Showing posts with label Maggie Smith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maggie Smith. Show all posts

Thursday, October 03, 2024

Bobservations

Some of you may remember the story of how we survived Hurricane Katrina in Miami—losing only the fence and part of the roof—and how that lead to our decision to move from Florida. But did you know that Carlos and I handle hurricanes differently? That Carlos falls asleep at the drop of as hat and I stay awake wondering if the house will fly away like Dorothy’s in The Wizard of Oz?

Well, as we waited for Helene to arrive I told a coworker about Carlos’s nonchalance regarding the storms and the day after the storm, when we were without power for over 14 hours, Carlos and I drove through Camden seeing what, if anything, was damaged or open or what. We ended up by my office and I noticed a couple of cars in the lot so we stopped to check and the guy I had talked to about Carlos’s hurricane reactions was there, and we started talking storm when the guy said to me:

“How did Carlos do during the storm? Did he stay awake?”

And before I could utter a sound, Carlos goodnaturedly shouted:

“I’m fucking blind! I couldn’t see a thing!”

So, that’s how he handled it.

This Tuxedo Memory if from April 2020 and entitled Things I Like #7:

A while back Maddie posted a series of posts about called Things I Like where the posts displayed Maddie’s home and some favorite things.

I took a look around the house and started with our sunroom and the plants Carlos has there, but then I came upon my absolute favorite thing …

Wasn’t he gorgeous?

I rarely go to Walmart but if they have cakes like that there, I may have to rethink my position on that store!

The great, and I mean The Great Maggie Smith—The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie to California Suite to A Room with a View to Tea with Mussolini to the Harry Potter films to The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel to The Lady in The Van to Downton Abbey—passed away last week at age 89.

RIP Dame Margaret Natalie Smith and thank you for the decades of entertainment.

The Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre in New York announced a proposed global settlement with hundreds of sex abuse survivors, who allege they were abused as children at the DRVC’s parishes, churches, and schools.

The settlement is based on DRVC’s parishes filing for bankruptcy, and it will halt a number of jury trials against the Diocese and its parishes. The law firm of Slater Slater Schulman served as a mediation party in the historic settlement, under which a trust will receive approximately $320.5 million for the benefit of survivors.

$320,000,000.00.

Oh, and then Pope Francis promised to “offer all the help we can” to aid clergy sexual abuse victims, after a group of Belgian survivors told him first-hand of the trauma that had shattered their lives and left many in poverty and mental misery.

Howsabout turning the child rapists into the authorities to have them prosecuted? Oh, but the shame on the church …

Fuck you, Francis.

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s marriage may be over, but fans still love Mr. & Mrs. Smith even if La Jolie does not. 

And she does not; Jolie was photographed autographing a movie poster for the 2005 action flick and seemed quite stoic about doing so, even averting her eyes from Pitt’s picture on the poster.

Oh Angie, you picked him …

Teo Toranzo is an Italian model, based in Brazil, who doesn’t shy away from an avant-garde photo shoot but the real issue is: Would You Hit It?

Thursday, March 05, 2015

Random Musings

Oh Ben Carson, you will never be president of this country; especially when one considers the Crazy Talk that falls from your lips. Which is what happened when you appeared on CNN this week and called ‘gay’ a choice — which leads to the question, when did you choose 'straight, Ben?

But I digress … see Ben says ‘gay’ is a choice because “a lot of people who go into prison straight, and when they come out they’re gay.” Yeah … he did. Only now he’s backpedaling, blaming his quote, blaming the actual words that came out of his asshatted mouth, on CNN:

“It was a 25 minute interview they chopped, and you see what part they emphasized. I did learn something very important: For certain networks, never do a pre-taped interview. Always do it live.”

But that’s a lie … too; a look back at the interview and you see that there were clearly no jump-cuts and no edits — just a straight back-and-forth about whether homosexuality is a choice.

So, Carson apologized:

“I realized that my choice of language does not reflect fully my heart on gay issues. I do not pretend to know how every individual came to their sexual orientation. I regret that my words to express that concept were hurtful and divisive. For that I apologize unreservedly to all that were offended."

We’re born gay, Ben, you made a choice to be a bigot, and a stupid one at that. Oh, and once more, you will never be president of this country, so sit down.
So the Benham brothers — David and Jason — those anti-gay-boys-who-were-gonna-have-a-show-on-HGTV-until-HGTV-found-out-they-were-bigots have announced that they’ve turned a gay man straight, y’all!

They claim to have saved a man from homosexuality simply by buying him tickets to see the Chicago Cubs play baseball. 

Well, it might work; I once turned a woman into a lesbian after giving her a Home Depot gift card. 

Sit down, boys.
We’re hooked on Empire. We love the show and all its WTFuckery storytelling, but this week I realized I’d seen the show before ….decades ago.

