“This is the most important election since 1860. The future of American depends on what God’s people do. If America dies, it will be from self-inflicted wounds.”
– Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, during Glenn Beck’s three-day Restoring Love event in Arlington, Texas.
Now, we know what happened to at least one of the writers from As the World Turns.
Filed under News
The Chief in a moment of self-adulation, c. 2006.
While taking classes at a community college several years ago, I met a guy who – when asked why he had such a smooth chest – would respond that “hair doesn’t grow on steel.” In their youth, every male can hardly wait for at least two things: facial hair and chest hair. It’s a man thing, so you ladies just have to shrug and roll your eyes. But, in looking at shirtless men on television, in the movies and on fitness magazine covers, you’d think a chest made of steel is the norm. It’s as if that part of the Y chromosome didn’t quite take hold when they reached puberty. I mean, seriously! What’s that all about?
Admittedly, not all men are hirsute. But, it’s just one of the many attributes of the human male species – along with a unibrow, a fetish for cars and constantly reaching for a ruler when he gets an erection. (This latter fact is something no man would confess to publicly.) So, this trend of men with clean-slate torsos is confounding.
I know that most male bodybuilders shave or wax their physiques to enhance the lines in their muscles, especially their chests and stomachs. I suppose the hair wouldn’t mix well with the baby oil and spray-on tan mist. But, even some male strippers wipe their torsos clean. Check out the latest Matthew McConaughey movie, Magic Mike, and you’ll see.
Matthew McConaughey
It wasn’t always that way. Even as recently as the 1980’s, men on TV and in the movies still had chest hair. But then, came the 1990’s and a growing antagonism towards anything and everything male. We can thank the likes of Geraldo Rivera and Bill “Puff Daddy” Clinton for that. Suddenly actors and male models were shoved through the pre-pubescent car wash where their bodies were rendered as close to looking female without being castrated. If it wasn’t for their deep voices, you’d think these guys still ride bikes with training wheels. The American male has been feminized to the point of androgynous stupidity.
From the Spring 1977 JC Penney Catalogue
I recall reading an Ann Landers column where a woman stated that she made her husband shave his body because she didn’t find it attractive – and the poor sap apparently felt desperate enough to do it! The letter writer was now worried that he’d start letting it grow back because their young son might ask him questions about it. Landers – an older version of Gloria Allred, but not as bitchy – told her just to explain gently to her son that his father shaved his body because he loved her. I thought the man should just tell his wife to fuck off, grow the chest hair back, grab his son and leave her ass. It’s interesting that women don’t like men telling them what to do with their bodies, yet somehow, many feel they have that prerogative when things are turned around.
1970’s Winston Cigarette Ad
I find it equally curious to note that, among gay men, body hair is not just appreciated, it’s celebrated. Here, political correctness is tossed into the trash like a used Trojan, and Gloria Allred’s face forms the backdrop of a dart board. I think it’s this crowd that made shaved heads and goatees fashionable. Just don’t tell that to the NFL! But for once, I’d still like to see a hairy-chested male on TV who isn’t a child molester or a serial killer. In other words, I’d like to see an adult male who looks a little like me and not a store mannequin – steel-plated chest and all!
Filed under Essays
If today is your birthday, “Happy Birthday!”
Singer Tony Bennett (Benedetto; I Left My Heart in San Francisco, I Wanna Be Around, Who Can I Turn To, The Shadow of Your Smile, Because of You, Rags to Riches, Stranger in Paradise, In the Middle of an Island, The Good Life) is 86.
Actor Steven Berkoff (Intruders, The Krays, Rambo: First Blood, Part 2, Beverly Hills Cop, A Clockwork Orange, War & Remembrance) is 75.
Actor Martin Sheen (Ramon Estevez; The West Wing, Apocalypse Now, J.F.K., Wall Street, Badlands, Ghandi, Gettysburg, The Final Countdown) is 72.
Singer Beverly Lee (The Shirelles) is 71.
Martha Stewart, cooking, craft, decorating, planting advisor; Martha Stewart’s Living [TV show and magazine], is 71.
Film director John Landis (Twilight Zone: The Movie, Beverly Hills Cop 3, The Blues Brothers, Coming to America, National Lampoon’s Animal House, Oscar, Three Amigos, Trading Places) is 62.
Guitarist Johnny Graham (Earth, Wind & Fire) is 61.
Actor John C. McGinley (The Rock, On Deadly Ground, Born on the Fourth of July, Hear No Evil, Point Break, Fat Man and Little Boy, Talk Radio, Wall Street, Platoon, The Pentagon Wars) is 53.
Singer – guitarist James Hetfield (Metallica) is 49.
Filed under Birthdays
1492 – Christopher Columbus set sail aboard the Santa Maria, accompanied by a crew of 90 and two more ships, the Nina and the Pinta.
1949 – The rival Basketball Association of America and the National Basketball League merged to form the National Basketball Association (NBA).
1958 – The Nautilus, a U.S. nuclear submarine, accomplished the first undersea voyage to the geographic North Pole.
