Charlie

Contact Daddy.

I occasionally joined a friend at Lutece for special occasions, because he loved it, but I never thought it was worth the price.

How could I have forgotten that recording of Die Tote Stadt, which I used to listen to often? I also saw her live in the role at NYCO in 1975, with John Alexander, another good singer who could sometimes rise to greatness.

Somehow I missed the news of Neblett's death back in November, and only realized it when I saw a tiny "in memoriam" in the LA Times today, which would have been her 72nd birthday. She was a beautiful woman who could be electrifying at her best. I saw her many times at the NYCO, and later at the Met and Covent Garden, in a wide variety of roles: in Mefistofele, Prince Igor, Louise, Fliegende Hollaender, Tosca, etc. The most memorable was as Minnie in Fanciula del West in a gorgeous production at Covent Garden in the 1970s. Unfortunately, she could also be staggeringly bad on occasion; I remember one performance where there were murmurs in the audience that she must be drunk, and she certainly looked and sounded that way. It was an uneven career, but I am surprised that she passed with so little notice.

I don't know if @WilliamM did, but I was there many years ago, when it was still Yugoslavia. I actually liked Split better than Dubrovnik, because it seemed more like a real city than a museum piece.

A belated HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

I keep thinking about doing a river cruise. I used to want to do one of the French barge cruises which move slowly, so that you can walk or bike along the canal paths, but I think I am past that phase. I get lots of literature from the companies that do European river cruises, and one of these days I will do one of them. My problem is that almost everywhere they stop is someplace I have already been, or someplace that doesn't interest me. The single friends I know who have taken them always go with a companion, and they have indicated that the passengers seem to be almost entirely couples.

My most memorable meal in a restaurant in France was actually at a very upscale Vietnamese restaurant in Paris, where the highlight was perfumed eel soup.

Before WWII, the Sudetenland was part of the new nation of Czechoslovakia, so the public schools used Czech as the language of instruction, although a majority of the population were ethnic Germans. In 1938, the Czechs were forced to cede the Sudetenland to Germany, and the Sudeten Germans fought for Germany. At the end of the war, the German residents were forced to leave their homes, and the area was re-settled with Czechs. During the Communist years, when the East Germans were only allowed to travel to Warsaw Pact countries, many of them went to the Sudetenland for their vacations, because the older Czechs could still speak and understand German. I lived and worked in the Sudetenland shortly after the fall of the Iron Curtain, and the tourist industry in the area still was heavily dependent on the Germans.

In theory, it may make sense to use "they" when a singular person's gender is bi or indeterminate, but the lack of normal subject-verb agreement in "they is" is very distracting, because 95% of listeners won't understand the point and will just think of it as a grammatical error. Of course, you might argue that it opens an opportunity to explain the topic of gender orientation, but more than likely a simple statement will end up getting lost in a long discussion like this thread.

"Whoso" and "hym" are the same person (it is a reflexive statement: "whoever finds himself" would be the modern English wording), so the "whoso" is singular. "Whoso [whoever]" is not gendered, and the "himself" is masculine only because the fallback pronoun in English is masculine when the person's gender is unknown. Speakers and writers in English often switch at that point to the genderless plural "they" with the proper plural verb (in this case, the future tense verb is the same for both singular and plural), because it is easier to be inclusive of both genders with a genderless plural pronoun. The Pardoner's audience is both men and women, and he does not know who among them may take up his offer (he undoubtedly hopes several of them will, not just one male). Forgive me, I am a pedant.

This is a slightly different situation, in which the plural pronoun "they" is used to refer back to the singular pronoun "hym" [sic], but the verb attached to "they" is "wol," which has the same form in both singular and plural, so there is no obvious confusion about subject-verb agreement.

Speaking as one who engaged in frequent group activity in my debauched youth, including in the Ramble, I have to say that I never encountered anything as complicated as you describe. I think it would require a choreographer with a great deal of control (think: Busby Berkeley) to make it work for even a few minutes. I think the newscast engaged in a bit of hyperbole.

See? I told you this is what happens!

That's actually a barrow of monkeys.

For those in the US who might be confused by Mike's post, that was 38 degrees Celsius, not Fahrenheit.

When I first moved to Philadelphia at 21, one of my new gay friends was a young Mormon who had recently finished his 2 year mission in the city, and had stayed in Philadelphia because he enjoyed his evenings in a local gay bar. He was more sexually sophisticated than I was (which wasn't easy!), and he took me to my first leather bar in New York.

Well, finally something we can agree on. Who would have thought it would be tapas.

Except for the escargots, there is nothing on their menu that I wouldn't be delighted to order. Sweetbreads are a favorite of mine, and it has been a long time since I have eaten anywhere that serves them. I have had venison occasionally, and even reindeer soup, but I am not sure what red deer is.

The problem with using "they" as a substitute for an individual is that is screws up the verbs that have singular and plural forms. "They are" is awkward to refer to a specific individual, and "they is" requires too much mental gymnastics. I would suggest substituting genderless "person" for the gendered pronoun: "Person is a drama queen."

I believe January 26th was yesterday in Australia.

I went to the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk years ago, but never knew this history of the man. I have also been in the church in Provincetown, which an old friend of mine was instrumental in converting to the town library.

I have encountered coyotes several times here in Palm Springs. One time I saw a coyote and a big bird fighting over something on the grounds of a nearby church. Another time I was walking up a major street and a coyote passed me on the sidewalk coming the other way; we nodded to one another. Twice from my living room I saw a large coyote in my yard on the other side of my pool; we just stared at one another, but as soon as I moved, he ran away and leaped over my wall onto the street. In my new house on the edge of the desert, I sometimes hear the pups howling on the other side of the wall at night.

In a sex club, people keep their shoes on.

"Jasper Plum" is a boutique women's clothing store in suburban Los Angeles, not exactly the right image for a BDSM top.