Author Archives: ronqueens

And So It Goes

Today is Friday, August 1, 2025. Yesterday I was absent from this venue because I decided to see a film at the IFC Center in Manhattan at the last moment, even though weather forecasters were predicting flash flooding for most of the day. I waited until about 5:15 to reserve my ticket to see a 25-year-old parody of beach and slasher flicks called Psycho Beach Party starring the inimitable Charles Busch, Lauren Ambrose, and a very young Amy Adams. Last night marked the second night it was being shown and I couldn’t resist seeing a panel of the actor/screenwriter himself and the director of the production, Robert Lee King, after the movie was screened. I bought a senior membership ticket for the 7 o’clock show online at 5:15, so it was time to leave already.

The theater the film was being screened in was the largest auditorium in the venue, so I found an aisle seat a few rows from the stage. A young, perky woman introduced herself as the publicity director of the theater and said that the Q&A would proceed at film’s end.

The plot involves Florence Forrest (Lauren Ambrose), a sixteen-year-old high school senior looking forward to summer vacation on the beach in Malibu, California, who wants to hang out with the boys, and wants to learn how to surf, even though she’s a girl. Before you can say Gidget, Florence becomes involved with the cool boys on the beach. There’s surfer guru Kanaka (Thomas Gibson), surfers Yo-Yo (Nick Cornish), Provolone (Andrew Levitas), and B-movie actress Bettina Barnes (Kimberley Davies) who’s hiding out in a beach house from her studio that’s supposedly haunted.

Soon Ambrose is dubbed “Chicklet” by her on-again, off-again boyfriend Starcat (Nicholas Brendon), who suggests that she’s not even a real chick since she seems not to be interested in sex. She begins to take surfing lessons from Kanaka, and before long, a series of gruesome murders occurs. Florence becomes a suspect in these murders, as she experiences puzzling blackouts where she adopts another personality, that of Ann Bowman, an angry, lewd bondage enthusiast who makes Kanaka her willing submissive slave.

In this film, there are so many send-ups, primarily of 50s and 60s stock types and psycho killer movies, that the viewer gets lost in the mashup. Busch comes in as police captain Monica Stark who is charged with investigating the murders. It soon becomes known that Stark had an affair with Kanaka years ago before making captain.

The cast is extensive here; there’s Florence’s tightly wound mother Ruth (Beth Broderick) who plays her Donna Reed persona to the hilt. Even Amy Adams is a hanger-on among the beach denizens of this Southern California community. This certainly was one of her first film roles, and I had trouble initially identifying her. There’s also a Swedish exchange student named Lars (Matt Keesler) who is living with the Forrests.

The film works as high camp and it’s not necessary to think too much of its exalted aims; it’s just very funny as it pokes fun at these genres with a very light touch.

The interviews after the film were informative. Ben Brantley, originally from The New York Times, interviewed King and Busch. Busch appeared as himself (not in drag) and was dressed all in white. Busch mentioned that the film was adapted from his 1987 off-off Broadway play and that it was determined that more of a plot had to be inserted into the 2000 film adaptation. Busch also stated that the play was formless; there was no serial murder plot which was now added to the King-directed film. The use of Ambrose was mentioned by either King or Busch as they looked at many actresses for the role of Florence Forrest. I wanted to ask a question concerning Adams being in the film, but I lost my chance. However, her casting was addressed by both King and Busch. The director mentioned how she was a good dancer and that in one scene where there was some sort of dance competition among the beach kids, her better dancing skills had to be toned down a bit to suit her character.

The news out of Washington these days is so awful that I don’t know where to begin commenting on every horrible story. The Jeffrey Epstein scandal just gets weirder and weirder every day, what with the bizarre announcement today that convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell, who was serving a 20-year prison sentence in a maximum security facility, was moved to a lower-security federal prison camp in Texas. This move comes a week after Maxwell met in private with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche at the U.S. Attorney’s office in Tallahassee. Details of that meeting have suspiciously not been made public. If this latest action by Dump’s private justice department doesn’t seem a bit suspicious, then we are all morons for not thinking there’s a rotting fish here.

Family members of Virginia Guiffre – one of the women who accused Epstein of sex trafficking and who died by suicide earlier this year – and other accusers of Maxwell and Epstein reacted to the news with “horror and outrage,” saying that it “smacks of a cover-up.” Cover-up indeed. They accused this president of sending a message that “pedophiles deserve preferential treatment and their victims do not matter.” When will Dump’s enablers finally sit down and realize how awful their Supreme Leader is and start putting up some resistance to him? I wonder if that day will ever come.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

And so it went!

Here is former Times critic Ben Brantley and Charles Busch next to him on the right.

Here is Robert Lee King on the left, Brantley in the middle, and Busch on the right.

And So It Goes

Today is Wednesday, July 30, 2025. We have returned from our three-day Disney cruise to the Bahamas to celebrate my son’s 40th – Egad! – birthday on July 28, the day we docked back in Cape Canaveral, Florida. I have to say that my son was overall pleased with the Disney extravaganza, even having no children of his own. As I mentioned in earlier blogs, the reason we took this type of sailing experience was that his good friends have two small children, one being 7 months old and the oldest being about 3 and a half years old. Otherwise, you wouldn’t find me on such a ship going to the Bahamas in late July. Generally, I find the ports rather lackluster and the heat is always a problem. This cruise made two stops: Nassau, the Bahamas, and Castaway Cay, Disney’s own island. I stayed onboard for the first stop and got off briefly for Castaway Cay to go to some beach there and lounge just about a half hour before starting back to the ship. On the island, passengers were treated to a sizzling barbecue, but I eschewed that culinary experience because of the heat and just hightailed it back.

All in all, the cruise sparkled with everything one associates with the Disney brand: movies with a Disney theme, the characters welcoming all of the passengers onboard, shows for two nights related to Disney, the first night being The Little Mermaid and the second Aladdin. There were trivia contests, but most of them had a Disney theme. I tried to enter one of these contests, but had trouble identifying many of the answers to the questions. I even entered an 80s musical trivia game, and if not for my asking to join two other men seated in the lounge waiting to enter the contest, I would have probably answered only one question if even that. I found the questions quite difficult since only a few chords were played to a song, not much more than that.

