Kirk Cameron's (a) dick

 

Former child star Kirk Cameron--whose parents pimped him out to predatory Hollywood Elites at a tender age--shows off for the cameras a model of his weird, misshapened penis. It's a last-minute effort to boost Christmas sales of his line of Evangelical Celebrity Dildos.

#SorryNotSorry

Via Rail Nordique

#FakeMapFun

I saw this map posted earlier this week on Twitter by @apapenheim.

I immediately understood that this map was a joke (some on Twitter apparently missed this point), although I probably do not get all the jokes. I've lived in Canada for 5-1/2 years now, so I should get some, if not most of Ministry of Canadian Humo(ur) references. Or maybe I just have a jones for geography? Yes, that, too.

Here's what I've gleaned so far:

• High-speed rail all over the thinly settled North with Moose Factory, Ontario, being the Grand Central Station/transit center for all of Eastern Canada. It is funny, but it is also sarcastic, as the Canadian North and the Indigenous people who live there are probably the least well served by the Canadian government (boil water orders, no roads, poor housing, suicides) and the least acknowledged by the rest of Canada. But, you know, Canadians are so nice, all is forgiven!
  

• One lowly little high-speed rail line between Toronto and Sarnia--not Windsor, which one would expect over Sarnia, as Windsor is the "more important" city, the end/start of the McDonald-Cartier Freeway corridor, where most of Canada's population lives. Also, Toronto, Canada's most populated city, is completely disconnected from the rest of the high-speed network. And let me tell you, Toronto will not stand for this!

• No stops in Montréal (suburban Laval, instead) or Québec City (suburban Lévis, instead) and barely a stop in Ottawa, the federal capital. Again, the Québec City-Montréal-Ottawa-Toronto-Windsor corridor is the country's most populated. And, as Torontonians would say, it's most important.
  

• No connector between Calgary and Edmonton. The sibling rivalry is intense between these two, and never the twain shall meet.

• Barely a way out of Winnipeg. Likely more true than Winnipeg would care to admit.

• A stop located in "Marché aux Puces," Ontario. Which means "flea market" in French. I admit I had to consult my dictionary to get that joke.
  

• A stop located in the Narcisse Snake Pits, Manitoba. Is this even a thing? Yes, apparently, it is!
  

• A connector to Bismarck, North Dakota (why?), and another to Point Roberts, Washington, a city only accessible by land through British Columbia.

• The "under construction" line between Kegashka and Blanc-Sablon, Québec. In real life, there is no road between these towns along the Québec coast. I'm assuming they are all fishing ports that have limited ferry connections between one another. Part of the joke is likely that a road has long been proposed for this region or is something that seems desirable, yet impossible, and thus will never happen.
  

• "Thanks" to various entities and people, including the "SAQ"--la Société des alcools du Québec, AKA the liquor control board for the province of Québec. SAQ does not stand for la Société alcoolique du Québec--the Alcoholic Society of Québec--as I have been known to call it. By accident, I swear.

• The suggestion in the Twitter comments that this transportation map looks like it was crafted by the Toronto City Council, where eternal political gridlock for decades on end prevents even the simplest of transportation plans from moving forward.

I didn't get the reference to Hyder, a town in Alaska. Like Point Roberts, Hyder is separated from the rest of the U.S. and only accessible via Canada.

 

So I understand most of the jokes, but you know what? The jokes just aren't that funny. Or they're funny in a small-country, in-joke, Canada-is-so-special kind of way, which, like a robot, computer, or android, I understand but do not feel.

 

Perhaps, then, I've lived here long enough. Which gets me to part of why I've been so silent over the last few months: Yes, I've been busy with work and living my best pandemic lockdown self, but I've also been applying for jobs--and I finally got one in November. I say "finally," but it really only took two to three months once I made up my mind to move on.

And move on I will, next spring, back to the States, where I think I belong, at least for now. At least until Argentina is open for business again.

Oh Canada, I had such high hopes for us 5-1/2 years ago. My main reason for leaving, on paper, is to seek new professional challenges, but let's not be two-faced about it: Canada, you and I are not a good fit. I hate to admit it to you, but I've been faking my Canadian orgasm since at least 2017--the sight of the red and white maple leaf no longer stirs my heart, if it ever did, and I just don't give a rat's about David's story arc on Schitt's Creek. I care even less, if that's possible, about Dan "I don't like labels" Levy's opinion on anything or Drake's latest musical offering. 

 

Really, let's call the whole thing off. Faking it is just no way to live, no way to face and embrace your soon-to-be-sixth decade on the planet.

So, au revoir, Canada. Don't worry, though, there's plenty of time to talk it through. This will be a painfully long goodbye as I don't exit Stage American until May 2021.

 

Oh, and by the way, I still have permanent resident status and a citizenship application in the works. Because, Canada, the thing I may have learned most and best from you is insincerity.

Love my way

 

Because I need to post something for November 2020. 

