It’s taken me a long, long time, but I finally got my hands on a good, excellent actually, copy of Rhythm In The Ranks, a George Pal Puppetoon I remember from early childhood, mostly for how scary the villains of the story are.

When George Pal, a Hungarian, came to the States to escape the Nazi takeover of most of western europe, he brought with him a very unique method of stop motion animation. Rather than using clay figures, or ones with armature skeletons you could reposition between each exposure of a frame of film, Pal used a “replacement” method wherein many individually carved wooden figures were used to represent motion. A scene with a figure walking across the frame might use several dozen carved figures, each in different stages of walking, replaced one after the other as each frame of film is shot.

It gave the figures in the cartoon shorts an amazing degree of apparent flexibility, and yet they looked solid. You could tell they were wooden figures, and yet they not only walked and talked, they breathed, their faces stretched as the painted on mouths and eyes moved. Their legs and feet extended out as they walked. It made wooden figures seem as if the very wood they were carved from had come to life, and it made the Puppetoons fun to watch.

Pal made many of these while Europe was burning under the Nazi onslaught, and some of this cartoons spoke directly to that, employing a creepy stand-in for actual Nazi soldiers in the cartoons: The Screwball Army.

The Screwball Army was literally just that…an army of cannonballs with legs and arms that had screws stuck in them with nuts on top that spun while they marched across the screen, destroying everything in their path. Seems weird, but it was an effective stand-in for the real thing in a cartoon mostly aimed at children, but enjoyable by adults too. Added to the effect was they usually marched across the screen to the tune Powerhouse which anyone who ever watched the old Warner Brothers cartoons would recognise. They really creeped out six year old me.

The Screwball Army’s most well known appearance is in the Puppetoon Tulips Shall Grow, but Rhythm In The Ranks is the one I remembered most from way back when, and the hardest to find a copy of.

When I finally got to see Rhythm In The Ranks again after so many years had passed, I saw I’d correctly remembered much of it, including the hilarious singing telegram declaration of war, and the Screwballs marching across the hills. But dig it…I remembered everything reversed left from right. It’s a trick my memory plays on me over and over again to this day. I have no trouble reading, it’s not any sort of dyslexia. I have no trouble telling left from right. It’s just in my memory, and more pronounced the further back the memory is. There’s probably a name for it somewhere. This image of the Screwballs I got from a website article on Rhythm In The Ranks (go read it…there’s another shot in there of the hilarious singing telegram) is a good example. 

I remembered this scene perfectly all these years in every detail, but as a mirror image of what it actually is.

…from Joshua Marshall over at Talking Points Memo.

Something really striking about the attack on federal institutions like the Treasury and the IRS is that it’s always the same youngsters doing Musk’s work. I was just assuming that they’re bedazzled true believers that Musk can get to work for him cheap. Now Joshua Marshall opens our eyes, yours and mine, a bit more. And it’s ugly. Really, really ugly.

Why these kids? Here’s why: It’s not just that they’re firmly in the cult of Musk, but that they’re young and have all the foresight of kids with a fifth of rum an ounce of pot and a final exam the next morning. Or in other words, they’re willing to do things, very very illegal things, things you wouldn’t want on your resume, that the members of the Musk cult who are older and smarter and way more capable really don’t want to get their fingers dirty with. Yes, Trump has their backs…for now. But as Marshall says tomorrow is a long time and Trump suffers no loyalty to anyone. He may thumb his nose at the courts but the law is still the law in the real world, and those older and smarter members of the cult have careers and a mortgage and a family which might just make them a tad reluctant to just walk in somewhere and do whatever the Reich Musker wants.

But those eager young things over there, like virgins entranced by sugar daddy attentions? Sure…the man who has had 12 kids by three women, and all his older and smarter cult members, will let Them do it. And they’re thrilled to get recognition from The Man.

It’s so obvious…

I’ve actually restarted work on an art piece I began several years ago and I can’t tell whether that’s improved my head space or that a better headspace has somehow made it possible for me to go back to my drafting table. I suspect it’s the former because I have no idea what could have possibly improved my mindset at this time. But it could be anticipation of my upcoming Walt Disney World DVC vacation. But there’s pain there too, this particular visit.

