Tag Archives: art

And So It Goes

Today is Wednesday, December 10, 2025. It’s late here, owing to Elliot and me watching a horror film from 2019 called Brightburn on Netflix. We also had dinner out at Diner Bar, in Rego Park and didn’t get home until after 8.

For those of you who like gory films, this is one is for you. I knew nothing about it other than the brief description of it on the screen. This film offers a counterstory to the origins of Superman, in which an infertile farm couple living in – of all places – the fictitious town of Brightburn, Kansas, Kyle and Tori Breyer, are shaken to the core when they discover an alien ship crash-land near their farm. Inside is a small fragile baby that they soon take in as their own and rear him as their own son. They name the human-looking boy Brandon, and everything is honkie dory until the boy turns 12 and the chaos begins.

We soon learn that this boy, Brandon, has superpowers that make him superior to any human on the planet. But instead of using his superpowers for good, he uses them to wreak vengeance on his supposed enemies. Soon people in the town wind up dead as a result of his supernormal abilities like X-ray vision, super strength, and levitation. The film stars Elizabeth Banks as Tori and David Denman as her husband Kyle who begins to suspect his son later on of committing murder. In the role of the evil Brandon, Jackson A. Dunn does a pretty good steely stare that is quite frightening. He almost looks like he’s from another planet at times.

Produced by James Gunn, written by his cousin Mark and brother Brian and directed by David Yarovesky, the film delivers a nice take on the Superman origin story but takes it to another level altogether. This is the screenplay that asks, “What if Clark Kent wasn’t such a nice boy?” There are several moments of gruesome and horrifying violence, though, that might turn off some viewers. I hereby warn you here. But I do recommend the film with some reservations. It seemed more less developed than it could have been.

The burgeoning boat attack controversy is not going away for this liar in chief, as well as the Epstein scandal, as the president backtracked over releasing the video of the September 2 attack on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean Sea that killed two survivors, according to an ABC News article entitled “Trump backtracks on releasing boat strike video, distances himself from controversy,” by Hannah Demissie, Justin Gomez, and Allison Pecorin.

First the lying cheat said he had “no problem” with releasing that video, but is now reversing course and deferring to his Nazi Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth.

When pressed on Monday by ABC News Senior Political Correspondent Rachel Scott about his December 3 comments, he claimed, “I didn’t say that.” He then added, “Whatever Hegseth wants to do is OK with me.”

In an interview with Politico, published on Tuesday morning, Dump further distanced himself from the controversy when asked if he believed the second strike on the survivors was necessary.

A number of Senate repugnicans said on Tuesday that they’d like to see the full video of the September 2 strike released to the public.

Republican Senator Thom Tillis said, “We’ve got to release the video. Look, we have got to get the Epstein files released. We’ve got to get any videos that do not in any way compromise mission integrity out there. Just get the stuff out there.”

Some Democrats and legal experts have suggested that the killing of survivors could constitute a war crime.

Members of Congress are attempting to pass new legislation to force Hegseth to provide lawmakers the unedited footage of the strike.

Tillis on Tuesday said that releasing the video would clear up discrepancies about what it depicts.

The September 2 boat strike is part of what this cruel administration has called its “war” on drug cartels without offering a shred of evidence to substantiate their claims. There have been more than 20 military assaults against vessels in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific, killing more than 80 people. I say this should enrage all Americans as this regime resorts to murder for no darn reason other than claiming these men were going to sell drugs to Americans.

Demonstrating more clearly that he’s out of touch with ordinary Americans, the billionaire president offered more of a stupid rant about nothing at a rally in Pennsylvania the other night. No one can believe what this idiot said in a rambling 90-minute discourse on what was supposed to allay the fears of Americans’ economic worries. Instead, he went off course as usual and made as much as sense as a inebriated dumb ass.

Thus in a Reuters online article, the babbling of this crazy man took center stage in “Trump veers off-script and does little to calm Republican nerves,” written by Anthony Zurcher.

Grump’s handlers expected him to address concerns around affordability and the state of the U.S. economy which he has tanked personally on his own since taking office.

Over the course of his cringeworthy address, he talked a little about the economy, but he also talked about immigration, his Democratic critics, Venezuelan boat strikes, windmills, and golfing.

