We are sweltering through some mighty hot weather down here in Texas, boys - Tuesday it was 104 degrees, and the heat index was a whopping 119! The temperature inside the house was 85, even with the a/c system and all fans going full blast. We had a serviceman come out yesterday who cleaned and recharged the a/c, which helped; and also, the outdoor temp cooled off to a mere 98 degrees.
When we hear of silly-ass people in France or wherever agonizing over whether it is "ethical" to use air conditioning in extreme heat, we just laugh. The question here in the Lone Star State is: You want to live or die? It's that simple.
I hope all my truckbuddies are staying cool and comfortable. If you need something to take your mind off the weather, here's an amusing B movie from 1941 made by the Hal Roach studios - they also made the Our Gang comedies in the 1930s.
We like to watch old movies or TV shows during dinner at the kitchen bar; and it seems I have made a convert of M.P., who wasn't quite sure who Zasu Pitts was until I started playing some of her movies. Now he thinks she's swell. See what you think.
We watched this last night while eating supper at the kitchen bar. I'm sure many of my truckbuddies will recall thumbing though those catalogs as M.P. and I did in the 70's. It wasn't nearly as good as Playgirl, but sometimes it was all you had to dream on.
Bonus: In this a local news report on West Hollywood in 1980, you will get a glimpse of the International Male store there. I never knew they had an actual store building.
Witty food historian Max Miller gets down to the nitty gritty with that British favorite of most peculiar nomenclature. But relax - it's not what you think!
Mass-production housing for the masses. What a concept.
A couple of early Levittown houses in 2D and 3D view. Click to enlarge.
What was included in the price of a Levittown home in 1950.
Floor plan of the "Ranch" model, about 800 square feet. Much more convenient layout,, but the 8-foot kitchenette would bug me, and M.P. would would have fits.
M.P. and I enjoyed watching this touching 2008 film about the first Levittown, featuring some of the original owners reminiscing about the early days of that huge postwar development on Long Island. Levitt & Sons mass-produced more than 17,000 houses in less than five years, and built an entire town too, complete with schools, churches, stores, playgrounds, and swimming pools.
We both grew up in postwar neighborhoods ourselves, but they were nothing like this gargantuan, master-planned community. Quite an achievement - in my book, on a par with the Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge. A dream come true with practical benefits. Here's a look into the human side of all that. Enjoy.
Ya know, fellas, sometimes you just run out of steam. I've been posting a lot here for the last 100 days and more, but yesterday I realized I just don't want to write about the horror anymore. The stupidity, the craziness, and the absurdity are still growing, and going from bad to worse to beyond godawful - and it's breaking my heart.
We are living through a great turning point in the history of the world. The sunlit world of peace, prosperity, and progress - on the whole and in the main, despite all its flaws and failures - that our fathers fought for is disintegrating before our eyes. Instead, hateful right-wing dictatorships are arising all around the world, hand in hand with fundamentalist religion, willful ignorance, arbitrary cruelty, and the worship of Mammon. Liberty has dropped her lamp, and Justice her scales.
The human race, led by fools, frauds, and fanatics, seems to be in a race to the bottom, sinking back to a lower level of civilization that we thought we had left far behind us. And worse is to come, perhaps. I fear that the 21st century will make the 20th look like a Sunday-school picnic.
No one should take my words as a counsel of despair, but rather as an urgent warning. In any case, I can't do anything about it, and right now I need to come up for air and clear my head. So I'm taking a break from nausea, disgust, and political blogging - for how long, who knows.
* * * * *
In this mortal life, we have to take the bitter with the sweet, and we should certainly enjoy the sweet parts while we can. It just so happens that a certain foodist in New York has got a sweet shade of orange for you to try - oh, Mary, don't ask!
We both love carrot cake, but I don't care for raisins. M.P., however, thinks it would be super.
Hauser is a great favorite of M.P.'s, and I like him too. He played this outstanding concert of classical and popular music last May in London with guest artists Caroline Campbell, Aida Garifullina, and Lara Fabian. As M.P. says, he's a superb cellist and a real showman to boot. Quite a treat for music lovers.
M.P. and I are working our way through some of this guy's videos. Very funny - and you wouldn't believe his resume if I told you about it, so go look at it yourself.
You should understand that Cajuns are Southerners with a French twist and a splash of hot sauce. They enjoy a bit more joie de vivre than their Anglo neighbors. And like M.P., they are great cooks.
