Charlie

The ancient Greeks and Romans had pretty much the same ideas.

"Gays" are no more monolithic in their preferences and prejudices than any other social group. That's why it is always a mistake to assume that just because a man wants to have sex with other men, he will think, feel and act the same as every other man who has the same desire. The "gay community" is a convenient categorical construct, not an objective entity.

One caution about the family circle boxes. I happen to be someone who is more interested in the music than the visuals, and most of the operas I saw at the Met were ones I was already very familiar with. I would not recommend the boxes for an opera like Akhnaten, or for something where you really cared to see the full action. Something else I forgot to mention was the possibility of standing room if seats aren't available for something you really want to see, if you can handle it.

When I lived near Lincoln Center I didn't have a lot of money, but I liked to go to the opera frequently. My favorite seats were always in the balcony boxes or the family circle boxes. I didn't mind seeing the performance from the side angle rather than straight ahead, because one was also much closer to the front of the stage, though unfortunately one can't always see the back of the stage. I preferred the front seats for a better view than the elevated back seats, but what I liked best about the boxes at any level was that the seats were real movable chairs rather than the fixed seats everywhere else in the theater. I noticed that many regular fans who came to multiple performances, including the legendary Lois, also often sat in the family circle boxes. Unfortunately, I haven't been back to the Met in almost a decade, so I don't know how things may have changed. In April, one can get anything from snow to heat in Manhattan.

That may be true, but my friend who recently died at home at 88 had to have a fulltime paid caregiver (she was a gem, BTW), but the cost had reached the point that the house itself would soon have to have been mortgaged to pay for the care. Finding a good in-home caregiver was also not easy.

Djokovic has never really been a favorite with the fans, because he came along and overshadowed Roger and Rafa's tennis bromance by actually outplaying both of them. I would not be surprised if he ended up passing some of their most cherished records, since he is a few years younger than they are, provided he can stay healthy.

Aren't the Eskimos reputed to have done that--put granny on an iceberg? Seriously, though, I think I would go crazy on a cruise till the end of my days. I get antsy on a ferry boat.

Barcelona, of course.

I occasionally get a call on my landline phone that identifies the caller as myself. I never answer, and I never leave me a voicemail.

People are always surprised by the sound of their own voice. ("Is that what I sound like?!")

The last time I got a quote of $60 from a real escort was in 1978.

At least one male in every generation of my mother's family seems to inherit a congenital heart condition, but it skips around in odd ways. My grandfather died of it at 55, and his grandson (my cousin) died of it at 30, yet my uncle (the male in the middle) lived to 91 with no heart problems. Luckily, I have never had any heart issues.

Obviously a model rather a player: no one has played with one of those wooden Spalding racquets in years.

Every time this thread gets revived, other names pop into my head, like Jerry Herman and Andy Warhol.

I can understand why a symphony orchestra would break such a long opera into separate performances, but I wouldn't want to hear it that way. I don't even like intermissions, unless I need to go to the restroom. I find operas like Reingold and Ariadne auf Naxos best when they are done with no intermission, although it is a strain on my bladder.

Act III is about 80 minutes long. Of course, Tristan is dead before the end of the first hour, and Isolde gets all the good music after that.

It's finally over! Nadal wins a stunner, after almost five hours.

I'm sure I have mentioned somewhere before this thread the time I went home with a Belgian (NOT Steven Draker) who pulled a chest out from under his bed. In it were two full sewer cleaners' kits, which he wanted us to wear while we had sex. They weren't noticeably dirty, but the smell was pretty pungent.

Like Vienna, Bratislava is charming because it is structurally an old Hapsburg city (it used to be called Pressburg). Unfortunately, Slovakia on the whole is a fairly conservative, reactionary country, unlike the Czech Republic. Czecho-Slovakia was created after World War I by the western allies, largely because the Czechs and Slovaks spoke almost the same language, but their cultures were very different. The Czech half was industrialized and oriented toward secular western Europe, while the Slovak half was primarily agricultural and heavily Catholic. The split into separate countries after the collapse of the Iron Curtain has accentuated their differences. I would be more inclined to opt for Slovenia, which is more liberal, and has better weather.

For a change, someone who looks younger than his advertised age.

If Medvedev can beat Nadal in the final, I think that a year from now he could be one of the Big Three.

After five years of living with my spouse and me, at 94 my mother voluntarily moved into a CCC, because she felt that she would be more comfortable living among her age peers, and we would be more comfortable having our own home again.

You're right. I hadn't realized that it really wasn't a CCC.

Gorgeous, but that is not a tennis racquet.

Thanks for the correction: it was Fountaingrove.