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May '06
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The B Side
By: Mitzel
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Do you ever imagine what it would be like to run into yourself as you were 20, even 30, years ago? |
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Apr '06
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Moths & The Flame
By: Mitzel
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Why do I dread opening my e-mail file every morning? When younger, I loved visiting my post-office box nearly every day and scooping up my letter mail. At some point, the joy of
that exercise waned the PO box was stuffed with junk; hunting for a personal letter was like seeking that needle in a haystack. |
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Feb '06
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Line-Up
By: Mitzel
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For some reason I found myself more fascinated with
Speeding than I expected. Speeding is a collection of the Old Reliable photos of David Hurles. As a bookseller, I see just about all
the photo collections of the male body. Some have more charms than others. But all are important documents of the artistic side of homoeroticism. |
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Jan '06
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Love Letters
By: Mitzel
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I have watched with interest the sensation attending the release of the film version of Annie Proulx's short story Brokeback Mountain. |
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Dec '05
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That Last Cigarette
By: Mitzel
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My voice now sounds like something in between the mature Marianne Faithful and the late Tallulah Bankhead in her last public appearance. It is deep, raspy and not very flexible. |
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Nov '05
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Roll 'Em
By: Mitzel
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What's amazing about the new Truman Capote movie is that it got made at all. I'd love to have been a fly on the wall when this idea was pitched. |
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Oct '05
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Re: Past
By: Mitzel
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Eat & be merry, for tomorrow... |
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Sep '05
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Doppler Lingo
By: Mitzel
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I was reading an article about New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg the other day. He was addressing what the Transit Authority in his city was doing after the bombings in London.
Mayor Michael rattled off a list of things that were being done and he asked subway and bus riders to report unattended knapsacks. |
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Aug '05
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Barney Frank's Socks
By: Mitzel
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My friends Sam and Gerry were by for a visit the other day. We made idle chitchat. Then, for whatever reason, Sam said: "Gerry, your socks don't match!" Gerry didn't miss a beat. |
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Jul '05
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Homo Erectus
By: Mitzel
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I can never stop studying my fellow humans, mostly those of the male persuasion. I love to watch when two men or more interact. Many things come to mind. |
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Jun '05
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Words Wise
By: Mitzel
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Have the qualities of homophobia changed in the past 25 years? By "qualities," I do not mean what the word can denote-- excellences or accomplishments-- but rather in the sense
of "aspects" or "attributes," the parts of the damn thing. I just looked up "homophobia" in my desk dictionary and was surprised to find it listed. |
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May '05
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Plug-Ins & Pin-Ups
By: Mitzel
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I have noticed one distinct advantage of being my age (57). It is that so much of what is pitched in our culture is aimed for audiences ahead of me, past me, off to one side, everywhere but where I am. |
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Apr '05
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Simple?
By: Mitzel
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It always seems to start with something simple. I take a blade and cut open a box. Pick up an ink marker and write on a paper bag. Open a newspaper or magazine and fall into the pictures and text. At this point, I fear things can get tricky. Will the contents of the box be what
I expected? So many things have happened to that box before I opened it and in its processing and travels, anything could have happened. The ink marker may be dry. The newspaper or magazine may have some horrible news in it or notification of someone's recent death. Or
it may be a complete waste of time and I will rue having thrown away valuable time. |
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Mar '05
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Bozoville
By: Mitzel
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I hope I'm not alone in this sentiment. But I cannot get away from the idea that the immediate and large worlds I live in is looney-tunes. Actually, I shouldn't drag Looney-Tunes into this morass as they were a fine cartoon factory, and still may be, giving us the iconic Bugs
Bunny, as much a gay icon as Batman and Robin, a pair of cartoons who formatted, or at lest provided a service to, my nascent sexual ambitions, when young. And, I suspect, to many others. Blessings on their creators. |
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Feb '05
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Unlimited Talk Time
By: Mitzel
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Most mornings I stand in front of my apartment building, waiting for the local bus. I might smoke a cigarette and read a newspaper. I do not consider waiting for the bus to be a particularly social occasion. |
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Jan '05
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Lincoln De-Enigma-ed
By: Mitzel
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January 11, 2005, is the publication date for the new book
The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln. The author is the late C. A. Tripp, and it is based on his original research. Tripp died in the fall of 2003, just days after completing the manuscript. Local author Lewis Gannett
(The Living One) worked with Tripp on this book for the past few years, and after Tripp's death had the primary responsibility of editing and organizing the manuscript into a publishable presentation. Lewis is a friend of mine and he would, periodically, give me updates on the
project's progress. |
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Dec '04
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Kinsey & Co.