On the last night of the cruise, all of us celebrated “Joshua’s” birthday in a cool Disney restaurant: Arendelle: A Frozen Dining Adventure, which featured characters from the film and play Frozen (which I was unfamiliar with, of course) staging a show right in front of us since our table faced the stage in the middle of the eatery. The waitstaff came around to sing “Happy Birthday” to Joshua who winced at all of the attention.

The true highlight of this short cruise was the fireworks display off the bow of the ship on Saturday night. I took a several-seconds video of the entire display and it was quite exciting. The theme that night was Pirates of the Caribbean and every passenger was expected to don pirate garb for dancing after the fireworks. I had no such attire, but did condescend to wearing the red bandanna that was provided to us in our stateroom that morning by our stateroom attendant, Sherbelin.

One of the specialized restaurants onboard was 1923 which was named after the year Walt Disney Studios was founded. Elliot and I had breakfast there on several occasions and enjoyed the food there. The buffet was found on Deck 11 in Marceline Market which was named for Walt Disney’s early childhood home in Missouri, according to the description of the ship found on Google. Even though the food here was plentiful, I found it not as bountiful as that found on the Celebrity Apex, the ship we were on in May. Also the design of the whole floor was not as open as that found on the Apex. One quibble I had about the ship was that the elevators were quite narrow, considering that this cruise apparently had 4,000 passengers on board for the three-day excursion. The elevators on Apex were quite wide as I recall them, and we had only a little over 2,000 passengers overall for that seven-day cruise.

One of the other drawbacks of the duration of this cruise was my not being able to explore the whole ship within those three days. There’s just so much you can do within that strict timeframe. I did see two films, or, actually, one and a half films, since I saw only one hour or so of The Fantastic Four: First Steps on the last night of the cruise at 10:45 p.m. If I saw the entire film, I would have come down to the room close to 1 a.m. We were docking around 5 a.m. and I had set our phone alarm to 6:15 that morning. That’s why I decided to dart out close to 12. Another reason was that I was not enjoying the film as much as I had thought I would. Actually, I dare say I thought the film was quite lackluster; I couldn’t accept Pedro Pascal as Mr. Fantastic, the leader of the group, Reed Richards.

The first film I saw in the Never Land Cinema on Deck 4, I believe, was 2025’s Thunderbolts which was dubbed The New Avengers. The film features such actors as Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, David Harbour, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as morally ambiguous CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine who tries to kill of this ragtag group of antiheroes at the beginning of the film who finally band together to fight this new menace from within. Pugh is a standout in the film as Yelena Belova who questions her role as a CIA assassin after her sister dies. Lewis Pullman portrays Sentry, the new supercharged adversary that Valentina pits against the group.

After we docked, we drove to Vero Beach, where we stayed overnight at a lovely beach resort called Kimpton Vero Beach Hotel & Spa in which Elliot, I, and my son shared one spacious room. This was Monday which was my son’s real birthday, so that night we went out to a rustic seafood restaurant called Ocean Grill. The interior was quite woody, dark, and homey looking.

Since it was Joshua’s birthday, I joined everyone in ordering a drink, a glass of red wine. I brought two gifts to give my son later in the evening: a book on the Titanic (a subject he’s quite interested in) and the photo album I put together showing pictures of him from a baby to an adult. I would have to wait presenting him with these gifts as he excused himself from the table early on to state he had a headache. Maybe he was fearful of turning 40 or, as he claimed, he was suffering from being exposed to too much sun over the three days of the cruise. Whatever it was, he asked for his hamburger to be brought back to the room and we honored his wish. So we had dinner without him.

It wasn’t until Tuesday that I could present him with his gifts. This time it was during breakfast at the hotel’s restaurant called Heaton’s where I was able to give Joshua his presents. He woke up feeling much better after leaving last night’s restaurant quite early. Which was very comforting.

After breakfast, it was time to check out of our hotel. It was Joshua’s friend “Dillon” who was able to book an earlier reservation for Elliot on Delta since I was able to change my 7:35 p.m. reservation to 3:25 out of Orlando Airport on Tuesday, July 29, and couldn’t do it on Elliot’s app on his smartphone. Thus we were booked on the same flight and this was quite marvelous. Originally, Elliot had a 7:59 flight leaving for LaGuardia out of Orlando. This was much more convenient for the two of us and we have Dillon to thank. Joshua had to be driven to the airport earlier for a 2:10 p.m. reservation (which was delayed to 2:41 in the car as we were driving back to Orlando), so we all had to be driven to the airport together. Thus my wish to change our time to that of an earlier one without incurring any additional costs.

We got to the airport closer to 1. The driving time was close to 2 hours. It was sad having to say goodbye to Dillon, his wife “April,” and her two children, “Evelyn” and “Lincoln.” And, especially, my son who was going to start a new job very soon in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Anyway, the flight home was very unremarkable, except for some turbulence in the middle of it. During the flight, I was able to watch a Dutch film called Memory Lane about a long-married couple who take a road trip to Barcelona to visit a friend in hospice only to learn that things have changed since the last time they visited southwestern Europe. Also the husband, Jaap, also discovers his wife, Maartje, is suffering from early onset dementia. Not the most laugh-out loud kind of film to watch on a plane. But there were some very small moments of humor in the movie like the characters’ struggle with new technology as they try to enter a hotel room with a newfangled key, their bantering over how they seem so mismatched (Jaap enjoys his retirement by watching TV news, while Maartje yearns for more joie de vivre in her life. She convinces her grumpy couch potato of a husband to take that long-delayed trip by car to Spain to visit an old, dying friend. Along, the way, Maartje experiences spells of confusion, panic, and disappears for no reason at all. It is at this time that Jaap realizes his wife is now suffering from the early effects of dementia and has to accept it one way or another.

We touched down at JFK a stunning 45 minutes early: around 5:45 p.m. I think we actually got into the apartment close to 8. I walked in first, while Elliot left to do some shopping. I met Atticus who walked up to me as if to say, “Where were you all this time?” He allowed me to pet him and he seemed mostly unaffected by our absence. Whoo!

And so it went!

Here is the grand atrium on Disney Wish.

