...do you insist on bending spacetime and suddenly posting so many AI recreations of your original photographs, inserting a much younger you?
Several years ago, a lifelong friend and I were discussing aging and the effects it was having on our bodies. We decided that 28 was a perfectly fine age to be and that we were going to remain 28 from that point forward—regardless of evidence to the contrary. I've shifted it a few years forward from that to my mid-30s because in many ways those years were even better. All of us have an inner self and an outer self, and that hot, young, bearded guys is the real me inside, the person who is—and will be—driving this bruised and battered old body around until the final wheel falls off.
I wonder whatever happened to that shirt...I love bending spacetime.
This was my first real exposure to Chicago. Oh sure, I was aware of the band (I mean you couldn't turn on the radio without hearing them), but this was the first album of theirs I actually bought. I remember putting the record on my turntable, plugging in my headphones and falling in love. From that point on I was a huge fan, and as recently as the 2000s I was still backfilling my catalog with the earlier albums I'd previously brushed off.
To be honest, however, I did lose interest in the majority of their work after Chicago X, the album that came out immediately after this one.
It was Michael Flatley in steel-toed boots, Riverdancing on the Republican ballsack.
A historic, motherfucking tsunami that tore across the map and left the Republican Party looking like a yacht-club orgy capsized mid-thrust, a hundred Thurston Howells bobbing in the chop with their Nantucket reds around their ankles, fighting over one monogrammed life vest.
Democracy didn’t knock. She came through the kitchen window, jacket torn, lipstick crooked, one shoe missing, a rotisserie chicken under one arm, and said, “You assholes start without me?”
You could feel it as the numbers hit the screen. Group chats detonating. Phones lighting up dark bedrooms. People sending voice messages that were just sobbing, snorting, and “ARE YOU FUCKING SEEING THIS?” Somebody’s Aunt Deb in Parsippany, who has never once found the caps lock key on purpose, was finally using the correct tone.
The air had tasted like dread for two years. Now it tasted like possibility, cheap tequila, and Republican flop sweat.
Blue wave, my entire ass.
It was a comeback with bloody knuckles and somebody else’s veneer embedded in one of them. A voice scraped raw from screaming into the wind, finally hearing an answer. It was anguish finding an outlet, outrage finding its legs, a country hauling itself up off the linoleum, one hand on the Formica, and saying, “You thought we were finished? Oh, honey. We haven’t even taken our earrings off.”
There’s that line, “Hope has two beautiful daughters—anger and courage.”
Those girls just pulled up in a stolen Buick LeSabre, carrying bolt cutters and a fucking battering ram, and one of them had already keyed a Cybertruck on the way in. Anger because we’ve seen enough. Courage because we’re still here. You could tell Hope had raised these two felons on Entenmann’s and spite.
Hope’s been gone so long I figured she’d run off with a pool hustler in Reno, changed her name to Crystal Chandelier, and bought a questionable houseboat with a man whose business card just says “Opportunities.” Last I heard, she’d joined a pyramid scheme selling chakra-enhancing windshield wipers and tried to settle a parking ticket with a Bed Bath & Beyond coupon and a loosely supervised ferret.
But around nine o’clock, she came rattling up the driveway in a borrowed Honda, sequins in the cupholder, a gas receipt stuck to her cheek, clutching a convenience-store rose. We pulled her inside and put the kettle on. She ripped down the blackout curtains, opened every window, lit a Virginia Slim, and told us this place was getting some goddamn air.
She’s a catastrophe. She smells like truck-stop perfume and secondhand cigarette smoke. But she’s back. And for the first time in ages, we can imagine her staying a while.
Because this wasn’t a one-off. It wasn’t a fluke. Across the country, up and down ballots, we were winning seats we hadn’t held in decades. James Talarico wasn’t even born the last time a Democrat won a Senate election in Texas.
Two years ago, we watched the map change color and felt the future closing around our children. Last night, I watched it change again and caught myself imagining their lives without immediately rehearsing what I would have to protect them from. The same country that had broken our hearts was giving us reasons to believe in it again.
But we’ve always known no superhero was going to swoop in and hand our country back to us.
No one was ever coming to save us.