Part 2 of my Elio and Oliver mixtape, made for a friend's birthday, although I secretly suspect he has not and will not listen to my lovingly crafted, slightly self-indulgent oeuvre.

Season of the Witch

 

Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger, and The Trinity performing Donovan's "Season of the Witch," 1968 or so. One of the trippiest things I've seen in ages and certainly a song to set the mood for Halloween.

Just chicken-fry everything already

More #PandemicPantryCooking: This is the main thing I made in the kitchen this week: The ultimate chicken-fried steak.

And it truly was.

 

I'm sorry, but maybe it's a Texas thing, and every now and again I need a serving of chicken-fried steak so that I am not completely bummed about by life, politics, work, work, and more work. Honestly, I think Louisiana, Texas, and New Mexico may have America's best food. (Is it wrong to select a place to retire based on what you can get to eat?) 

 

OK, California, too, I'll give you that (for fish tacos and every Asian cuisine imaginable), but the other states are more affordable. And under certain circumstances I will give North and South Carolina credit, but you can get grits in Texas and good seafood in Louisiana, so those states can just serve as your occasional culinary sidepiece.

 

Pandemic pantry shortcuts: 

 

I didn't pat dry anything, as the recipe recommended, but probably should have as it might have made the batter and breading stick a little better. Although it did just fine.

I didn't have Tabasco sauce (because Canada) but did have Cholula hot sauce (because Canada?), which added a nice kick and really made the dish. 

 

I did not make my own gravy (although I can), instead using my last packet of San Antonio Pioneer Flour Mills cream gravy mix, which I bought when I visited a while back. (I will accept charity. Just so you know, the mail still works reasonably well between the U.S. and Canada.)

 

I splurged and used some very nice, thin Angus beef steaks, about 1/4- to 1/3-inch thick.

 

Heart healthy? Please see yourself out. But it was damn fine eatin' at Rancho Santo Montag this week, y'all. 

 

And some weeks, that's all that matters.

 

***

 

Image credit (oh, Blogger, why did you change your format?): The mothership for packaged cream gravy - San Antonio's Pioneer Flour Mills. By Leaflet. CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported. Source: Wikimedia Commons. 

Death has grown tired of chess

 

Republican Way Off Broadway

 

Not a Drape, not even a Scrape

 

Surrender Dorothy!

 

Dinner is served with a generous side of anxiety

Gỏi cuốn or summer rolls by Yuchinkay. CC BY 2.0 Generic.
Via Wikimedia Commons.

"You'll have to tell me how this works. I haven't eaten in a restaurant since March." 

 

Neither had I. 

Today Cairo and I went to a favorite Vietnamese restaurant, Pho Hung on Spadina Avenue at St. Andrew Street in Chinatown, for a late lunch/early dinner. Come to think of it, this is the first place we dined together in Toronto when we started dating more than seven years ago this summer.

Since shelter-in-place became the norm here in mid-March, I've done takeout from a Japanese restaurant and a Persian restaurant near where I live, but that, Tim Horton's, and Mary Brown's Fried Chicken, is about as adventurous as I've gotten in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. In defense of both of us, patio dining just reopened in Toronto in late June, but indoor dining only started up again in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) on July 31.

 

First things first: 

• We had to wear masks, except when eating. Even when I went to the washroom, even when we paid the bill, we wore masks.
• We also had to provide our names and telephone numbers in case contact tracing was needed. (We now also have an app in Ontario to help with this as well.)
• All the silverware (in this case, chopsticks, soup spoons, napkins, etc.) came in individual plastic bags, which we opened ourselves.
• Tables were far apart and some were marked with a bright red 'X' so that no one was seated too close to others.

 But that didn't really matter because we were maybe two out of four or five diners in the restaurant. We were easily outnumbered by the staff and the owners.

 

Heretofore, this has been a very busy Vietnamese resto, in the heart of Toronto's main Chinatown. (There are a couple of others.) Maybe we went at an unpopular time or maybe it was just a nice summer day and everybody was at the beach or the cottage, but overall, Chinatown was more lowkey than you would expect on a Saturday afternoon in August.

 

The food was great, as always, maybe even better in some ways than usual but that could in part be down to the fact that we hadn't eaten there in so long. We even peeked into some shops along Spadina, which seemed to be doing a fairly brisk business, despite the pandemic.

 

But I keep thinking about that restaurants, all the restaurants, and how any of them have survived this lockdown. You really have to wonder how most of them, any of them, have held on for this long.

 

So maybe this will make me get out and about a little more, at least once a week, at least for takeout, to put some money back in the economy, other than a steady stream of Amazon and iTunes purchases. I confess that even as a die-hard introvert, I feel somewhat stir crazy at this point, ready for company, some activity, new sights and sounds, and definitely something other than my own cooking when I can be bothered to cook at all.  I can only imagine how the extroverts among us are doing. 

 

Stage 3 of reopening, where we are currently in the GTA, still feels a little raw, a little chancy, a little brutal even. There seem to be more homeless people on the street, in my own neighborhood and in Chinatown. We're not even close to normal, but perhaps today was one small step toward normalcy. Hopefully so. 