“If some Republicans, and his White House aides were hoping for a focused message that the party could use to deflect repeated Democratic attacks over the economy, the president did little to deliver,” according to the article.

What it was was a typical “weave,” the term coined to indicate any of Dump’s longwinded, nonsensical speeches.

At first, he made a gaffe in calling his Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, Susie “Trump,” when he said she instructed him to focus on the economy. So here he couldn’t even remember the name of his own fucking chief of staff.

When he did talk about the economy, he resorted to blaming his predecessor for the bad economy we’re in right now, which is another fucking lie since the economy was actually better under Joe Biden. Even though people didn’t believe so then.

Against all of the experts, Grump defended his dumb tariffs, even though some economists have cited them as contributing to cost-of-living woes.

Harkening back to ridiculous comments he made earlier, Grump repeated the dumb comment about getting by with fewer pencils and dolls as Americans deal with buying fewer cheap products from China. What the fuck does this have anything to do with soaring costs at grocery stores, department stores, gas stations, and wherever? Again, the idiot said, “You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter.” “Two or three are nice.” Who really buys 37 dolls for their daughter? one must ask.

I think I can’t continue with his comments here as I’m about to retch and it’s getting later. Just know that this dumb fuck let loose on refugees from “third world” countries, calling Somalia “about the worst country in the world,” as he brazenly gloried in his own festering xenophobia. He even double downed on Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a Somali immigrant and naturalized citizen by saying “throw her the hell out,” and that “she does nothing but complain,” forgetting for the moment that this is what he does best – complain, complain, complain.

No wonder that this shit bag is the laughingstock of the world! How he has any damn supporters after this speech is totally beyond me!

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Wednesday, August 20, 2025. I’m posting this late tonight because I forgot to mention that I was going to attend a meeting of my TCM group this evening at 5. There were eight of us sitting at a long table at the diner called Tick Tock on 8th Avenue and 34th Street. Our host, if you will, was “Derrick.” I thought I had a working knowledge of cinema, but Derrick’s grasp of world cinema really extended beyond my mere lowly grasp. He held court for the entire evening, which amounted to about four hours when we finally took our leave from each other. Derrick narrated story after story about some unknown morsel of film knowledge to everyone’s delight. The most intriguing story was his attending a film screening and coming across the acclaimed director Francis Ford Coppola sitting in the audience. Derrick mentioned that Coppola was asked to give a talk to the audience on the cuff, and he humbly agreed to do so. Derrick indicated that Coppola talked about 10 minutes, mostly about the issues he encountered on filming Apocalypse Now which forms the basis of a 1991 documentary on the problems plaguing the cast and crew during the making of Coppola’s Vietnam saga. I just finished watching this documentary last night; I recommend it to anyone interested in the film process.

The most unpopular president in American history is seeing his polling ratings dive precipitously day after day as he pursues stupid issues as caring about the depiction of slavery at the Smithsonian Institute. An online opinion piece addresses this dichotomy between Demented Don’s declining popularity and the pursuit of subjects that Americans mostly don’t care about like tackling museums and other fucking nonsense. The piece is titled “Trump is widely unpopular and losing ground fast. Why is anyone afraid of him? Opinion.” This musing is written by Rex Huppke.

According to Huppke, the burning issues for most Americans are high prices, inflation, and health care. But our increasingly unpopular president is laser-focused on “things nobody cares about him,” except him. One issue is downplaying exhibitions on the history of slavery at the Smithsonian.

“On the same day a new poll by The Economist/YouGov showed Donald Trump’s disapproval rating hitting a new high, the president took time to post this on social media: “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL [there’s his ridiculous capping style], where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been.”

Why the fuck would Americans in 2025 worry about the depiction of slavery when it was abolished in 1865 when American voters are watching the costs of beef and vegetables skyrocket?

This idiot then instructed his attorneys to go after museums and to get rid of “woke” ideology. Huh? This is such a diversion from releasing the Epstein tapes that no one would be distracted into thinking that the federal government should be interfering with museum policy on such a high level.

Finally, the writer of this piece questions why anyone is still afraid of this bumpkin, especially when his favorable ratings are so fucking low. He actually calls Demented Don a “toxic president.”

Nearly two-thirds of Americans say the country, under the “leadership” of the pedophile in chief, is “out of control.”