It was always going to be up to us.
We were the heroes we were waiting for. Every door knocked, every call made, every exhausted person who found one more conversation in them. We did this.
The wins hit like church bells after a siege.
Texas. Kansas. Iowa. North Carolina. South Carolina. We flipped the fucking Carolinas. Maine. Ohio’s Senate seat. Democrats won the House AND the Senate.
Texas went blue from the Senate seat and governor’s mansion through the statewide offices and all four Supreme Court seats on the ballot. We got rid of fucking Abbott.
And Mississippi, friends.
Mississippi’s Senate race is still too close to call.
Mississippi.
Governorships flipped in Georgia, Ohio, Iowa, Texas, and Nevada. My own home district, New Jersey Seven, threw Tom Kean Jr. out and elected Rebecca Bennett.
And Amy Acton beat Vivek Ramaswamy. Honestly, that was the one I wanted most. After the way he treated her, watching Ohio choose her to govern them? Oh, that is some exquisite, eat-shit-and-call-her-Governor gratification.
Talarico’s win was satisfying for the same reason. He ran on love, decency, empathy—everything Trumpism tries to humiliate out of us. In Texas, of all places, love fucking prevailed.
We elected our first Black woman governor, first Muslim senator, first openly gay male senator, first Native American woman governor and senator. Texas elected its first Latina governor. New York elected its first Palestinian American state legislator.
That’s Jimmy Carter’s beautiful mosaic, coming alive before our eyes.
Different names. Different prayers. Generations of people who belonged here long before this country could bring itself to say so. Somewhere, a child heard a room full of strangers applaud a name that sounded like theirs. I hope that sound stays with them longer than anything cruel anyone ever says about it.
Every single one of those victories was democracy dragging herself out of the ditch, gravel in her palms, a broken heel in her hand, a ballot clutched against her chest, and yelling, “Nice fucking try, motherfuckers.”
For Republicans who campaigned on making us afraid of one another, the MAGA brand has gone from carnival bark to contagion. They rolled in Trump like dogs in something dead. Turns out the smell doesn’t wash off on Election Day.
They even lost districts they gerrymandered themselves.
Any Republican who still thinks clinging to him is a survival strategy might as well be using a bowling ball as a flotation device. The country has had enough of these congressional crotch-sniffers treating our lives like collateral for his ego.
Winning just feels good, doesn’t it?
After the last election, I couldn’t look half my town in the eye.
Every school event, every supermarket checkout, every familiar face came with the same question. How could you? How could you hear the same man I heard and decide he deserved more power?
The distance between us was enormous, even when we were standing shoulder to shoulder.
But today? I want eye contact. I want to walk down the street looking for somebody wearing this same ridiculous expression. To say, “Did you see?” and watch them start smiling before I finish.
And yes, I want MAGA to fucking choke on it. I can believe in our common humanity and still want the people who laughed at our distress to spend today rage-refreshing the results until their thumbs cramp. They called us hysterical. They told us to cope. Well, sweetheart, look at me coping. Absolutely fucking flourishing. How inconvenient for you.
Because this time, we won. After the degradation, the callousness, the contempt, victory tastes like salvation. And I’m drinking that shit straight.
I can laugh about Republicans getting their asses handed to them all day. But there’s a reason Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s victory speech keeps bringing me to tears, and it goes back to the morning that changed my life.
My son found me crying on the bathroom floor after the 2016 election and asked me one question: “How did this happen? You said the good guy would win.”
Donald Trump was so clearly the bad guy even my little boy could see it. And the moment he saw me, he knew. The bad guy had won. He didn’t understand how that could happen. How could he? There I was, trying not to frighten him, trying to pull myself together enough to be his mother, to explain something I couldn’t make sense of myself. I didn’t have an answer for him. I couldn’t find one for me.
That question changed the course of my life. I wanted to right the wrong that was Donald Trump, to show my son that everything I’d taught him about kindness and decency still meant something in the world beyond our front door. That doing the right thing was worth it. That the good guys could prevail. I’ve been working toward that ever since that morning, when my little boy needed an answer and all I could give him was a mother determined to help make it true.