 

And then this evening we watched the news and learned that the province is back up to having more than one hundred new COVID-19 cases reported per day, a number not seen since early summer. Our infection rate is small stuff compared to what's going on in the States and other parts of the world, but that and the fact that the U.S.-Canada border is closed to travel for the foreseeable future are signs that the pandemic isn't done messing with us just yet.

 

I, the profaner

 

I discovered this song earlier today, the whole album in fact, 11 episodios sinfónicos, by the late Gustavo Cerati, a famed Argentine musician, songwriter, and lead singer of rock en español legends, Soda Stereo.

Cerati died too young, just a few years ago, due to ongoing complications from a stroke. This album and concert were recorded in Buenos Aires in the early 2000s when he would seem to have been at a creative peak, at least if this song provides sufficient evidence. (However, the Great Gazoo called and he wants his coat back, Gustavo.) I once had a boyfriend from Mexico who waxed eloquent about Soda Stereo, but I never really got them or got into them, at least back then. But now, I'm sorry I didn't. Maybe hearing this record would have made me appreciate the band. Maybe this record would have prompted me to travel to Argentina much earlier in life than I did, only a mere two years ago.

But I've done so twice now, and I will do so again, espero que sí, once the COVID-19 pandemic ends. I've even toyed with the idea of working remotely from Buenos Aires, which now seems completely possible. I'm not quite convinced my employer would agree, but if this pandemic is really anticipated to last for two years, as recently predicted, then what the hell? Why not? I loathe this job, and if you've been reading so far, you know Canada and I have a marriage of convenience--or inconvenience, given its unsatisfying retail scene and its small screen view of everything. Back home, the U.S. seems crazier and deadlier than usual. So if Argentina would let me in, if I had access to good healthcare, if I had access to a strong, reliable internet connection, would it matter if I did my job from a place I would much rather be, improving my Spanish, a lifelong goal, and exploring spectacular landscapes, steak dinners, and Malbecs along the way?

De veras, after all this meshugas, it's hard to imagine going back to the office, let alone to whatever was passing for normal at the beginning of 2020. If I can work from home for six months in Toronto, I could do the same in Buenos Aires, or Salta, or Jujuy, or Mendoza, or Puerto Madryn, or Trelew, or Córdoba, or Ushuaia, or Rosario, or San Antonio de los Cobres ... well, maybe not San Antonio de los Cobres, a unique and beautiful place but one where the altitude is high, the air is thin, and the roasted llama is a little too free-flowing for a sensitive stomach like mine. (And yet I ate it, loved it, and would go back for more if given the opportunity.) 

But, otherwise, hell yeah, I could do this and still hit up the llama blue plate special in San Antonio every few months or so. So buen apetito and buen viaje, bitches! I'm outta here first chance and a ticket on Aerolíneas Argentinas I get.

Tears of a clown

 

Mornin' glory

 

 

"And glory to my hot young boyfriend, Brandon!"*

 

* Fez not included; some assembly required.

Suddenly last summer

This is a recent mixtape I completed as a birthday gift for a friend of mine, who previously in these pages I've dubbed The Italian American, although that label does an exceedingly poor job of conveying anything about his personality. In some ways, it's more of an ironic label, at least if I even remember what irony is at this point, thank you very fucking much Alanis Morissette! (Just kidding, girl. You know I love you. Like a friend.)

We both enjoyed the movie and the book, Call Me by Your Name, although I think IA may have enjoyed both more than me. Increasingly I find I have a somewhat problematic relationship with media portrayals of the G in LGBT+ lives. However, I don't think it's so much the media's take that bothers me; It's more the wishy-washy, fuzzy-wuzzy, hyper-fluid, contemporary take on sexuality and gender identity.

No one seems to want to be Gay with a capital G anymore. Every identity, every gender seems highly mutable. Perhaps that's as it should be: The era I came out in (1980-1983) feels like a thousand years ago (and, let's face it, it was 40 years ago, a couple of lifetimes if we were peasants in the Middle Ages) and represented a very different time in gay life. Pre-AIDS for one thing but also in the midst or even a little post-liberation, a time when gay men seemed to know who they were and what they wanted--and that was to be men who unapologetically loved men. Gay identity was a political statement as well as a personal identity. We had to be united to get across who we were--sure of ourselves and our sexuality (this is not a phase!); men who wanted to be men and not women (I'm not a transvestite!); men who knew how to have fun (sometimes discreetly, sometimes not) but who knew how to present themselves so as to gain respect and further the cause of our safety and equality.

Maybe that's all an illusion. Maybe sexuality and identity were more fluid then than we realized, but back then the bisexuality of men often seemed like an excuse not to commit to being gay and marriage to a woman felt like a betrayal to the cause. That was perhaps way too rigid a view, but the rigidity was there to push us and our rights forward. No waffling! No backsliding! No second-guessing! We're here, we're queer, get used to it!