Huppke wonders why no public figures are coming out to denounce the toddler in chief. Of course, repugnicans will not do it because they’re cowed by him for some strange reason. According to Huppke, “They’ve spent decades ignoring the needs of their voters, focusing instead on tossing them red meat from the culture wars and assuming that bashing liberals is all that matters.”

The writer here criticizes Democrats for going after Chump with kid gloves, except for Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, and California Governor Gavin Newsom. There aren’t that many Dems out there who have taken off the kid gloves, which is irrational, given Dump’s unpopularity at the moment.

Even corporate types have been silent or outright supportive of a president liked by fewer and fewer Americans.

This is unwise, according to Huppke, especially when dealing with such a fucking bully as this ghastly man who will stop at nothing to use the power of the federal government against his enemies.

Huppke feels that there “is zero political risk to standing up to this president. There is only upside, and how more haven’t realized it yet is beyond me.”

In the meantime, the horrible Texas House did pass that ghastly GOP-drawn redistricting effort, despite full Democratic opposition to it. It is now time, according to Governor Newsom, “to fight fire with fire.”

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Sunday, August 17, 2025. Today Elliot and I ventured into Manhattan – even though I was a little apprehensive about riding the subway since my Friday night debacle on the E – for a day of culture by visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art, on 82nd Street and 5th Avenue. Elliot particularly wanted to see an exhibit on chinoiserie that was closing today, while I was drawn to an exhibit on Black dandyism called Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, which is actually running until October 26. I was also intrigued by another exhibit called Casa Susanna which chronicles a community of cross-dressers who met regularly in New York City and the Catskill Mountains in the 1960s and onward. This exhibit runs through January 25, 2026, so you have time to see it.

Earlier, I went out for coffee at Pink Forest before leaving Forest Hills at around 11:15. To get into Upper Manhattan, we took the R train instead of the E and got off at 59th Street to transfer to the 6 where she got off at 86th Street. Before going to the museum, we had brunch at a new place on 83rd Street and 2nd Avenue called the Penrose Bar. The meal I had certainly tickled my palate since I had lemon ricotta pancakes that were so very tasty. Even the coffee was quite robust.

After brunch, we walked up to 5th Avenue and to the Met. I looked at my watch when we finally paid our guest rate (we donated each $10 instead of paying the suggested $30) and thus entered the hallowed halls of this world-famous institution. We asked someone at the information desk to guide us to the chinoiserie exhibit and we actually found the floor and the gallery it was located in without too much ado. The exhibit on the ground floor is specifically titled Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie. The liner notes on it say the exhibit “radically imagines the story of European porcelain through a feminist lens.” So when porcelain arrived in early modern Europe from China, it led to the rise of chinoiserie, “a decorative style that encompassed Europe’s fantasies of the East and fixations on the exotic, along with new ideas about women, sexuality, and race.”

The exhibit supposedly features at least 200 historical and contemporary works spanning from 16th-century Europe to contemporary installations by Asian and Asian-American women artists.

For my book, the second exhibit we visited on the second floor, the one on Black dandyism, had the most crowds and was the best exhibition I’ve seen in a long time. In fact, I hope to return to it at least once more before it leaves. According to its liner notes, the exhibit “explores the importance of style to the formation of Black identities in the Atlantic diaspora, particularly in the United States and Europe.” Here there was an abundance of memorabilia such as photographs, paintings, garments and accessories, decorative arts, and even videos to help interpret the concept of dandyism as both an aesthetic and a strategy that allowed for new social and political possibilities. The exhibit is organized into 12 sections, which range over several rooms of stuff. I’m sure I didn’t cover all 12 sections since Elliot finished viewing it before I and I didn’t want to keep him waiting.

We finally left the Met at 4:40 p.m., just 20 minutes before actual closing time. I was ready for another cup of coffee so we stopped at a Joe & the Juice on Lexington Avenue for hot coffee and banana bread for me. Elliot just read a copy of The Wall Street Journal that was left by a departing customer.

Now we walked down to 77th Street to get the 6 downtown to 51st Street where we waited for the E to take us back to Forest Hills. This time there were no delays getting home.