Here is the front entrance to Never Land Cinema where I saw both Thunderbolts and The Fantastic Four: First Steps.

Here are some characters at our dinner in Arendelle: A Frozen Dining Adventure. Don’t ask me who they are supposed to be. I have no clue.

Here’s our ship docked in Castaway Cay.

This is where I lounged in Castaway Cay for about 40 minutes.

Here is the staff going through their pirate motions on the top deck before the fireworks display.

Here is Spider-Man making an appearance during dinner at Worlds of Marvel restaurant. Here we saw Paul Rudd as Ant-Man and Evangeline Lilly as the Wasp speak to the audience from a large wide screen as they interacted with diners.

Here is Cinderella in the grand atrium.

This little amusement took place on the first day on Deck 11 when it was stunningly hot up there. Here are some of our beloved Disney characters dancing and schvitzing in their costumes. I’m surprised no one fainted in that group.

And So It Goes

Today is Wednesday, July 23, 2025. The Epstein imbroglio is not going away and it seems that this president is losing support from many of his own die-hard supporters, and one of them famously came out today to denounce Dump as a “piece of shit.” This erstwhile acolyte’s name is far-right activist Jake Angeli, more commonly known as the “QAnon shaman.” Angeli’s denunciation of his Supreme Leader appears in an online article for AlterNet by Carl Gibson entitled ‘What a fraud’: QAnon shaman publicly trashes Trump in profanity-laden post.”

The actual post Angeli tweeted came today on X in which he wrote “Fuck this stupid piece of shit.” Naturally, he was referring to the Orange Turd. The Onion CEO Ben Collins observed on Bluesky that Dump has lost Angeli as his most ardent fan.

Though Angeli didn’t state his reasoning for why he called Dump a “fraud” and a “stupid piece of shit,” it’s most probable he split with the president over his administration’s continuing refusal to release the Jeffrey Epstein files. Even after he was sentenced to more than three years in prison for his participation in the January 6, 2021, insurrection, the far-right conspiracy theorist continued to insist while incarcerated that there was a “storm” taking place that would result in prominent Democrats being jailed over their connections to Epstein. But this is not going to happen and Angeli and so many of his stupid far-right conspiracy pals are disappointed in what’s going on now in the Dump administration, which is a total coverup of what truly is in those files.

Even the prestigious newspaper The Wall Street Journal unflinchingly reported today that senior Department of Justice (DOJ) officials found Dump’s name in a “truckload of documents” pertaining to the Epstein investigation. The paper can do no more since it is already being sued by this perennial litigant. So why should it care now that the truth has been revealed.

ABC News reported earlier this month that the FBI’s index of Epstein evidence includes a logbook of visitors to Epstein’s “Little Saint James” compound in the U.S. Virgin Islands, along with a log of boat rides to and from the island. Also included in the Epstein evidence is a “document with names” which could be the fabled “client list” that followers of the Epstein scandal say may implicate multiple wealthy and powerful people who associated with the convicted pedophile, and it’s these names that Chump is most assuredly trying to protect – along with his own besmirched name.

In a far-ranging interview with actor Jeff Daniels, who is essaying the role of another Republican president, Ronald Reagan, in the upcoming movie called Reykjavik, had some very hard words for the current toddler in chief. I am in awe of Daniels’ most famous clip of him responding to a college student who thinks the United States is so great, and Daniels reels off some sobering statistics on how this country is definitely not very special anymore; it’s actually very low in terms of standard of living, health care, and other societal measurements. I’m not sure where this clip is from. I know he was in a series recently on the newspaper industry; it could be from that one since he’s on a panel and is responding to questions from the audience.

Here is what Daniels said that is spot-on in regard to not only this president but to the tenor of these dire times. “We’ve lost decency. We’ve lost civility. We’ve lost respect for the rule of law. We’ve normalized verbal abuse. We’ve normalized bullying. Out the window goes character, integrity. We’re supposed to elect the best of us, not the worst of us. He’s everything that’s wrong with not just America, but being a human being.” Here, here. This is exactly how millions of us currently feel at this moment.

Well, tonight is my last entry until next Wednesday since we come home late on Tuesday, July 29. The Disney cruise is on Friday, July 25, and it ends on Monday, July 28, my son’s actual birthday. So let the party begin!

Have a great next few days. Also have a wonderful weekend.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Tuesday, July 22, 2025. This Jeffrey Epstein business is such a hot potato for the convicted felon of a president that his henchman MAGA Johnson, the creepy House Speaker, has decided to shut down the House before a pivotal vote could have been taken to release the Epstein files. This is so fucking immorally blatant that no one is fooled by Dump’s biggest booster doing his duty to appease his Supreme Leader, but as article after article has pointed out, this affair will NOT go away and it could cause permanent damage to Chump’s second term after just six months into his second term.

One online article for AlterNet reveals how ruinous this scandal could be for the adjudicated sexual predator in the White House and it’s titled ‘In danger of coming undone’: Analyst says Epstein crisis exposed 2 key problems for Trump,” and it’s by Carl Gibson.

According to a recent analysis, the so-called president is already struggling to defeat a problem of his own making. In a Tuesday op-ed for The Hill, Democratic strategist Brad Bannon wrote that the ongoing controversy over Jeffrey Epstein is taking all the wind out of Dump’s sails less than a year into his second disastrous term.

According to Bannon, the longer Dump refuses to be transparent about Epstein, the worse it will be for him politically. Oh, don’t you just love this! The bastard is so terrified of the backlash against him that he started bloviating over a former president, Barack Obama, for committing treason. How could anyone in his or her right mind accept this delusional insanity coming from the pouty lips of this psychopath? He is deflecting and distracting even more desperately than ever. And his made-up delusions will not convince anyone that he’s telling the truth!

According to Bannon, he added that the scandal “reveals two key problems with [Trump’s] second term” that pose a significant risk to his ability to be effective in the future. Bannon said, “First, the president has broken a series of promises he made to the American people during the 2024 campaign. Second, he has always relied heavily on his most loyal supporters in times of trouble, but the once solid MAGA base is in danger of coming undone.”

