A number of years ago I followed a blog set in an apartment above a restaurant in London, two gentlemen residing. Though it presented itself in documentary style, there was a whiff of fiction. I cannot be more precise, though apparently I was not alone olfactorily.

I say this because at some point, someone wrote in ‘Comments’, engaging an ‘I’m confused’ tone: There’s no apartment above the so and so restaurant. Knowledgeable? I suppose, still it struck me, as an acolyte of the Blanche DuBois church of courtesy that this was deliberate cruelty.

The blog in question was as entertaining and craftsmanlike as can be, and the author was always complimentary and encouraging of my own threadbare blog, so I was disappointed when it shuttered. As to the fiction question, I don’t know if the blogger ever came clean, or if there was clean to come to.

I asked a friend once if he thought that presenting oneself online generally amounted to fiction on the face of it. His reply was that since ‘curating’ was unavoidable, the answer was yes.

Now, since I haven’t come up with a post for the past five months, I’m considering enlisting Artificial Intelligence to carry on.  As a matter of fact, this very post may be the work of A.I., so ‘as a matter of fact’ may be the wrong way to put it…

Here is (or isn’t…) a photo of our backyard taken from the balcony yesterday; that’s a Japanese Magnolia there, which we haven’t seen in full bloom in years because typically the squirrels eat all the buds.

A pair of hawks settled in the neighborhood, squirrels vacated.  [applause]

At the start of certain familiar ‘discussions’, via something like muscle memory, I can fairly quickly launch a short two-character One Act, taking on Stephen’s character in the back and forth to save him the bother.

Once, mid-performance, Stephen said he hoped it wasn’t going to escalate to punching as he would hate to see me harm myself…

Weekend past, we found ourselves in probably – interpersonally speaking – our least nurturing environment: the automobile.  I call Stephen the copilot from heaven (nice thing) and backseat driver from hell (true thing) hybrid.  He finds my driving ‘unskilled’ (bogus thing).

We traveled some distance Saturday to attend a ‘Folk art’ festival in Summerville, Georgia at the famous ‘Paradise Gardens’ of the Reverend Howard Finster, ‘Outsider artist’ darling of the Eighties.

Wikipedia begins: “Outside art is art made by self-taught or supposedly naïve artists with typically little or no contact with the conventions of the art world.”

‘Supposedly’, quite sly for Wiki.

Regardless of how gifted the artist, faux naïveté does positively abound at these festivals.  And there’s also faux eccentricity;-)  Did I mention tattoos as far as the eye could see?

Nice day, met our friends ‘Tex’ and Pete, who were showing there.  Both very talented, and both committed card-carrying eccentrics. 

Saturday was our [eighth] [legal] anniversary.  Behaved ourselves as best we could on the drive home.  I allowed Stephen to speak his own part in the minor bickering that may have taken place…

Cheers!

With its infiltration now into movie dialogue and newscasts, the ‘second D’, as I call it, has taken such a solid foothold in the pronunciation of the contractions couldn’t/shouldn’t/wouldn’t (could-dent/should-dent/would-dent) that we are apparently stuck with them.  People always pronounced those words that way?  No they did-dent…

Next. For some while, I have been advocating for a long retirement of the word ‘amazing’ (“That’s aMAzing!” “She’s aMAzing!”) for its having been driven into meaninglessness, but now I say we need to remove ‘amazing’ permanently from the English language.  Having made such a statement, it’s far easier to move forward with my next bit.

Remember my post from five years ago (of course you do…) called The Tattoo Pandemic?  Deadly as Item #3 declares, I think I no longer apologize for it.

My friend Andy recently very calmly characterized tattoos as “self-mutilation”.

I feel SO much better…

My friend Will W and I have a history of bad experiences in movie theaters with regard to patrons nearby.  I recently mailed him the neatly folded sister popcorn bag of the one used relentlessly by the person seated behind Stephen and me throughout ‘Asteroid City’ the other week.  I’d printed on the bag:

‘The Will & Dave Theatre Experience – Home Edition’.

Below is a text exchange this morning.