Then I realized: Empire is Dynasty set to hip hop. See, in Empire, there's this giant corporation — a record company — with a homophobic father, his troublemaking ex-wife, his gay son, whom he wishes wasn’t gay, a hard partying child, and one that’s slightly off-center, in this case bipolar and off his meds.

In Dynasty, there was this giant corporation — an oil company — with a homophobic father, his troublemaking ex-wife, his gay son, whom he wishes wasn’t gay, a hard partying child, and one that’s slightly off-center, in this case because he was a bastard child and his father never recognized him.

Now, I’m not saying it’s bad thing, I’m just saying what it is … but I’ll keep watching because, well, Cookie ... and Jamal.

Scary news earlier this week when word leaked that Dame Maggie Smith would be leaving Downton Abbey after its sixth season — set to air here in the colonies next year.

Now it seems to have all been a joke and a spokesperson for Milk Publicity says that Smith had long ago agreed to stay with the show “for as long as the [it] runs.”

I feel like we dodged a Dowager Countess bullet!
In addition to loving Empire, I also love Gotham. It’s not as dark as the Christopher Nolan films, and yet not as cartoony as the series, or some of the earlier versions of the film.

Plus, it also features Cory Michael Smith as Ed Nygma, who will be The Riddler one day.
He’s kinda nerdy on the show, but in that HGN [Hot Gay Nerd] kinda way.
Lindsey Graham, our Republican wingnut Senator from South Carolina, took a cheap shot at House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi over her reaction to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech to Congress. Graham said Pelosi's frustration with Netanyahu was apparent throughout the event, making a comment about her appearance during the speech:

“Did you see Nancy Pelosi on the floor? Complete disgust. If you can get through all the surgeries, there’s disgust.”

Misogynist pig … when then non-apologized by saying it was a cheap attempt at humor.

Two things Miss Lindsey:
#1: Humor should be funny, yours wasn’t, and …
#B: For a gay man you have no Snarkability. Perhaps if you cane out of the closet you’d be better at it.

Now, sit down.
Why? 

A New Jersey man who suffered burns to his face and legs from a sizzling-hot steak fajita skillet while praying had his suit against Applebee's thrown out. The man claimed his server did not tell him the skillet was hot and as he bowed his head in prayer over the entrée the skillet splashed him with grease in the left eye and face, and then he knocked the plate onto his lap.

The court ruled that it was "self-evident" that a sizzling plate of food would be hot.

Um … duh?

Saturday, June 09, 2012

I Ain't One To Gossip, But ....


Maggie Smith has said that this next season, the third, will be her last on Downton Abbey, and, well, at least one person will like it. And, no, it isn’t me; I loves me some Dowager countess.
But, the rumor mill is churning that, while Maggie’s character is beloved for her sharp wit and not-to-be-messed-with attitude, that Dame Maggie is much more like the Dowager Countess than we ever imagined.
It seems that the 77-year old actress has demanded that US producer Rebecca Eaton be fired from the show after Eaton ALLEGEDLY called Smith ‘difficult’.
Oh, no she di’in’t.
According to the Mirror—London’s sharper-toothed National Enquirer-- Eaton said in April: ‘Maggie Smith is a handful. She’s very difficult.’ And the Dame wasn’t having it. 
She was said to be so enraged by Eaton’s comments that she is unable to work with the woman ever again. And this has, naturally, caused an onset panic since Dame Maggie is one of the greatest assets of the show.
A source—and by source, I mean evil, gay valet Thomas—says, “Maggie made it clear that she no longer wanted to work with her. As a result, Eaton has been asked to stand down from the third series, and her name will be taken off the credit.”
Stand down? I love the Brits!
So, here’s the rule of thumb: never, ever mess with a Dame playing a Countess.
It’s a lose-lose.

