BSR

I might have been wrong about Novak's chances of playing Wimbledon. Right now, it's looking more likely that he chooses to play. He's in London and practicing on grass. After a 2.5 hour practice session, which included playing 2 practice sets with #71 Fede Coria, apparently the knee is fine. While video showed him playing with much restraint & caution, Novak commented "I like my trajectory." If Novak does pull out, the most likely time would be immediately before the draw ceremony this Friday. If he's still undecided, his first match will be scheduled for next Tuesday, July 2. Since Alcaraz lost early at Queens, he dropped to #3, making Novak the #2 seed at the Big W. That means that there's a 50/50 chance that Alcaraz & Sinner end up in the same half of the draw. If that happens and then Novak pulls out, oooh, fans are going to be royally pissed. But my humble opinion is that Novak's gonna play. The tweet below has the selfies that Fede took after playing his boyhood idol Novak for the first time. Instead of being upset from the shellacking (Novak beat him 61 60), Coria was all smiles and just asked Novak for a selfie. Fede took some flak for his shameless fanboying, but I don't blame the guy. Anyone who meets his childhood idol for the first time is going to be pretty gushy.

Oops, it turns out that Maschile Plurale is available on Amazon Prime in Italy but not in the US. If anyone wants to see it, PM me. PS: I won't be hugely shocked if they make a third & final installment to this series. The ending of Maschile Plurale certainly leaves the door open. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Well, to be fair to the owner socked with a knee-buckling assessment, he bought the condo 10 years ago, well before the post-Surfside legislation that forced condo associations to take on many expensive repair & maintenance measures all at once. But to your point, it is certainly possible if not likely that the owner featured in the video failed to do his due diligence, specifically, research whether the condo association kept up-to-date with repairs & maintenance or was guilty of kicking the can down the road. This poor guy learned the hard way that his association was a bunch of can-kickers whistling past the graveyard.

Yes, he was great in Klute. Then again, he was a great in a lot of things, too many to list. Two of my favorites were the silly but entertaining Dirty Sexy Money as the patriarch of a multibillionaire family and The Rosary Murders, an imperfect thriller worth watching for Sutherland's performance alone. DS struck me as a real actor's actor, someone who loved the work and the craft. He leaves behind a hella impressive body of work.

This 3m18s video is just one condo owner's story, but it very much represents what's happening all over the state: soaring HOAs & 6-figure assessments. The report skips skyrocketing homeowner's insurance, although I'm pretty sure this poor guy has gotten slammed with that as well. This owner's monthly HOA rose from $1500 to $3000 a month, bad enough already. Then he got hit by a special assessment of $224,000 [gulp]! Since the owner doesn't have it (or anywhere near, it seems), he'll be forced to sell. How much he'll net from the sale after paying the assessment & other costs is another matter. Some units in the complex have been hit with assessments $400,000+!! The complex looks nice but not super-luxe. I doubt many owners can just write a check, no sweat. Inventory is booming on the Gulf coast of Florida, with some areas seeing 10x increases in properties on the market. Inventory has yet to surge in South Florida where this owner is (Aventura), but with so many owners finding they simply can no longer afford the crushing costs, it seems just a matter of time.

Yes, the job of an escort is to escort someone, i.e., to keep them company. Usually that means in bed but it can also mean going out to dinner, going to a museum, seeing a Broadway show, windsurfing, a zillion possibilities. What the prospective client is asking @ICTJOCK adds a significant level of complication: to tell and maintain a lie. Keeping someone company while walking through Central Park, even holding hands, does not require any dishonesty. Passers-by might draw their own conclusions about your PDA, but that's on them. But going to a party or whatever "social setting" together and pretending to be a couple does require the escort's participation in dishonesty. The escort & client have to set their story straight in anticipation of questions: how did you meet? who made the first move? how long have you been dating? what's your favorite bar, café, restaurant? have you met (client's best friend) Johnny? isn't he hilarious? and so on. That's not keeping someone company; that is asking someone to lie and keep lying. Even if you agree that the client will answer all inquiries, the escort still has to smile and nod and maintain his "yup, it's all true" face. Personally, I could never do it. I'd be so nervous about getting tripped up in a lie that I'd inevitably mess up. If ICTJOCK felt uncomfortable with the deception, then he made the right decision to decline.

