Bite Me, Tony

Every bookstore worth its salt has a cat. The bookstore cat, aloof and superior, holds court from atop a favored cushion located somewhere within the shop. The cushion (or throne, as is more likely the case) generally adorns a once-comfy-but-never-fashionable 20th century chair or sofa punctuated by claw marks on both arms. In a pinch, a hard, wooden stool will do. Throughout the day, customers come and go, paying homage to the indifferent feline's magnificence as they browse from room to room. Be forewarned: bookstore cats can be capricious when showered with overt affection. Too much  rubbing will almost certainly result in a peremptory hiss or perhaps even a quick nip from sharp, tiny teeth. The bookstore cat is  royalty  and demands to be treated as such: it has never missed a meal during any of its nine lives but cleverly conceals its generous bulk beneath a lush fur coat that continually scatters behind this majestic creature as it slinks from one place of repo...

The Betrayal of Thomas True Molly houses are not establishments regularly covered in History 101, or even in Lucy Worsley's highly regarded documentary programs on PBS. In fact, unless you're a gay British scholar you are unlikely to have come across the term "molly house". And yet, in London during the 18th and early 19th centuries, molly houses were infamous. Under cover of darkness, sodomites (or "mollies", hence the term molly house) gathered in secret meeting places to socialize with other like-minded men. 200+ years ago, "gay" was not a term used to describe this much vilified group of degenerates . Our modern equivalent of a molly house would be a combination gay bar, drag venue, sex club, and relatively safe haven for outcasts to form chosen families when they were cast out by their own. Not unlike more recent times, there were frequent raids on molly houses, depending on the whims of a constabulary willing to overlook these illegal es...

Cult Movies #3 & #4 (Part Two) * Following the 1967 release of the blockbuster hit,  Valley of the Dolls  author Jacqueline Susann set about writing a sequel to capitalize on the movie's popularity. Titled Beyond the Valley of the Dolls , Susann's screen treatment would have brought back original star, Barbara Parkins, as a (presumably) more mature Anne Welles. Since  Valley of the Dolls had been a winner for 20th Century-Fox, Susann and her husband, Irving Mansfield, convinced the studio to allow Mansfield's company to produce the film. However...somewhere along the way, Mansfield and Fox crossed swords and he was fired from the project. Susann soon hit the trail herself, still clutching her precious screen treatment, along with her pearls. With a youthful(ish) Richard Zanuck in charge of new productions at Fox, it was decided that the highly successful smut peddler, Russ Meyer, would write and direct his own version of Susann's brainchild.  Kicking around Holl...

Cult Movies #3 & #4 (Part One) So far, 2025 has been a long haul and it's only March. In the weeks since my last post, much has happened, most of it not good. And by not good, I mean really, really god-awfully not good. So not good that I've stopped watching the ABC Evening News, listening to NPR and reading The Guardian online. BECAUSE. I. JUST. CAN'T. I just can't . End of story.  It was during this long, dark night of the soul that, in a moment of pique/funk/desperation (take your pick) I got into my movie collection and dug out two X-rated blasts from the past that were released in 1970, courtesy of none other than 20th Century-Fox. In 1970, it came as something of a shock that a prestigious studio like Fox would dip its toes in the dirty pictures business, but the times they were a-changin' and Fox badly needed a reversal of fortune after releasing a steady stream of box-office flops. Besides, hadn't the X-rated Midnight Cowboy  proved to be a prestigi...

The 39th President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, was finally laid to rest in Plains, GA , today while the 45th (soon to be 47th) president (he who shall not be named) was sentenced without penalty in New York for his felony conviction on all 34 counts of a scheme to influence the 2016 election by making hush money payments to a porn star. 45/47 will be the first president in the history of this country to take office as a convicted felon. The differences between Jimmy Carter and the other guy could not be more stark. Carter had a problematic presidency but was, fundamentally, a decent, honest, empathetic and unassuming man whose post-presidency years were filled with international diplomacy, hands-on advocacy on behalf of the world's sick, poor and homeless, unshakeable faith, and a proven love for his fellow humans. The other...well, the less said about him, the better. His many, many  vindictive words, his unspeakable cruelty towards his fellow humans, his utter narciss...