Charlie

I still have those original Mandate photos of Franco (142)!

Fun!

There are many words in English that are imported directly from another language, but have acquired a different pronunciation here, even British English words that are pronounced differently by Americans (e.g., think "clerk" pronounced by a New Yorker and a Londoner). Proper names are another "issue" (see Mike Carey's explanation above). I watch a lot of tennis on tv, and I cringe when I hear the American and British commentators' pronunciation of the players' non-English names.

Are any of those old phone sex lines still in business?

There was an obituary in my local paper this morning in which every sentence ended with an exclamation point!

Being referred to as "@Charlie."

"...you know..." before almost every sentence. (I realize it is a place-holder to prevent the listener from interrupting before the speaker has said all he or she wants to say, but you know, I find it irritating--you do know that, don't you?)

I loved it last year when Nicki Haley used that response to Trump's criticism of her. I don't think he understood her.

That's amazing!

Wow! That photo of #25 certainly brings back memories. I had non-commercial sex with him shortly after I had seen that photo in a magazine, which had to have been about 40 years ago.

Ah, the adorable Bruno! I sat next to him once on the ferry to Cherry Grove. He never said a word to the man he was traveling with. At a later time, another escort told me Bruno never smiled because he was extremely shy and embarrassed that his English was so poor (he was Cuban), so he didn't want to invite conversation.

Since the "Czech Republic" has been around now for almost a quarter century, it's not surprising that younger Czechs use it naturally, because it's the only name they have ever known. I still slip and call it Czechoslovakia, because that's what it was when I lived there.

One of the big debates when Slovakia split from Czechoslovakia was what to call the new country. I was living there at the time, and there was lots of discussion. Some Czechs wanted to revert to the old Hapsburg designation of Bohemia, but that really ignored the Moravians. A logical change would have been to Czechomoravia, since the Moravians stayed with the Czechs when the Slovaks seceded. But the Czechs have always been the dominant group in that relationship, and they finally decided to just refer to it as "The Czech Republic," which is awkward, since that is an English designation (only the Czechs ever call it Ceska Republika). "Czechia" makes it sound more like a geographical entity, with an easy name that can stay the same in any language.

Does the Palm Springs Weekend count as "real life?"

You will notice that Rudy's form is a little more awkward than mine, but he learned quickly.

Did I ever tell you about the time I danced with Nureyev? Yeah, I probably did.

When I first visited Vienna in 1971, it didn't look like it had when "The Third Man" was filmed, but there still were signs of the war damage, even in the central city. A decade later, it looked like any other prosperous western European city. Prague had been spared damage in the war (Hitler intended to maintain it as a kind of outdoor museum, especially the Jewish quarter, once he had conquered Europe), but it was pretty grim under the Communists until 1989. I remember going into a Prague restaurant in 1978, and paying for butter as a separate item on the menu.

At the end of WW2, control of Austria was divided among the Allies, just as Germany was. If the Russians hadn't agreed to withdraw in 1955, the country would have been balkanized the way Germany was into East and West Germany, and eastern Austria would have been another Iron Curtain/Warsaw Pact country. It actually took a long time for Austria to recover and become a part of "Western Europe." Vienna in particular has always been filled with people whose ethnic and cultural background is Eastern European. Czechoslovakia was an artificial post-WW1 creation. Before the war, it was part of the Hapsburg Empire, and Bohemia and Moravia had been run by the Germanic Austrians, while Slovakia was run from Budapest by the Hungarians. Prague for centuries assertively identified itself as a Western European city, and still does.

Only a very serious opera fan would consider them celebrities, but Kenneth Riegel got drunk and sang at a party given in my honor. David Rendall bought beers for me and a friend at a local pub on the night of his Covent Garden debut. And I bought a drink for Dame Eva Turner during the interval of a performance of Manon at the ENO. In a completely different sphere, I once spent two hours in interesting conversation on a train with Alan Guttmacher, the president of Planned Parenthood and one of the longtime leaders in the fight to legalize abortion.

A friend of mine has just moved from Palm Springs, where at this moment it is 94 and sunny, with 16% humidity, to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where at this moment it is 32 with mixed snow and rain. I am not eager to visit her anytime soon.

Back in the early 1950s, there were little fanzines (3"x5") sold on newsstands, and I bought one of Elvis for about 25 cents. He was still a new young singer, and there was one black and white photo of him without a shirt, that I used as jack-off material. I didn't have to hide it from my parents, the way I did my copies of Physique Pictorial.

I have met a few, but probably the most notable was Martin Luther King, Jr., when I was a young man.

I am outside the gay sex scene in PS, and I have never stayed at a gay resort here, so I can relay only hearsay. However, I was told a few years ago that one can buy a day pass to use CCBC, even if you are not actually staying there.

Those old candid photos of street traffic around Times Square certainly bring back memories of my seamy youth.

At the end of the 1960s, there was a brief fashion fad for "see-through" shirts for men--you could even buy them off the rack at upscale department stores like Bloomingdales. My partner and I decided it would be fun to throw a "see-through" shirt party on a bitter cold Saturday night in December. Everyone who was invited wore a see through shirt, including one queen who had one custom made by a fashion designer. The last guest to arrive was a very handsome young man, who immediately retreated to the bedroom with his bag, and emerged a few minutes later in a beautiful white mesh see-through shirt....and matching see-through pants. Needless to say, the party was an enormous success, and guests reminisced to me about it for years.