The art piece is an absolutely unique one for me, in that it’s a pencil and charcoal drawing, no ink, and there will only ever be that one original. Only my oil paintings have been one-offs up to now. The artwork doesn’t scan well but I’ve no plans on making high quality scans anyway. I wanted to try something entirely in pencil and charcoal on high quality cold press paper, not the Strathmore board I usually use for my artwork. That sort of paper is usually used for water colors but I thought the texture would be good for how I work with charcoal. I wanted to try something without ink, all grey scale in graphite and charcoal, and I wanted it to be a finished piece, not something I would tweak later in the computer. Something frameable.

But that caused my innate fear of failure to bring a halt to it after I got only a third of the way through it. The computer has turned into something of a crutch over time, and it’s why I don’t use media I can’t easily erase and redraw over. Some of the most amazing political art I’ve seen employed Conte Crayon or grease pencil and once you put something down with one of those that’s it, unless you’re working for publication and can get away with white gauche correction like Herblock did (you should see his originals…they’re full of that…but it didn’t show up in the halftone newsprint process so he knew what he could get away with). One of the grand masters of the form, David Low, once said that every cartoon he did took three days to complete, two spent in labor, and one “removing the appearance of labor.” I have tried over the years to take heart in that. Instead I’ve felt badly all the time about not getting over my fear of making a mistake on the drawing and learning to use those old techniques of the masters. This was going to be an attempt at making a start on that and I choked.

So I put it aside, but somewhere I could see it every time I went down into my art room. I needed it to remind me.

Somehow, the other day, something clicked and I could see a way forward with it, and I got a renewed interest in it coming from who knows where. Maybe it was something adjacent to my sudden interest in developing and scanning in some film that had been languishing for years. Maybe it was a willingness to visit its themes, which are full of so much joy and pain both after watching and reading so many new stories of young gay couples in love. But one day I took another look and I saw a way forward with it, and I put it back on my drafting table for the first time in years. I’ve been working on it in little baby steps for several days now and for the first time in years I’m feeling really good about where it’s going.

The work in progress is here at the end of this blog post, but be warned: It’s not pornography, I don’t do pornography, but it’s probably NSFW either. As I said, it doesn’t scan well but I can snap some shots of it off my iPhone. My intent though is there will only ever be one copy.

There’s a backstory.

Somewhere, possibly a Fark Photoshop contest, I came across an image of someone wearing bluejeans. But the image is tightly focused on just their hips…bare skin above the beltline and these tight fitting blue jeans below…with a product tag hanging off one of the belt loops. The tag reads:

WARNING: Removing this article of clothing guarantees the wearer a portion of your soul.

Most of us, except for low life creeps, know how that works. You lay down with someone and afterward they will be somewhere deep in your soul forever, for better or worse, but hopefully for the better. I thought the image was cute in its way and I made a print and stuck it on the wall behind the art room bar.

Time passes, the universe expands, and one day my brother came for a visit to Casa del Garrett East. While he was here he wanted to go to the local Harley-Davidson dealers to get a t-shirt from each with their locality on it, because collecting those is a Harley thing. So we went to the dealer off RT 40 near White Flint and while he was browsing around so was I.

Time was I really wanted a Sportster, so I was gawking at some of those. Then I walked over to where they had their fashion selection. Leather jackets and various Harley branded items. Over in the t-shirt section where the usual motorcycle culture prints, including one kinda rude one I’d seen many times before…

Gas, Grass, or Ass. Nobody Rides For Free.

And looking at that t-shirt I remembered the image behind the bar back home and thought: there’s two sides to that coin isn’t there.

And immediately an image came to mind.

A young guy is camped camped on the side of a dirt backroad somewhere in the middle of nowhere. It’s somewhere deep in the empty wide open spaces of the American southwest. The road he’s camped beside goes in a straight line and vanishes somewhere over the distant horizon. His motorcycle is nearby, and also his empty sleeping bag and camp stove. The young man stands looking to the sunrise in the far horizon with his morning cup of coffee in one hand, and the other resting on his naked hip; he’s only wearing a t-shirt since he’s just got himself awake and hasn’t dressed yet. His back is to the viewer, his t-shirt drapes suggestively just above his very cute butt. On the back of his t-shirt is a message that reads: Nobody Rides For Free.