“Trump’s refusal to release the infamous Epstein list is just one of the many promises he made while he was soliciting votes for his return to the White House last year. He has become the typical politician who will say anything to get elected and fail to deliver when he wins.”

Bannon went on to argue that Dump has already burned most of the bridges that helped him get reelected outside of the Epstein matter, including his former friendship with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who was his Number 1 campaign donor in 2024 before condemning his horrible budget bill. He also angered influential far-right podcaster Tucker Carlson by continuing to fund Ukraine in its war with Russia and former White House strategist Steve Bannon (no relationship to the author here) who has used his podcast to tear into Chump’s signature domestic policy legislation for lavishing the wealthy with another multi-trillion-dollar tax cut, arguing instead for significant hikes in the corporate tax rate. This statement from Bannon is very hopeful in terms of Drumpf losing his power as a result of this scandal: this could be the final nail in his political coffin.

“The sorry state of the economy will eventually be Trump’s undoing as it was Joe Biden’s,” Bannon wrote. “But the Epstein scandal gives Trump great grief in the here and now. His failure to follow up on his promise to release the infamous Epstein List of sexual predators has painted a giant kick-me sign on his backside.”

Only time will tell. I’m angry that this asshole called Mike Johnson can just force the House into early recess so this scandal could presumably go away by the time they convene again in September. This will not do and the American public will demand something be done about this affair sooner than later. Let this horrid man not get away with committing rape on 14-year-old girls under the tutelage of the late Jeffrey Epstein. Let’s also hope that his fanatic base of supporters falls away, leaving him in the lurch.

Today is the penultimate day before Elliot and I leave for the sultry state of Florida on Thursday and we did a mitzvah today by driving to Woodmere to help Elliot’s former neighbors “Mary” and “Joseph” by helping Mary with Joseph who has severely hurt himself with his back around July 6. Mary called us earlier this morning to ask us to come out and help her with doing shopping for her. Originally, I thought we were going to stay with Joseph while she went out and did some grocery shopping. When we arrived around 3, that was not the case: Mary desired us to go out to a neighboring FoodTown to buy items on a shopping list. We saw Joseph sort of haunched over on the couch. He had a towel over his privates since he is unable to get dressed. We also discover that his pain was not attributed to his back, but that he pinched a sciatic nerve. This could definitely be very painful, and Joseph mentioned that he’s on painkillers. Mary also mentioned that if these measures did not work on alleviating the pain altogether, then surgery is a final option. We hoped that this would not be necessary and then we went out and drove to the supermarket.

After leaving Mary and Joseph, we had dinner at Lucky Boy Restaurant where we topped off our delicious meal (I ordered eggplant parmigiana with capellini, while Elliot had a Greek salad with tzatziki and pita bread) with a slice of their yummy coconut cream pie.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Monday, July 21, 2025. It’s late here owing to Elliot and I watching a wonderful film on Netflix, Sinners, from early 2025. We tried to watch it before, but had some trouble understanding the dialogue. We successfully watched the entire film tonight.

Set in rural Mississippi around 1932, the movie stars Michael B. Jordan in dual roles, as twin brothers Smoke and Stack, who return to their southern town to open a juke joint, in their parlance, after trying to make it in Chicago as gangsters. They recruit their cousin Sammie (a breakout role for Miles Caton) who plays a mean guitar and sings the blues. Most of the early scenes reflect the brothers’ setting up a rundown mill and turning it into a money-making endeavor. They buy the property from a bigoted white man by warning him if he ever tries to bring the Ku Klux Klan there, they will shoot dead everyone who attempts to shatter their peace.

it’s not until much later that the film descends into a confrontation between those behind the doors of the juke joint and the vampires who are outside and trying to get in. This culminates in much gore, with plenty of stabbing and shooting and blood gushing.

Before the gore fest enthusiastically begins, the film makes a statement about music and how it connects generations of humans. A prologue tells the story of mythical figures throughout history with the ability to connect their ancestors and descendants – all the world, really – through music. In one of the movie’s best sequences, Sammie’s performance at the club transcends a singular musical moment to become a culmination of all that has come before and all that will be. You see dancers from ancient cultures in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere make their way through the 1930s crowd, while a modern man suddenly appears next to Sammie to bolster his blues with the buzz of an electric guitar. When you see this, you don’t wag your head in bewilderment because you realize the connection the director Ryan Coogler is making of the universality of music here.

Even the vampires appreciate music here as well, which is a rarity seen in any other vampire horror entry. In this film, the leader of the vampires is a white man called Remmick (Jack O’Connell) who galvanizes his growing horde with Irish music and dance, and his interest in Sammie comes from the perceived power of Sammie’s musical ability. He desires to not only take Sammie’s music for his own (“I want your music,” he growls at one point, “I want your stories”) but to use it to reunite with his own heritage, something he has been robbed of because of his vampiric nature.

Some people might think it takes a long time for the horror aspects of the story to break out, but when they do, they are immensely satisfactory to all horror fans. The film works as a melange of genres and it is very worthwhile to see on Netflix.

Today was an entirely ordinary day, given that Elliot and I will be leaving – once more – for Florida on Thursday to help celebrate my son’s imminent 40th birthday by taking him on a Disney cruise over the weekend of July 25th through the 28th, his actual birthday. No, he’s not regressing. The reason for this kind of excursion is that “Joshua’s” close friend and former boss has arranged this trip with me and he’s bringing his wife and two small children on the ship. This marks my first Disney cruise, so I’m sure this particular kind of cruise will have many darling amenities.

My last blog this week will be on Wednesday then.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Sunday, July 20, 2025. Elliot and I have returned from our second minitrip, this time driving upstate, to Sullivan Country, specifically the hamlet of Phillipsport, located in the town of Mamakating, which is part of the Shawangunk Mountains Scenic Byway. We were visiting Elliot’s old girlfriend from the Lower East Side who now resides over 20 years in rural upstate. We spent about 24 hours visiting “Sue” at the former bungalow county where Elliot spent idyllic summers there over 60 years ago.

We had breakfast on the way, on Route 17, in New Jersey, at the Suburban Diner. Then we took the New England Thruway to Sullivan County and to Sue’s country abode. There she spends her days with her aging companion, Baxter, who barked his welcome at us as we walked down the grassy path to her front door.