– – – – – –      – – – – – –      – – – – – –

“Stephen found Bruce LaBruce on Instagram this morning and passed him along to me.  A never-ending rabbit hole of film odds and ends, and what do I highlight here?  For all the well-deserved slings and arrows, ’The Greatest Story Ever Told’ had wonderful production/set design.  I saw it in Cinerama in 1965 with my friend Tony, who wanted to leave at intermission.  It has one of my favorite pans of all time, suggesting that the thuds of hardbound souvenir programs slipping off nodding audience members’ laps and hitting the floor, were all that enlivened the premiere.  If I’ve spoken the Shelley Winters line in the comments once, then it’s a thousand times.  I feel so validated!  Do you think seeing ‘TGSET’ in Cinerama rates with seeing ‘Oppenheimer’ on 70mm film;-)  Also on my resume: seeing ‘Reflections in a Golden Eye’ with Greek subtitles.  I think I may start an Instagram of my own and call it Dave’s Soiled Retina.”

Charlotte Inwood: Oh, this is a pleasure. Where have you been? I thought you were dead.

Eve Gill: Oh, no, Madame. I wasn’t. As a matter of fact…

Charlotte Inwood: You needn’t go into detail, darling. I hope you’re not going to turn into one of those explicit people who always tell you exactly how they feel when you ask them.

–   –   –   –   –   –   –   –   –   –   –   –

All these years, I have resisted talking health on Domani Dave, but being as how I reported Stephen getting a risky heart procedure a post ago, perhaps another followup.  Am I right?

The TAVR itself did proceed without a hitch.  The odd/nice thing, there was no discernible convalescence: he came home and was just Steve.  In addition, however, to the new aortal heart valve, Stephen now also has a pacemaker.

Both cardiac doctors – abundantly focused and charming – assured us the bum heart valve and the slow heart rate were unrelated.  Though I cannot say why, seems nice to know.

Better, still real old, end of tale.

I don’t suppose a person can announce an upcoming medical procedure, then fail to relate the outcome: we’ve been given no reason to expect anything but improvements.

Whereupon… I feel frivolous enough to also report on Saturday’s Coronation.

Like the Duke of Sussex, I hopped a flight to London and scurried to the Abbey.  Unfortunately, same seating fate as Harry, behind someone with a plume, so you may have missed my own face on the telly.

Should you fain doubt what I’ve just told, I invite you to reacquaint yourself with my post concerning my deep and decades-long relationship with Charles R.

Petty jealousy, don’t fall victim to it…

Stephen turned seventy-two yesterday.  For some reason, this year I reflected again on the fact that I was thirty and he was twenty-six when I robbed him from the cradle, though the robbing was actually the other way around.

We drove to the North Georgia mountains yesterday, at Stephen’s pleasure, to visit our friend Martin’s mother who turns ninety this coming Thursday and lives alone; Martin teaches in California.

We were going to visit Norma on Thursday, but at last, after a good bit of medical musical chairs, Stephen enters the hospital on that day for a TAVR procedure, I leave it to you to google what that is.

Stephen is stalwart, but I worry and cannot talk… for a change.  He zoomed past willful to obstinate years ago, but is a master of illusion: everyone loves him.

Our mothers shared the same birthday. Stephen’s mother would have been 99 today, mine 101.

I cropped this picture of Stephen and mom from a full-length I shot maybe 15 years ago; she’s actually standing on a stairstep. Diminutive, confoundingly sweet, perpetually chic.

The second picture, my mother and father, lifted from a photo with my brother and me.  Snapped February 8, 1968 by the next door neighbor with a Kodak heaven-knows-what, the day I left for Crete.  I’d lived on Crete for over a year when I received word my father had died.

When I originally unearthed this picture, I considered both that this was the last photo of the family together, and not so long afterwards that there was no reason to imagine a later photograph of my father existed.

All highlights and no shadow detail, a photographer’s kvetch.

My parents, aren’t they beautiful.

Though I tend to think of the Winter Solstice in more lyrical terms, it occurred to me today out of the blue that there may be more practical aspects.

As the ‘shortest day of the year’, if you have cares, today there’s less time to dwell on them, and if you are a child, unhinged for Christmas Day to finally arrive, there’s less time today to wait.

I’m pretty sure these two ideas are sound…

Happy Christmas and New Year!

This alarmed artifact measures a mere inch and a half wide, four centimeters for you metric souls. Stephen culled it from his vast, vast collection of ‘items’, as I rudely call them, with a verging on invisible hint to photograph it. I did. Boo!