In the meantime, the toddler in chief just finished his much-ballyhooed summit with war criminal Vladimir Putin in Alaska over the weekend that ended in what someone has called a “nothing burger.” An online article for MediaITE reports on this fucking unsuccessful meeting with the Russian aggressor entitled “Trump’s Red Carpet for Putin Ends in a Faceplant,” by Colby Hall.

Here this demagogue promised he would end the war in Ukraine – but so far he glaringly hasn’t in the long eight months he’s been in office. The article states, “Instead, he delivered a red carpet for Vladimir Putin – and little else.”

The much-hyped Alaska ‘peace summit’ ended not with a triumph but with a whimper.” Dump had to embarrassingly admit that “we didn’t get there,” which is a horrible admission of truth for this inveterate liar.

Fox “News” itself had to admit that Putin steamrolled over the fat golfer. They couldn’t put their imitable spin on this worthless meeting. Senior White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich bluntly reported that Chump “got steamrolled by Putin” on Fox News.

Not that I saw a whit of this disgraceful display of fawning before Putin by Dump who was seen clapping enthusiastically for the Russian president as if he were a rock star and not a brutal murderer of women, children, and civilians in the Ukrainian war.

Here the assessment of what Putin got from this meeting on U.S. soil is brutal: “For Putin, the payoff was obvious. He stood shoulder to shoulder with an American president, was celebrated on U.S. soil, and gave nothing in return. For Trump, the cost is harder to quantify but potentially devastating. He has painted himself in a corner with his ‘peace on day one’ promise. Anything short of an actual cessation of hostilities looks like failure. And failure, dressed up with pomp and applause, is still failure.”

The world now saw a U.S. president who was outmaneuvered, outtalked, and definitely out of his depth. “Allies will wonder if America’s resolve is fading; adversaries will take note of how easily Putin extracted a victory.”

All in all, Friday was an enormously embarrassing day for America and it was all due to the buffoonish Demented Don. Thus the war drags on and Putin smirks. For his superfluous part, Dump is left clapping on the red carpet for a man who just walked all over him.

Do try to have a good week.

And so it went!

Here is one item in the chinoiserie exhibit.

Another remarkable piece in this exhibit.

Imagine having that in your possession. And someone certainly did!

This piece was situated outside in an area with other items.

These pieces reflect the “monstrous” nature of chinoiserie.

This is a very colorful, decorative vase depicting Chinese characters.

We are now in the Black dandyism exhibit which I enjoyed the most.

This is more of a contemporary look that is on display at this exhibit.

Not sure of the designers whose fare is on display here, but it’s still striking nevertheless.

These were actual letters written by celebrated author, historian, sociologist, and political activist W. E. B. Du Bois to Brooks Brothers in 1920.

Another striking outfit in this exhibit.

Here are some portraits of Black “dandies.”

This is from the last exhibit we saw: Casa Susanna. This is a copy of Transvestia, a magazine for cross-dressers from the 1960s.

This page is from the 1962 copy of Transvestia.

This is a picture of one of the cross-dressers who sought refuge in the resorts established by Susanna Valenti and her wife, Marie Tornell, in the Catskill Mountains. All of these snapshots were rediscovered at a Manhattan flea market in 2004 and they form the basis of this fascinating exhibit.

Another cover from this ground-breaking magazine.

Here is an open view of the “lego” building from Fifth Avenue.

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.

And So It Goes

Today is Wednesday, June 11, 2025. I was absent here yesterday because I took advantage of museums on Fifth Avenue being free Tuesday night, from 6 through 9, as Elliot’s cousin “Joan” let me know through a text sent me on Sunday. So I decided to travel to the Museum of the City of New York, located on 103rd Street and 5th Avenue. Elliot had no desire to accompany me since he was undergoing an endoscopy today, quite early, like at 8 a.m.

When I got to the building, I was surprised to encounter a line of people waiting outside to get in by 6, so I took my place on line and waited. It took about 15 minutes to get into the building. Since I had no dinner, I hied to the cafe on the second floor where I ordered coffee and a peanut butter cookie.

