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  • C is for Call Me by Your Name

    C is for Call Me by Your Name

    I’m doing this Blogging A to Z thing for the month of April 2026. I did this 10 years ago, and it was pretty random. For this month at least, I’m focusing on queer media – movies, books, TV, etc., by, for, or about queer people.

    Call Me by Your Name, based on a novel of the same name, tells the story of a summer romance between 17-year old Elio Perlman, played by Timothee Chalamet in his breakout role, and 24-year old Oliver, who is not given a last name in the book or the movie, played by Armie Hammer. I’ve not read the book, but I understand it’s told in flashback and Oliver not having a last name is a literary device that would make sense to the very erudite characters in the story. I am not that erudite and it just seems like a weird oversight.

    But not as weird as casting someone who looked 35 to play a 24 year old doctoral student. Many people took issue with the seven-year age difference between the lead characters in this film, mostly because the younger character was a minor. Chalamet was 21 when he made the movie, but with his slight build and baby face, he passed easily for 17. Hammer, on the other hand, probably couldn’t have passed for 24 when he was 24. He’s also huge, so they really did look like an adult and child on screen together. It was kinda creepy.

    But not as creepy as Elio’s parents’ reaction to the relationship. They practically set the whole thing up. First they invited a 24-year old stranger to live in their home and encouraged their teenage kid to spend time with him. Then, after they became aware of the relationship, not only did they not kick Oliver out and fire him, they sent Elio and Oliver off on a romantic weekend together. And months later, knowing that he absolutely crushed Elio’s heart, they continued to treat Oliver like one of the family.

    When I saw the movie, there were five people in the theater. We all walked out together chatting about the movie, and all agreed on a few things: the movie dragged until the last 20 minutes, “what the hell was wrong with Elio’s parents?”, “why, exactly am I calling you by my name?”, and that Timothee Chalamet was going to be huge.

    And look at him now – dating a Kardashian, making movies about ping pong, and dissing ballet and opera.

  • B is for Brokeback Mountain

    B is for Brokeback Mountain

    I’m doing this Blogging A to Z thing for the month of April 2026. I did this 10 years ago, and it was pretty random. For this month at least, I’m going to focus on queer media – movies, books, TV, etc., by, for, or about queer people.

    Note – I’m using AI to generate images. If you’ve seen the movie, you understand the significance of the shirts. I think it’s hilarious how completely WordPress’ AI missed the point.

    One night in the mid 90’s, Pulitzer Prize winning author Annie Proulx observed a middle-aged man watching other men play pool in a bar in Wyoming and began to imagine what life would be like for a typical gay ranch hand. I don’t know how she made the leap from watching someone play pool to gay ranch hand, but here we go…

    60 or so drafts later, her typical gay ranch hands became Ennis Delmar and Jack Twist, two 19-year-old high school dropouts hired to herd sheep on the fictional Brokeback Mountain in 1963. I imagine she set the story in 1963 because by the mid 90’s, even Wyoming had gay bars. The short story appeared in The New Yorker in 1997 and became a movie in 2005 starring Heath Ledger as Ennis and Jake Gyllenhaal as Jack.

    The gist of the story is that Jack and Ennis meet, have a bunch of awkward sex but not much conversation (“… saying not a goddam word except once Ennis said, “I’m not no queer,” and Jack jumped in with “Me neither. A one-shot thing. Nobody’s business but ours.“), and then go their separate ways. Four years later, they reconnect and begin an affair that lasts another 16 years. And then Jack is killed in a hate crime and Ennis is left alone in his grief. And somehow this is seen as an epic romance.

    Unpopular opinion: Ennis deserves the sad and lonely ending.

    I’ll explain.

    In the glimpses we get into their separate lives, Jack ends up in Texas married to Lureen, with a meaningless managerial role in the company she inherits from her father. He cheats on her with both men and women. Not exactly admirable behavior, but the inability to keep his pants on seems to be his major fault.

    Ennis stays in Wyoming, marries Alma, and works a series of dead end jobs. Ennis is an all-around terrible husband. Aside from the relationship with Jack, he’s uncommunicative, short-tempered, and sexually abusive, the last point being weirdly glossed over in both the story and film.

    Throughout their affair, Jack holds out hope that he and Ennis can eventually be together, and Ennis repeatedly stomps on that dream.

    At one point in the story, after Alma finally divorces him, Ennis tells Jack that he’s been “putting the blocks” to a woman who works in a bar he frequents. The movie gives this woman a name, Cassie, and includes a little subplot wherein she and Ennis date for awhile but he ghosts her. When she eventually confronts him, it comes out that he’s no fun and barely speaks.

    So why do people fall in love with this guy?