The rigidity could be chafing and stifling, even to me. It's not that I was interested in women or, other than for a couple of weeks after acknowledging my sexuality and figuring out how to explain it to my parents and friends, that I considered myself bisexual. I am not. I am a solid Kinsey 6, or at most/least a Kinsey 5.75. I can be intellectually attracted to women from time to time, although I'm not sure about physically, and I have no intention of exploring any other possibilities at this late date in life. And I don't feel as though I've missed a thing. If anything, when I think about what I missed, I recall missed opportunities to meet men, get to know men, date men, and have sex with men (although admittedly not exclusively in that trajectory)--and I recall missed opportunities to travel more, where I would have likely met men, got to know men, dated men, and had sex with men.

The stifling part for me is that I often wanted to date and be in love more than I wanted to have sex with more men. I had my share of encounters, sure, but sex, even when I was at my peak {assuming I had one, that is) has never been a hobby or a mission for me. I also think that what rapidly became the gay identity of the 1980s and '90s--well-to-do white urban gay men and their hangers-on (the party boys, the muscle studs, the lovers, just add rainbow flags)--fell flat for me. I didn't have the money, I didn't have the body, I didn't have the ego and extroversion, and I didn't have the interest to be like everyone else, at least for more than a fleeting moment.  

The '70s and early '80s liberation and the '80s and '90s Reaganomics/Dynasty/Pet Shop Boys approach to gay life both seem très passé nowadays. Subsequent generations, post-AIDS crisis, appear to enjoy the freedom created, but the old man in me questions whether anyone coming out after 1992 or so feels any of the responsibility. I see stuff nowadays--the outrageous characters on RuPaul's Drag Race (the Canadian version in heavy rotation here at the moment), the predominance of trans identity in the media, the fluidity of gender ("some days I feel like a man, some days I feel like a woman"--so you understand what it's like to be paid less for the same or more work and fear being sexually assaulted wherever you are, including your own home?)--that makes me cringe. And it makes me feel very old. I always strove fro normalcy, respect, responsibility, permanence, and even a certain level of masculinity. None of that seems to matter anymore.

No, Gay with a capital G life hasn't been a bed of orchids or tulips for me. Sometimes it's felt more like a field of dandelions. While I've employed the beautiful ideal of men loving men as one of my guiding stars in my life, it can sometimes be a lonely journey. Some men can't love you. Some men only want to have sex--all friction and no feeling. Some men stay true to the rigid limitations of masculine power and dominance, even when given a opportunity to be free of these bonds and experience a transformative life. And some men just don't understand you--and you don't understand them.

Truth be told, there never was a choice, there was no fluidity, no in-between state of being: I am Gay with a capital G. It is who I am, and I am proud of that reality and that I've dealt with it reasonably well and lived the best life I could live under sometimes trying, sometimes dire, and sometimes happy circumstances.

So even Call Me by Your Name makes me somewhat uncomfortable as the movie perhaps more than the book implies a choice and a mutability of sexuality that I never felt were part of my reality. But, hey, maybe it's OK--it is the reality for some for sure. It's just that I find the idea of men loving men exclusively and determinedly greatly diminished and undervalued in the current milieu. Maybe we had it our way for too long--we set the standard, we set the course, and expected everyone to comply with our worldview. Maybe this represents a deep generational change, and I represent an old guard that can't get beyond its suddenly evaporating status and privilege. Maybe I'm in the wrong. Or maybe I'm not, but to quote our illustrious Fearless Leader, "It is what it is."

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the mixtape. I took a couple of songs from the soundtrack--French and Italian pop hits from the early 1980s--and expanded upon that, trying to represent the story and the scenes through song. Some of it likely works, some of it likely doesn't, but I hope you'll have fun listening nonetheless. I know I had a lot of fun exploring the pop charts, discovering new music, becoming reacquainted with old favorites, and putting this all together.

Thighs and whispers

Instabull not Constantonipple

 

Trump mispronounces Thailand as "Thighland" pic.twitter.com/PgTRnHpAA8

— The Recount (@therecount) August 6, 2020

Thighland
Nambia
Maracas
Salty Arabia
Phillypenis
Tzatzikistan

Little known fact: Toblerone, the capital of Nambia, and Vanilla, the capital of Thighland, are cistern cities.

Who's your daddy?

 

I wish him well

 

Oh, Schecky ... Part 3

 

Oh, Schecky ... Part 2

 

Oh, Schecky ...

 

Hey, swinger

 

Pandemic dreamin' on such a summer's day

Dream #1

Short version: I invited some people to stay at my place during lockdown, and they brought along a heretofore unknown chimpanzee.

Hilarity did not ensue.

In fact, I found myself saying stuff like,

"Of course I adore your monkey and I want him to be comfortable here but I just don't feel this is the best environment for him"

and ...

"No, I am not being uptight about this; it's just that I need to get some work done, and that's difficult to do with Bonzo swinging around the apartment all the time"

and ...

