Your Head Trucker notes that Chevrolet celebrated its 100th anniversary last month. To help them celebrate, here's a few films made by General Motors in years past, maybe you'll get a kick out of them like I did.
Chevrolet Leader News from 1938, one of a series of public-relations films featuring several short, amusing items, including a pipe-smoking cow:
Here's your chance to see what 1955 looked like in these TV commercials from Chevrolet:
And this highly innovative - if very, um, campy - song-and-dance number comes from the 1956 GM Motorama held in New York, featuring production models, concept cars, haute couture, and Frigidaire's Kitchen of the Future:
Your Head Trucker is feeling mighty proud of our Secretary of State today, after making the historic declaration that "gay rights are human rights" before the United Nations yesterday in Geneva. Rachel gives the scoop:
And here's the entire speech, if you want to see and hear it:
Also yesterday, President Obama issued a memorandum to federal agencies about the need to use American foreign aid and diplomacy, including granting asylum to gay and lesbians. Offical text of the memorandum is here.
It warms your Head Trucker's heart to hear these breathtaking statements - I am old enough to remember when homosexual was a word only whispered in public - especially since of late it has been so dispiriting to think about the anti-gay forces at work around the world. Wayne Besen of Truth Wins Out says:
The list of countries that recently declared war on sexual minorities include: Russia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Uganda, Iran, and Zimbabwe. For the contemptible despots who run these underachieving nations, fomenting homophobia makes political sense. By turning homosexuals into bogeymen these rulers can conceal their corruption and appear moral through the blessings of craven clergy. . . .
But today’s actions by the administration and Clinton’s speech were different. The words were spoken with true vision and encrusted in values. There was clarity and passion, and no one was left wondering where our country stood on the rights of LGBT people.
This was one of those times where our nation demonstrated true international leadership and made me incredibly proud to be an American. It was stirring to witness our country act decisively as a force for moral good. There was no patronizing that relegated the LGBT community to the role of liberalism’s unwanted stepchild. There were no carefully crafted and focus grouped code words that sugarcoated the abuses – just the honest truth spoken from the heart. . . .
The stunning events in Geneva mark the moment Barack Obama secured a national LGBT vote for his 2012 re-election campaign. Today we felt hope – but more importantly, we witnessed monumental change.
Amen.
Of course, some buttheads still don't get it, and probably never will. But oh let's do hope history hurries up and puts them on the shelf before too long.
BTW - your Head Trucker is not old enough to remember this date as a "day that will live in infamy" - no really, I'm not - but he does vividly remember it was exactly five years ago today that the Canadian Parliament voted for the third and final time to affirm equal marriage in that country. I watched the roll-call vote live, with tears running down my face, as member after member rose to vote on that historic occasion which finally ended all debate on the matter in the True North.
Canada, perhaps even more so than the United States, is a nation of immigrants now, and I was struck by the many different ethnicities represented by various Members of Parliament, from the four corners of the globe. It seemed to me that this was like a United Nations, joining together people from all over the world to ratify the equal respect and dignity of gay people. And I will never forget that moment.
So here's to better times for all of us queer people, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and all the fabulous colors of the rainbow.
Update: Be sure to read John Aravosis's excellent post:
Way back when your Head Trucker was young and still thinking he was supposed to grow up to be straight, he had a major crush on Cher. Here's a wonderful clip I found that I've never seen before, from 1967. Just look at how lovely Mrs. Bono is at 21 in that babydoll dress, so young and spirited and naturally beautiful - who wouldn't fall for a girl like that?
I made a little playlist of Cher's songs from the sixties, if you want to listen to more. Just open this video in YouTube, and you'll see the playlist at the bottom of your screen.
This has been floating around the blogosphere awhile, but I thought I'd repost it on the Blue Truck, in case any of my truckbuddies run into somebody who mouths about "marriage has always been the same" and "the Bible says . . . ." Well, here are the plain facts of what the Old Testament has to say on the subject, with chapter and verse cited. Throw this on your Christianist neighbor and watch the but-but-buts start bubbling out of his mouth.
Click to enlarge
The point being that the Bible is a collection of books written over a span of ten centuries, containing much that merely reflects the social conditions of the time and the typical attitudes of the straight, male writers who lived back then. Therefore, there's a lot of Biblical material that is simply not true and not a good guide for us now. The Christianists who claim that every word of it is the infallible Word of God are simply, tragically, ignorantly, childishly wrong.
God is bigger than the Bible. God is bigger than the Church. God - the Love that moves the stars, in Dante's lovely phrase - yet closer than hands and feet, nearer than breathing, as Tennyson wrote - cannot be fully contained in any one mind's understanding.
On the other hand, there are many things in the Bible worth knowing, and some that are deeply moving and soul-sustaining, as many millions of quiet Christians and Jews, not raving fanatics, have discovered down through the centuries, all around the globe.
Just a note to say the Pork Boys' dinner Thursday night was too yumsome for words. Wish I had a pic to illustrate this with, but both the ex-roommate and I are having software problems (oh Mary, don't ask!) so you'll just have to take my word for it. M. P. had already cooked the big Thanksgiving spread for his four adult kids and their spouses/whatevers last Saturday, so he planned just a simple little menu for us, or so he said.
Which consisted of:
Homemade 5-cheese ball and Ritz crackers
Barbecued sausages
Chicken livers and bacon en brochette
Turkey soup
Roasted hen stuffed with
Crackling dressing
Giblet gravy
Cranberry sauce
Baked sweet potatoes
Mashed potatoes
Maque choux (Cajun dish of corn, other veggies, and cream)
Green lima beans
Sliced fresh tomatoes au poivre et sel
Miz Pearly’s fruit salad (heaven! - the secret's in the sauce)
Fried biscuits (to die for - you ain't never had nothing that good in your mouth)
White Zinfandel
Cranberry pie with lattice crust
Apple strudel in puff pastry a la mode
with vanilla bean ice cream
Coffee
All of it made strictly from scratch (including the sausages), except for the Ritz crackers and the ice cream. And every damn bite of it was larruppin' good, believe me when I tell you. Wish you could have been there, boys.
Honk to Joe.My.God. for this reminiscence about funnyman Alan Sues, who died yesterday at age 85 - my God, has it really been that long since he was on Laugh-In? - and for the video of him telling this story, which made your Head Trucker spew his coffee all over the keyboard:
When I was a kid, three men on television hinted at the world I would one day enter. Dr. Smith (Lost In Space), Uncle Arthur (Bewitched), and Alan Sues. All of them were silly sniggering clowns, but that's how Hollywood used to do it. Some would say nothing has changed on that front, but I fondly recall all three.
I've always wanted a little seaside cottage in the south of France. This would do nicely. And it's a steal at only $100 million.
Though of course, it would have to be redecorated, totally. Who wants to help, in exchange for room and board next summer?
Be sure to use the full screen on this one, guys.
(Note: "Infamous" does not mean wonderful, grand, or even famous. I hear this assinine usage, as in the above video, more and more these days. What the hell is wrong with people who can't understand this simple distinction? I ask you.)
Thirty years since we knew the plague was among us. Twenty years since I lost my best friend Tommy to it. This is for him and all the others I knew, or never knew . . .
It's just how I feel right now: an old man alone at home on a cold winter's night.
But tomorrow night, the Pork Boys will have their delayed mini-Thanksgiving dinner, with a roasted hen and some luscious down-home trimmings, so that will be fun.
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.
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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.
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My Story
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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.