This came fully formed to mind in that moment I saw the t-shirt there at the Harley dealer. The only change I made to it when I set down to draw it was initially he had a companion with him who was still asleep in his sleeping bag. But the more I thought about it I decided that, no, he’s alone on his road trip to somewhere.

At first you might think it’s just an effort in sexy art. Which it is, but there’s more to it I hope the viewer sees. It’s not just about whatever struggles he’s having in the romance department (because he wouldn’t be wearing that t-shirt if things had been easy for him), it’s about he’s looking ahead to the life he wants to find…somewhere, somehow, over that horizon. Desire and dreams. Life as a road trip. Nobody rides for free.

It’s interesting how the artistic process works in your head. Or mine anyway. I have such a vivid imagination that I rarely do preliminary drawings and roughs. I think it until I can see in my mind exactly how I want it to look before I start drawing. I do make tweaks once I start, but they’re very few.

So it was really important to me that I get this one right. It had to be my best ever, and deep down inside I don’t see myself as being that good. But I work on it because there’s no other way. I have to get it out of me. And this one says just about everything I’ve ever wanted to say in my art paintings and drawings…if not my art photography, which is just relentlessly bleak (unless I get to work with a model which I haven’t in decades (are you out there Robbie? I bet you’re still beautiful…thanks for nothing Jon and Joe…)). My other art is a lot more positive. This includes A Coming Out Story. The political cartoons are what they are.

So here is the work in progress. Please be kind…it is nowhere near finished, but hopefully you can see where it’s going. Some of this is cropped because of how I had to capture it in the iPhone, so there is more to it on the sides than you see here. There’s probably still months of work ahead because I’m doing this in baby steps. I may post more updates as I go along.

Something seems to be reawakening inside of me. Hopefully it stays away for a while. I feel so much better today than I have in a long time.

Looking forward to my next Walt Disney World DVC vacation first week in March. I’ll be dining at the Brown Derby in Hollywood on the sixth, to reminisce about the angrygram I got while eating a Kobe steak dinner. If the Kobe steak is on the menu I’ll definitely be having it. 

Mostly just trying to forget that my country is circling the drain, because half the country is one half easily manipulated half-wits and one half stone cold bigots that would rather burn it all down than let the rest of us have a share of the American Dream, and the other half can’t decide whether to fight for the Dream, or make peace in our time.

When Walt Disney was alive nobody would have ever thought it would come to this. Conservative man though he was, he’d be spitting nails that a man like pussy grabber Donald Trump was in his Hall Of The Presidents. When I was a young boy and Walt Disney was alive I believed in that great big beautiful tomorrow shining at the end of every day. It seemed obvious. We were looking at the stars, and not paying attention to what was in the human gutter.

Gavin Kliger…one of Herr Musk’s young minions…seems to have embraced the dark side after feeding from this trough…

And just what would those Some Things be…?

This guy…Ron Unz…who would he be I wonder…

…hmmm…

Musk not only attracts this sort of young male to his following, he gives them power over the rest of us. Tech Bro is the new Brownshirt.

In Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged John Galt announces he’s going to stop the motor of the world, and set about doing that by leading all the Men Of The Mind out on strike, thereby causing the evil socialist altruist American government and great powers of the world to crumble to dust, while the Men Of The Mind secluded themselves safe and sound in Galt’s Gulch raising pigs, growing tobacco, and building super tractors that could cut a farmer’s eight hour day in half.

But poor John didn’t have a chance. One thing that helped lift the kingdom of Rand vail from my eyes was looking at the architect plans for the machinery of death in the Nazi concentration camps. Those guys were Good…they had a problem to solve and they did it with cold blooded sociopathic efficiency. It convinced me:  There will always be plenty of Men Of The Mind willing to lend their talents and imagination to the bloody murderous tyrant because they are kindred.

The closest Rand came to admitting this are the characters of Dr. Floyd Farris and more specifically, Dr. Robert Stadler, who I suspect was modeled after Robert Oppenheimer. Compared to Farris Stadler was a pathetic chump and you really wonder how anyone could take seriously that he was supposedly the intellectual equal of Galt who’s only moral failing was succumbing to the dark side of government funded science. Farris was the real thing through and through: and that for my money is Musk and his minions. And there are plenty enough of them to keep the world going just fine and dandy without the likes of anyone in Galt’s Gulch helping out, super tractors or no.