"I'm sorry, I assumed his name was Bonzo. No offense intended."

Dream #2

More Toronto freeway dreams. There has been more than one, but I can't recall the others at the moment. This time I was trying to dodge road crews, potholes, and bicycles (!) on the Gardiner Expressway.

In this dream, I had to periodically pull to the side of the roadway at some sort of weigh station or sentry booth. Then I had tell someone (the freeway gods?) a joke or funny story. Each time I tried to do so, however, someone just before me had told the same joke or had told a better joke, so I had to keep moving on. Author's note: I blame hashtag games of Twitter.

The big existential crisis of the dream was when I decided to stay on the Gardiner to get to my destination, somewhere northwest of the city, instead of taking a crosstown route to the 401 MacDonald-Cartier Freeway.

Author's note: Sadly, there is no crosstown route like this in Toronto. Quiet Flows the Don Valley Parkway does not count.

I don't know why, other than it being "the road not taken," but this decision caused me a great deal of anxiety. So much so that the anxiety woke me up.

Oh, and somewhere in the midst of this, I had to drive in reverse for several miles so that I could look through the contents of hundreds of Amazon boxes that had been spilled in the roadway.

At this point in the pandemic, my dreams are little more than thinly veiled yearnings for purpose, attention, guidance, road trips, and shopping.

Dream #3

Author's note: The US-Canada border has been closed to non-essential travel since late March; this is expected to continue until at least late August. Oddly, you can still fly to the US from Toronto's Pearson International Airport. (The commuter airport, Billy Bishop/Toronto Islands, appears to be completely shut down, save for the occasional traffic or weather helicopter.) But upon return from your travels, you are supposed to self-quarantine for 14 days until you're sure you're not sick with the 'rona.

I'm in the waiting area of a small commuter airport flying to a work-related conference in the USA. I'm really looking forward to the trip.

I'm carrying with me a small suitcase and my Mac desktop computer (27" monitor) under one arm (as one does, surely). No case for the Mac, just tucked under my arm and dragging it along to use while I'm at the conference. I suddenly realize I've brought it to the airport but forgotten the power cord, the speakers, the keyboard, the mouse, etc. However, I figure I'll sort it out and buy those when I get to my destination.

Suddenly my Mom and sister join me. They're going with me to the conference where we're going to meet my brother and his wife. We go to board at Gate 2, but the numbers are not sequential, 5, 7, 3, 1, 4, 6, 2, so it takes us a while to find the gate.

Instead of using a "jet bridge" to access the plane, we have to take a tram, which will carry us to the plane at midfield. Suddenly, one of my work colleagues shows up for the flight as well.

"I didn't know you were coming to this conference!"

"Yes, I am, but I don't have a place to stay."

Suddenly, I realize that my Mom and sister don't have hotel rooms either. "We'll figure it out when we get there," I say.

Finally, we are on the tram, and I open my suitcase, which is more like a briefcase or satchel. I look at my Mom in a panic. "I've forgotten my passport! I don't have my permanent residence card! I can't get on this flight. I can't get into the US without my passport and can't get back into Canada without my permanent residence card."

I stopped short of standing up, the shot panning out, and yelling, "I'm a man without a country!" but, give that the border is closed and there's no end in sight to all this meshugas, that is the subtext in my thinking these days.

I realized I would not "figure this out later," but I woke up before I had to take any action, such as bolting from the tram or, upon arrival in the US, proclaiming my ignorance when I got to Customs and Immigration. Surely I, an American citizen, does not need a passport to enter my own country when a Canadian driver's license should suffice as ID, I would say in my best Karen/Kyle imitation.

I'm an anxious traveler at the best of times--fine once on the plane, fine when I get to my destination, but getting ready to leave for the airport or leave the airport for the hotel, or home-train-hotel, or home-bus-hotel, or home-car-hotel, or everything in reverse, presents me with a host of unknowns that, frankly, puts me on the edge of a psychic abyss.

So forget two weeks of quarantine: The first trip anywhere after this pandemic is going to require my immediate hospitalization upon arrival for nervous exhaustion.

Smiles of a Bummer Night

Easy for you to smirk, you didn't spend your evening dragging
dead weight out of a movie theater. Persconferentie van de Zweedse
filmregiseur Ingmar Bergman in het Amstel Hotel te
Amsterdam. 10 oktober 1966, by Joost Evers/Anefo.
Courtesy of Nationaal Archief via Wikimedia Commons.
CC BY-SA 3.0.

Now reading: "(Swedish Angst) An Ingmar Bergman Movie for Every Quarantine Mood" by Rachel Handler, Vulture.com, 15 July 2020.

 

Despite the author's claims, personally, I'm not sure I'd recommend you watch these films under the current circumstances. Nonetheless, it's an interesting read, and I do rather like Persona, Wild Strawberries, and Fanny & Alexander. I'd like to watch The Silence again (at least I think I've seen it before) and a version of Smiles of a Summer Night in which all the saucy dialog hasn't been neglected by the subtitles. 