Charlie Sheen is roaring back and acting more like the fool than ever before. Of course, he has a new TV show to promote, so, go figure.
Charlie's Beverly Hills' neighbors are coming after him, claiming that Sheen is partying very hard--quelle surprise--and very often--quelle surprise--until the wee hours of the morning at his mansion, and his guests leave their cars parked all over the street.
And, to prove that it’s all a drug-fueled party, Sheen’s ex-wife and serial rehabber, Brooke Mueller--on probation for a cocaine possession conviction--partied so hard at the actor’s home that she suffered a relapse, resulting in yet another trip to rehab.
Sheen’s neighbors are complaining that “there has been an abnormally high levels of activity at the house all hours of the night. Cars containing scantily clad women arrive very late in the evening and don’t leave until the next day. The women always appear to be wearing the same clothes they arrived in, and looking a little worse for the wear.”
Of course they’re worse for the wear. Think of what Charlie looks like and double that.
And, as if the noise and the cars and the lingerie wearing girls doing the walk of shame down the street aren’t bad enough, Charlie and his friends stand outside and smoke. And swear.
Yikes!
It seems the increase in partying is due to the fact that Sheen “isn’t working right now. Filming for his new television show, Anger Management is done for the first season of the show. Things always go awry with Charlie when he isn’t working.”
So, he has free time and a rather sizable paycheck, and hookers and dealers on speed dial. I’m wondering if the Charlie Sheen Death Clock will start up again.
But, let’s keep this light and sweet and end with a bit of Sheen poetry, which he sent to TMZ in response to reports that he is on another Winning Bender:
I can’t speak to anyone’s opinion or judgement.
I was there
they were not.
their tepid
hearsay is a baseless
static drone.
a mantra.
their theme.
I refuse to be held hostage by their ‘constitutional’
privelidge,
to judge those
who can and who do.
nabobs.
CS
Wow. Illiterate much.

JLo has got to be the dumbest woman in the world.
I mean, she’s also one of the richest, and, thanks to American idol for reviving her “career”, one of the most powerful.
But now she’s letting a boy young enough to be her son call the shots for her and it’s set off a power struggle between JLo’s ass, AKA Casper Smart, BoyToy Backup Dancer, and her longtime manager, Benny Medina.
And Medina is talking, albeit obliquely. He told Vogue a while back that JLo lets “obsessive guys pursue her” and that “the ease with which that obsession becomes a relationship I think sometimes works against her ability to have a real meaningful relationship.
Ouch. Desperate much JLo.
Of course, because she’s already proposed a reality show for Casper to the Oxygen Network; she lets him drive her cars, puts him on an allowance so he can pay for things when they go out; bumped him up to be one of her lead choreographers; and allowed him free rein over her time on Idol.
That little boy must be something in the hay, eh?
And now JLo is taking business advice from the high school graduate. He is rumored to be telling JLo to ditch Idol next season and focus on other endeavors. Lopez even went so far as to let Casper attend a meeting with Idol executives, which he ALLEGEDLY screwed up, and could wind up costing her $10 million dollars and tens of fans.
He must be a good f**k, but he’s a stupid motherf***er.
First rule of male gigoloness: don’t mess with the client’s income.

Everyone has been focusing on Demi Moore of late, after he decades younger husband left her and she had that meltdown and entered rehab for some “mysterious” reasons—huffing?
So, it’s not much of a surprise that one of Demi’s children, Scout Willis is now acting up. Like mother, like daughter, I guess.
It looked for a while like Scout wouldn’t follow in the staggeringly drunken footsteps of other Hollywood offspring, by actually pursuing a higher education at Brown University. Turns out that is just a ruse.
Scout, who is only twenty, is just as “wild” as all the other celebrity kids. And, kinda stupid.
It seems she had a fake ID which she used all over New York to get into clubs and get all kinds of drunk and stuff, and one night, the cops busted her, asked for ID, and she showed them….the fake one! Now she’s in real trouble. She was arrested and then released on bail, though she will appear in Manhattan Criminal Court on July 31.
The celebu-spawn was arrested early in the evening—it was just 7 PM when she was getting her drunk on—after a transit cop spotted her sipping an 8-ounce Pakistani beer.
And she gave the officer a New York ID card with the name Katherine Kelly, but the cop wasn’t buying it. I mean, that chin? It’s says Willis all over it. So, Scout finally pulled out her real California ID.
“My name is Scout Willis,” she told the officer. “The first ID isn’t mine. My friend gave it to me. I don’t know Katherine Kelly.”
She was charged with criminal impersonation and breaking the open container law, both misdemeanors.
Now, I get using a fake ID. Lots of underage wannabe party animals do it. But, man, you never ever show the cops the fake ID. I mean, who are this girl’s parents? Yeah, Bruce Party Boy Willis and Demi Rehab Moore. You’d think she would have learned the ID lesson.
Oy.

Not much on Lindsay this week, except for the release of several pictures where she looks like Elizabeth Taylor; if Elizabeth Taylor was a crackwhore.
So, let’s get some Lohan 2.0, AKA Amanda Bynes, news.
She’s fun, like Lindsay.
See, after spending the spring in an endless cycle of nightclubs, driving while texting, hit-and-runs and arrests, Bynes issued a statement, via Twitter, about her tendency to drink-and-drive, and about her DUI charge. 
Oh, no she di’in’t.
Oh, yes, she did.
Lohan 2.0 actually Tweeted the President of the United States and asked him to fire the cop that arrested her.
Seriously. And she says she doesn’t drink, but this is one of the Drunkest Tweets I have ever seen. Not counting the time I Tweeted the Queen of England to pay my water bill, I mean. But, if she wasn’t drunk or high, she has got to be one of the biggest morons on the planet.
Lohan 2.0 Tweeted the Prez right after charges were filed against her for drinking-and-driving-and-hitting-and-running.
Yes, DUI. Doesn’t drink.
This misdemeanor DUI charge is related to her original arrest back in early April when she drunkenly smashed into a police car and then refused the Breathalyzer test.
See, she doesn’t drink, she just doesn’t know how to drive, "occifer".

