. My memory, which used to be sharp as a razor, is quite a bit duller than it used to be. The embrace of horror themes and stories by television networks is something I endorse (crime has long been a mainstay of the networks); I am greatly enjoying The Exorcist, gave up on both Scream and Scream Queens during their first seasons, never finished watching Damien (which was cancelled after season one)…and then there’s American Horror Story.

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To be honest, I have a love/hate relationship with the show.

Paul and I are both huge fans of Jessica Lange, so we were tempted to watch for that reason; we both enjoy horror (Paul was the one who got me to watch not only the Halloween movies but the Scream ones as well). But we rarely watch television when it airs; our schedules don’t permit us to watch things regularly week by week. For years we simply waited for them to come on to Netflix and then would binge-watch; it was before Season 2, Asylum, began airing that I got a DVR so we could record the shows–back in the days of VCR’s we used to record shows all the time. So, as Asylum aired, we were also watching Murder House from Netflix on disc at the same time.

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The acting was fantastic; Jessica Lange was, as always, amazing. But my biggest fear about the show–Ryan Murphy as show-runner–too often proved to be true. It has been my experience that Murphy is a great ideas guy, but those ideas don’t often pan out into a long-term running show; Glee being the classic example. But I thought the anthology nature of this show–each season being a self-contained story, and using an ensemble cast–might work. Murder House was terrific, and of all the seasons, the most cohesive in terms of story-telling. Asylum was all over the place; after an amazing beginning in which Adam Levine died in a most horrible fashion, the show seemed more concerned with cramming in as many horror tropes as possible within the season: Aliens! Serial killers! Nazis! Biological experiments creating bizarre things! Demonic possession! And on and on and on. Paul and I soon lost track of the story and were just watching for the acting. We never did watch the season finale. But it did give us the wonder that was Jessica Lange singing “The Name Game”; Lily Rabe’s brilliance as the possessed nun; and Sarah Paulsen, after playing a small part in season one, getting a chance to truly exercise her acting ability as Lana, the reporter who winds up involuntarily committed.

My favorite season, though, is Coven.

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It was set in New Orleans, for one thing, and beautifully shot; it was almost a New Orleans travelogue. Kathy Bates was added to the cast, as was Angela Bassett; it was about witchcraft and a school for witches…and one of the girls was obsessed with Stevie Nicks, who even made two guest appearances on the show, but her music threaded through the entire season.

AMERICAN HORROR STORY: COVEN The Magical Delights of Stevie Nicks - Episode 310 (Airs Wednesday, January 8, 10:00 PM e/p) --Pictured: (L-R) Lily Rabe as Misty Day, Stevie Nicks as herself -- CR. Michele K. Short/FX

Miss Robicheaux’ School for Girls was even in my neighborhood.

But again, the writing was incredibly uneven and often times the story didn’t make any sense. The acting was terrific, though, and the visuals absolutely stunning. I even wrote a piece about how watching Coven for the Criminal Element website about how the show reminded me of why I fell in love with this crazy city in the first place.

The <i>Freak Show</i> season was again unevenly written, and this time the acting–the way the characters were written and so forth, wasn’t strong enough to really carry the show. It was also filmed here, with New Orleans standing in for Jupiter, Florida; the Mott mansion, for example, was Longue Vue. And Hotel was such a mess that we didn’t ever watch the season finale, like Asylum. We are watching the new season, Roanoke, and were very close to stopping watching until the big twist in episode 6–Murphy had hinted in interviews the show would flip, and so we decided to stick it out until then. But after the big flip–which was incredibly clever–it seems like the writing is going off the tracks again.

There have been amazing moments on the show, though.

I am curious to see where this season goes.

And now back to the spice mines.

Get Dancin’

The book is proceeding apace, but I do think this may be my last venture into writing any kind of erotica. I love the story I am writing, and I love the characters, but I am so tired of writing sex scenes. I don’t even want to think about how many sex scenes I’ve written. I never say never, of course–I may write another fratboy book; who knows? But right now I am enjoying writing the story but am having to force myself to put the sex scenes in. I wrote a really nasty poolside one today–it’s not that I can’t write them; like I said, the one I wrote today is hot and nasty; I just don’t find them as much fun to write as I used to.

Speaking of sex scenes and nudity (see what I did there?), a few entries back I mentioned how I described the HBO show True Blood as “Dark Shadows with sex, nudity and a lot more blood.” I stand by that description; the show was a serial, just like Dark Shadows, there were a lot of supernatural elements, just like Dark Shadows, and the primary story was a romance between a male vampire and a human woman, and the vampire was originally from the same area where the story was set. Like Maggie Evans, the object of Barnabas Collins’ dark desires, Sookie Stackhouse, our plucky heroine, was also a waitress at a local bar and grill.