So when Dr. Abdul El-Sayed said, “Let them know tomorrow that the bad guys lost,” I heard the words I’d spent ten years wanting to say to my son.
Every time I hear it, I cry. And it feels so fucking good to cry tears of joy for a change, doesn’t it?
My son is older now. I can’t give him back those years, or reach across a decade and lift us both off that bathroom floor. But I can show him what we’ve done.
That’s the country I want him to know. The ugliness people will excuse has been gut-wrenching, but I don’t believe it’s the whole of us. We are contradictory, cantankerous, capable of astonishing generosity and breathtaking stupidity. Still becoming.
We have more in common than they want us to believe.
This restored something in me. Something I’d kept defending even when I couldn’t quite feel it anymore.
I can’t tell you exactly how we rebuild. I don’t know how to braid hair. I don’t know how to shuffle cards. I still can’t pump my own gas—thanks, Jersey. But I know how to start again with shaking hands. I know how to gather what’s left and make a life from it.
For so long, loving this country has meant grieving what was happening to it. Last night, love had somewhere else to go.
Thomas Paine wrote, “Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
And my God, does this triumph feel glorious. Glorious like hearing a familiar voice call your name through the rubble. Like warm water running over hands you hadn’t realized were freezing. Like the first full breath after the doctor says the thing you were terrified to hope for.
We are still surrounded by damage. Trump is still president. The work is waiting. But we are here—hoarse, tear-streaked, almost giddy with the discovery that we can still surprise ourselves.
Now the Democrats need to take those fucking gavels and use them. Expose the corruption. Release the Epstein files. Restore the healthcare and food assistance they gutted. End this war. We didn’t claw our way here to give Democrats nicer offices. We gave them power. They owe us results.
This isn’t the end. Today, we begin the long, hard work of pulling a country I love with every fiber of my being back from the brink. Tomorrow, we keep going.
We ride this momentum like a mechanical bull in the last bar standing in the Oklahoma panhandle on a Friday night—wild, unrelenting, loud as hell, and hanging on for dear life. But we have to hang on when the music stops, too. Democracy does not protect itself. It requires our participation every single day, in big ways and small.
That’s the responsibility in those first three words: We the People. We proved that the power of the people is stronger than the people in power.
For two years, they’ve gotten to write this chapter of our history, and we’ve had to live every fucking word of it.
Now it’s our fucking turn to write what happens next.
And if you’llexcuse me, my Soros check just cleared, and I’ve got to dye my hair blue, get my second abortion of the day, and enroll my son in a girls’ swim meet, all before dinner.
Loyal and patriotic citizens, please stand by for a message of the utmost importance from the President of the United States, Supreme Ruler of the Western Hemisphere, Lord-Emperor of the Sky Above and All the Planets, Conqueror Of Every War, God’s Own Avatar on Earth, Grand Re-namer of Water, and the Dumbest Fucking Imbecile to Ever Shit Himself Raw In the Oval Bordello.
“I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP”
Oh, come off it, you tiresome crybaby.
How many times did this repulsive dipshit tell everyone to pretend that hewas on the ballot? According to the WaPo, it was at least 41 times over the past couple of weeks. Yeah, well, guess what, Nimrod — everyone did vote as if you were on that ballot of theirs. Don’t go boo-boo-booing to us if you don’t like the results.
You shit your bed. Now go lie in it.
(Folks, I’m running on way too much caffeine and way too little sleep this morning. I’m going to jot down a couple of quick hits and then maybe toddle back to bed.)
Well, we did it. We ran the table, and flipped both the House and the Senate back to Democratic control.
Now we can begin to dismantle this whole wretched experiment in what would happen if we took a greedy moron, put him in charge of an entire country, and let him to whatever the fuck he wants.
Yesterday, almost all the heroes who were supposed to win, did. Among them were James Talarico and Gina Hinojosa in Texas. Annie Andrews in South Carolina. Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayad, who becomes the first Muslim in the Senate.
And almost all the shitbags who supposed to lose, lost. The rank, in-over-her-head amateurs, like Darline Graham. The malodorous, what-the-fuck-is-he-even-doing-here political tourists, like Vivek Ramaswamy. Buh-bye, Viv. The low-wattage corruption-factories like Ken Paxton, who couldn’t even articulate a reason for running, beyond ‘me get money.’