 

And I will always remember Cries & Whispers ... but for all the wrong reasons.

 

Once upon a time, when I used to live in Washington, D.C., I would volunteer at the Smithsonian Institution's many cultural events, especially film series. Back in the day, it was one way to see some interesting arthouse movies. This was early days when VCRs and home viewing were still fairly new. This was also early days when I had zero dollars in my bank account, so every little freebie helped, no matter how constraining.

 

So I volunteered at an Ingmar Bergman film festival where I got to watch (most of) various films--The Silence (again, at least I think), Smiles of a Summer Night (saucy dialog-less), Persona, Fanny & Alexander, and, most famously, Cries & Whispers.

 

It's not an easy watch--but then again, I really wouldn't know for sure. Why? Well, I actually never got to view the entire movie. You see, there is a scene (which I will refrain from describing in all its gory details and thereby end up "spoiling the surprise" for you) that caused not one, not two, but *three* people to faint mid-movie. 

 

As a result, I spent most of the time in the theater lobby contacting security, who called the paramedics, who brought firefighters to the theater along with them, one of whom kept opening the movie theater door and saying things like, "Why in the hell is this movie making all these people faint!?"

 

So, really, I wouldn't recommend this particular Bergman movie at this time or any time. In retrospect, the scene in question just seems gratuitously disgusting, but, hey, it's Bergman. Oh that touch of Sweden with an ice pick in your chest and all that. 

 

Besides, why view a movie that I doubt would now seem as perverse as it was that evening some 35 years ago? You don't need fiction. You don't need celluloid. The reality of watching the American president talk about dishwashers when the COVID-19 death count is 138,000 and rising is perverse enough for a lifetime.

The Barefoot and Pregnant Contessa

Definitely not mine: Steak with shitaki mushrooms by Jon Sullivan.
Public domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Has anyone started a let's-see-what's-in-the-pantry-and-the-freezer pandemic home cooking show? A program for those of us who are too wary or too lazy to hoof it down to the grocery store but instead want to use up what we've already purchased or can easily find at the corner store mere steps from our front door?

 

If not, I may be your guy.

 

Tonight, I made chicken meat loaf. (Ground chicken is fairly easy to find here in Canada.) No marjoram? No problem! I'll just use up this old bottle of herbs de Provence that's been hanging around since Moses was pulled out of the bullrushes. Seasoned bread crumbs? Well, how about if I just use some slices of this stale sourdough bread I bought at the corner store last week? Ketchup? Do I have enough? Do I have too much? Just use the whole damn bottle! It's friends with Moses and will feel lonely if left behind.

 

Steak night! Because I just discovered this ancient frozen steak in the freezer! And look! I managed to buy a bottle of chimichurri sauce at some point. Let's try that as a marinade to cover up the frozen steak's sad, sorry life. ¡Che! You've now got un poquito de la Argentina en su plato.

 

Eggs? Salsa? Dinner! Or maybe breakfast or lunch! Heat the salsa, red or green, in a skillet and sort of poach three or four eggs in the salsa. Just add some leftover tortillas and a can of refried beans. You, my friend, are now the Barefoot-and-Pregnant Contessa!

 

And always remember: What doesn't kill you can probably be reheated for tomorrow's lunch. Or dinner. Or the following day's breakfast.

 

Bon appetit!

The president doesn't measure up

Because he has a very tiny brain/penis/emotional IQ/whatever.

Somewhere over the rainbow

According to Wikipedia, 19th-century gay rights advocate
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs introduced the idea of coming out
as a means of emancipation. Public Domain.
Via Wikimedia Commons.

From the news: "At age 90, Kenneth Felts decided to come out as gay during the pandemic."

 

Good for him, and I wish him all the best. It's sad to me that it took so long, but definitely better late than never. Mr. Felts' experience serves as a good reminder that, no matter what our circumstances, it's best to live our lives as we see fit and not be hemmed in by others' unfair, unreasonable, or bigoted expectations. 

 

Or our own.

 

If you don't think coming out still matters, consider this: There's a commercial for an HIV medication, Biktarvy, in heavy rotation on TV these days. It features in part a black male couple holding hands, dining out together, and kissing. 

 

There's are a couple of scenes in the commercial that feature cityscapes, one of which I think is a bridge on the Riverwalk in San Antonio. As I used to live in San Antonio, I wanted to confirm this, so I did a search yesterday to see if I could find out where the commercial was filmed.

 

In doing so, I came across suggested search strategies such as these:

"Biktarvy commercial disgusting"

 

"Biktarvy commercial complaints"

 (Keep in mind my original search was "Biktarvy commercial location.")

 

And suggested posts labeled:

"The worst commercials to grace your TV in the past decade" (no mention of Biktarvy as far as I could tell)

 

"Is targeted advertising just another form of racism?" (from Reddit)

And there was a link to a message board labeled "Country Conservatives" (you can find this on your own; they're not getting any additional web traffic from me) where the commercial was "discussed" using phrases like "gross," "disgusting," "they can fornicate with no fear of STDs," "Big Pharma," "why is so much of our money spent on medical 'necessities'?" and "yet another loss for moral standards."

