Pop History Moment: Kristallnacht

On this day in 1938 Nazi Germany's war on its Jews began in earnest, with a frenzy of looting and burning now known as Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass; this allegedly spontaneous outburst of anti-Semitism that purportedly took Nazi authorities by surprise was in fact organized by them as early as 1937, to be carried out by Hitler Youth and other such organizations when a suitable provocation could be found to justify it.

As a scapegoat, the Nazis chose Herschel Grynszpan, whose attack on a Paris-based German diplomat named Ernst vom Rath two days earlier - which was itself prompted by the inclusion of his family in mass expulsions from Germany which had taken place on October 18th - was used to justify the Nazi's extremism. In a classic bully move Grynszpan was not only roundly condemned as a murderer by the Nazi press but by extension all Jews became murderers; in this manner did the murderous Nazis routinely deflect such charges from themselves.

In all, more than 200 synagogues were destroyed and thousands of homes were similarly looted or burned, 92 Jews were murdered outright and as many as 30,000 were sent to concentration camps before the destruction ended the following day; reports vary, but the Führer himself may have even personally led the assault in München. According to eyewitness accounts, members of the public also assisted in the destruction* by throwing old newspapers, kerosene-soaked rags, and other such flammable items on their nearest conflagrations-in-waiting. Others looked on in horror, unable to act as their neighbours - many of whom had fought for their country in World War I - were displaced from their homes or arrested.

The events of Kristallnacht were widely condemned by the British and American media of the time, although their outrage in this instance didn't exactly move their governments to accept more Jewish immigrants, owing to the widespread anti-Semitism of the times.

Only recently, as the 70th anniversary of the event approached, an Israeli journalist named Yaron Svoray, himself an acclaimed hunter of Nazis and neo-Nazis, discovered a midden in the Brandenburg district north of Berlin - itself the size of four soccer pitches - which contains much of the night's plunder.

The story of the night's events are told in the slim yet thrilling volume, Kristallnacht: Prelude to Destruction by Martin Gilbert.

*Likely the same people whom, after the war, claimed not to know Hitler was genocidal - the same ones whose children and grandchildren now claim the Holocaust never happened, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary.
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The History of Sex: Hedy Lamarr

The legendary beauty of Hedy Lamarr has never been questioned; in the years since her death, though, it's the beauty of her mind that's come increasingly to the fore...

Early in her career she starred in what is popularly considered the cinema's first nude scene - in the Czech film Ecstasy (1933) - which is actually notorious as the first to depict sexual intercourse and female orgasm on screen, not nudity (although it does have a prime example of that). Later, at the height of her fame, she and her second husband Gene Markey patented spread spectrum, an essential component of today's mobile phone technology, which plans she developed with her first husband, the Austrian arms manufacturer Friedrich Mandl.

Born on this day in 1913, she made her film debut in 1930; Lamarr, who was Jewish, escaped her fascist first husband and the Nazi threat in 1937, dripping in the jewels he'd given her and with the plans they'd worked out together. Legend has it that during her flight she hid in a brothel, even going so far as to have sex with a client there in order to conceal her identity. Arriving in London, she obtained her famous surname from Louis B. Mayer, who named her after the tragic silent movie actress Barbara LaMarr; previously she'd been known professionally as Hedy Kiesler.

Newly renamed, Hedy Lamarr's first American movie was Algiers (1938) opposite Charles Boyer; her biggest film role was as Delilah in Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah (1949) with Victor Mature. She also appeared in Tortilla Flat (1942), based on the novel by John Steinbeck. Frequently cast against type, she often portrayed devastatingly beautiful temptresses.

Having made off with hearts (and technology, and jewellery), Lamarr was subsequently arrested for shoplifting, first in 1965, and again in 1991; she died in January 2000.
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"Looking Out My Back Door" by Creedence Clearwater Revival

Late birthday boy Tom Fogerty started Creedence Clearwater Revival with his older brother John Fogerty in 1968, and although tension between them would prompt Tom to leave the band in 1971, in the intervening years they were responsible for a string of hits with a distinctive swamp rock sound, including Bad Moon Rising, Down on the Corner, Fortunate Son, and Travelin' Band.

One such song was Lookin' Out My Back Door, from their 1970 sixth album Cosmo's Factory; although the band's reputation has led many critics since to consider the song a paean to drug use for its illusory imagery, the song's author John Fogerty claims he was inspired by having read Dr. Seuss's book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street to his young son. Of course, there's no reason to think this has to be a case of either/or.