Filed under History
Acclaimed Irish novelist Maeve Binchy died July 30 in Dublin after a brief illness. Binchy published her first novel, Light a Penny Candle, in 1982, after five publishers rejected it. She had a steady stream of success in the years afterwards, including Silver Wedding, Firefly Summer, Evening Class, Echoes, The Copper Beech, Circle of Friends and Tara Road; stories centered around such ordinary events as a wedding anniversary or the building of a hotel. They sold in their millions and were translated into more than 30 languages.
Binchy began her career as a journalist with The Irish Times in 1968, though she admitted later she never had the instinct to be a reporter. When her mother died suddenly of cancer at age 57, Binchy stayed home to look after her father. When he died three years later, she sold the family house and moved to Dublin. Aged 29 and unhappy, she developed a phobia about a mouse, drank a lot and had a painful affair with a married man.
In 1971, Maeve Binchy met the children’s writer Gordon Snell through friends. He was working for the BBC in London and she was, by then, women’s editor of The Irish Times. After a year flying to see each other during weekends, she asked for the job of the paper’s London correspondent and moved across the Irish Sea. Binchy and Snell married in 1977.
Binchy became lonely in London and began to write stories in the evenings to stay occupied. She began with two books of short stories, Central Line and Victoria Line, then tackled her first novel at the age of 42.
At the time, she and her husband were two months behind with the mortgage. But, Light a Penny Candle, a novel which follows the fortunes of two young girls growing up in Ireland in the aftermath of the Second World War, sold for £52,000 – the largest sum ever paid for a first novel – and their problems were solved.
“Nothing terrible has ever happened to me,” she told an interviewer. “I met and married the man I love in my thirties when I thought all that had passed me by. Success and money came in my forties, when I’d my head screwed on… I’ve never really searched for success, never felt there was some hole in my life that needed filling. I’ve only ever wanted more of the same.”
Filed under News
Here’s an independent view of the Chick-fil-A fiasco.
I am sure that there are many people in the U.S, even those reading this article, that are weary and tired of the excessive politicization of practically everything in American culture. This politicization has caused innate personal decisions to enjoy Oreo’s without there being a statement about supporting gay rights. Or an individual choice to enjoy a chicken sandwich resulting in being labeled as a person who hates or is a homophobe.
The American cultures ability to over politicize anything has been apparent in the recent escapade that was started by comments by the Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy in response to a question about marriage:
We are very much supportive of the family – the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that. We know that it might not be popular with…
View original post 2,124 more words
We can dream, can’t we? Personally, I’d prefer Bacardi.
Filed under Curiosities
If today is your birthday, “Happy Birthday!”
Actor Peter O’Toole (Lawrence of Arabia, Becket, A Lion in Winter, The Last Emperor; autobiography: Loitering with Intent) is 80.
Keyboardist Garth Hudson (The Band) is 75.
Wes Craven (author: A Nightmare on Elm Street; director: Vampire in Brooklyn, The People Under the Stairs, Shocker, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Swamp Thing, Summer of Fear, The Hills Have Eyes series, Last House on the Left) is 73.
Actress Joanna Cassidy (Blade Runner, Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, Under Fire, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, The Package, Buffalo Bill) is 67.
Actress Kathryn Harrold (MacGruder & Loud, The Bronx Zoo, I’ll Fly Away, The Larry Sanders Show, The Companion, Deadly Desire, Into the Night, Heartbreakers, The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper, Modern Romance, The Hunter, Nightwing) is 62.
Actress Mary-Louise Parker (Sugartime, A Place for Annie, The Client, Bullets over Broadway, Naked in New York, Fried Green Tomatoes, Signs of Life) is 48.
Filed under Birthdays
1769 – Gaspar de Portola, a Spanish army captain, and Juan Crespi, a Franciscan priest, stopped in what is now Los Angeles on their way north from San Diego. They liked the area and named it Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula, or “Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of Porciuncula.” Porciuncula was a chapel in Italy.
Gaspar de Portola
1871 – Artist John Sloan (South Beach Bathers; cofounder of Ashcan Art) was born in Lock Haven, PA.
1923 – President Warren G. Harding died of a stroke in San Francisco, CA, after returning from a trip to the Alaska territory. Vice-President Calvin Coolidge became the nation’s 30th President. Harding’s death came just as the “Teapot Dome” scandal broke.
1934 – Upon the death of German President Paul von Hindenburg, Chancellor Adolf Hitler became the nation’s absolute leader.
1985 – Delta Flight 191 crashed as it approached Dallas / Fort Worth International Airport, killing 135 people and injuring 15. A newly-identified weather phenomenon known as wind shear was blamed for the disaster.
1990 – Iraqi military forces invaded Kuwait.
1992 – At the Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, Jackie Joyner-Kersee became the first woman to win 2 consecutive Olympic gold medals in the heptathlon.
Filed under History
Carly McGehee, a resident of Flower Mound, TX, just outside Dallas, decided to do something more than just boycott Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day on August 1; she planned a “National Same Sex Kiss Day at Chick-fil-A” this Friday, August 3. “Of course people will oppose us, but I think everyone will be surprised at the amount of support that comes out tomorrow night,” McGehee says. “We just have to remember that love conquers hate. Love will always conquer hate.”
Filed under News
Chief Writing Wolf 