After having bagels and cream cheese, Elliot and I took a short drive to Ellenville, the neighboring town, where we visited a local bookstore called The Common Good. Sue decided to stay home with Baxter. This time I resisted the temptation to buy another book that would just sit on the shelf. Even though I was attracted to a nonfiction book on the Christian far right and how it’s destroyed America. I forgot the name of the book and didn’t snap a picture of it, so I will now have to locate it in other bookstores under “new books.” I think this will not be such a tragedy if I can’t track it down.

Close to 7, we went out again to Wurtsboro to an Italian restaurant called Pasta D’Oro that had a very ecletic menu – everything from fish to steak au poivre. Their portions were astounding. Sue’s salad could have been easily shared among three people, let alone just one famished patron. I ordered the polpettini and the veal sorentino which was not only delicious but also bountiful. Elliot ordered nonna’s lasagna which he termed the “best he’s ever eaten.” Sue ordered the veal sorentino like me and was also very impressed with it. All of us had doggie bags brought to us. We eschewed dessert this time to have just coffee and cappuccino.

We left the restaurant after 9 and I was a little apprehensive about Elliot driving home on these dark country roads, fearing an encounter with deer or other animals along the way. Luckily, we had no such encounter last night.

When we got home, we turned on the television to watch a 1949 film based on a William Faulkner novel, Intruder in the Dust. By this time, Sue left us to retire upstairs. I stayed to watch the entire film, as Elliot left after an hour or so. The film was set in Faulkner’s own town of Oxford, Mississippi. The plot concerns the jailing of a strong, proud African-American by the name of Lucas Beauchamp who is accused of murdering a white man in small-town Mississippi in the 1940s. As the town’s white, bigoted residents prepare to lynch this innocent man, a teenage boy named Chick (Claude Jarman, Jr.) joins forces with an elderly morally leaning woman by the name of Mrs. Haversham (Elizabeth Patterson) and another Black youth whom Chick hangs out with to clear Lucas’s name and find the real killer. Of course, the true murderer turns out to be a white business partner of the murdered man.

An aside to the casting of Patterson as the elderly woman convinced of Lucas’s innocence. I thought she looked quite familiar and it turned out that Patterson portrayed Mrs. Trumble on the I Love Lucy series in the 50s. When the film ended, Eddie Mueller, the host of Noir Alley on TCM, provided this interesting tidbit on Patterson: during the latter years of her life, she maintained a residence at the famed Roosevelt Hotel, in Los Angeles, the site of all of the TCM festivals. Pretty interesting, eh?

Surprisingly, I stayed up past 1 when I trundled upstairs to sleep in the spare bedroom next to Sue’s. I managed to read and finish The Day of the Locust and was quite happy.

The next morning, we slept until past 10 and had breakfast with Sue in the dining room. We had more of the bagels that Sue bought. Then I let Sue and Elliot reminisce over 60 years of fond memories. We left around 12:30 or so.

We drove to Ellenville where we had coffee and rugelach (I had it, not Elliot!) at Cohen’s Bakery, the local bakery that attracts visitors far and wide. It was quite crowded before 1 and we had to wait on line to get our food. Elliot bought their famous pumpernickel bread.

Now we prepared ourselves to drive back to Queens, which took a long time (almost 3 hours) to do so. Elliot took the scenic route where we had a wonderful vista of the valley below. This added more time to our drive.

We finally got home about 6 since we stopped at Uncle Bill’s diner, in Flushing, to have a lite bite before getting to Forest Hills.

It’s late here owing to Elliot and my watching an intriguing horror film from 2019 called Saint Maud on Hulu. The story is set in a seaside town in the U.K. and concerns the travails of a private nurse called Maud (Morfydd Clark) who is sent to look after a dying patient, Amanda Kohl (Jennifer Ehle), an imperious “dancer, choreographer and minor celebrity,” as Maude intones in a voice-over when she arrives at her house.

Soon an instant power battle ensues between nurse and patient. You see, Maud is on a self-appointed mission to save Amanda’s soul before she loses her mortal coil. But Amanda has no religious beliefs like Maud. At one point, Amanda scoffs at her and says, “You know it’s all not true. He doesn’t exist.” This sets off Maud, naturally.

This debut feature by Rose Glass brilliantly captures Maud’s descent into religious mania amid elements of self-mutilation, rumbling noises heard on the soundtrack, insects scuttling on the wall, and even a little levitation in Maud’s dingy one-room apartment.

This film is not everyone’s cup of tea since it moves at a glacial pace, and you wonder where this movie will lead the audience. You do get your reward, but this only arrives at the last few moments of the film.

Another week is almost upon us.

Have a good week.

And so it goes!

Here is faithful Baxter lying on the floor in the living room. I think the sneakers there belong to Sue.

And So It Goes

Today is Friday, July 18, 2025. Elliot and I have returned from spending less than 24 hours with my friend’s son, his wife and toddler daughter. But it seemed much longer because of our interaction with “Naomi,” “Zander” and “Nalah’s” whirlwind of a daughter. When we last saw her for her birthday on May 3, she wasn’t this verbal, but yesterday and today, she was as voluble as a wind-up doll. She was actually almost a little shy for her birthday, and that was just a few months ago.

We left Forest Hills yesterday around 9:30, had breakfast at Jackson Hole, and drove straight to Princeton. When we arrived a little after 1, we learned that Naomi was in day care and we had some time to ourselves before we had to pick her up. So after the usual greetings and hugs, we piled into our host’s white SUV and drove to the Dinky Bar & Kitchen, located nearby, in Princeton. We learn that this casual restaurant serving beer, cocktails, and small and large American plates served as a onetime train station. For lunch, we shared several small plates among us and everything was very tasty. After lunch, Zander and Nalah drove us to the Main Street in Princeton where we browsed the Princeton Record Exchange and the bookstore called Labyrinth Books. Actually, I walked into these places with Zander, while Elliot sat in a park with Nalah. It was quite hot then. First, we had to have some ice cream at the Bent Spoon.