Born on this day in 1941, Tom Fogerty died of AIDS-related complications to tuberculosis in September 1990, having received tainted blood transfusions during back surgery in the early 1980s.
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Remembering... Earl Thompson

On this day in 1978 a promising literary career ended, just as it was gaining momentum...

Although Earl Thompson only published three novels while alive - A Garden of Sand, Tattoo, and Caldo Largo - and a fourth one (The Devil To Pay) posthumously, what novels they were! So bristling with rage and contemptuous of taboo are they that I hesitate to say how autobiographical in nature they are. I began A Garden of Sand at the behest of Mr. Christiansen*, and was at first enthralled by its sterling depiction of Depression-era Wichita; very quickly, though, I found myself drawn into the characters' inner lives in a way I hadn't been since I started reading Steinbeck.

*One of the members of the brain trust here at the Pop Culture Institute.
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Introducing Dorothy Dandridge

The history of show business is littered with the remains of those who were unable to deal with its attendant pressures; despite what it may look like to those of us on the outside, such adulation comes with a price too steep for many to pay, and so they pay with their lives...

Dorothy Dandridge was one such casualty of fame; a raving beauty, gifted actress, and acclaimed cabaret performer, her 25 years in the public eye exacted the ultimate toll on her. She died in September 1965 at the age of only 42; whether she was murdered or overdosed - or whether that overdose was intentional or accidental - hardly matters now. Only the loss remains; that, and the legacy she left behind.

Born on this day in 1922, Dorothy and her older sister Vivian (along with Etta Jones) performed on the Chitlin' circuit, a kind of black vaudeville, first as the Wonder Children and later as the Dandridge Sisters. Dorothy's mother Ruby was a lesbian, involved with a woman named Geneva Williams; scurrilous rumours abound that Williams molested her lover's daughters. Whether or not that was true, she was a stern taskmaster, working the girls hard both onstage and at home.

Hard work landed Dorothy successively larger roles in various movies, but it wasn't until she was 32 that Dandridge got her big break in Otto Preminger's Carmen Jones (1955); for her troubles she was nominated for an Oscar, only the third African-American so honoured and the first in the Best Actress category. She lost the award to Grace Kelly.

The final ten years of Dorothy Dandridge's life were a study in contrasts; she broke many barriers and received much acclaim in front on audiences and cameras, but suffered from a downward spiral of addiction and abuse in private. Following her death she seemed destined to fade into oblivion, and would have too, if not for the cherished place she held in the hearts of two successive generations of black actors like Cicely Tyson, Jada Pinkett, Janet Jackson and Angela Bassett.

Halle Berry didn't so much play her as channel her in the HBO film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge and the Emmy she won for the searing performance both revived interest in and in a way vindicated the memory of a gifted performer and a sensitive soul lost to fame.
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Happy Birthday Tony Slattery

Comedian Tony Slattery - born this day in 1959 - has always been frank about the source of his darkness and his light: a lifelong struggle with bipolar disorder, as confessed on-air to Stephen Fry in the landmark documentary The Secret Life Of The Manic Depressive.

Okay, so this is one of his darker moments; it's here because it also happens to be one of his cuter moments as well. Taken from the Cambridge Footlights Revue in the 1980s, the same show that unleashed the comic talents of Fry, Hugh Laurie, and Emma Thompson - among many others - is a happy little ditty called Shoot Somebody Famous.
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Remembering... Marie Dressler

MGM studio boss Louis B. Mayer called her 'the most adored person ever to set foot in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio', and he was a man who'd never blow smoke unless he could find a way to put it on film and charge two-bits admission!

Born in Coburg, Ontario, on this day in 1868, Marie Dressler was a big girl who grew into a big woman with an even bigger talent; although her initial ambition was to appear in the opera, it was undoubtedly her splendid sense of comic timing that brought her instead to vaudeville. There she befriended Mack Sennett and Edward Everett Horton, both of whom would later feature prominently alongside her in the early history of Hollywood.

Already popular in silent films - a medium famous for its FACES! - by the time she appeared in talking pictures she had her routine by rote, and indeed much of it involved making faces. In films like Anna Christie (1931) her mug-happy antics threatened to wipe even a ham like Greta Garbo off the screen.