And, most deliciously, that useless lump of protoplasm up in Maine, the one who’d spent thirty years doing fuck-all, apart from collecting a paycheck. I wonder what Susan Collins will do next? I’m really concerned, aren’t you?
Big Suze was such a class act that she didn’t even bother to deliver a concession speech. The second she lost, she fuckity-byed it out of there.
BANGOR, Maine — Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) greeted supporters at her election party throughout the night but was a no-show after losing her bid for a sixth term.
Her campaign played Semisonic’s “Closing Time” and began packing up the room without any concession speech from Collins.
Oh, and I regret that I must inform you that Jon Husted’s impossibly-sculpted ass — that big, strong gluteus, with tears in its eyes — lost its bid for reelection, too.
The whole country is mad at the GOP right now. Here’s just one measure of how pissed off: the last time Kansas elected a Democratic senator was 1932.
Republicans have no one to blame but themselves. They really did take a greedy moron, put him in charge of an entire country, and let him do whatever the fuck he wanted to.
Then they stepped back and completely abdicated their Constitutionally-mandated role to act as a check against dumbfuckery. Whatever the moron wanted, that was fine with then.
Incoherent tariffs? Go for it, Dear Leader. Unconstitutional executive orders? You do you, bro. Fire all the experts and replace them with morons? Sounds good to us. Prosecute political enemies? Knock yourself out. Send masked thugs to disappear people off the streets, and shoot anyone they want? Sure, why not? Kick millions of people off their healthcare so that gazillionaires can have another tax cut? Have at it. Bulldoze half the White House to rubble and replace it with some farkakte dance hall? Fucking go nuts. Wage illegal wars and alienate all our allies? What could possibly go wrong?
And look what happened. The moron broke our entire fucking country. The whole thing! Do you know how hard it is to break a country the size of America? It’s like trying to bankrupt a casino. People thought that was impossible, until Donny came along.
Do you know how badly you have to fuck up to get Republicans to vote for Democrats?
And now the grown-ups have to come in and fix all that shit. I better not hear one complaint about how much it’s costing or how much time it’s taking. Don’t make me come over there and explain just how much stuff is broken.
That’s Rep. Robert Garcia, the Democrat who is now the incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee. He posted that last night, after winning his own reelection.
He’s talking to you, Donny. And you, Piss-Drunk Pete Kegstand. You too, Bobby Brainworms. Don’t pretend you can’t hear him over the noise of that whale-head-separating chainsaw. He’s talking to all of you White House shitweasels.
Lawyer the fuck up. Accountability is coming.
Hey — I know what would be fun right about now. Let’s overdose on schadenfreude while watching MAGA completely lose their shit on Elon’s Nazi Bar.
Tonight, the American people sent a clear message — they want a politics that brings people together rather than divides them, and leaders who offer concrete solutions to the challenges they face.
These results were only possible because outstanding candidates stepped forward in every region of the country — including in areas once considered long shots. They came from different backgrounds and represented a range of political perspectives, but were united by shared values, a belief in public service, and a commitment to putting the people of their districts and states first.
We also owe a debt of gratitude to the thousands of election officials and volunteers from both parties who helped ensure a smooth election and carried out one of the most essential functions of our democracy.
While this administration has another two years in office, our job now is to roll up our sleeves, make changes wherever we have the power to do so, prevent further damage, and lay the groundwork for the future.
He really is so truly good at this. As I keep saying, I think this kid’s going to have a real future in front of him, some day.
And isn’t in nice that, at least this one time, we all do get a puppy — as opposed to, y’know, that other stuff?
this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:
practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.
to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.
we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.
Lately, portrayals of Hell in popular media have presented it not as a place of eternal torment engulfed by flames, but rather as something far more intimate. In both AHS and Preacher, Hell is shown as something very personal and unique to each individual sent there. In Preacher, Hell was portrayed as an having to relive the worst point iin your life again and again on an endless loop. In AHS it's finding yourself in your worst fear possible.