 

So, yeah, coming out still matters. It matters a lot in fact. If nothing else, it matters to ignorant, unfriendly, even hateful people who may vote and decide your fate about medical care and the drugs available to treat your medical conditions.

 

Maybe coming out in its own way educates them--or maybe it just serves notice that we're here, that we live amongst them, and we're not going back into the shadows to keep them happy or make them comfortable.

All the inspiration you need

CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.

If I were ever on a golf cart, here are some of the things you might hear me yell:

1) "Help! I've been kidnapped!"

2) "Why are my kidnappers forcing me to wear all this tacky synthetic-fiber sportswear?"

3) "Does the clubhouse make a mean mojito?"

4) "Nice ass!" (After I've visited the clubhouse and had a few too many mojitos)

I cannot imagine any circumstance under which I would feel the need to yell "White power!" Perhaps if I were especially excited to see a Martha White baking supplies delivery truck pulling up to my favorite grocery store. But even then, I think I could muster some restraint.

Sorry, I know it is not a funny situation, but it's either laugh or cry most days, and today I sweated all the tears out of my system by assembling some exercise equipment in an overly warm apartment. 

This particular incident--you know, the one where the King of the A-holes tweets a video of a couple riding on a golf cart yelling "White power!" as they pass by a group of protesters, then claims he didn't know (about this or about the Russian government paying a bounty to the Taliban to kill U.S. soldiers? It's hard to keep up!)--feels like a new low for all of us.

So what's the solution? 

Vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote. And vote some more until it becomes a habit and you can see it make a difference. Because it will. If it didn't, so many people wouldn't be trying to stop you from doing so.

Even if you're feeling uninspired by this year's crop of candidates--and how absolutely precious of you for feeling that way!--vote as if your life depends upon it.

Because, whether you're dealing with racial hatred, police brutality, the Taliban, COVID-19, or a myriad of other tragedies, clearly your life and the lives of your fellow Americans does depend on your voting. Not doing so or doing so badly clearly has catastrophic effects on all us. 

The only inspiration you need right now is making sure your fellow Americans are safe and well. The revolution, or--choose your own adventure!--whatever it is you want to happen, can likely wait a little longer.

Soy infeliz

Lmao this lady on Telemundo be slapping the shit outta people pic.twitter.com/MzjGzb4ekE

— 𝑴𝒓. $𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒆 🤴🏾🥃 (@WhereDaYakAt) June 25, 2020

Me on the Fridays I don't take as vacation days.

* * *

By the way, I finally figured out who the actress is, Venezuelan power house and runner-up to Miss World 1980, Hilda Abrahamz.

Her peleas y cachetadas (fights and slaps) are featured prominently in the YouTube channel, Soap Fights.

If you're happy and you know it, slap your enemies upside the head!

* * *

Cálmate, cálmate, tranquilo, tranquilo. I do not advocate physical violence against those you hate, dislike, or even just find annoying. Don't you just know that Olimpia Mercouri de Villanueva, Ms. Abrahamz character in Mi gorda bella, would get hauled off to an anger management program if she did crap like this in real life.

Nevertheless, let's acknowledge that I've had a tough year here in Canada, absolutely none of it pandemic-related. As an introvert by nature, lockdown has had its perks. Besides, it's been rough and tough since I first landed here on July 1, 2015.

Since that day, I've had to survive and apparently try to thrive while dealing with a handful of malignant, venal narcissists who would tear me down and think nothing of it because I'm too this or not enough of that. Honestly, as dog-eat-dog as the U.S. can be sometimes, when you find people who are kind at home, they are truly kind, perhaps because we know how harsh life can be in an everyone-out-for-him/her/nonbinary pronoun-self world. Things are bad enough. Why make it worse?

But here in Canada ... my goodness. Why is everyone so mean when you have so much? The sense of entitlement, the passive aggression, the jealousy, the pettiness, the smugness, the selfishness, the stinginess of spirit, the persnicketyness, the casual cruelty while patting yourself on the back for being "good" and "nice," the utter goddamned laziness. If you have so much already, it would stand to reason that you would feel all warm and generous with the world around you, wouldn't it? Well, no. The sad reality seems to be that you don't feel generous and want to give more to the world. Quite the opposite. Instead, you just want more and demand that the world to give it to you just how you want it, and if it doesn't, you'll definitely let them know about it.

Canada: A nation of Karens.

Perhaps some of what I see is from the vantage of being a boss, a high-profile personage in a complex organization. It's not as if I never dealt with assholes at work in the good ol' U.S. of A, that's for sure. The country is currently being brutalized by the King of the Assholes and his toadies, after all.