Dressler was awarded an Oscar for her appearance in Min and Bill (1931) with Wallace Beery; onscreen they shared not so much chemistry as physics. Altogether she would make 40 films; her penultimate, Dinner at Eight (1933), shows Dressler at the top of her game, despite her obvious illness. Castmates later reported finding her vomiting violently or else coughing up blood in her dressing room, only to emerge and film take after take of a flawless performance fraught with comedy and drama in equal parts...

Dressler's memoirs were entitled The Life Story of an Ugly Duckling, but the Pop Culture Institute would like to offer a posthumous revision: A Swan By Any Other Name.
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In Memoriam: Edward VII

An ageing heir to the throne, unpopular as his mother was revered, who attracted the public's ire by preferring the company of his mistress to that of his younger wife - herself a neurotic beauty viewed by the public as an almost holy icon... There are few writers as bereft of original ideas as History.

Yet for a man who was viewed as a dissipated dilettante right up until the moment he became King, the life and times of Edward VII offers many potential lessons to his modern-day counterpart. Though his apprenticeship was long and his subsequent reign short, he accomplished much in the just over nine years allotted to him on the throne, not least of which was the rehabilitation of his own image. The age in which he reigned was given his name - the Edwardian - and it stands as a last golden hour before the horrors of the 20th Century beset Europe.

Born on this day in 1841 at Buckingham Palace, the second child of Queen Victoria and Albert, Prince Consort, he was created Prince of Wales a month later - a title he would hold for nearly sixty years. He was known within the family as Bertie as his name at birth was Albert Edward.

His marriage in March 1863 to his fourth cousin Princess Alexandra of Denmark (daughter of the future Christian IX) was arranged in the fashion of the day, supervised by his elder sister Victoria, Princess Royal, the future Queen of Prussia. In no time at all a fashionable social set formed around them, with its twin foci at their London residence, Marlborough House and in the Norfolk countryside at Sandringham House. After December 1861, and because of his mother's melodramatic widowhood (during which she refused to appear in public) he endeavoured to carry out many of the royal duties the grieving Queen would not. In this sense he can be said to have saved the monarchy by keeping it from becoming too remote. The Princess of Wales, too, carried out many engagements on behalf of children and the sick; she was also a renowned patroness of the arts.

Always a ladies man, the Prince maintained a stable of mistresses throughout his lifetime, including actress Lillie Langtry, Lady Jennie Churchill (mother of Winston and wife of Lord Randolph), Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick, actress Sarah Bernhardt, dancer La Belle Otero, and wealthy humanitarian Agnes Keyser; the one who was at his side when he died, however, was Alice Keppel, whose great-granddaughter Camilla Parker Bowles succeeded in snaring herself a royal mate where she had failed.
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"Follow Me" by Uncle Kracker

Birthday wishes go out today to Uncle Kracker, who in 2001 scored a massive hit with the song Follow Me, from his debut album Double Wide; although initially best known in the Detroit area as a turntablist and rap artist who worked in Kid Rock's posse, as this single demonstrates, by the time he'd begun recording Uncle Kracker had abandoned hip-hop in favour of a country sound.

On a personal note, Uncle Kracker is at least partially responsible for what was at the time the most offensive joke I'd ever told*; upon hearing the news that he was marrying, I let fly with the brilliant quip that her professional name was likely to be Aunt Spread. Upon closer reflection, that was probably not a good thing to say in a room full of extremely earnest female writers, as I did. On the plus side, it got me out of there, so it wasn't all for naught.

*That was 2002; I've since surpassed it *at least* half a dozen times.
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POPnews - November 9th

[After it was destroyed by war in 1993, Stari Most was rebuilt almost immediately, and reopened in July 2004.]
694 CE - Egica - Visigoth King of Hispania - showed his utter ignorance in matters spiritual at the Seventeenth Council of Toledo when he accused Jews of aiding Muslims, and thereafter sentenced all Jews to slavery for something that not only never happened but never could or would happen.

1688 - William of Orange captured Exeter during Britain's Glorious Revolution.

1851 - Kentucky marshals abducted abolitionist minister Calvin Fairbank from Jeffersonville, Indiana, and returned him to Kentucky to stand trial for helping a slave named Tamar to escape from her owner, A. L. Shotwell of Louisville, who had recently hired her out to a Judge Purtle of that city. The following year Fairbank would be sentenced to 15 years hard labour, but was eventually pardoned in 1864.