In the case of Myrtle Snow, Miss Balenciaga herself, it's being relegated to the position of a sales clerk at JC Penney, selling ready-to-wear stretch polyester to willfully-ignorant suburbanites.
BTW... now that AHS13's season is over, I have—thoughts—that I will be sharing about the most recent season at some point in the future.
Orff - Carmina Burana / Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelpha Orhestra (1960)
My first love as a teenager was classical music. While my parents encouraged this, their library of recordings was limited. Fortunately, at the time Phoenix was blessed with a fantastic ratio station that expanded my horizons considerably.
This is one of those pieces, and this particular performance is so seared into my brain that—some forty years later—I can still recall every note and intonation.
...for about a week or so after the Russian Bot Farms were taken down is how quiet my spam filter was! No more pages-long lists of comments (most of which were in Russian). And no more attempted attacks to breach my firewalls!
Slava Ukraini!
Unfortunately, over the past couple days, the bot comments and attempted break-ins have resumed. Interestingly, however, they are not coming from Russia, but rather (of all places) India!
I don't want the Malignant Orange Narcissist to be gay, even closeted. I really don't.
I've known I was gay since 4th grade—fascinated by my PE coach's hairy armpits, stubble, and the way his prominent nips showed through every shirt he wore (so that's where it all came from, amirite?), but I didn't have a name for it until high school. And along with the name, came the very real knowledge that society didn't look kindly upon boys who liked boys, or girls who liked girls. So I shoved it down deep and plastered over it with the type of devotion to religion that adolescents often do.
But that didn't make it go away.
Tom, my first high school crush (summer 1973)
Tom was my first real crush. And Tom was the boy who taught me that if you're gay in 1973, you never confess your love to another boy—especially if you don't know if it will be returned. It will end the friendship and leave you heartbroken.
Did that stop me from falling in love again? Of course not. I met Mike at church. My mom was obsessed that I had not yet been Confirmed in the Lutheran faith and sent me in for the ridiculous religious studies that would allow me to have a sip of wine and eat a dry cracker upon graduation. (Of course, with my mindset at the time it was all very necessary and I welcomed it with open arms.) Among the other teenagers in attendance for this training was Mike.
Mike, winter 1974
I was immediately smitten. He was a year younger; I was a Junior, he was a sophomore. There was a mutual spark there—although not that kind of spark (at least not from him; I wanted to jump his bones even if I wasn't completely sure what do actually do in that situation), unfortunately—and we became friends. I have no memory of the circumstances that caused us to crash and burn, but I undoubtedly pushed the boundaries of our friendship in a way unacceptable to a straight teenage boy, and did something stupid.
By the time senior year rolled around—and while developing a great friendship that lasted until I went off to college with a girl named Jean the year before—I knew I was gay. Not bisexual. Not "questioning." I was a full-on fag. I was sexually and romantically attracted to men. And then along came Daniel.
Daniel, Daniel, Daniel... I may have written about my senior year crush before so if any of this sounds familiar forgive me. I'm an old man and too lazy to go searching through all my previous posts to verify this one way or another.
In the summer of '75, the company who built our house finally got around to finishing up the rest of the subdivision just to the west of us. At this point I had decided to go into architecture, so every afternoon after school I would head over there and wander through the homes under construction as they were going up.* Daniel's family moved into one of those homes that fall.
I don't remember the circumstances of our meeting, but it was only afterward we realized that we lived only a few doors down from each other and started hanging out. Daniel was a bad boy. He smoked, he enjoyed a beer or two when he could get them, and he unabashedly drove a pink '69 Mustang. I mean any guy who drives a pink car has to be gay, right? Well, no. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Daniel, senior year, 1976
I still wasn't anywhere near ready to come out, and based upon past experience, after my heart started fluttering and I saw stars when we were together, I knew better than to outright confess my love to this boy lest it be a repeat of what happened with Tom. So I kept it bottled up until one afternoon my body said, "Fuck that!" and it became a little too obvious how I felt.