Apparently plenty of people liked Mascarpone, enough for the filmmakers to make a sequel, Maschile Plurale (Masculine Plural, the first film was titled Masculine Singular in Italy). In the 3 years since we last saw the characters, Antonio's baking career has taken off. He's now a star on social media with hundreds of thousands of followers and his own tag line. Luca went in the opposite direction: he gave up baking and the bakery and is now a social worker. In the first scene, we recognize the 3 principals -- Antonio, his best friend Cristina, and his ex-boss & ex-something (relationship is tough to define) Luca. They look the same, but you can tell right away that Antonio & Luca are now very different people. Even though Antonio & Luca haven't seen each other for 3 years, the chemistry is still there, and shortly after reuniting, they decide to revive the old bakery, this time as a coffeeshop. Whereas the old Luca f*cked anything that moved, the new Luca has a boyfriend Tancredi, with whom he's monogamous. As the movie unfolds, we learn why the bond between Luca & Tancredi is so strong and also why old friends & lovers Antonio & Luca went 3 whole years without speaking. The sequel is just as good as the first movie; in fact, I found myself laughing even more this time. I want to say that I didn't like how it ended, except that we're not quite sure exactly how things wrap up. We think we know, but they leave one last uncertainty in the final scene. If you liked Mascarpone, you gotta watch the sequel. The second installment is on Amazon Prime.

Frankly, I'm surprised it's less than 50%, would've guessed 60-70%. Boeing used to be a great company, before a bunch of MBA "geniuses" created the current shitshow.

I love how the water slide makes his swimsuit (what little there is of it) get wedged up his ass, LOL.

The legendary Dakota (co-op that has been home to celebrities such as John Lennon, Lauren Bacall, Judy Garland, Leonard Bernstein) is designated a landmark by the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission. But if you buy one of the units, apparently you can do whatever da heck you want to the interior as long as your renovation doesn't change the external appearance of the building. This penthouse unit's interior is ultra-modern, in stark contrast to the building's 19th century exterior. It was bought & sold in 2015 and again in 2022. I don't know which purchaser did the renovation, but I gotta give him a big ol' golf clap for getting the co-op board's approval for such a radical transformation.

I just saw Mascarpone (also goes by its original Italian title, Maschile singolare), and I highly recommend it. It's the story of Antonio, who has been a kept househusband his entire adult life, and the changes he deals with after his husband dumps him. Antonio needs to find a place to live, a job, and most of all (cliché alert!) himself. Even though the movie was shot in just 3 weeks, with (I'm guessing) a shoestring budget and a couple of novice actors (first film for the actors who play Antonio and Luca, his boss), Mascarpone comes off as a polished production. The characters are likeable, and the script is really well-written. I'm not nominating it for Best Foreign Film or anything, but the 1h41m flew by. If you can find it on streaming (currently available on Dekkoo), cue it up. Trailer below ...

Uh muh gawd, is global warming frying my brain?? This is the second time in less than a week that I am 100% in agreement with José Soplanucas ... eek! Ok, seriously now, I'm guessing "ladies only" escorts fall into 1 of 3 categories: 1) those who say ""ladies only" in hopes of getting very lucrative offers from men, 2) those who really are "ladies only" ... unless rent's due & they're short, and 3) those who are "ladies only," absolutely no exceptions. If you ask once and he says no, then of course, no means no. Any further communications with a ladies-only escort who has already told you no would indeed be harassment. If he doesn't respond, I would also take that as a no. With plenty of escorts, multiple attempts to contact might be necessary because a lot of guys are just flakey/negligent/too busy to respond. Sometimes the escort never got your message. But with a ladies-only escort, I'm going to assume he did see my text/email/WhatsApp and simply wasn't interested. Additional attempts at contact after non-response don't quite rise to the level of harassment, imo, but I just don't think it's a good idea. This thread is way too similar to the thread started by a stiffed escort where one forum member insisted that nonpayment was equivalent to rape. Yikes! Get a grip! Here, an inquiry to a sex worker is being blown up to sexual harassment. Yikes again!

With some hesitation, I'm recommending Taekwondo (Argentine director Marco Berger, best known for Plan B) with a big ol' caveat: expect no plot or character development whatsoever. So why watch it? Fer invites Germán, a guy he knows from his Taekwondo class, to spend some time at his parents' country house. Although Germán is the outsider because all the other guests are Fer's long-time friends, he fits in quick enough. The cast is beautiful, and they spend most of the time in just underwear or swim trunks, with a decent amount of full monty. The whole 1h51m is the guys lounging around, talking about sex, sports, video games, whatever guys talk about. By the way, all of Fer's friends are straight. So that's it, almost 2 hours of nonsense conversation and beautiful bodies. I won't give away what happens between Fer & German, but it doesn't exactly take psychic powers to figure it out. Enjoy the eye candy: I thought Fer was attractive and Germán drop-dead gorgeous; most of the straight pals are pretty hot as well. Just don't expect any substance. Berger basically remade this movie 6 years later, titled Horseplay (Los agitadores in Spanish). Same premise: a bunch of skimpily dressed guys at a country house, no plot, no character development. But Horseplay has less nudity, a less attractive cast, and an ending I hated. Avoid this one and stick with Taekwondo.