1867 - The Tokugawa Shogunate handed power back to the Emperor of Japan, bringing about the so-called Meiji Restoration.

1872 - A fire destroyed much of Boston; ignited around 7:20 PM, within 12 hours it had destroyed 65 acres of the city's downtown including 776 buildings, and was responsible for at least 20 deaths, although a citizen's brigade managed to save the Old South Meeting House.

1888 - Jack the Ripper killed Mary Jane Kelly, his last known victim.

1906 - Theodore Roosevelt became the first sitting US President to make an official trip outside the country when he went to inspect progress on the Panama Canal.

1907 - The Cullinan Diamond was presented to Britain's King Edward VII on his birthday; at 530.2 carats, it was not only the largest finished diamond in the world until the 1985 discovery of the Golden Jubilee Diamond, it's also officially the best birthday present ever given.

1918 - Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated - effectively ending the German Revolution - following which the country was proclaimed a republic.

1921 - Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work with the photoelectric effect.

1923 - In Munich, Germany, police and government troops crushed the Beer Hall Putsch; the failed coup was the work of the Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler, Erich Ludendorff, and members of the Kampfbund.

1938 - Kristallnacht, Nazi Germany's first large-scale act of physical anti-Jewish violence, began.

1961 - Brian Epstein attended a gig by a new band called The Beatles at Liverpool's Cavern Club; by December he was managing the band and history (not to mention some bloody great pop music) was being made.

1965 - 22-year-old Catholic Worker member Roger Allen LaPorte, protesting against the Vietnam War, set himself on fire in front of the United Nations building - one week to the day after Norman Morrison did the same thing in front of The Pentagon.

1967 - The first issue of Rolling Stone magazine was published.

1979 - Four men now better known as the Bridgewater Four - Patrick Molloy, Jim Robinson and cousins Michael Hickey and Vincent Hickey - were found guilty of murdering 12 year-old paperboy Carl Bridgewater, which crime occurred outside Stourbridge in September 1978; their convictions would be overturned by the Court of Appeal in 1997 after it came to light that police fabricated evidence in order to extract a confession from Molloy - a confession around which the entire case against the four was.

1985 - Garry Kasparov became the youngest world chess champion by beating Anatoly Karpov.

1989 - Communist-controlled East Germany opened checkpoints in the Berlin Wall, allowing its citizens to travel to West Germany for the first time since 1961, at which point the city's citizenry began the demolition that resulted in the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

1993 - Stari Most, the 'old bridge' built spanning the river Neretva in the Bosnian city of Mostar in 1566, collapsed after several days of bombing.
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Happy Birthday Parker Posey

The Queen of the Indies - born on this day in 1968 - had the privilege of portraying one of my favourite characters in contemporary fiction...

In Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City (1993) Posey played Connie Bradshaw, one of the most dynamic characters in the legendary series of novels, who goes from the quintessential good-time girl to a tragic figure of redemption almost in a broken heart-beat. Although she is a minor character, her actions reverberate through the story and touch me still; the single mention of her in this year's Michael Tolliver Lives reduced me to tears. (Not that there's any chore to that, me being all in touch with my feelings and that.)

There have been other impressive turns - Dazed and Confused (1993), The House of Yes (1997) A Mighty Wind (2003), and a hilarious run on Will & Grace - but it was as Connie Bradshaw that she wormed her way into my heart.

[Need more Parker Posey?]
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"Loving You" by Minnie Riperton

For all that it may have obscured her past successes and inhibited her future ones, Loving You still manages to serve as a superlative showcase for the numerous gifts of Minnie Riperton.

Released by Epic Records in January 1975 with The Edge of a Dream on its B-side, it was also included on her second album, 1974's Perfect Angel; the song hit #1 in the US, #2 in the UK, and was a crossover hit as well, attaining the #3 spot on the R&B chart.

She's shown here performing the song on Soul Train in 1974, introduced by the coolest cat around, Don Cornelius...
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Remembering... Minnie Riperton

The curse of a smash hit single is that it obscures whatever success came before, and often makes any future success impossible; it's a curse that Minnie Riperton knew all too well. Despite having had a number of singles on the R&B chart before she released Loving You, it's that song for which she's most often remembered today.

Born on this day in 1947, Riperton was possessed of a rare gift: a five-octave vocal range (which may even have been five-and-a-half), including the ability to sing and clearly enunciate in the whistle register. Additionally, she was a student of drama and dance, and briefly pondered a career in opera until she was discovered by Chess Records, where she worked as a secretary.