It’s not the mind that makes a person decent, it’s the heart. You can suffer a small mind if it has a big heart attached. But a big mind and a small or nonexistent heart is a dangerous combination.

Back in my USENET days I had a signature at the bottom of my posts that read, I do not speak for the militant homosexual conspiracy, I only work here.

Why am I bringing this up now? Oh…no particular reason…

(Via the Florence County Democratic Party on Facebook)

Sue gets up at 6 a.m. and fills her coffeepot with water to prepare her morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards.

With her first swallow of coffee, she takes her daily medication. Her medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to insure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but $10 of her medications are paid for by her employer’s medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance – now Sue gets it too.

She prepares her morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Sue’s bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

In the shower, Sue reaches for her shampoo. Her bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for her right to know what she was putting on her body and how much it contained.

Sue dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air she breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air.

She walks to the subway station for her government-subsidized ride to work. It saves her considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Sue begins her work day. She has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Sue’s employer pays these standards because Sue’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union.

If Sue is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, she’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn’t think she should lose her home because of her temporary misfortune.

It’s noon and Sue needs to make a bank deposit so she can pay some bills. Sue’s deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Sue’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.

Sue has to pay her Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and her below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Sue and the government would be better off if she was educated and earned more money over her lifetime.

Sue is home from work. She plans to visit her father this evening at his farm home in the country. She gets in her car for the drive. Her car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards.

She arrives at her childhood home. Her generation was the third to live in the house financed by Farmers’ Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans. The house didn’t have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification.

She is happy to see her father, who is now retired. Her father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Sue wouldn’t have to.

Sue gets back in her car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn’t mention that Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Sue enjoys throughout her day. Sue agrees: “We don’t need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I’m self-made and believe everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have.”

I saw this one laughing in my face yet again…this time in my Facebook feed from a relative of a good friend. There are family issues going on below the public surface there that I don’t want to butt into so I didn’t respond. But this is one of those zombie bits of homophobic agitprop that pushes my buttons whenever I see it…

This is one from Rick Warren, a devoted homophobe and pulpit thumper. Near as I can tell it was something he put out there in 2013 around the time of President Obama’s second inauguration. Warren, as you may recall, was invited to give the invocation at Obama’s first inauguration, thereby spitting in the faces of all the gay Americans who worked so hard to get him elected over John McCain and the lunatic Sarah Palin. It’s a clever bit of misdirection, begging the question of what the disagreement is all about. It seems so reasonable on it’s surface, but beneath the surface it’s a sewer of shifty morals intended to make bigoted attacks on our lives appear to be reasoned and compassionate. Warren is giving us the motto of someone who can’t see the people for the homosexuals. It is itself the huge lie it purports to stand against.

There’s nothing complicated here: LGBT people don’t have lifestyles, we have lives. Not all disagreements are equal. If your convictions aren’t grounded by verifiable provable truths they are mere conceits. And where love is ruled by empty convictions, and not by sympathy, kindness, charity, and above all empathy, then it isn’t love at all, it’s sanctimony. 

I’ve been watching clips of both Close and Young Hearts on various video social media. It’s given me a disjointed picture of both of them, but the plot summaries I’ve seen have helped me stitch them together. Close is tragic. The homophobia the kids in it experience from their peers drives them apart and the end of it is heartbreaking. Close is basically, near as I can tell, a story about prejudice. Young Hearts is a love story.

I have a fragmented view of this film, from watching the clips of it people have been posting from overseas. So I have almost zero knowledge of the dialog in the clips because the language is Dutch and when there are subtitles those are either in German or French…maybe I’ve seen one or two in English. But I can make out a bit of what’s being said from context, and the fragmentary and miniscule German I know when there are subtitles. And by guessing at the Dutch.

The first part of it is Elias becoming very fond of his new neighbor Alexander, and then falling in love with him. When he’s alone with Alexander he’s happy to acknowledge his love, but when it’s among classmates and family it gets complicated. Especially as he has a girlfriend he gradually becomes more distant to.