After I finished my snack, I ambled to the first exhibit that I could find which was entitled “Songs of New York” that is described as “an immersive interactive experience that introduces visitors to a full range of music from and about New York City, from the 1920s to the 2020s, showcasing everything from be-pop to K-pop, across genres, boroughs, and musical movements.” This exhibit allowed visitors to stand on the five boroughs and hear a song that either was written about that borough or emanated from the borough. For example, if you stand on Queens, you might hear a song from the Ramones who made Queens their home at the beginning of their career. I believe they actually hailed from Forest Hills. I enjoyed this exhibit, but couldn’t linger too much since the time was a-wasting.

I then walked into another exhibit that I recognized from previous visits there, an exhibit called “Activist New York” that delved into the drama of social activism in New York City, past and present, with issues as diverse as immigration, civil rights, and LGBTQ+ rights. Too bad the exhibit did not cover the ongoing spectrum of protests organized against this fascistic regime, but that will have to wait awhile until there is some better perspective. However, the Black Lives Matter Movement was indeed covered.

The exhibit I really liked was the one on the life and career of the first Black Congresswoman in history, Shirley Chisolm, which commemorated the centennial of the birth of the first Black candidate for president who was born in 1924 and died in 2005. In the notes, it’s noted that this is “the first major museum exhibition on the life and legacy of the pathbreaking politician and New Yorker.”

Through many photographs, short videos, and even articles of clothing that she wore which were donated to the exhibit, the exhibit explores her life, from her early years in Brooklyn and Barbados to her lasting impact on U.S. politics. The far-ranging exhibit follows her political career from her 1964 election to the New York State legislature, her 1968 election to Congress, and her 1972 run for president. Through this exhibit, we learn what issues were dear to her heart like education and child care, rights for migrants and workers, abortion access, and racial and gender equality. She was an early advocate for LGBTQ+ civil rights when it was not the custom quite yet. I learned through this wonderful exhibit that Chisolm was a fiery advocate for the vulnerable and the silent majority, in sharp contrast to the terrible, morally repugnant representatives and senators that inhabit the corridors of Washington these days. The slogan that captured her essential philosophy was “unbought and unbossed.” She was not beholden to any special interests and she reveled in that stance.

This was the last exhibit I was able to view since I spent more time at this installation than any other exhibit in the museum. It was already close to 9 when a guard walked into the exhibit on the third floor and announced it was closing time. The last exhibit I hardly looked at: It was called “Urban Stomp” and showcased the various dances that have shaped – and been shaped by – the city’s ever-changing cultural landscape.

I got home rather late for a Tuesday night and I just continued watching The Last Showgirl from 2024 that stars Pamela Anderson as a showgirl in a Las Vegas throwback show called “Le Razzle Dazzle” who is thrown for a loop when her manager, Eddie (played poignantly by Dave Bautista), informs the cast that the show will be closing to pave the way for a “dirty circus” that features such acts as a topless woman spinning plates on a pole situated in her vulva. Yes, that’s the new show that will be replacing this once-glittery, rhinestone-packed revue. Anderson as Shelly Gardner lives in a modest home and is embraced by her close friend Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis) who is a casino cocktail waitress with a permanent tan and eye shadow up to here. The thin plot of the film involves Shelly reuniting with her estranged daughter, Hannah (played by Billie Lourde). Anderson is the best thing here: her performance is nuanced and very touching as she realizes she could be at the end of her showbiz career.

In the meantime, I missed Governor Gavin Newsom’s speech to the mentally defective president who deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles to quell supposed rioting by protesters. This tin-pot wanna-be dictator must think that sending in the troops is a good political move; he is sorely mistaken. In an online AlterNet article entitled “Backfire: Trump hit with bad news as polling reveals recent actions are unpopular with voters” by Adam Lynch, the true reality of this desperate move by a clueless president is provided.

The podcast “Daily Blast” is cited in which host Greg Sargent described this recent action by Chump as “befitting a third-world tinpot dictator.” Sargent then asked his guest, analyst G. Elliott Morris, about the public possibly perceiving this as presidential overreach.

Morris answered thusly: “[Trump’s] motivation is probably that the politics of sending in the guards and marines is good politics, but that doesn’t seem to immediately be the case.” Morris cites a recent Yougov poll that puts Chump’s decision to sic the national guard after protesters at “seven points underwater,” or 38-to-45 percent approval. (I’m surprised it’s not at 80 percent or higher.) Dump sending in the marines came in at “13 points underwater.”