After school we'd often retreat to my bedroom to do homework or just lay on the bed and watch television. He would often get rowdy and initiate some harmless horseplay. He usually pinned me (okay, so I often let him), but one day I turned the tables and we found ourselves on the floor, with me on top. At this point I was fully hard and grinding my crotch into his until he realized what was going on and he pushed me off. That was the end of our little wrestling matches. It wasn't enough to kill the friendship immediately, but there was a definite change. He slowly started drifting away (always "busy" when I suggested we do something) and when it came time for me to leave for Tucson in August to attend the University of Arizona, we were barely speaking.
Even after starting college, I still wasn't out but I had a plan. And choosing UofA over the much closer ASU had been a part of it. I knew coming out while still living at home would be...problematic (this was years before I knew my dad was—at least—bisexual), and I figured if I were 100 miles away it would give me a chance to get to really know what being gay meant for me, far from my family.
The point of this long-winded story is to confess that as Mr. Romano pointed out in his video above, prior to coming out, I too was full of jealousy toward men who were out and it manifested in a lot of anger. While I never got physical with anyone (that just wasn't me; I'm essentially a pacifist), I was quite vocal. And as Mr. Romano points out, it was all projection of my own insecurities.
Finally, a month or so after the start of the fall semester and I had settled into my dorm, a guy at the end of the hall—Andy—a tall, blond, out-and-proud flaming homosexual if there ever was one, sat me down one day and said, "Honey, I am sick of your constant bad-mouthing of gays. When are you going to admit it?" Of course I played dumb and asked, "Admit what?" He said, "Oh girl...that you're as queer as I am." While it was true, of course I immediately denied it and stormed off, quite offended that he could so easily see through my facade. I didn't speak to him again for weeks afterward. But that brief conversation did end my hateful rhetoric and realized that coming out was going to be "now or never."
The situation with my roommate—Karl—was deteriorating for a variety of unrelated reasons, so at the start of the spring semester I switched dorms. And it was that January that I finally got up the nerve to attend my first GSO (Gay Students Organization) meeting at the Student Union.
The first person I came out to—other than the folks in that meeting—was my new roommate, who—after I came out to him—offered up his own confession: he wasn't gay, but he wasChristine Jorgensen's nephew. "We don't talk about Uncle George any more."
Let me know if you'd like to hear the rest of this sad, sordid story. Before Ben and I moved to Denver I'd documented the entire thing in the old blog that I wiped out after realizing the link to it was in the signature of the emails I'd been sending out to recruiters—one of the dumbest things I've ever done (wiping the blog out, not necessarily failing to remove the link). I've been meaning to record the story for posterity again, so if I get enough interest it may actually be the impetus I need to do something other than spend my online time obsessing over the decline and fall of civilization.
*There's an interesting story of what happened one afternoon in one of those houses.
I was catching up with and having a delightful FaceTime with an old friend whom I've known since first grade today and was telling him about ChatGPT's ability to do decent photo restoration and pointed him to the images from 1983 that I'd posted a couple days ago. "Is that Steve?" he asked, while simultaneously sending me a photo of Steve I'd taken in 1979. I said yes, and he sent another long-forgotten photo of Brian, a boyfriend who I dated around the same time. He then followed up with two photos of me that I'd completely forgotten about because I didn't have the originals in my albums any longer—probably because I'd sent them to him years ago. I had other photos from that shoot, but these were missing. Both were blurry and either under- or over-exposed.
What the heck, I thought, and I fed them into the AI monster with the prompt, "Restore, sharpen, and adjust exposure."
I have to say, when AI gets it right, it gets it very right.
Here's the before and after of the other photo:
As I titled this post, "I was never that young." But I was, Blanche, I was in that chair!
If I close my eyes I can almost believe it's 1979 again. Of course, if it were 1979 and 10:30 pm on a Saturday night I would have probably already been at Bullwinkle, dancing and looking for love in all the wrong places.
I'd close off the pantry from the kitchen and move the refrigerator to the end of the counter where the sink is located. I'd get rid of the third parking spot in the garage, and move the washer and dryer from the current laundry room into the mud room. I'd then reduce the size of the walk-in closet in the primary suite and move the bathroom further toward the back of the house to allow a closet to be placed in the current laundry room to turn that into either a fourth bedroom, home office, or—god forbid—a maid's room.