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Whether True Blood was horror or not, I cannot say. As I said when I embarked on talking about my favorite horror this month, I pointed out that I am not well-read enough in the genre, or know enough about it’s history, to discuss actual aspects of the genre and what qualifies as horror or not. I think, like with ‘mystery,’ ‘horror’ has become a generic umbrella term for vast swatches of work that sometimes have as little in common as a tomato with a watermelon. Is a ghost story like Ammie Come Home horror? The book scared the crap out of me, but it was marketed, really, as romantic suspense with a touch of the paranormal. Are all paranormal novels horror? I am really not qualified to answer that question.

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I guess the best description of the show would be to call it a ‘paranormal soap.’ It had moments of suspense and terror, of course–and gore, and humor, and nudity, and sex. The story was interesting every season (the season about the maenad, not so much; Paul and I both got kind of bored with that season) to me. People often, on social media, talked about not liking the show or liking the show; but I’m not ashamed to say that I pretty much enjoyed it during its entire run. The problem, of course, was that they had to keep upping the stakes (no pun intended).

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It also had a diverse cast. Many of the characters, in fact, I found a lot more interesting that Sookie the mixed blood fairy and Bill the vampire; and there were some wonderful comedy moments as well–one of my favorites being when Tara is in a moody funk after her boyfriend Eggs turned out to be a serial killer and was killed himself, and Arlene, played brilliantly by Carrie Preston, snaps in exasperation, “So you fell in love with a serial killer? Who here hasn’t?”

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If there was any problem with the show’s writing, it seemed like they couldn’t make up their minds what Sookie was; sometimes she was this whiny, passive heroine things happened to; other times she was a badass with a smart mouth who took no shit from anyone.

And of course, my absolute favorite, Pam, never got enough story or scene.

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Even the annoying characters at the beginning eventually were developed into likable characters over the course of the show. Jason Stackhouse went from a self-absorbed young stud who loved and left every women he met, who was estranged from his sister, into a pretty decent guy who tried to do the right thing but just made bad choices. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Ryan Kwanten, who played him, was gorgeous.

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The first moment I saw him on screen I thought, “That’s who should play Scotty if that series ever is filmed.”

I’ve not read the enormously popular novels the show was based on–not from any sense that I wouldn’t like them; but again, one of those I just don’t have time to read them things. I’ve gone back and forth on that–Charlaine Harris is a terrific writer, and an absolutely lovely person–but maybe if I take another trip to a beach, like the Acapulco trip or Hawaii, I’ll take them with me to go and binge read.

The show was also filmed beautifully; it was filmed in Louisiana, and sometimes they were here in New Orleans filming, and Bon Temps was, like Collinsport in Dark Shadows, a kind of magnet for paranormal creatures and activity. I myself have always wanted to do this type of a series–I came up with an idea a million years ago–and even named my town, Bayou Shadows. My short story “Rougarou” actually took place in Bayou Shadows, Louisiana, and I’d intended for Need to eventually tie into that at some point.

Ah, well.

There was also a lot of homoeroticism in the show, and gay/lesbian/bisexual characters. I loved Lafayette, the gender bending short order cook/drug dealer/hustler who was also a medium.

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The show was also exceptionally clever, as I am sure the books were as well, about dipping into social issues.

And now back to the spice mines.

Ruby Red Dress (Leave Me Alone)

Twelve days left to Halloween.

I’ve talked about Dark Shadows already, and I’ve also talked about soap operas before. But a lot of what we see now on television is technically serials; most series now are serials, where the action of each episode is picked up from where it left off in the previous one; continuity is important; and what happens in each episode has a causal effect on the characters for many episodes (and seasons) to come. I can remember, while True Blood was airing, and I was describing it to a friend who didn’t watch…and finally, I said, “It’s kind of like Dark Shadows with nudity, sex, and a lot of blood.” (I intend to talk about True Blood before Halloween, but this is not the entry.) It was kind of true, and I intend to draw those comparisons when I talk about True Blood –but today I am going to talk about another serial television show involving the supernatural (I don’t know that I can call it, fairly, horror) that Paul and I enjoyed watching: Dante’s Cove.

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I probably would have never known about Dante’s Cove if I hadn’t been working as an editor for Harrington Park Press at the time. Here TV was doing those adaptations of the Richard Stevenson/Don Strachey novels, and were also developing a series called <I>Dante’s Cove</i>. HPP was bringing the Strachey books back into print with tie-in editions, and Here was interested in having Dante’s Cove be novelized with tie-in editions. I thought it sounded interesting (it was pitched to us as “gay Dark Shadows“), and was interested in doing the novelizations myself, so Here sent me the pilot and the first season on DVD to watch.