Married to composer Richard Rudolph, she is the mother of the talented comedian Maya Rudolph, whose own exotic beauty is an echo of her mother's, and whose abilities as a singer and impressionist prove there might be something to this DNA business after all.

In 1976 Riperton revealed that she had breast cancer. Having undergone a mastectomy in an effort to combat the disease, it was too late; the cancer had already spread to her lymphatic system. Refusing to give up, she became an advocate for cancer research and continued to tour until just weeks before her death, in July 1979, at the age of 31.
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In Memoriam: Esther Rolle

Best known for her portrayal of Florida Evans - first on Maude, then later on Good Times - Esther Rolle was as ill-suited to the shallow vocation of the sitcom as CBS seemingly was to giving that sitcom the challenging story lines it deserved...

Born on this day in 1920, the 10th of 18 children (strangely enough, in Florida) Rolle moved to New York City to attend school - first Hunter College, then Spelman College, and finally the New School for Social Research.

She made her acting debut onstage in 1962's The Blacks, and thereafter acted with Negro Ensemble Company. In 1972 she was cast in Maude, and after one season her character - slightly reworked - was spun off into her own show, Good Times.

Good Times was a trail-blazer for network TV; set in a black household in the Cabrini-Green projects of Chicago, the show costarred John Amos as Rolle's TV husband, Jimmie Walker as J. J., Bern Nadette Stanis as Thelma, and Ralph Carter as Michael. For comic effect, Florida's best friend and neighbour Willona Woods was played by Ja'net Du Bois. Both Rolle and Amos absented themselves from later seasons when it became clear that the network was prepared to squander the opportunity it created to be socially relevant, preferring to exploit the popularity of Jimmie Walker. It would be a rare lapse in judgement for the show's pioneering producer, Norman Lear...

Rolle took occasional roles through the 1980s and 1990s, both on stage and screen; she died in November 1998, nine days after her 78th birthday.
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"I Can't Make You Love Me" by Bonnie Raitt

I remember reading an article in a magazine once that said this song was the most dysfunctional love song ever; I remember thinking 'Uh, whuh-HUH?' If anything, this is the least dysfunctional love song ever... This is what I get for reading music reviews in Mirabella!

I Can't Make You Love Me was a monster hit for birthday gal Bonnie Raitt in 1991, from her breakthrough 11th album Luck of the Draw; it was later covered by George Michael, among others.
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POPnews - November 8th

[The distinctive round shape of the Bodleian Library amidst the splendour of Oxford's medieval quadrangles makes it a must-see destination for tourists, but belies its importance as one of six deposit libraries in Britain and the only deposit library for the Republic of Ireland within the United Kingdom.]
680 CE - The Sixth Ecumenical Council commenced in Constantinople.

1519 - Hernán Cortés entered Tenochtitlán as the guest of Aztec ruler Moctezuma II, who welcomed him with great a celebration; over the next few years Cortés would repay this hospitality by despoiling the city, plundering the country, and enslaving those who'd welcomed him.

1602 - Oxford University's Bodleian Library was first opened to the public... And by 'public' I mean certain scholars willing to undergo a spot of minor bureaucratic rigmarole for the privilege.

1619 - The former Princess Elizabeth of Scotland and England - daughter of James VI and I and Anne of Denmark - was crowned Queen of Bohemia as consort to Frederick I, three days after his own coronation; best known to history as the 'Winter Queen', regular readers might also remember that Her Majesty had earlier been the focus of a misguided attempt to restore a Catholic monarchy to England when, at the age of only nine, the Gunpowder Plot was foiled in November 1605. Oddly enough, it would be her Hanoverian descendants who became the saviours of Britain's Protestant monarchy after the demise of the House of Stuart with the death of Queen Anne in August 1714.

1793 - The Louvre was first opened to the public as a museum, during the French Revolution.

1864 - Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected to a second term as US President over Democrat George B. McClellan.

1889 - Montana became the 41st US state.

1892 - 22nd US President Grover Cleveland - a Democrat - was elected 24th US President over Republican incumbent Benjamin Harrison and Populist James Weaver; Cleveland remains the only US President elected to non-consecutive terms.

1895 - While experimenting with electricity, Wilhelm Röntgen discovered the X-ray.