Sargent criticized major news media outlets that appeared to assume the Orange Cheeto’s invasion of California as “good for Trump.” Thus we have these major news outlets just giving Dump a pat on the back and not really engaging in any true scrutiny of the situation.

It’s wrong to think of this issue as an immigration issue, warns Morris. “This is a protest, civil rights, and law enforcement issue now.”

Sargent agreed the media could be making a mistake granting “Trump potency on this issue” by assuming voters automatically look at the spectacle in California as being about immigration. “Why would voters see it that way when what they’re seeing is American troops being sent to an American city in response to a largely peaceful protest?” he asked.

Morris even sees Dump’s public support on immigration to be crumbling when people see that hard-working, innocent immigrants are being targeted by ICE rather than “criminals.” Morris said, “The only thing that was popular was deporting convicted, violent criminals, with 87 percent support. But everyone else, Americans basically say ‘Don’t deport them.'”

So here we have a very unpopular president using dictatorial tactics that are mostly rejected by a large percentage of the electorate. So why is he still resorting to these stupid and disastrous measures? Can anyone tell me? Is he that unaware?

Oh, by the way, Elliot’s endoscopy went well today. I received a call from the doctor’s office around 9 to pick him up and when I rushed to the gastroenterologist’s office, Elliot was standing outside the office at the top of the block. So everything was all right; we then walked to a local eatery to have a little breakfast.

Tomorrow I will be absent from this venue, as I’m seeing a play with a member of my gay men’s reading club. I’ll call this new acquaintance “Daniel” and he asked if I wanted to see My Son’s a Queer (But What Can You Do?) at City Center, and I said yes. So we’re meeting at a restaurant at 6:15 before walking to the theater at 8.

Have a good Thursday then.

And so it went!

Here’s the pathbreaking U.S. representative Shirley Chisolm and her campaign slogan, “Unbought and unbossed.”

Here is Chisolm’s slogan on a sweater.

Chisolm’s visage is featured in two Black magazines, Ebony and Black Woman’s World.

This is the start of the wonderful exhibit on Shirley Chisolm entitled “Changing the Face of Democracy: Shirley Chisolm at 100.”

I appended this playbill of Hair to remind my readers that I eschewed seeing this groundbreaking play in 1968 when my father received two free tickets to the play on a school night. That’s why I said I couldn’t go! Wasn’t I stupid?

Here is a timeline for LGBTQ+ activism.

And So It Goes

Today is Wednesday, April 9, 2025. It’s pretty late here owing to us being out with our adopted “niece” “Esther,” so I won’t belabor you with any more venom directed toward our moronic president who just announced a 90-day pause on his disastrous trade war which clearly demonstrates he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing with these tariffs. This patently demonstrates that he’s the most economically illiterate president in U.S. history. But enough of him!

Before meeting Esther at a local Chinese restaurant, Spicy C, on Austin Street, I drove to my usual comic book store by the name of Royal Collectibles close to 11. The extent of the traffic snags encountered on just this 15-minute drive could cause anyone to suffer agita. Not only did I encounter the usual number of double-parked cars in every major road, which is so exasperating, there was also a clogged line of traffic on 71st Avenue and Continental Avenue that forced me to go another way to Metropolitan Avenue. I had to wait several minutes longer for the directional light to flicker allowing me to turn left onto Continental Avenue which I avoided this time. So my complaint is with rude drivers who fail to show any common courtesy to other drivers by parking willy- nilly in narrow roads, thus blocking cars from getting around them. Before I got to that turn on Continental Avenue, I was driving in back of a Rogue driver who positioned her car in back of a car pulling out of a spot. She positioned her damn car in such a way that I couldn’t get around her, so I honked her right away which caused her to abandon the spot. This is the kind of discourtesy that I’m referring to here. It’s infectious just like the Dump virus these days.

We met Esther around 7:30 and had a wonderful dinner with her, as we ordered scallion pancakes, steamed pork dumplings, won ton soup, hot and sour soup, and chicken rice noodles. Esther ordered mapo tofu. The only one to take food home was Esther who retained a lot of her tofu dish as a take-home supper for another time. After dinner, we walked down to Martha’s Country Bakery where we sat down for dessert: Elliot and Esther had some gelato (Elliot enjoyed chocolate gelato, while Esther asked for mango gelato) and tea, while I ordered a piece of strawberry banana cake and coffee.