    The takeaway from Brokeback Mountain is that for gay men in the American West in the 1960s and 1970s, life was miserable, and likely to end in violence or solitude. While there is probably some truth to that, it bothers me that when Annie Proulx imagined life for a typical gay ranch hand, she came up with a dullard with a mean streak and a sad sack who meets a violent death.

  • A is for The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and…

    A is for The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and…

    I’m doing this Blogging A to Z thing for the month of April 2026. I did this 10 years ago, and it was pretty random. For this month at least, I’m going to focus on queer media – movies, books, TV, etc., by, for, or about queer people.

    The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is a 1994 Australian movie about three drag queens on a road trip from Sydney to Alice Springs in a silver, then pink tour bus dubbed Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

    To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar is a 1995 American movie about three drag queens on a road trip from New York to Los Angeles in a yellow Cadillac convertible, who carry with them an autographed photo of Julie Newmar.

    Each film includes an older, established performer who tends to be the adult in the room, a younger, immature, somewhat annoying performer, and…the other guy, who talked the more seasoned performer into allowing the younger one to come along.

    In both films, the vehicle breaks down in the middle of nowhere in a town that seems to be 20 years behind the times, providing an opportunity for the travelers to get to know the locals while they wait for repairs to be made.

    And both films include a scene where one of the drag queens kicks someone’s ass.

    The films were apparently in production at the same time, and the remarkable similarities are just a bizarre coincidence. But despite all the similarities, the movies are actually quite different.

    In Priscilla, the reason for the trip is ostensibly a four-week gig at a resort. We learn along the way that Tick (Hugo Weaving), who organized the trip, is married to the woman who runs the resort and they have a 12-year-old son that Tick doesn’t know. Terence Stamp plays Bernadette, a transgender woman in her 50’s, whose husband has just died, and who feels the need to get out of town for a while. Guy Pearce is Adam, who is new to drag, very campy and loud all the time, and clearly annoys the hell out of Bernadette, who at one point comments that he’s performing all the time.

    While there is a lot of humor and ample opportunities to see the queens performing in truly spectacular drag, the road trip is just a vehicle (pun intended) for a story about three people at turning points in their lives. Bernadette, Tick, and Adam are three vastly different characters that show just some of the variety of queer experiences. The film is loosely based on the lives of three real drag performers who were initially set to play themselves, but the studio wanted more bankable, i.e., straight, stars.

    One negative in an otherwise excellent film is a completely unnecessary subplot portraying a supporting character’s Filipina wife as a crazy, alcoholic, ex-prostitute and stripper. I’m tempted to say it hasn’t aged well, but it’s hard to imagine it was ever not offensive.

    In To Wong Foo, Patrick Swayze’s Vida and Wesley Snipes’ Noxeema, tie for first place in a drag contest in NYC, and are travelling to L.A. for the national contest. John Leguizamo’s Chi-Chi Rodriguez (and yes, the golfer Chi-Chi Rodriguez did sue) tags along. We don’t really get to know the characters beyond that.

    The reason for the photo of Julie Newmar is that it exemplifies the level of glamour they aspire to in their day-to-day lives. And they achieve it. The three stars appear in drag throughout the film, and their outfits are amazing, and other characters believe they’re women, which is absurd. But like Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in Some Like it Hot, not at all convincing as women, but we all just agree to suspend disbelief.

    Patrick Swayze, probably because he was a dancer, actually did a pretty good job of embracing the physicality of the role, carrying himself completely differently than he did normally. Wesley Snipes in a dress, though, was just Wesley Snipes in a dress.

    To Wong Foo is not a bad movie. It’s also not a very good movie. It’s fun to watch, but it’s kinda silly, very predictable, and doesn’t have anything to say.

    But on the other hand, it doesn’t include any horrendous racial stereotypes, so there’s that.

  • No Place for Hatred in America

    No Place for Hatred in America

    Hillary Clinton said today that “Hate has absolutely no place in America.” I appreciate the sentiment, but sadly, she’s demonstrably wrong about that.

    I woke up this morning to news of the shooting in Florida. At that point, they were reporting 20 dead, and 40 or more injured, and saying it was among the worst mass shootings in US history. I didn’t even register that it was a gay club right away.

    I made coffee and cooked apple-cinnamon pancakes for my daughter. She asked for them last night, and I am so thankful that on Saturday night, she was home requesting apple-cinnamon pancakes for breakfast.

    After breakfast, we went to the local farmer’s market. Around the corner, there was some low-key Pride-related stuff happening. There were a few vendors, some information booths, a bouncy castle. It was early – it may have become less low-key as the day progressed.

    At one booth, they were registering people to vote – Democrat of course. Another had some information on LGBT safe spaces. I’ve seen a handful of safe space stickers in shop windows around town. It’s kinda cool to see that out in the country.