By: Mitzel
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Author T.C. Boyle's latest novel, The Inner
Circle, is an imaginative recreation of sex researcher Alfred Kinsey's life, work, and associates. Bill Condon, director of the award-winning film
Gods and Monsters (based on Christopher Bram's novel,
Father of Frankenstein) has a new film out,
Kinsey. |
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Nov '04
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Two Cents' Worth
By: Mitzel
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I heard something interesting on the radio the other day that got me thinking, a rare enough event, not the thinking part but the hearing something on the waves. |
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Oct '04
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Contingency
By: Mitzel
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What if just one thing goes wrong? A friend of mine recently boarded a flight from Boston to Kansas City-- I forget what the occasion was. As the big plane was taxiing for take-off, it suddenly came to a halt, skidding off the runway. What went wrong? I asked him. |
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Sep '04
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Parties of One
By: Mitzel
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I was staying with my older brother last week. The occasion was my annual visit back to the Midwest to see all my immediate family members, now all in one town. Brother had recently got himself engaged; his fiancée will become his third wife. It occurred to me that three
marriages might once have been seen as extravagant. It is the norm in my family, myself excepted. |
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Aug '04
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On Tour
By: Mitzel
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I read that David Bowie has been hospitalized while on tour-- in Germany I think. (Get better, David!) It was in the newspapers that the tickets to Madonna's summer tour are being discounted-- she's having trouble filling venues. It has also been reported that the audiences for
literary fiction, poetry, essays, etc., are shriveling up, due to disappear in 50 years. What's happening? Is this the end of the world as we know it? |
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Jul '04
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Starting Point
By: Mitzel
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I have this new title in my bookstore which is my favorite of the season. It is
At Ease: Navy Men of World War II. It was put together by Evan Bachner; he spent six years tracking down
the photos in this collection. He found the bulk of them in the "Naval Aviation Photographic" unit at the National Archives. He searched through hundreds of boxes. Amongst the quotidian
pix, Bachner found photos that "told a story which was not about battle, but about the less heralded experiences of a soldier's life when the war goes elsewhere for a moment." |
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Jun '04
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The Land of Oz
By: Mitzel
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I own and operate an independent GLTB (shall I include "Questioning"?) bookstore in Boston. It is a labor of love, mostly. I have been doing this kind of work for a considerable
time. |
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May '04
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War's Over
By: Mitzel
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Recently a friend narrated the following story to me: not too long
back, he had attended a public function somewhere on the Harvard
University campus. The featured speaker that night was
author/activist Susie Bright. |
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Apr '04
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Cha Cha Cha
By: Mitzel
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There's a well-known person in my town, a fellow in the media, a writer and a talking head, who nearly died of the plague a few years back. An intervention by friends got him proper
medical care and he survived. He had subsequently come down with another malady and the press has detailed his medical stations-of-the-cross with avidity. |
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Mar '04
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Commitment
By: Mitzel
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As I write this text, the legislators at my state house (Massachusetts) are sitting as a constitutional convention, which they do every year, I think, and they have a number of items on
their plate. |
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Feb '04
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Class Report
By: Mitzel
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Time to look over the shoulder and see how far we've come. How do we judge success? If the times they are a'changing, have they changed enough? What shall be our base line? 1965? 1969? 1970? Does it matter? Let's start the year the
Advocate, the gay-and-lesbian publication, first started publishing, which was 1968, I think. |
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Jan '04
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Chat's Opposite
By: Mitzel
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I just finished reading Gore Vidal's latest book,
Inventing a Nation; Washington, Adams,
Jefferson. It's a lovely, long conversation in Gore's voice about the founding and the founders of our Republic, which, of course, he doesn't think much is left of his point. |
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Dec '03
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The American Songbook
By: Mitzel
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I write this listening-- for the umpteenth time-- to the recent CD release,
Bette Midler Sings the Rosemary Clooney
Songbook. |
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Nov '03
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Out the Backdoor
By: Mitzel
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I just came back from my annual physical. I have a new doctor, a young woman. Her immediate report: my liver is slightly enlarged; my prostrate is slightly enlarged; my blood pressure is elevated; my ego is diminished. |
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