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Lucky

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Posts posted by Lucky

  1. I had the privilege of reading an advance review copy of You Should Be So Lucky, which debuts on Tuesday. Not only did I like it, the NY Times has given it front page coverage.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/24/books/review/new-romance-novels.html?searchResultPosition=8

    Times:

    But sometimes there is no hope. Illness worsens, accidents strike, you lose people you love. It’s inevitable, as Cat Sebastian’s blunt, beautiful midcentury historical makes clear: “Unless a couple has the good fortune to get hit by the same freight train, their story ends in exactly one way.”

    At the start of YOU SHOULD BE SO LUCKY (Avon, 382 pp., paperback, $18.99), the journalist Mark Bailey is only 16 months out from the death of his partner. He’s coasting. It’s only when he’s assigned to write about a flailing baseball player on the sad-sack New York Robins that he finds something to connect to: “What’s happening to Eddie O’Leary is an end. That’s something Mark knows about; that’s something Mark can write about.”

     
     

    Eddie, “a wad of bad ideas rolled into the approximate shape and size of a professional baseball player,” doesn’t know why he is suddenly terrible at a game he loves. He’s lonely and new to the city and shunned by the teammates he bad-mouthed to the press. He’s grateful for Mark’s attention even though he knows it’s an assignment, and he’s quick to notice all the little kind impulses Mark would die rather than admit to. Their romance is like watching a Labrador puppy fall in love with a pampered Persian cat, all eager impulse on one side and arch contrariness on the other.

    People think the ending is what defines a romance, and it does, but that’s not what a romance is for. The end is where you stop, but the journey is why you go. Whether we’re talking about love, baseball or life itself, Sebastian’s book bluntly scorns measuring success merely by end results: “The crowd is hopeful, but it isn’t the kind of hope that comes with a fighting chance. It’s a hope that doesn’t need success to validate it. It’s something like affection, maybe with a bit of loyalty mixed in.”

    Hoping, loving are things you do for their own sake, to mark being a human among other humans. Or as Eddie puts it: “Sometimes you want to look at a guy and say: Well, he’s f——-, but he’s trying.”

    I can think of no better summary of why we do any art. If you read one romance this spring, make it this one.

    07cat-sebastian-cover-superJumbo.jpg?qua

     
  2. You will have to go to London to see it!

    https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/apr/29/michelangelo-and-the-most-sublime-declarations-of-gay-love-in-art-british-museum-the-last-decades

    WWW.THEGUARDIAN.COM

    Michelangelo announced his love for a young upper-class gentleman in verse and prose, but he also gave Tommaso de’ Cavalieri some of the greatest homoerotic drawings...

     

  3. I was watching the make up game between Cleveland and New York, the latter ahead 3-2 in the bottom of the ninth. The count on the batter is 3-2 and the pitcher throws ball 4. Cleveland would now have the bases loaded except that the umpire called the ball, clearly outside, a strike. No bases loaded. No excitement. The last batter limply grounds out. Yankees win.

  4. I put off tax law until my last semester in law school because I was so sure that I would hate it. To my surprise, I loved it and wished I had started sooner so I could become a tax lawyer. I have done my own taxes ever since.

    Now I use programs like Turbo Tax and Taxslayer. With the addition of a small side business, my taxes are harder. Last year I used Taxslayer and didn't seem to have any problem. This year I cannot figure out what they are doing It seems like I am going around in circles. They currently have me owing more than $2000 in federal taxes than I paid last year despite a similar income. I am just lost.

    So I come here, where else? Does anyone recommend one of these programs and why? Anyone want to do my taxes for me? I guess I am too old now. Sigh.

  5. One scene before the ending involves David telling his lover Sean to "let go." I've always thought that to be a hard thing to do while being very loving. You've been with this guy for years, and now the only right thing to is let him go. Hard for both parties. A very moving scene.

     

    The sad scenario today is that the generations after the AIDS epidemic have shunted it into the deep recesses of gay history.

  6. On 1/25/2024 at 9:34 AM, pubic_assistance said:

    For the record, I would have totally sucked the cum out of a bathtub filled by Jacob Elordi. 😉

    Relax Relaxing GIF by Pepephone

     

     

    Me too. But I didn't like Saltburn, but I loved the Murder on the Dance Floor number. The song, the lighting, the setting, the dancing, the body, the dick, the butt...I watched it several times.

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