We then picked up little Naomi at her day care center which was a private residence nearby. It was then time to decide on dinner. Instead of going out again or even ordering from somewhere, we ate Nalah’s food that consisted of rice, mashed potatoes, and fish. We found ourselves watching a film I’ve seen before and have forgotten much of it, 2005’s Red Eye starring the man of the hour, Cillian Murphy, and Rachel McAdams as two supposed strangers who meet on a red-eye flight from Texas to Miami, Florida. Lisa Reisert who is portrayed here by McAdams is a hotel manager at a luxurious hotel in Miami and Murphy is a mysterious charmer. Soon we learn that he has a sinister purpose in seeking her out as they first meet on line getting their tickets back to Florida. He soon informs her that he works for a terorrist organization which is planning to assassinate Charles Keefe, the current United States Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security. Lisa’s managerial responsibility at the Lux Hotel in Miami, where Keefe and his family are staying, is crucial to the plot. He also tells Lisa that an associate is outside her father’s house in Florida, who is here portrayed by Succession’s Brian Cox. If she does not carry out what he wants her to do concerning the Deputy Secretary, which is to call her hotel to tell her coworker, Cynthia, to move the Keefe family from their regular suite to another set of rooms, he will give the order to kill her father. The tension soon builds as McAdams has to find a way to fight this once-charming stranger and avert an impending catastrophe. There were some good fight scenes and moments of suspense in the film, I thought. However, Murphy does not come across that convincingly as an amoral terrorist. So the film loses something in his portrayal.

Anyway, it was a little over 11 and it was time to go to bed. I had little ability to read my new book, The Day of the Locust, by Nathanael West. I had read this book many years ago and just picked it up again. I still can’t find the book I have to read for my gay men’s reading club, so I just have abandoned the idea. I’ll read anything now.

I have no time to write about what happened today. Suffice it to say we left our genial hosts right after breakfast, had coffee in Grovers Mill, New Jersey, which is well known for its association with Orson Welles’ 1938 “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast. This amazing broadcast depicted a Martian invasion beginning in Grovers Mill which caused a widespread panic and hysteria among many of its listeners who took the program as the God’s truth. We had coffee in a shop that is themed around many iterations of “War of the Worlds.”

After this wonderful find, we drove back to our hosts for the day after I realized I left a charger for my phone and a bottle of water. Then we drove to Edison, New Jersey, to have lunch with my newish friend “Harvey.”

We spent a little time with Harvey in his ranch house (we met only two of his six cats) on a quiet residential street and then followed Harvey in his red sports car to a mall where we had lunch in a restaurant called Seasons.

Now we began the drive back to New York after saying goodbye to Harvey in Edison. It took almost two hours to get back to Forest Hills. I just hate the traffic you have everywhere these days.

Tomorrow we have another drive: this time going north, to Sullivan County, in Phillipsport, where we will stay over “Sue”s house until Sunday. Another sleepover!

Have a great weekend.

And so it went!

This was on the wall of that coffee shop in Grovers Mill.

A picture depicting the supposed Martian invasion at Grovers Mill.

More stuff on the wall.

And So It Goes

Today is Tuesday, July 15, 2025. Despite fervent backlash against a movie, a fucking movie, by Dump’s red hats, Superman has soared to first place among millions of Americans who have made this film this country’s No. 1 film in terms of summer revenue. Severely criticized by bigoted MAGAts for its embrace of immigrants, the film’s more all-embracing theme of kindness and charity toward the “other” has been accepted by moviegoers everywhere. In an online article for Daily Kos by Oliver Willis entitled “Americans reject MAGA meanness as ‘Superman’ soars,” the reality of the mean and stupid embrace of xenophobia has been totally rejected by those millions of Americans who have metaphorically flown to theaters across the country to see the film. This has made the film the No. 1 movie in the United States.

The movie’s success is another humiliating loss for the MAGA movement which campaigned against the film’s proimmigrant themes. Here is a direct quote from the article: “But the film is also a resounding rejection of the bitter, cynical meanness that’s been a hallmark of President Donald Trump’s second term.”

Since its release on July 11, the production has earned more than $122 million and received a rating of 83 percent from critics and 93 percent from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes. That resounding success comes on the heels of the right’s full-throated attack on the film for its being “woke” and their predicting overall failure for the film, which certainly hasn’t come true. Conservatives or the far right – “red hats,” as I call them – were angered by director James Gunn’s description of the film as an “immigrant that came from other places.” However, these idiots don’t know the origin story of the superhero as I know it since I’ve been buying Superman comics for a very long time. Of course, he’s an immigrant and is not from this Earth.

Those on the right were woefully wrong in predicting the movie’s failure, as in Fox News pundit Tami Lahren forecasting the “woke” film’s demise. This noncritic said this about the film: “The new ‘Superman’ movie went woke and will probably flop.” Boy, I wonder how this clueless host feels now since the film has literally soared since it was released?

For those who need a crash course on the history of the comics’ best-known creation, Superman debuted in Action Comics #1 in 1938. Superman is the sole survivor of the planet Krypton who landed in Kansas in a rocket designed by his father Jor-El and was adopted by a farm couple who pass him off as their own child, Martha and Jonathan Kent. The writer states uncategorically, “Superman is an undocumented immigrant – and he has been for all 87 years of his existence.”

The superhero is described as a “champion of the oppressed” and a champion of social justice since the very beginning of his launch.

As for the filming of this new incarnation of Superman, it was written and filmed before the Orange Ogre won the 2024 election, “but audiences can see the clear contrast between the film’s embrace of kindness and the daily meanness of the Trump administration.”

For Dump, cruelty is the point. But for Superman, that is absolutely not the way.

Thus Superman stands for truth and justice – the complete opposite of what MAGA is all about. Unfortunately, this comic book character is a fantasy, an ideal that doesn’t exist in the real world. And one must wonder why this stupid MAGA community got all ruffled over an ideal, a fantasy, anyway. Don’t they have other more serious things to worry about like losing their Medicaid, their Social Security benefits, and so on?

As for myself, I was almost ready to see Superman myself and I was looking forward to writing a review for it in this blog, but I didn’t go. My new friend from the Austin Street Diner who I’ll call “James” couldn’t commit himself to go and see it in the afternoon. So I’ll have to wait for another time. Be patient! I will get there eventually.