The story was, actually, rather similar to the Dark Shadows opening: a young person comes to Dante’s Cove/Collinwood at the same time as a centuries old supernatural creature arrives, released from being imprisoned apparently for all time. Dark Shadows had Victoria Winters and Barnabas Collins the vampire; Dante’s Cove had Kevin and Ambrosius “Bro” Vallin. While Barnabas spurned the love of the witch Angelique, who cursed him and turned him into a vampire, leading his family to chain him up in his coffin; Ambrosius was a practitioner of magic called Tresum, and was engaged to a high priestess of the religion, Grace Neville. Grace caught Ambrosius literally being fucked in the ass by another man, whom she killed with magic, and she, too, cast a spell that locked him up for all eternity. Except Kevin, who comes to Dante’s Cove after being thrown out by his homophobic family to be with his lover Toby, unknowingly releases Ambrosius from his prison–which also triggers Grace to return.

Grace was played by Tracy Scoggins, best known for playing Monica Colby on first The Colbys, and then later on Dynasty.

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There were various characters, lesbians, gay men, straight boys, and varying storylines. Toby, the male lead, was played by Charlie David.

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Kevin was played by Gregory Michael, who also later turned up on the show Greek.

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Arrow’s Stephen Amell was in the first season as an asshole straight boy who was recast in Season 2.

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There was lots of male nudity–including full frontal–and the men always looked like they were covered in oil. Reichen Leimkuhl, who won The Amazing Race and was later on the terrible rip-off of Real Housewives type shows The A List–New York, joined the cast in Season 3. And Thea Gill from Queer as Folk, also joined in Season 2 as Grace’s sister and mortal enemy, Diana.

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Like I said, lots of pretty shirtless men, bare male asses, and the occasional male full frontal.

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The primary problem with Dante’s Cove, I felt, was bad writing and bad directing, as well as some serious continuity problems. The actors did their best with what they were given, but they just weren’t given enough, and it seemed like it was trying to be too serious. But a supernatural-themed soap opera with gay and lesbian characters that could get away with nudity shouldn’t have taken itself quite so seriously; it should have gone for humor and camp, and I bet it would have really caught on. (As I’ve said about other shows, “it wants to be Tennessee Williams when it should be going for Melrose Place.”) We were entertained, and we enjoyed watching it, but there was always such a sense of what it could have been. In the third season, the show went more along a campy route, giving the characters great bitchy quips, and it looked liked it had found its way…but alas, it wasn’t to be. It was cancelled. There was a spin-off show about a lair of vampires who lived in a sex club called The Lair that was also fun, and looked like it was hitting its stride at the end of its first season…but there wasn’t a second season, alas.

The novelizations, alas, never happened, which was also incredibly disappointing. I really thought I could make it a lot of fun…but alas, it is another one of those ‘wasn’t meant to be’ things.’

It would be kind of fun to rewatch…

And now back to the spice mines.

I Think I Love You

The 1980’s were an interesting time. The decade is sort of a blur for me in some ways–there was a lot of pot smoking and alcohol abuse and of course, the cocaine issue–but I also had fun, or so it seemed at the time. I sometimes wonder, when I am given to reflect on the past (something I seem to be doing more and more as I age) how different my life would be had I not, in fact, been living a double life in my twenties. But of course, these are the sort of things that are immaterial ultimately; if any single one thing in my past had been different, my life as I know it now would be different, and I am enormously happy with my present life. And I do remember that period of my life fondly; I remember going, many times, into a marijuana induced coma with friends while we watched endless hours of MTV, back when it used to actually show music videos.

Another popular show that we watched through the smoke was a syndicated series called Friday the 13th–the Series.

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Every episode of the show began with a voice over:

“Lewis Vendredi made a deal with the devil to sell cursed antiques. But he broke the pact, and it cost him his soul. Now, his niece Micki, and her cousin Ryan have inherited the store… and with it, the curse. Now they must get everything back, and the real terror begins.” 

Part of the problem, you see, was originally Micki and Ryan decided not to keep the store and had a big sale to get rid of everything inside. Then Jack Marshak, an expert in the occult, showed up and told them about Uncle Lewis’ deal with the devil and that every item in the store was cursed. In the first episode, they didn’t believe him, of course, until they started tracking down one of the items. Each cursed item had some kind of power related to what it was; a Cupid had the ability to make anyone fall in love with the person who owned it, for example. The problem was the blood curse on every item–in exchange for the use of the item’s power, the person using it had to kill someone, or the item itself would kill someone. The show followed the three–Jack, Micki, and Ryan–as they tried to track down each item.

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The reason I even discovered the show in the first place was because one of my friends thought Robey, the actress who played Micki, was hot.

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She almost always wore white cotton tank tops without a bra, in typical 80’s exploitation.

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She also had a bad case of serious 80’s hair.

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But it was a clever idea for an anthology/horror/supernatural style series, and it last three seasons. I kind of got sucked into it, and still remember it fondly. It was syndicated, so it was much lower budget than it would have been had it aired on a network. It was available for streaming on Amazon Prime recently, and the last time I was doing cardio I was rewatching….alas, for my month of horror, it’s no longer available. Rewatching made me realize just how low budget the show actually was; but it would be a great thing to reboot for the modern audience.

And now, back to the spice mines.