If someone already posted this video somewhere in this thread's previous 334 pages, pardon the redundancy, but I swear, I howl laughing every single time I watch it. Jeff Gordon impersonates a Joe Schmoe car buyer and scares the life out of a poor car salesman ...

Who besides narcotraffickers pays their lawyer in cash? The only time people pay their doctor in cash is for small co-pays. I can't imagine paying for a facelift in cash, although I'm guessing it's been done. Whether the one counting bills is an employee collecting payment on behalf of the owner/company or a self-employed service provider (escort or other), business is business. Counting mistakes or intentional ripoffs, while rare, are terrible for business but can be avoided by counting the money upon receipt, QED. I'm wondering if clients want to downplay payment to prop up the fantasy that the sex was something other than purely transactional. Newflash: the only reason that smokin' hot escort f*cked you was money. My gawd, get over it.

Don't let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya!

Again, you're expressing an opinion, nothing more. I doubt Amy Vanderbilt or Emily Post ever addressed the topic. Why is it OK for a cashier to count cash in front of you, but not an escort?

"classless"? That's your opinion, and nothing more. "solely transactional"? God forbid we call a spade a spade. I know the only reason an escort sees me is money. Any client who can't accept that reality would be better served spending his hard-earned money on psychotherapy. PS: I consider the money and services exchanged with an escort to be a perfectly legitimate transaction

I saw Eismayer, an Austrian movie about a closeted lieutenant and an openly gay enlistee in his training group. Wow, it turned out nothing like I expected. Pretty good, definitely worth a watch.

Nobody here (I hope) gets offended when a cashier counts the bills you handed over. So why is it considered rude or inappropriate for an escort to do the same?

I agree that we're due for a recession, probably a bad one, but as bad or worse than the GFC? Some troubling signs (like the collapse in commercial real estate), but far from 2008's harmonic convergence of stupidity and recklessness. Florida's real estate market is fascinating. On the Gulf Coast, inventory is exploding. Owners crushed by homeowners and maintenance (hurricane-proofing) costs are selling and fleeing. Prices haven't collapsed, yet, but 10-fold increases in the number of properties listed can mean only one thing for prices. On the other coast, wealthy buyers are flooding South Florida. Some sold their homes in NY & CA and have a moving truck of cash to spend. Many work in tech or finance. Miami continues to attract a sh*t-ton of rich foreigners. So many luxury condos are being built in South Florida that a glut would seem inevitable. But apparently they're selling like hotcakes, and buyers have real money this time, not the no-money-no-problem buyers from pre-2008.

I am always a bit freaked out when @José Soplanucas and I agree on an issue, but despite those reservations I'll weigh in here. You claim that some jurisdictions "consider it rape," but the linked legal abstract gives a very broad definition: 'rape by fraud,' an action whereby a person obtains sexual consent and has sexual intercourse of any type by fraud, deception, misrepresentation, or impersonation. Depending on the interpretation, any dishonesty -- a guy lying about his income, a guy telling someone he loves them when he doesn’t, a guy who says he has a hotshot job when he's really a grunt -- every little fib under the sun, any BS that cads have spouted since time immemorial retroactively revokes consent and presto! change-o! makes all cases of what was originally consensual sex a Class A felony. Sorry, but that's not rape. That's the Cult of Victimhood run amok. Our overburdened courts need to focus their limited time and resources on legitimate cases of rape, not "your honor, he promised to leave his wife for me!" It is not my intention here to trivialize what happened to @Tony_tx. That assh*le manipulated & cheated you, and you have every right to be angry. But I have to draw a line here because there's a Grand Canyon-sized gap between fraud and rape.

Assh*les are often masters of manipulation. That's how they manage to treat people like sh*t yet get away with it time and again. In the moment, you were unable to respond to the red flags because he pressured you with tricks like the family member who was (never) coming to pick him up. I can understand why in the wake of this con, you respond by switching to a policy of payment upfront. Plenty of escorts say the same thing during initial communication and even in their ad. But as many here have advised, doing so will turn off a significant number of prospective clients. Maybe take a breath, or even a brief break from escorting, and when the anger fades, come up with your list of rules, e.g., no discounts, no haggling, money on the dresser, etc. @Jamie21's list is a great starting point. The next time and every time you see a red flag, just stick to your rules come hell or high water. In other words, to state the obvious, ignore the client's attempts to distract or manipulate you. Hopefully such measures filter out 98% of the schmucks while avoiding the turnoff of payment upfront.

Dunno, but they should make one ... as long as it doesn't star Billy Eichner.

I guess the "couple" could claim that they haven't been dating long, but even with that story, the chances of getting tripped up are uncomfortably high (at least for my pain threshold). That is a tangled web I'd rather not weave.