    Leaving the farmer’s market, I saw two young men walking casually down the street holding hands. No one seemed to notice them. It’s nice to live in a safe space.

    Back home, I heard the death toll was at 50, making this the worst mass shooting in US history. The shooter’s father said it’s not about religion – his son was upset about seeing 2 men kissing a few months ago. So upset by two men kissing that he stewed on it for months and planned a mass murder of gay people.

    Then I heard that the killer had been investigated twice by the FBI for possible ties to ISIS. Donald Trump crowed about being right about terrorist attacks. Some asshat in Texas tweeted a bible verse about reaping what you sow.

    I am Pulse and I am Orlando started showing up as Facebook profiles to show solidarity with and support for the victims and the community. I vented my spleen about how a terror suspect can obtain assault weapons, but gay men can’t give blood.

    Gay men can’t give blood. Like I’m talking about someone else. Old habits die hard.

    I took my daughter out to lunch. We went to an antique store. Ran a few errands.

    In LA, police arrested a man with assault weapons, and possibly explosives, on his way to the Pride parade.

    We made dinner together and watched kids cooking competitions on the Food Network. And I tried to pretend that I’m not seething with anger and fear.

    Unfortunately, hate is all too common in America today. Today ISIS claimed responsibility for a mass killing of gay people. American Christians, some of them elected officials, have been calling for gay people to be put to death for years – 51 that I’ve been around for.

    But today, I saw two young men walking down the street hand-in-hand and no one cared. And I’m going to try to stay focused on that.

  • Blogging A to Z Recap

    Last month, I participated in the Blogging A to Z challenge. It was a last minute decision – literally made the day the challenge began.

    I had created a WordPress account years ago, and did nothing with it, so the first challenge, of course, was retrieving the password.

    I have to confess, I scoffed a bit at the challenge. How hard could it be to just jot down a few paragraphs every day? Apparently, pretty hard, judging by the number of days I posted close to midnight.

    The hardest part on most days was simply choosing a topic. Once I’d settled on the subject matter, the posts came about pretty quickly. Several posts were inspired by news stories. Some by things that happened to be going on in my life that day. Some days, I would google “words that begin with __” and scan the list until something came to mind – particularly on days when 11:00 PM hit and I hadn’t written anything. That’s how I came up with K.

    Some of the participants had an underlying theme to their month of blog posts. I will do that in the future. The first few days, I managed to include original photographs, and thought that would be an underlying theme, even if no one noticed it. That stopped at G.

    I was pleasantly surprised to see that people I didn’t know personally were following me. I hope to keep up the exercise, not every night, but a few times a week. Let’s see if I keep the followers and gain a few more.

    The new challenge is to come up with some sort of underlying theme. Instead of me just rambling, I’d like to come up with something consistent to ramble about.

    Open to suggestions.

  • Z is for (Tappan) Zee

    Z is for (Tappan) Zee

    I’m doing this blogging A to Z thing. Today is Z.

    So this is it. On a whim, on the day the thing started, I signed on to do this A to Z Blogging Challenge. For the month of April, several thousand people wrote a blog entry every day (not counting Sundays), with each day’s topic starting with a new letter. Some had a general theme. Others, like me, winged it. Coming up with a new topic each day was the biggest challenge, and quite a few days, I hit publish moments before the day ended.

    Today, I’m writing early as I’m going out later and won’t have a chance to write something before the end of the day. But still, rushing to get something on paper (figuratively) before I head out.

    The New Tappan Zee Bridge

    I remember the first time I drove over the Tappan Zee Bridge. I was in college, heading from Northern New Jersey to the Bronx. I was never really conscious of the hill in the middle of the bridge until I drove over it at high speed in dense fog. Yikes.

    Since then, I’ve driven it hundreds of times, in all sorts of weather. The bridge wasn’t built for the amount of traffic it gets, so traffic jams are the norm. More than that, the bridge can’t handle the stress. It hasn’t felt safe in years. And it seemed like they were talking about replacing it for years.

    A few weeks ago I read an article about the construction process for the new bridge. I guess I haven’t been out that way in a while; I had no idea how much progress they’d made.

    I love the design of the new bridge – it’s really visually striking. But the construction process is kind of amazing. Obviously, building in the middle of a river is a bit of a challenge. I’ve heard from people who commute across the existing bridge that watching the construction is the best part of their commute. I imagine people slowing down to watch contributes to the bridge delays I hear about in the traffic report pretty much every day. But it probably makes the commute a little safer too. Kind of like putting mirrors in stairwells to keep people from rushing down the stairs.

    The new bridge is clearly being built to accommodate more cars, and apparently there will be no toll booths. They’re going with high-speed EZ Pass and high-speed cameras that will capture the license plates of anyone without an EZ Pass so they can send them a bill.