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Random Musings

So, we'll start off with some good news.
Last month we saw yet another case of an LGBTQ youth attempting suicide as a result of bullying when Austin Rodriguez tried to kill himself, but ended up, instead, in a coma. [original post HERE]
Now, Austin is off the ventilator; he's out of the coma. He's been awake for nearly a week. And he's been moved from the ICU and is in a private room in the hospital.
Austin took to Facebook, via his mother's account, to let people know he's doing better:
Hopefully this is a wake up call for Austin; for him to realize that suicide isn't an answer. And hopefully this will be a wake up call to parents and schools that bullying needs to stop.
Now.

Tony Perkins, Flying Monkey In Chief for the inappropriately named American Family Association, actually believe that the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell brought about the Secret Service Hooker Scandal.
That's quite a jump. Allowing gay men and women to serve openly in our military is the root cause of a bunch of Secret Service agents hiring Colombian hookers.
That Tony Perkins is just about the biggest idiot EVER!

Say it isn't so!
Maggie Smith reportedly wants out of Downton Abbey after next season, wishing to return to movies and the stage: "Maggie has asked Julian to write her character out...She is filming until August and then wants to leave, going out on a high. She thinks that three (seasons) is enough and she wants to get back to the stage and big screen."
That means that, should there be a fourth season of Abbey, the Dowager Countess, a master of the potent one-line put-down, will be gone.
I.Am.Crushed.

Mitt Romney may appear on Saturday Night Live to, um, dispel the rumors that he's as dull as dishwater and stiff as a board. But, if he does it, Mittsy asks one thing of the SNL writers.
No, don't make him wear flip-flops isn't the right answer.
No, don't make fun of his millionaire stay-at-home-mom wife isn't it either.
Mittsy asks that the show be........Funny.
Because Mittsy knows comedy. I mean, look at his political career and aspirations.
High-larious.

And, speaking of Mittsy, we all know that his opinions are like buses: a new one will be along in five minutes. But while he is the Flip-flopper of the Romney household, Ann Romney has quickly become the delusional moron in charge.
First was the horrid struggle she endured by choosing to be a stay-at-any-number-of-homes mom, and now she's said this:
'Memba when people were all outraged that the Romney family strapped the family dog, Seamus, into an air-tight crate, and then put him on the roof of their car for a twelve hour road trip in 1983? And 'remeber how Seamus defecated all over himself and on the windshield, but also thoroughly enjoyed the experience?
Yeah, that';s Ann Romney';s newest spin.
“The dog loved it,” Ann Romney says, “He would see that crate and, you know, he would, like, go crazy because he was going with us on vacation."
Ann Romney cares as much about average stay-at-home mothers as she does about the family pet, and for her to suggest that the dog enjoyed being tied down to the roof of a car and forced to sh*t himself is reprehensible.
Of course, Mittsy took up the call, too, telling Diane Sawyer that he would do that again: "Certainly not with the attention it's received."
See, he wouldn't stop doing it  because it's inhumane to do such a thing, he'd stopped doing it because people noticed.
The Romneys. So fucking out of touch it's unbelievable.

Is Rush Limbaugh back on the Oxy?
Well, he's certainly sounding crazier than normal.
Limbaugh says that while using his iPhone with a voice-transcription feature that turns spoken words into printed text, a mysterious message suddenly showed up:
“Obama’s minions are taking over and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
That missive left the moron radio host just dumbfounded--emphasis on the dumb--as he noted, “I hadn’t said anything like that!”
But, true to form, Rush has no proof that his iPhone is sending him threats from Obama's Minions because, um, “I was so discombobulated by what happened that I didn’t save what showed up on my iPhone. I can’t prove this, because I didn’t keep the transcriptions. I deleted them. I don’t even know if I actually deleted them. I just didn’t send them. They are not on the phone. I went and looked.”
Discombobulated means totally off your effing rocker.

Jose Canseco. Baseball player. Steroid rager. Global warming expert.
He has been Tweeting about how global warming might have saved the Titanic.
Oh, but he has:


Some new hotties crossing the screen these days.
Columbus Short, of ABC's Scandal
Henry Ian Cusick, also of Scandal and, of course, Lost
François Arnaud, of Showtime's The Borgias
Neal Bledsoe, the hot gay Republican on Smash
Christian Cooke, from Starz' Magic City