There is less hierarchy here than at home, which might be a good thing if you're lower in status. You have more say--although you apparently do not take on any additional responsibility, you just have a lot of opinions. I find it difficult enough to defend myself when people don't respect my position, my ability, or my intellect--and yet I have to stay calm and measured to convey my authority because heaven help you if you show some steel and hurt someone's feelings here.

And by the way, the challengers do none of the above. They disrespect you to your face and behind your back and do not seem to suffer any professional or personal consequences, as far as I can tell. I guess I should find that liberating, but, instead, it just seems pitiful to me.

Maybe it's because I tried my damnedest for the first year or so to eat, drink, sleep, and breathe Canadian, and it has felt like I've been starving myself, gasping for air, ever since. There is just not enough there there or here here, if you will. I feel like all the country produces is a certain amount of social cohesion and a whole lot of social welfare. Art, culture, a rich tapestry of life--who needs those when you pride safety first and smugness second? Or vice versa. Safety has its appeal, especially if you're not used to having much of it (looking at you, USA). But why does insisting on your personal and professional security result in smugness?

Maybe it's this job, maybe it's Toronto, maybe it's Ontario. Montreal seems nicer, as does Vancouver, and I hear good things about the people in the Atlantic provinces. I've only been to Halifax and the Gaspé so far as was charmed by both, at least for the scenery and human scale of things.

And maybe it's the fact that I've never managed to make any friends here, and I've given up trying. Almost everyone I know is from work or from business, other than the friends I had made before coming here, who are either in Quebec or from Vancouver. And among those I get along with at work, they tend to be outsiders--either from other countries or other, less mainstream cultures. I seem to have only the rarest, most meager of connection with the "old stock Canadians," as the Progressive Conservative Party likes to call them--the white and English-speaking among us.

* * *

If it's so bad, why do I live here, you say? Well, I've been asking myself that over the last couple of months. Maybe even the last couple of years. To tell the truth, I'm tired of being a stranger in a strange land. I want to go home. But I can't, at least not yet.

Love, a legal trip to Cuba, low-cost healthcare, old-age security and the Canada Pension Plan--these are the things that keep me here, at least for another five years.

It's certainly not the weather and definitely not the people.
 

Sunset Bullshittervard

Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard

Our president after his recent rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

(Not) Everybody hurts (just you)

This turned out almost too tragic to post. I'm very very sorry @realDonaldTrump #EverybodyHurts pic.twitter.com/d3nlAL1WAT

— Krister Johnson (@KristerJohnson) June 21, 2020

Dead man crawling ...

(Butt) Hurt

This one is my favorite so far. pic.twitter.com/GfoZGkn7pY

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) June 21, 2020

Dead man walking ...

Droopy is the head that wears the crown

Bill Barr, attempting to crown himself

Separated at birth: U.S. Attorney General and all-around authoritarian wannabe William Barr and Droopy.

A Members Only jacket means a vote for me!

On first glance, this may seem to be quite a reach for relevancy, but I think it's valid, nonetheless.

Way back in the early 1980s when I was still a young man and gave a toss about mid-range fashion for guys, I recall shopping at a Chess King at South Park Mall in Charlotte, North Carolina. Charlotte! The Queen City! Which seemed like Southern-fried civilization at the time because we didn't have "fancy" stores like that in Eastern North Carolina back then.

Store clerks worked on consignment at Chess King. I know this because I still remember this weird incident where a store clerk started literally begging me to buy something, anything, to save his job. He did this in front of his manager, and his manager stood by, arms crossed, in a way that suggested he expected the clerk to start performing up to and including genuflecting and prostrating himself to make a sale.

I didn't understand any of this at the time. I found the encounter confusing. Like any good WASP, I also felt deeply embarrassed and annoyed by the clerk's actions. Whether fairly or not, I thought the clerk was very much a loser; in the interactions I had noted between the clerk and the manager before the encounter, and in the midst of the encounter itself, the clerk struck me as someone who had been sliding through life on charm and good looks. He was in trouble now because that had only gotten him so far in a world that was based on sales and results.

And he wasn't even that good looking.

 

I wasn't too sympathetic so I didn't end up buying anything that day. And I *loved* Chess King, so that's saying something. I think Chess King sold Members Only jackets, and I would have genuflecting myself to find one in a color I liked at a price I could afford.

All of this is to say that now I think I might have some insight into how China's Xi Jinping must have felt when Our Fearless Leader, Donald J. Trump, started begging him to buy America's soybeans in order to help him get re-elected.

Key:

Me = China/Xi Jinping

Loser store clerk = Trump

Chess King = America 

Member's Only jacket = soybeans

Store manager = Wealthy Republican supporters of Trump or maybe John Bolton. (I haven't figured this out yet.)

Separated at birth: Muppet edition

Rated P for Pandering

This preview of The Sims™ Find Religion indicates that this will be a low point in the franchise, truly the most spiteful, racist, and faux Christian expansion pack ever.

Or maybe this is a scene from a telenovela? If so, I think I've seen this one before.

It doesn't end well.