This 2000 documentary about America's favorite redhead was produced by WNET for the PBS American Masters series, and won an Emmy Award. I discovered it only the other day, and highly recommend it to all you Lucy fans out there.
It might be old news to the rest of the world, but we just discovered this 2008 documentary about the Los Angeles studio musicians who created the sounds we all loved in the 1960s. As Dick Clark says in here, "They played for so many people in so many styles. . . . They had the magic touch." Though rarely credited for their work back then, this show honors their contributions to the "West Coast Sound" that was heard 'round the world on radio, records, TV themes, and movie soundtracks. Fascinating.
An extra interview with delightful Carol Kaye, the only woman in the group, and a fabulous bassist:
We've been watching some videos from Cavalcade of Food lately. It's based in the little town of Croswell, Michigan, up in the "thumb," where a fellow named Kevin is the friendly proprietor of a mind-boggling collection of vintage appliances, kitchenware, and furnishings from the 1950s to the 1970s. His collection is so big that he bought a former five-and-dime store to display it all in.
We weren't too impressed at first, because what Kevin has collected is the same kind of everyday stuff - sometimes the very same make and model - that M.P. and I grew up with in that era, which all seem rather ordinary to us. (Functional, yes; beautiful, maybe; glamorous, not at all.) But you have to admire Kevin's energy and passion for amassing such a huge collection, each piece of which he can tell you all about in minute detail.
Kevin also loves to cook, as M.P. does, and we've watched several of his cooking videos with interest. The first one below is a crowd-pleasing treat we might make the next time M.P.'s family comes over - or maybe just for our own delectation some autumn night.
The second video gives an overview of the collection. It's kind of a trip, looking at this huge display of so many familiar items from the past - maybe you'll get a kick out of it, too.
We recently enjoyed this very interesting documentary from the German Archeological Institute on the origin of pants - the where, the why, and the who.
This video was produced in 2012, but somehow I totally missed it back then, and just happened to come across it last week. Be sure to watch the 2022 update as well.
A few nights ago, M.P. and I watched this fascinating exploration of Vermeer's techniques, and had quite an interesting conversation afterwards. M.P. being a trained artist, he understood more of the technical aspects than I did. Very worth watching if you care anything about painting.
I have some new Pork Boys pictures of recent dinners to post, but just haven't got around to doing it yet. I plead heat exhaustion: it's been over 100 degrees down here every damn day since the middle of May, most unusually.
But we don't always dine in state at the dinner table; in late years, we've developed a custom of sometimes watching old movies on my laptop while we eat dinner in the kitchen. Here are three comedies from the Golden Age of Hollywood that we enjoyed this week - maybe you will, too.
Starring suave and studly Brian Aherne and gorgeous Loretta Young as a young married couple who move into a Greenwich Village apartment house that turns out to be a comic hotbed of blackmail and murder.
Starring our gal Rosalind Russell (later "Auntie Mame"), Ray Milland, and Edmund Gwenn (aka Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street), in a collegiate comedy about a busy dean who says her career is more important than romance - until a tall, handsome visitor who won't take no for an answer brings her lofty ideals down to earth with a bump and a splash. Includes delightful cameos of Lucille Ball and Gale Gordon, who at the time were stars of the radio sitcom My Favorite Husband (the forerunner of I Love Lucy).
Starring the delightful Irene Dunne and Dean Jagger in a whimsical laugh riot about a middle-class couple struggling to raise a family on a tight budget until a couple of newly planted trees begin to bloom, causing wonderment - and a national scandal. This was Miss Dunne's last film role before she retired from acting.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, harmony; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that I may seek not so much to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
.
We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love.
and welcome to the Blue Truck, a blog for mature gay men with news and views on gay rights, history, art, humor, and whatever comes to mind. Plus a few hot men. The truck's all washed and gassed up, so hop in buddy, let's go.
CAUTION: For mature gay men only beyond this point. Some posts and links may not be suitable for children or the unco guid. You have been warned.
Insert valid picture ID with date of birth now, or click here.
My Story
click photograph to read
Churches say that the expression of love in a heterosexual monogamous relationship includes the physical, the touching, embracing, kissing, the genital act - the totality of our love makes each of us grow to become increasingly godlike and compassionate. If this is so for the heterosexual, what earthly reason have we to say that it is not the case with the homosexual?
It is a perversion if you say to me that a person chooses to be homosexual. You must be crazy to choose a way of life that exposes you to a kind of hatred. It's like saying you choose to be black in a race-infected society.
If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn't worship that God.