1904 - Republican Theodore Roosevelt was elected 26th US President over Democrat Alton Brooks Parker; having succeeded to the Presidency following the assassination of William McKinley in September 1901, Roosevelt became the first 'accidental President' to be elected of his own accord.

1923 - Adolf Hitler's abortive Beer Hall Putsch began, in München.

1932 - Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected 32nd US President over Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover.

1933 - US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt unveiled plans for the Civil Works Administration.

1939 - Adolf Hitler escaped an assassination attempt by Georg Elser in München, during a celebration of the anniversary of the failed Beer Hall Putsch.

1960 - Democrat John F. Kennedy was elected 35th US President over Republican Richard Nixon.

1966 - Edward Brooke became the first African-American elected to the US Senate.

1971 - Led Zeppelin released Stairway to Heaven, from their album Led Zeppelin IV.

1973 - The right ear of kidnapped oil heir John Paul Getty III was mailed to a newspaper along with a ransom note; Getty's abduction has been thought to be the work of 'Ndrangheta, but their connection to the crime has never been proven.

1977 - Archaeologist Manolis Andronikos uncovered the tomb of Philip II of Macedon at Vergina.
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The Death of Steve McQueen

Three decades after his death - on this day in 1980 - Steve McQueen remains an icon of cool; one of an elite group of anti-heroes, his performances in films such as The Magnificent Seven (1960), The Great Escape (1963), Bullitt, and The Thomas Crown Affair (both 1968) are classics of the action-adventure genre. McQueen's only Oscar nomination, though, was for his role in The Sand Pebbles (1966).

He came by that tough-guy persona naturally, having run with gangs as a teenager, spent time at a home for wayward boys, and served a hitch in the Marine Corps. A racing enthusiast, McQueen did many of his own driving stunts in his movies (or at least as many as the insurance company would let him do); whether cars or motorcycles*, if it went fast, he wanted to be on it.

He died as fast as he lived, of a heart attack following surgery to remove a tumour from his lung; it was suspected the mesothelioma from which he'd been suffering was caused by exposure to asbestos. He'd received extensive exposure to the stuff during his years as a Marine, then latterly on soundstages and in racing togs.

*Or, indeed, actresses!
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"Mountain Of Love" by Johnny Rivers

Birthday wishes go out today to Johnny Rivers, one of the most versatile performers of the 1960s; his adeptness at American music extended to rock and roll, country, blues, and folk. Mountain of Love first appeared when it was released as a single by its songwriter, Harold Dorman; Rivers' version was a huge hit in 1964, going all the way to Number 9 on the US charts.
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The History of Sex: Tom of Finland

When Tom of Finland (born Touko Laaksonen in May 1920) died on this day in 1991, he left behind him a legacy few artists would have dared; a body of work as oversized as the bodies his work depicted - 3500 drawings in all - the vast majority of them explicitly gay in nature. Love them or hate them (there seems to be no middle ground) they represent a huge risk taken by the artist who drew them, and for many years a similar risk for the men who possessed them.

Informed by an early attraction to working men, Laaksonen gradually morphed into the grand-daddy of the leather scene, demonstrating an unabashed appreciation for tough guys, uniforms, and even - horror of horrors! - 'sexualizing the enemy' (which is a phrase professional homosexuals use). If nothing else, he helped to disabuse the notion that gay male sex was some lavender-scented thing that happened between two hairdressers but an all-male activity - unlike those butch straights, whose boinking always includes at least one delicate, floral-scented female.

With all this talk about man-on-man action (not to mention the research I was forced to do) I have to go now and... Uh... Lavender-scent my hairdresser*.

*Which is an extraordinary euphemism, I must admit!
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In Memoriam: Albert Camus

Albert Camus devoted his life (which began on this day in 1913) to the battle against nihilism, the idea that life has no meaning; 'All of us, among the ruins,' he said, 'Are preparing a renaissance beyond the limits of nihilism. But few of us know it.'

Existentialism, the philosophy with which he is most often - and, in his opinion, wrongly - associated, can be a bleak and unforgiving place, but only if you let it. Our existence, he argued is what we make it. What Camus made of his existence is a tidy little career in which he ventured into all areas of writing except poetry, which tidy little career had a major influence on others durings his lifetime, an influence which has continued to grow ever since his death, in January 1960.

Those of us who've read his works and been moved by them in the years since might be skeptical at his assertion that the things we do in life are meaningless; the mere fact that he can speak to us thusly from beyond the grave is the sternest rebuke human mortality ever had.
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