Q's Moon

I didn't die last night, of course, on the apparent full moon, the first of two this month.  Didn't even come close, for I imbibed moderately last evening.  That is my new plan--moderation.  Others do it, so why not I?  I'm tired of walking around in heart attack territory. Not that, though, really.  I just want to be pretty again.  Ho! you say.  O.K.  I was never pretty, but I did have a build of sorts that you could distinguish pretty easily from a ______________ (choose your comparative).

So moderation in all things.  That is the motto of the aging wicked.  Not the practice always, but the motto. There is always a chiasma between theory and practice.  What falls in the cracks is what we call our lives.  And I, definitely, live in the cracks.  "Borderland," a new series coming to you this fall from Cafe Selavy.

Probably not.  But it is a good idea.  I need sponsors.  Perhaps I'll run a pilot to see if there are any takers.

I read with some interest yesterday that Gore Vidal died.  I thought he was already dead, but it turned out to be William Buckley.  You couldn't really tell the difference between them physically when they got older.  A good article in the New York Times yesterday pointed out the similarities in their heritage and opinions.  They were monsters, both of them.  Here.  Look and see.

(link)

What you can't hear so clearly is Buckley calling Vidal a "queer" after Vidal called Buckley a "crypto-Nazi."  Vidal clearly was the cooler of the two, but man, that Mailer moment when Buckley says "I'll sock you in the goddamned face and you'll stay plastered" was good.  Who can talk like that any more?  I'm going to a bar tonight just to say it to someone.  A bar without any "real men," of course.  A bar in my own home town where men have been "civilized" by private school systems that taught them that hitting people was not a manly thing to do.  Indeed, quite the opposite.  Men don't punch.  They opine. And a strong, well-worded opinion is as manly as a man should be.  Men who understand that sexual harassment is far worse than cultural or economic or any other sort of harassment.  Elegant men with spines of steel.  No socking people in the goddamned face, no sir.  That's where I'm going to be a brute.

I'm worried, though, that people everywhere are going to lose their composure.  I thought this was a spoof article, but apparently it is quite real (link).

And speaking of brutes, here is the first phone message (of several hundred that I got while on vacation) I heard when I returned to work yesterday.  It took me some time to figure out.  I forwarded it to C.C., but it turns out that he is the one who left it.  I hope today goes as well.