Tomorrow Elliot and I will be finally dining with my cousins “Rivka” and “Dillon.” We were supposed to have gotten together a little over a week ago, but we canceled owing to the severe weather forecast for that night and the extreme heat.

Have a good Wednesday.

I will also take the car out for a spin and I’m a little apprehensive since I’m driving to my comic bookstore, the site where the car was dented last Friday. I’ll be on the alert, but I have no control over what might happen to the vehicle once it’s parked. I have to believe what happened was quite rare.

Have a good Wednesday then.

Another little car trip is planned for Thursday, July 17, till Friday, July 18. We’re driving to Princeton, New Jersey, to visit “Zander” and his wife “Nalah,” as well as their two-year-old daughter “Naomi.”

So I’m not sure when I’ll see you again. If not tomorrow, then it’ll have to be either Friday or Saturday.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Monday, July 14, 2025, Bastile Day. As you must know, Bastile Day commemorates the storming of the Bastille prison on July 14, 1789, a key event in the French Revolution. It’s France’s national holiday, symbolizing the end of absolute monarchy and the beginning of a new era of liberty and equality. I seriously wonder when will this country have its own Bastile Day after we cleanse ourselves of this wanna-be monarch, Donald J. Dump, out of our collective consciousness?

In the latest effluvia known as an “Extreme” Court decision today, this “Trump” Court, as it really should be called until this asshole leaves office – if he ever leaves office – the court has now allowed this ogre to proceed with his plan to carry out mass layoffs at the Department of Education. Another fucking win for the convicted felon you can say, delivered to him by the Trump Court. An online CNN article by Devan Cole and John Fritze entitled “Supreme Court allows Trump to proceed with mass firings at Education Department” lays out the repercussions of such a terrible ruling made by the Trump Court.

So, in another irrational victory for this fascistic regime, the Court lifted for now a lower court ruling that had indefinitely paused Diaper Don’s plan. The Trump Court’s decision puts that ruling on hold while the legal challenge plays out.

But in a scathing dissent – Go, Sonia, go! – Sonia Sotomayor said her colleagues had made an “indefensible” decision to let Chump proceed with taking apart an agency that ordinarily can be dismantled only by Congress, but in the second era of Dump, this Congress has ceded its entire power over to the Orange Cheeto, so waiting for Congress to do its job is a moot point these days.

“The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave,” Sotomayor wrote in the dissent, which was joined in full by the other two liberal justices.

The Orange Cheeto ordered mass layoffs at the department earlier this year – cutting its workforce in half – but lower courts have blocked that effort.

Of course, the incompetent and loyal Dump acolyte, Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who is a former professional wrestling promoter – boy, does she have such sterling education credentials to run this agency – described the court’s decision as a “significant win for students and families.” What world is she in when this can be considered a “significant win” for students and families?

Created during the Carter administration, the Education Department is tasked with distributing federal aid to schools, managing federal aid for college students and ensuring compliance with civil rights laws – including schools accommodate students with disabilities. Most public school policies are a function of state government.

The court’s decision, Sotomayor wrote, “will unleash untold harm, delaying or denying educational opportunities and leaving students to suffer from discrimination, sexual assault, and other civil rights violations without the federal resources Congress intended.” This horrible decision by this extreme court just plays into this regime’s fucking record of destroying civil rights in this country ever since Dump took office in January 2025. In the meantime, people will suffer from being laid off when they clearly shouldn’t be. Also, I ask those justices who gave Dump another unworthy win, how do they sleep at night, knowing that their ruling will lead to so much suffering among the American public? They probably just don’t care.

One thing I got done today is have our new Subaru Forrester repaired after some idiot sideswiped it last Friday near Metropolitan Avenue where I had it parked for about two hours. I called my garage and had the attendant known as “Leandro” take the car to his brother-in-law’s repair shop. The job was done within one day. I was called close to 4 and told the car was ready. The cost: just $600. When I went to the garage before getting ready to be picked up by our friend “Patricia,” I was directed to see the car by the manager, “Jerry.” I walked down the ramp and saw Leandro who took me to the car. The rear of the car, which sustained the damage, looked totally brand new. I couldn’t see anything there (though it was dark in the garage) that looked remotely out of joint. I was told to let the car stay in the garage until Wednesday, and I said I would do that.

In a stunning coincidence with my little “accident” on Friday, today I witnessed the aftereffects of a fucking accident with two parked cars right outside my building! Can you believe that? One car was bizarrely up on the street and the other’s rear fender was badly dented. How then could this happen if those cars were parked? It sounds like my little mishap last Friday, doesn’t it? I asked a neighbor who was doing gardening outside, and she mentioned – without corroboration – that the cars might have been struck by an Amazon van. So there you go? Driving in this crazy city is truly a dangerous sport.

Now I feel a little apprehensive about parking in the same area since I will drive to my comic bookstore on Wednesday like I normally do. It’s the best area in which to leave a car. There are metered spots outside the store, but they are in a very narrow two-way street. And it’s still too warm to walk there. I’ll just have to give it some thought. I could use an Uber both ways, but that will be an expensive proposition. I’ll let you know what happens by Wednesday.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Sunday, July 13, 2025. I had another busy day today right after my viewing of Audra McDonald in Gypsy yesterday, even though I didn’t stay in Manhattan after having dinner at the Westway Diner after the show. Again, there would have been no reason to go to a gay bar so early in the day, so I decided to come home instead.

Today I headed again to Manhattan around 11:35 a.m. to meet my Astoria friend “Seth” at a supper club called 54 Below where comedian/singer/actor Lea DeLaria was holding court in a show that was advertised as “Brunch is gay.” I hate to say that I had no idea who this celebrity was since I had never seen her in anything, especially her most well-known series Orange Is the New Black from 2013 to 2019. According to her Wikipedia page, “she was the first openly gay comic to appear on American television in a 1993 appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show.” Remember this one, folks? She is also the originator of the U-Haul Joke which she began performing at comedy shows in 1989. This is the joke that begins with a question: “What does a lesbian bring on a second date?” The answer: “A U-Haul.”

