Happy Birthday Ethan Mordden

To paraphrase the site near the top of my blogroll, 'why oh why' are most of the people I like best also the worst served by the Internet Photo Gods? But more importantly: 'why oh why' have those same deities forsaken me yet again, so soon after the last time*? Obviously, it's time to ritually sacrifice another issue of Life magazine in order to appease them.

Ever since I was introduced to his 'Buddies' cycle of novels shortly after the release of 1985's I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore - thus rendering me incapable of complete loathing for twinks** - I have eagerly followed the fictional exploits of Carlo, Dennis Savage, J. (formerly Little Kiwi), Cosgrove, and Bud with the same fascination I've followed the semi-fictional real-life archetypes upon whom they were based.

Mordden is more than a deft writer of fiction, though; his nonfiction works include histories of Broadway musical theatre and an adept perspective on classic film and the artists who made them, as well as a recent biography of Florenz Ziegfeld which somehow found its way into the collection of the Pop Culture Institute***.

Born on this day in 1949, Mordden lives in Manhattan, the city he has so eloquently described and inhabited lo these many years...

*I'm still reeling over the numerous House of Grimaldi bloodbaths of the past four weeks.
**Thanks a lot!
***In the interest of full disclosure: the book nearly caught fire like a comet entering the atmosphere, so quickly did I snatch it off the shelf in the store when I first saw it.
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