There a scene with Elias in the car with mom and his older brother in the front seat, and dad next to him in the back seat, and he comes out to them and it’s a very emotional scene. The kid is crying and telling them he tried to change but he couldn’t, and his mom stopping the car, getting out and coming back to him to tell him he doesn’t have to change, he is loved.

But in the clips I see I don’t get the reactions of dad and the older brother.

I suspect there was some static there because there is another scene that takes place at a costume party, Elias is wearing the costume of a knight and Alexander is dressed as the Joker. Elias tearfully breaks up with Alexander, telling him he isn’t gay like him (Alexander is played as being completely comfortable with his orientation, and not taking any static from his classmates), and that none of this would have happened if he had just stayed in Belgium. They have a fight, and it seems to be over.

But the synopsis I have read say they reconcile as Elias learns to accept himself with the support of his family, and eventually his girlfriend. So I kept looking around for clips of that. There is one where Elias is tossing pebbles at Alexander’s window in the middle of the night and he comes and Elias tries to get back with him but Alexander isn’t having any of it and pushes him away. So that one wasn’t it.

Last night someone posted the reconciliation scene to three Facebook reels. I’m doom scrolling (I guess it’s called now) and I hit this one I hadn’t seen before and it’s the moment the two kids put it behind them and get back together and no kidding it brought me to tears.

Elias is at some big outdoor party with lights and music…his dad is singing on stage…and he’s apparently looking around for Alexander and doesn’t find him and sits down on the grass distraught. Alexander was supposed to be there. Maybe he left because he didn’t want to run into Elias. But then Elias’ older brother comes over and tells him (I think), that Alexander is inside the main tent and he should go find him. Elias gives his older brother a joyful hug…I’m assuming it’s because now he knows his brother is good with it and still loves him. His brother pushes him off with a smile, telling him to go now and find Alexander.

So he goes through this crowd in the main tent looking for Alexander. And here the filmmakers pull out all the stops.

The scene goes into slightly slow motion, a beautiful evocative music soundtrack music comes in (it reminds me very much of passages in the music to In A Heartbeat, but the composers are different), and we see Elias stop suddenly and by the look on his face you know he’s spotted Alexander. I knew Exactly how that felt once upon a time, and that young actor made me relive it all over again. Butterflies like I haven’t had in decades. Then we see from his point of view Alexander, in the crowd, turn slightly, and see Elias. More butterflies.

Where do they get these young actors who are that damn good?? That one scene, just a minute or two maybe, is pure cinematic gold. I hope they and the filmmakers win every award they enter the film in. Not that I would expect the Motion Picture Academy to do anything for this film.

So the two of them reconcile, and then dad stops singing, steps off the stage and comes over to Elias and embraces him. And all the other grown up couples smile, and so does Elias’ girlfriend who accepts him now too. And the two of them, Elias and Alexander stand side by side, happy together again, and Elias puts his head on Alexander’s shoulder…and fade to black.

Supposedly it will be released for US audiences on March 15. Heh…the day after Valentine’s Day. But this is exactly the sort of thing the New American Order doesn’t want anyone to see, so I’m not sure it’ll actually get a USA release.

I bought a copy of Goodnight And Good Luck after seeing many ads in my feed for the play coming to Broadway starring George Clooney as Edward R. Murrow.

Tonight I could only watch maybe the first half of it.

It’s filmed in black and white, and the photography is not only first class, but I think it deliberately harkens back to the film styles of the mid 1950s. Certainly the detail in the clothing, furnishings, technology, and that practically every male in the cast is smoking, or at least holding a cigarette, makes you believe you are looking through a magic screen into the past. The filmmakers recreated that 1950s atmosphere with careful attention to detail.

The movie, and the broadway play, is summarized as the battle between Murrow and Senator Joe McCarthy. But what hits you in the face watching the beginning of it is the environment of the Red Scare. There’s a story at the beginning Murrow reports on, concerning a young airforce man who was convicted of being a subversive on the basis of that being defined as anyone who maintained a close relationship with a communist whether or not they were one themselves. The man was convicted on the basis of sealed documents that neither he, nor his lawyer, nor the presiding judges were allowed to look at. This, in the movie, is Murrow’s first strike at what America was becoming during the Red Scare.