The show was supposed to have started at 1 and brunch was an option if you so wanted it. I had no trouble getting to the venue on West 54th Street, but Seth had some trouble with trains not stopping near there, so he was a few minutes late. When I entered the club, I descended stairs to the main area and was ushered to a table where an elderly couple was sitting. I thought we would have been sitting at our own table, but I was wrong. When I got to the table, the couple was having what looked like a salad.

There was someone in the audience who looked remarkably like the star of the hour, but it later turned out to be someone else. Before the appointed hour, the three-piece band started warming up. And at 1, Ms. DeLaria bounded on stage. I was very surprised to learn that she’s 67 years young. I assumed she was years younger. Sporting a dark suit and a practically bald pate, with black eyeglasses, she immediately begin singing a standard number. Which I’ve forgotten already. Her 75-minute set had less comedy but featured more of her inimitable jazz singing which reminded me of the late Ella Fitzgerald who distinguished herself as a scat singer. The only wonderful bit she did was when she screamed into the mic for an extended length of time this one line, “Fuck Donald Trump!” Fuck Donald Trump!” She went on interminably saying this line to the raucous applause of the audience. I also liked her diatribe of tourists in New York during the holiday season who stupidly stop traffic in the middle of the street to take pictures.

Since Seth came in slightly late, I decided not to have the brunch. I thought it was gauche to be eating while DeLaria was singing up on stage. I convinced him to go out someplace else after the show, which ended close to 2:20 or so. Overall, we were not so fond of the kind of singing that DeLaria did. Most of the songs we couldn’t even identify since she embraced a very different arrangement of them that made them almost unrecognizable. For example, her rendition of Debbie Harry’s “Call Me” from 1980 certainly didn’t sound like the version we were familiar with. Anyway, I was quite happy that I was able to sample a new venue right here in Manhattan.

The place I decided we’d go to for actual brunch was Friedman’s At The Edison, located on West 47th Street. We then walked to the restaurant after leaving 54 Below. I called first to see if I could make a reservation and I was told to just come. The gal at the other end said there should be tables at that time.

When we arrived at Friedman’s, we had no trouble being escorted to a table. The first thing I asked for was coffee since I had no time to go out this morning to get my first cup of java. I then ordered the blueberry pancakes for my entree and Seth ordered the Asian chicken salad. We were quite satisfied with our dishes.

At brunch, I discussed with Seth the opportunity we had to go to the Whitney Museum of Art afterward because it was free that day as a result of some West Side Fest. When I checked this further, I discovered that the museum is free on the second Sunday of the month, and this was that date. So we walked toward 8th Avenue to take the C downtown to 14th Street.

Overall, we spent about only an hour in the museum which was closing at 6 today. We started on the 8th floor and made our way to the 5th. The first installation we saw was one by the “sound” artist Christine Sun Kim who uses musical notation, infographics, and language – both in her Native American Sign Language (ASL) and written English – to produce drawings, videos, sculptures, and installations to explore the dynamics of sound. We thought this way too esoteric for our sensibilities, but we thoroughly enjoyed the exhibition on the fifth floor which featured the works of American artist Amy Sherald in an exhibit called “American Sublime.” This artist is best known for her luminous portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama which was on display in the exhibit. (I have several of her paintings as pics below.) She is the first African American painter to ever receive presidential portrait commissions from the National Portrait Gallery. One of her pieces, The Bathers, was sold at auction for $4.265 million.

Instead of staying until closing time, I convinced Seth to walk to the Chelsea Market to browse through the bookstore there. We left the museum at around 5:30 and walked to the Chelsea Market where I gave myself about 10 minutes to walk around the store. I tried to see if the store had my gay men’s reading club selection, I Make Envy on Your Disco, by Eric Schnall, but no such luck. However, it did have one of the previous books assigned to the guys: In Memoriam by Alice Winn. I missed the meeting where this book was discussed, so I never read it. But there was no reason to buy it.

Talking about books, I’m proud of the fact that I finished reading Griffin Dunne’s memoir, The Friday Afternoon Club. I read it in less than a week, and it was over 300 pages long. The book is a haunting and wildly funny story of a family torn apart by the heinous murder of a daughter and Griffin’s sister, Dominique Dunne, in 1982 and the subsequent fallout from the trial and unsatisfactory verdict from that trial. It was this flagrant miscarriage of justice that launched the second career of Dunne’s father, Dominick, to that of a crime reporter and subsequent novelist. What really intrigued me about the book was Dunne’s realization that his father was covertly gay after siring three children.

Anyway, this is where Seth and I parted. He took his train back to Astoria, while I took the E back to Forest Hills. I didn’t have to wait too long for a Queens-bound train, thank God.

I thought Elliot and I were going out when I came home, but he disabused me of that idea by saying we were going out tomorrow with our cross-country friend, “Patrica,” so he didn’t want to dine out twice. So I ordered in instead.

In the meantime, the president who was just cursed out by Lea DeLaria today during her show was actually booed in MetLife Stadium today as he attended the FIFA Club World Cup final. This spontaneous Bronx cheer arose when his ugly image was shown on the Jumbotron. Maybe he might finally get the message he’s not universally liked, as he so falsely thinks. Who knows? In his delusional mind, he might say Democrats put these people up to boo him.

Another week to get by. Have a good one.

As I said, I might not be here tomorrow if our dinner engagement with Patricia takes too long. But we’ll see.

And so it went!

Here’s a side view of Lea DeLaria at 54 Below.

Here’s Amy Sherald’s haunting portrait of Breonna Taylor. As you should know, she was the 26-year-old African American medical worker who was killed on March 13, 2000, after officers from Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) forced entry into her home.

Here’s another one of Sherald’s realistic paintings.

Another one of Sherald’s ordinary but truly extraordinary subjects.

This is the famous portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama that was hanging in the National Portrait Gallery.

Can you identify the original photograph Sherald is upending here by depicting two Black men kissing? If you guessed the picture of the American sailor kissing a nurse in white on V-J Day, by the world-famous Alfred Eisenstaedt, you get a free sticker from me.

One last picture before I go from Sherald’s wonderful exhibition. I don’t recall the caption that went with this picture, but if this guy isn’t gay, then I’ll eat my cap.

Oh, if you can, go see her exhibit which runs until August 10. It’s a must-see.