    Hopefully, someday soon, the daily bridge traffic report will be a thing of the past and crossing the Hudson on the way to New England won’t be the scariest part of the trip.

     

  • Y is for Yogurt (Frozen)

    Y is for Yogurt (Frozen)

    I’m doing this blogging A to Z thing. Today is Y.

    I just scarfed down some Ben & Jerry’s Half-Baked Froyo, which, according to the container, is “Chocolate & Vanilla Low Fat Frozen Yogurts mixed with Gobs of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough & Fudge Brownies.”

    The frozen yogurt is considerably lower in fat (3g to 14g) and calories (180 to 270) than the ice cream equivalent. But still…gobs of cookie dough.

    I think when you start measuring ingredients in gobs, it’s safe to say you’re no longer talking about a healthy snack. But I kid myself that it’s good for me because it’s yogurt.

    Granola bars are basically cookies – nutritionally similar to Oreos. Dried fruit has almost as much sugar as candy. Pretzels have no fat or cholesterol, but are loaded with salt.

    We know this stuff is no good for us and eat it anyway. Inside we’re saying “I know this is a bad choice. But it could be worse.”

    Kinda like voting.

     

     

  • X is for Xenophobia

    X is for Xenophobia

    I’m doing this blogging A to Z thing. Today is X.

    Xenophobia: n. intense or irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries.

    There’s a lot of that going around these days and I just don’t get it. I guess that’s where the irrational part of the definition above comes in.

    My maternal grandparents were Irish immigrants. They both sailed for America at 17 (one in 1914 and the other in 1915) to find work – something there was none of in Ireland.

    I didn’t know my grandparents, but I heard stories of them sailing for America as teenagers and I always pictured them like the kids in this Schoolhouse Rock episode.

    They came here, took the sorts of jobs people give uneducated immigrants, and made lives for themselves. Eventually they met, married, and started their own family. They lived in a neighborhood of Irish and Italian immigrants, and got started on the whole melting pot thing. Their kids’ generation eventually left for the suburbs and another wave of immigrants moved in.

    One year I found copies of the ship’s manifests (“Lists or Manifests of Alien Passengers for the United States Immigration Officer at Port of Arrival.”) from when they came over and put them in a frame with pictures of the actual ships (the SS Celtic and the SS New York) and gave it to my mother for Christmas. She passed a few years ago so now it hangs in my kitchen.

    Every day, I pass the manifests of alien passengers and I’m reminded that I’m a second generation American. Only one generation separates me from people who left their homes to escape crushing poverty and came to America to start new lives.

    And I try to behave accordingly.

     

  • W is for Wall

    W is for Wall

    I’m doing this blogging A to Z thing. Today is W.

    The idea of building a nearly 2,000 mile impenetrable wall between the U.S. and Mexico is ludicrous. We’ve spent something like $7 billion already on fencing that only spans about a third of the border. The cost of a wall would be astronomical.

    Donald Trump thinks we’re going to get the Mexican government to pay for it, and has an interesting extortion plan in the works to make that happen, but…

    Putting aside for a moment that this the dumbest idea ever, I think there is a way to pay for it.

    Naming rights.

    Think about it: MetLife Stadium, Barclay’s Center, PNC Arts Center, Citi Field. Companies would pay to get their name on this thing. You know Trump wants his name on it. Sell it off in chunks – it’ll be a gold mine.

    Of course, you’d have to make it more than just a wall. It would have to be a destination (just on our side of course…). Stagger a few giant entertainment / retail spaces; a few stadiums; maybe some water parks…

    Wait, wait…I’ve got it…

    Casinos!! C’mon, the sucker will pay for itself. What could go wrong?

  • V is for Victim

    V is for Victim

    I’m doing this blogging A to Z thing. Today is V.

    According to this article in the NY Times, NC Governor Pat McCrory believes that the entire transgender bathroom debacle was actually orchestrated by Democrats and the Human Rights Campaign in order to give Democrats the edge in the upcoming Governor’s race.

    Uh huh.

    Apparently he’s very irritated that the law has taken center stage in the election and that the backlash has allowed for no dialogue on a “complex issue.”

    No dialogue. This is a law that was introduced, pushed through both houses of the North Carolina legislature, and signed into law in one day in a special session – at a cost of $42,000 of taxpayer money.

    But no one wants to hear his side of the issue. And this was all the Democrats doing.

    Pat McCrory is the real victim here.

    Here’s the thing. This isn’t a complex issue. All this transgender bathroom nonsense is just solutions in search of problems. There was no issue to be addressed.

    So it’s not that people don’t want to hear what he has to say. The problem is he has nothing to say, but won’t stop talking.

    Here’s a thought: when you’ve dug yourself into a hole…STOP DIGGING.