Waitin' for the Weekend

Le dîner de Mariele

For once, a truly funny video out of the barrage of just-thinking-of-you emails from distant relations:

Tired Old Queen at the Movies: The V.I.P.s

Steve Hayes reviews the 1963 film:



Catch more fabulous movie reviews at Steve's YouTube channel.

Delicious Dishes

Way cool. I want these. Even though I rarely cook anything these days more creative than a Stouffer's dinner.

Marriage News Watch, 2/17/14

Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights reports:

Sunday Drive: In the Early Morning Rain

Guest Post: Uniformly Gorgeous

Contributed by my truckbuddy Tim from England, now resident in Spain:

Tim’s Take on Spain

Uniformly Gorgeous - My Mijas Firemen

By way of a short prologue, I ought to say that this guest post should have been with you for the start of 2014. However, I managed to bracket Christmas and the New Year with visits to the hospital for surgery, which I then followed up with by having bronchitis. I’m not sure if Spain is still the sick-man of Europe, but I sure feel like the sick-man of Spain!

Anyway, although it’s a month late, the arrival of the new year is often symbolised by a baby, and the lovely image below shows our favourite Spanish goalkeeper, Iker Casillas (see my previous post if you missed him), holding his newborn son, Martín, who arrived on the 3rd of January. Needless to say, the Spanish press was full of jokes about Martín being in a safe pair of hands! Felicidades to Iker and mum Sara, and a big Hola to Martín.

Now, back to our subject, the first in an occasional series looking at Spanish men in uniform. Today it’s the turn of the my local firemen who are based in Mijas, one of the pretty white towns, or Pueblos Blancos, famous in Andalucia, and about 14 miles away from my home.

“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society” – so wrote Samuel Langhorne Clemens, under his pen name of Mark Twain.

“I love a man in uniform, or out of it come to that” – writes Tim Turner below, using his real name.

So let’s get my first guest post of the year off with a bang, or at least some smoke and flames. Here’s the smoke.

And here’s the flames. Who could resist a big red helmet like that?

Welcome to my local firemen, Los Bomberos de Mijas.

Continued after the jump . . .

Waitin' for the Weekend

On this chilly Valentine's Day, here's something to raise the steam in your pipes:

Federal Judge Strikes Down Marriage Ban in Virginia

In the case of Bostic v. Rainey, U. S. District Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen today struck down Virginia's anti-gay marriage laws on grounds that they violate the U. S. Constitution's guarantees of due process and equal protection.  However, no gay wedding bells will ring in the Old Dominion anytime soon:  the ruling is stayed, pending appeal to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.  Judge Allen, appointed to the bench by President Obama in 2011, began her ruling with this quotation from Mildred Loving, plaintiff in the landmark Supreme Court interracial marriage case Loving v. Virginia in 1967:

On page 22 of her ruling, Judge Allen declared:

Gay and lesbian individuals share the same capacity as heterosexual individuals to form, preserve and celebrate loving, intimate and lasting relationships. Such relationships are created through the exercise of sacred, personal choices - choices, like the choices made by every other citizen, that must be free from unwarranted government interference.

The judge also deliciously hoisted Justice Scalia with his own petard:

In Windsor, our Constitution was invoked to protect the individual rights of gay and lesbian citizens, and the propriety of such protection led to upholding state law against conflicting federal law. The propriety of invoking such protection remains compelling when faced with the task of evaluating the constitutionality of state laws. This propriety is described eloquently in a dissenting opinion authored by the Honorable Antonin Scalia:

As I have said, the real rationale of [the Windsor opinion] is that DOMA is motivated by "bare . . . desire to harm" couples in same-sex marriages. How easy it is, indeed how inevitable, to reach the same conclusion with regard to state laws denying same-sex couples marital status.

Judge Allen concluded by saying, in part:

The Court is compelled to conclude that Virginia’s Marriage Laws unconstitutionally deny Virginia’s gay and lesbian citizens the fundamental freedom to choose to marry. Government interests in perpetuating traditions, shielding state matters from federal interference, and favoring one model of parenting over others must yield to this country’s cherished protections that ensure the exercise of the private choices of the individual citizen regarding love and family. . . .

Justice has often been forged from fires of indignities and prejudices suffered. Our triumphs that celebrate the freedom of choice are hallowed. We have arrived upon another moment in history when We the People becomes more inclusive, and our freedom more perfect.

Read the entire ruling here.

Judge Allen's ruling is the first in a Southern state to uphold marriage equality (Oklahoma, where a similar ruling is pending appeal, is only sorta-kinda Southern in some places, more Western actually). Yesterday, a judge granted partial marriage recognition in Kentucky.  Today, another same-sex marriage lawsuit was filed in Alafuckingbama, of all places; click here for a map of lawsuits in progress or on appeal nationwide.

My word, all these judges across the country suddenly discovering that teh gayz are human, and entitled to the equal protection of the laws just like they was people. Something your Head Trucker brought up 35 years ago, but nobody wanted to listen to me then. Still, better late than never, right boys?

The dominos are piling up with breathtaking speed now. It's all over but the shouting, screaming, and whining from the nasty hardcore bigots on the religious right.

In Memoriam: Shirley Temple Black, 1928-2014

After a fabulous career in Hollywood and later in diplomacy, beloved child star Shirley Temple has died at age 85, which seems so strange to say.

Accepting the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Screen Actors Guild in 2006.

My favorite of her movies is The Little Princess (1939), in which she plays Sara Crewe, a little Victorian girl stranded in a boarding school when her soldier father is reported killed in the Boer War, and thereafter the now-penniless girl must work for her room and board. Cesar Romero and Arthur Treacher play memorable roles as sympathetic friends to Shirley's character. I never knew till now that the movie was filmed in brilliant Technicolor, so I'll have to watch it again - a lovely monument to Shirley's life and career.

The Birth of the Modern World: 50 Years Ago

On February 9, 1964, the Beatles made their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, and the whole world changed, for good or ill. Some might say it was then that the inmates began to take over the madhouse, but so many commentators have expatiated on the cultural shifts since that point in time that your Head Trucker feels no need to add to the discussion. Still, here are a couple of retrospectives made by CBS News at the time of the thirtieth anniversary, in case you need reminding of the electrifying first appearance of those mop-headed storm troopers.





And here's an amusing reminiscence by Mitzi Gaynor about appearing on the second Sullivan show featuring the Beatles, broadcast from Miami Beach on February 16: