In Which We Go to the Movies

 I finally got around watching Project Hail Mary in an actual theater.  Friends had told me that it was well worth the trip to see it there and to watch it in IMAX, but I screwed around too long and it had been downgraded to the regular screens. 

Years ago I was an enthusiastic moviegoer, but now the allure of lying in my own bed with the cat and with my laptop on my stomach watching whatever Netflix dishes out is just too much to deny.  The Barbie movie in the summer of 2023 was the last time I set foot in an actual cinema, but Project Hail Mary sounded interesting and I like Ryan Gosling (he does a good job considering most of the role is a solo act,) so I figured what the hell. I put on my pants and went to the movies. 

The theater is in what used to be a very nice shopping mall attached to our convention center, but all the retail has surrendered and closed, leaving only the cinema and a half empty food court. It was like dropping by Miss Havisham's for tea.  But the theater was very clean with very comfy chairs that reclined.  I knew from bitter experience that seats like that are not meant for men as tall as me, but I didn't really mind and just let my feet hang off the end of the foot rest.  

Better writers than I have already discussed how the experience of movie watching has declined so sadly.  Let me just agree with what they've already said.  The experience included 20 minutes of commercials which I ignored by playing crosswords on my phone, followed by eight trailers for upcoming movies.  And what were the movies? Six sequels, one remake, and one (ONE) original new movie.  Staying at home with my cat in the bed never seemed so appealing. 

The movie itself was fine, not the best sci-fi I've seen but also not the worst.  Lots of great big, very loud action sequences which frequently were so confusingly shot it was not clear what was going on or where it was located. My main criticism is that no movie needs to be 2 and a half hours long. Two and a half hours is a miniseries. Give my fucking bladder a break. 

Recently I saw a story about some big shot from Sony rebuking theater owners at their annual meeting for a number of problems they had created for themselves and that were driving down attendance.  He mentioned the commercials as a particular problem and I certainly agree.  I do not appreciate spending $27 just be forced to watch an ad for eczema cream.  Fuck. Off. But the Sony guy represents a problem equally as bad.  Studios think milking the same old intellectual property for endless sequels and remakes is a safe bet.  They're wrong. It's going to take more than yet another Spider-Man movie to get me to put my pants on again and struggle down to the cinema. 

I think I'll just stay home with these guys instead: 

Ink stained.

He needs glasses to see to the end of his dick.

I'm trying to focus on his beautiful musculature, but I'm distracted by what he's holding. What is that?

Once again, I ask, "Is that real?" And once again, I realize, I don't care.

In the weeds never looked so good.

In Which We Are Identified

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In Which We Gel

How do you get gelatin? Originally, it was just the boiled down remains of slaughtering, horns and hooves and fish heads, all the crap nobody wanted to eat.  It was the scrap of scraps.  It rendered out a squishy, fairly clear glop.  Some misguided chef somewhere realized you could suspend more edible bits in it and, voila, in a marketing masterpiece, they called it aspic and somehow it became fancy.  No excessively fancy Victorian or Edwardian dinner was complete without it.  It was not sweet particularly, but was often part of the fish or meat course. Food scientists discovered an easier way to make it, they added sweeteners and fruit flavor and what did they have? They had jello, baby. 

That brings us up to the madness of the post-World War II era.  Homemakers of the time were wild for any product that made the drudgery of domestic life easier.  Canned food, frozen food, and anything labeled "instant" was a big hit.  Jello fit right in plus it had the added panache of aspic's reputation as gourmet grub.  Bridge clubs everywhere were swept up in a frenzy for it.  "The girls" couldn't get enough; a luncheon consisting of coffee, cigarettes, gin, jello, and gossip was guaranteed to get you through another week of your loveless marriage and those fucking kids.  

Hearkening back to its roots as a medium in which you could suspend all manner of random crap, recipes proliferated claiming to be "salads" since that implied health and slenderizing. One of the most popular of those so-called salads was for Ambrosia, which was a mixture of jello, whipped cream, canned fruit cocktail, and the always disgusting dried coconut.  

As a baby gay in the mid-60s, how mrpeenee longed for Ambrosia without coconut.  Dried coconut, in mrpeenee's unshakable opinion, is unfit for human consumption.  I would just as soon chow down on a piece of shag carpeting.  mrpeenee's mother (mapeenee) absolutely refused to consider this very minor modification.  "Coconut is in the recipe," she would state adamantly.  A recipe in her world was something that might as well have been etched in stone.  Looking back I can only sympathize with the poor dear.  She had four kids and a husband whose only contribution to housework was to open yet another bottle of cheap scotch. Her life was not easy breezy.

But that was then, and now it's a new day, a day in which mrpeenee is fully capable of making his own damn jello, anyway that I want to.  The internet was only too happy to provide me with thousands of recipes for ambrosia.  I landed on one called Orange Fluff which expanded its madness to include Cool Whip, miniature marshmallows, and vanilla instant pudding in the mix.  I have now made it twice and it is just as delicious as I dreamed all those many years ago in the suburban swamps which formed me. 

I know this kind of cooking (or "cooking".  The preparation only calls for boiling water and stirring) is often sneered at, but I am here to vouch that it is tasty in the extreme.  It may not be Julia Childs, but neither am I.  What it is is a product of those mid-century women's magazines just as much as I am.  Here's to you ladies. 

Boys for whom I would firm up: 

That's what I need to help me in the kitchen.

Boeuf al a mode

Just a simple boy wondering where the fuck his underwear is.

Wheeee

There are some men for whom clothes are not only overrated, they are almost a crime.

Exhibit A

The strain of trying to think.  Don't bother sweetie, it's not what you were meant for.

In Which We Are Lost

 

Is that stupid Mercury back in retrograde AGAIN?  Because I am in the midst of a string of small time disasters. 

Last week I was on my way to the chiropractor riding in Waymo (the local driverless robot taxi, because I am a fancy boy.)  I hopped out, took two steps and realized I was wearing my sunglasses and my regular glasses had fallen out of my pocket in the backseat of the car that was disappearing into the distance.

When I turned to my dear friend Diane von Austinburg to complain about the loss, she very perceptively asked if I had lost another pair of glasses because she knew that I had just replaced my sunglasses less than a month ago.  That's why it's important to remember dear friends can actually know too much.  I have now decided to simply staple these new glasses to my forehead. 

I was already brooding about these annoying and very expensive calamities when I thought to console myself with a cookie.  The very first bite included something much harder than you would expect in a chocolate chip cookie.  When I fished it out of my mouth it turned out to be a crown.  

My dentist, God love her, got me in the very next day to reattach the crown.  Inspection of the site where it used to live revealed a small cavity, the first one I've had in years.  She breezily assured me she would fill the cavity without any numbing since the nerve there had been removed originally and before I could marshal any protest based on how horrifying that idea is, that's exactly what she did. 

So the obvious answer to all this misplacement is to simply never leave my apartment again.   If I can't see and I can't chew, I will simply have to sit here in the dark waiting for the end.  

Boys I wish I could find: 

Exhibit A.

I also tried to convince Diane that the evening when my dinner consisted of most of a bag of Cheetos meant that I was now a vegan, but she didn't fall for it.

Ready, steady, go.

Our old friend Giancarlo Volti.

Shapely

In Which We Are Mystified

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In Which We Celebrate

 

My birthday is coming up soon and I will be 71 years old, to be mathematically exact.  I had thought I would start ignoring any birthday that doesn't end in multiple 0s, but Diane von Austinburg offered to come out to help celebrate, and any visit from her is always something to look forward to so I am pretending to be a good sport about the whole sorry mess, but there had better not be any choruses of Happy Birthday.  I hope she doesn't get caught up in the ongoing collapse of American airports.  It's only a 3-hour flight out here from Austin and I would hate for her to spend more than that long waiting in line. 

Another reason I am willing to acknowledge this anniversary is that my birthday this year falls on Easter Sunday.  This is only the second time in all these years that that has happened, but it has been a near miss before.  I remember when I was very young my mother made cupcakes that looked like little tiny Easter baskets 

Isn't that adorable?

That was absolutely remarkable because my poor mother, god rest her sainted self, was not a very enthusiastic baker. With four kids and a crappy oven, it's hard to blame her.  So yay for her cranking out a bunch of cupcakes with pipe cleaners as handles, jelly beans as Easter eggs, and tinted coconut as grass.  I don't remember anything else about them particularly and I also don't remember my mother's reaction when I announced I do not like dried coconut.  It's hard being a mom.

Also, completely unrelated to my birthday festivities, I wanted to mention that in comments generated by my recent post about the difficulty in understanding British accents, several of my English readers revealed their varying dialects.  None of them were defensive about it, because all my readers are very nice people, and I appreciate their restraint since looking back at the post I realize I was, uhm, a tiny bit insensitive.  I don't think I actually referred to anyone as having a speech impediment, but it was a near miss, so please accept my humble apologies.  Having read their very English blogs for years, I had always assumed somehow that they all spoke with the most refined, poshest, received pronunciation, Agatha Christie inspired, BBC shipping news articulation.  But it's a funny ol worl, innit?

Guys who need to be my birthday presents

Speaking of birthday cakes . . . .

Let's go for a ride.

Did I mention it's spring?

Spring has sprung.

Time to enjoy the great outdoors.

I'm sitting with all the windows open listening to the knuckleheads down on the street yodeling.

Even in permanently mild weathered San Francisco, we're glad to put winter behind us.

In Which We Are Planted

 

I have no idea where I got the impression that the black plastic pots plants come in from the nursery are not suitable as long-term housing for the plants, but I have for decades been adamant about transferring them into what I believed were more suitable containers.  More informed gardeners and professional landscapers have insisted to me, using small words because they thought that's what I needed, that that is not true, that the black plastic pods are just fine.  But a) they're wrong and b) those cheap pots may be utilitarian, but, man, are they ugly and c) shut up. 

When I had my house and garden up in the canyon, my obsession with repotting was no big deal.  I had a big patio with plenty of room to work in and any mess I made (and I always made a mess) was easy to clean up with a hose and a broom.  Now that I have relocated to an apartment with only a few insolent house plants, my efforts at giving them a new, more attractive spot are considerably more difficult. 

The subject has unfortunately come up again because late last year I bought a really charming fiddle leaf ficus.  It has been a great addition to my tiny collection of house plants, and so I decided it was time to give it a real pot.   Repotting is not really very difficult, but since I have to pull it off in the kitchen, The whole operation is a little more complicated.

Especially since the ficus is fairly tall and the pot is sizable.  But I am a genius and also not all that fussy about the final product.  I always explain to any plant that has come into my grasp "You have two options: live or die." 

In the end, it all came out fine

Ficuses are notorious for going into shock if you move them around and then dropping all their leaves to prove have a delicate they are, but this one seems to be less crazed than that and I hope it will be happy in its new home. 

Boys I'd like to put in a pot:

Au naturel

Much like PhotoShopping, I have decided not to struggle against AI created beefcake.

Are these guys real?  They are real enough

If we can't tell easily if it's AI, then maybe it's not worth the grief of worrying.

AI slop?   I want to slop him

Classical