We got home close to 10. We asked Esther to text us when she got home and she did.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Tuesday, March 4, 2025. Tonight the liar in chief is delivering his address to a joint session of Congress, of which I have deliberately tuned out, as I had mentioned yesterday. Instead, Elliot and I watched a silly comedy from 2022 on Netflix called The Estate starring Toni Collette, David Duchovny, Ana Farris, and Kathleen Turner as a wealthy dying aunt. The movie devolves into a mad dash to inherit old Hilda’s estate, as a bevy of cousins descend on her and her mansion in New Orleans to try to get their names on Hilda’s will before she dies. Collette and Farris play Macey and Savanna, two down-on-their-luck sisters who run a rundown cafe in town and scheme, along with their married cousins, Beatrice and James, and their single cousin Richard – or “Dick,” as he would like to be called – played by natty Duchovny, who continually hits on Collette, to become the heirs of Hilda’s substantial estate. The film lacked any nuance as cousins are pitted against each other in their desperate attempts to curry favor with the dying Hilda, played with the usual brio by Turner. The film has quite a number of jokes about flashing and other body parts. We watched this feeble comedy as a way to get our minds off the address by the liar in chief, which was still going on when the film ended before 10.

Since I won’t write about what was contained in the blowhard’s address, I think I’ll wade into city politics, in that our own mayor, Eric Adams, is facing calls to resign amid controversy over the Dump Department of Justice’s move to dismiss his federal corruption indictment. An article (I know I’ve said I don’t read papers anymore, but this time, I picked one up) in today’s Daily News covers the fallout from the move to dismiss those charges against the mayor. It’s titled “Adams doubles down vs. critics, says foes after him with ‘lynch mob mentality,'” and it’s written by Chris Sommerfeldt.

Holding a press conference at City Hall, Adams was asked by reporters why he thought it was appropriate last week to label Black politicians who have urged him to resign “Negroes” in need of saving from God. Adams replied, “well, those Negroes knew they were wrong.” Sheesh! Not only is this an offensive thing to say coming from a Black politician like Adams, it’s offensive to the concept of the Deity to being Him in connection with calls for him to resign because he’s now viewed as a very compromised candidate for reelection since he’s seen as being beholden to the liar in chief. But Adams claimed there was nothing derogatory about the remark he made at a Black History Month celebration at Gracie Mansion last Tuesday.

Conversely, Adams said the outrage should actually be about the mounting calls for him to resign or be removed from office.

Those who have called for him to step down are City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, state Senator Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and other prominent Black elected officials.

Adams’ controversial comments are herewith quoted in total here when he spoke at Gracie Mansion last week and said, “When Jesus was on the cross, he said, ‘God forgive them for they know not what they do.’ All these Negroes who are asking me to step down, God forgive them.”

Black leaders, reacting to the mayor’s comments, including Harlem pastor and civil rights advocate Johnnie Green, said last week’s the mayor’s use of the racial phrase in that context was deeply insensitive.

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, a vocal Adams critic who is Black, said his reference to a “lynch mob” was likewise offensive. I would agree with Williams’ assessment here. He remarked, “The second Black mayor in our history is actively undoing the decades of progress it took to elect even the first. It’s deeply disrespectful to both the leaders who worked to get us here and people who hope to carry us forward.”

A related story here is the announcement just made this past Saturday by former governor Andrew Cuomo that he’s now running for Eric Adams’ job. I believe that Adams is fearful of his candidacy, even though Cuomo is fraught with quite a lot of baggage himself: Cuomo was accused by 11 women of sexual harassment and he also came under fire for a policy directing nursing homes to readmit patients recovering from COVID. Cuomo eventually resigned as governor on August 24, 2021, as a result of the investigation into those charges that were substantiated by the state attorney general.

Personally, I’m not a fan of the current mayor and think anyone else would be better than him in the job. I’ve written how he betrayed municipal workers with Medicare and now he’s more of a Republican than a true Democrat in my opinion. His cozying up to Dump soils him forever in my book. I look forward to hearing the other candidates for mayor provide a case for voters to vote for them as the race heats up.

And so it went!