Innocent Bystanders

All Members Please Rise October 31, 2022

As they used to say on Archer: “Phrasing!”

This sorority accepted its first man into its ranks

University of Wyoming Kappa Kappa Gamma has become the first sorority at the university to accept a male member into its sisterhood.

I seriously doubt it was the first sorority to “accept a male member.” I’ll bet sororities are accepting male members all the time. Why even back in my day, a male member I was very attached to was nearly accepted at a sorority.

Quick Media Reviews October 3, 2022

Watched some stuff. Here are brief impressions:

The Terminal List. This is the Amazon mini-series that critics panned but fans loved. Rotten Tomatoes has it at something like a 35% rating among critics and 95% among the hoi polloi. Amazon has it at 4.5 stars, but almost everything at Amazon is 4.5 stars. They’ve got box office failures from the 80s and 90s at 4.5 stars. Anyway, back to the show.

I binged it in one sitting. Entertaining, but all the non-linearity in the story-telling couldn’t make up for a very linear, pretty predictable, plot. I’d say 3.75 stars.

Everything Everywhere All at Once. I love Michelle Yeoh, but this movie is a pointless, puerile mess. The theme seems to be: “If only you older people were more woke and wimpy, everything would be nice.” Fight scenes were meh. Two stars.

Uncharted. Dan Brown meets Spiderboy. Silly plot contrivances, but pretty imaginative action scenes. Didn’t ever feel the chemistry between Wahlberg and Spiderkid. 3.25 stars.

Jungle Cruise. I like the actors individually, but they never gelled as an ensemble. Flat dialogue. 2.5 stars.

The Greatest Chord in the History of the World? October 2, 2022

Back in 1972, Grammy Award-winning composer and conductor Claus Ogerman wrote a score for a ballet called Some Times. In 1977 he expanded the score into a jazz-classical album called Gate of Dreams. One of my favorite albums of all time, featuring George Benson, Michael Brecker, and David Sanborn.

The shortest piece on the album runs about two and a half minutes, and just past halfway in (1:19) it delivers my favorite chord on the planet.

You’re free to disagree and consign yourself to wallowing in wrongitude forevermore, but you’ve got to submit your own favorite chord in penance.

Got the Monkey Off Our Back October 1, 2022

Monkeypox looked like it was going to be our next big health crisis, until this happened:

How did it get turned around?

Well, seems like everyone in charge finally got their heads out of their hineys and decided to acknowledge that this was really a problem of, by, and for, the gay community:

You don’t get that kind of disease split among genders if heterosexual transmission is a real player. And you don’t see it concentrated in the ages between 20 and 45 if it’s an airborne virus.

So, a survey by the CDC in the first half of August found that half of gay men had throttled back on their promiscuity, and ouila! Disease starts fading away.

What didn’t happen is the stigmatizing and consequent increase in violence toward, and harassment of, gay men. That’s supposedly the big fear that the health administration had, which prevented them from being frank from the outset.

How much suffering of the gay community could have been avoided had they been open and honest from the beginning?