Which was also a Lavender Scare. There’s a scene in the first half of Murrow hosting his Person To Person show. Murrow is interviewing, via television link (that was the show’s hook), to Liberace in his Hollywood home. Murrow’s questions to him are later shown in the cue cards a tech is holding off camera, which tells us they were scripted in advance, and these are not casual conversations between Murrow and his guests they are made to appear. Murrow asks Liberace if he’s planning on getting married soon. Liberace gives him the standard boilerplate about waiting for that perfect mate. Afterward, as the lights in the studio are turned off, Murrow sits alone with a cigarette looking very unhappy at what he had just done.

Before the See It Now broadcast about the young airforce man, two colonels show up in the office of Fred Friendly to basically tell him to scrap the story. We know things you don’t about this, how dare you question our findings. Friendly stands his ground. What findings? Who is making the accusations? How reliable is this source? But the tension in the air is palpable. The military is telling a news broadcaster not to air a story, just on their say-so.

And all for case that turns on a rule that says you are to be considered a subversive if you maintain a close relationship to a communist. It was his father and his sister, and the accusation wasn’t they were communists, but communist sympathisers. The Air Force told him he had to denounce them both. And he wouldn’t. So he was convicted of being a subversive himself.

Later, after some McCarthy hearings CBS was covering, Friendly is given a packet by a creepy man somewhere in the Capitol (who I suspect was supposed to represent Roy Cohn but I didn’t catch the name Friendly says). The packet allegedly contains proof that Murrow is a communist. Friendly walks away in disgust but asks if he can keep the packet. “Sure,” says the creep with a smile, “I’ve made copies.”

Shortly after that scene I had to turn it off. I’ll probably get back to it tomorrow, but I was thinking maybe I should have watched After The Thin Man instead. It was too much like what we are living through now, and that was the early to mid 1950s.

A criticism often leveled at the movie after it came out was that its portrayal of McCarthy was too over the top…not knowing that the clips of McCarthy used in it are actual news footage from those events.

McCarthy’s sidekick during his red baiting capitol hearings was Roy Cohn. And Roy Cohn is, so I’m told, the man who taught Donald Trump everything about how to make the legal system turn against itself rather than you, and how to make powerful people afraid of you. It’s not just a likeness between then and now, it’s a bloodline.

It’s been a while since I’ve developed film. I can tell by how I had to wash all my measuring flasks before I began filling them with chemistry. That, and all the times I had to look up some figures in my Kodak dataguides because none of it was fresh in my memory.

I discovered something about how much I’ve aged in only a couple years or so. Thankfully the right hand doesn’t have the tremors my left does, but it’s there. I notice it when I’m trying to do some delicate work, like threading a developer tank spool. And the muscles in them are noticeably weaker. Either that or the crimping on the ends of the film cassettes has got tighter. It was a surprising amount of effort to pop them open with the cassette opener I’ve used since I was a teenager.

But I got four rolls of Tri-X Pan done. I’ll scan them in later and see how long they’ve been sitting there waiting to be developed.

The weakness and loss of fine precision in the hands is ominous. Maybe I can get some of it back by diving back into drawing. I could fill in some blanks in A Coming Out Story maybe…

I’ve been watching clips of this movie on various websites. It’s a stunning exploration of how deep friendship can be between boys, and the ways homophobic social pressure shatters lives. Leo and Remi are in love. It’s never made clear if either of them are actually gay, although I’m told it’s strongly suggested that Remi is and was to a degree self aware. But straight guys fall in love with other guys too in a deeply felt soul brother kind of way, and these two are very young. For a time they grow up in a place where closeness between boys was simply accepted as a part of growing up. That changes when the two move into a new school year.

Their closeness attracts the attention, and static, of classmates, which Leo cannot handle. He withdraws from Remi and it tears them both up with tragic consequences. I’ve seen it said on some forums that Leo capitulated to the homophobia of his classmates, and I think that’s completely unfair. These are kids. If you’ve never felt that pressure…and it comes at you from all directions, that contempt and loathing…consider yourself lucky. It’s too much for a lot of grown adults. It’s way too much for someone that age.

I’m not sure I’m going to watch this when it becomes available because it might be too much for me, even at my ancient age, or especially given what happened to me throughout my own life. I grew up in a period of time and a part of American culture when boys were expected to form close bonds and have a best friend. I had my best friends. We had sleepovers. We were close. What happened in my case was mom had to move several times so she could be close to the bus lines that got her to work. The separations tore me apart. It wasn’t until later in my teenage years that I began to realize it might have been different for me than it was with my friends. Maybe. I’ll never know for sure.

But back then the homophobic static wasn’t there nearly to the degree it is now, because nobody talked about That in front of kids. I didn’t start feeling it until middle school and by then I was keeping an emotional distance from the world around me. I had the additional burden/advantage of growing up around family that absolutely despised my dad and his side of the family, and would take it out on me because I was his son. So I grew up knowing that there would be people in my life who would hate me for something I couldn’t help being. I got use to it, which helped when my sexual orientation became undeniable.

The point is I know how all this feels and how it would have felt to the characters in this movie and I’m not sure I want to relive it again, especially given what happens.

That said, I’m glad that stories like this are finally being told. They need to be told. It’s a crime against humanity to attack closeness between friends, treat it with contempt, gay or straight. This movie is amazing, the young actors in it are pitch perfect in their roles. There is another one along the same themes, but which deals more specifically about gay love and romance, called “Young Hearts” that I’ll probably watch because so I’m told it has a more uplifting ending.

Both of these were made overseas. Close (2022) is a co-production between Belgium, France and the Netherlands. Young Hearts (2024) is a Belgian-Dutch co-production. Of course you knew neither one of these could have been made here in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

This is making the rounds online. The story about the man who sold 100k worth of pianos to Trump’s casino was in the news prior to his getting elected the first time, yet people voted for him anyway. This gives us the perspective of the person working the other end of that small business disaster. Check out what Trump did to her son’s class graduation party…

I am so easy to manipulate once you have the key. Oh I can come off as a stubborn single minded I Don’t Care What You Think so and so, yes. Also The Brat can be provoked out of me given certain specific events. Just ask a certain German someone. But once someone has that key I can be talked out of or into practically anything.

Obviously I guard that key carefully. It’s why I will often just walk away from a situation I don’t want to be in, rather than talk it out and get dragged back into somewhere I don’t want to be, especially if it’s someone I like, or did like at some point. It’s very easy for me to brush off angry people. It’s super easy for me to take a walk from someone who questions my intelligence after I’ve already taken the measure of theirs and found it wanting. But if you have that key it’s nearly impossible for me to keep my mind made up about anything you don’t want me to keep it made up about.

So just a few days ago I got a shock at work, and that on top of all the changes to the work environment which had to be made for security reasons (the arms race in cyber space between the good guys and the bad never lets up and we have an active mission going on) made me determined to go back into retirement. I was in tears. A bit of software I’d created that I was intensely proud of got snatched out from me with no notice. I was simply cut out of it. That, and the constant security roadblocks I was colliding with trying to do the work I was tasked with, was too much for me. I’m 71 years old and too old for the stress and heartbreak. I had not come back out of retirement for all of this. I told them I was retiring. Again.

The short version of the story is I got talked out of it.

I’m easy.

I’m hoping we’ve all arrived at an understanding that I’m just keeping an open mind. I have not committed to staying. We will, hopefully, work though things and see if the solutions proposed are agreeable to me after all.

But I have my doubts. There is more to me than the computer nerd/software engineer, but all of it centers on the fact that I am (yes I know it sounds pretentious to say so) an artist. I bring that to everything I do creatively. If the work isn’t worth giving my heart to, then it’s not worth doing. You only get one life and let me reach back into the religion of my childhood and say (I mean this) that it’s a sin to allow yourself to do work without heart. It’s like sex without love. Okay…yes…I realize there are people who are fine with that as long as the money is good. I am not. It’s why for most of my young adult life I bopped from one job to another to another. Once my heart stopped being in it, I was tendering my resignation. Although sometimes I got the boot before that when my sexual orientation became an issue. Which I was fine with because I don’t want to be anywhere people like me are held in contempt either.

There is art I have brought to my work that I must continue to be able to bring to it if I am to stay long term. In the short term, there is a Very Important project I am committed to bringing forth, a proof of concept, and I am going to do that however the f*ck I have to, because I agree it is Very Important and I am Going to get it done.

After that…