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?

Meme Dump

Bobservations

This is less a Tale Of Carlos being funny than it is a Tale of What A Fabulous Human Being Carlos is …

The other night I came home from work in a mood; not a bad mood, but not a good mood. A bitchy mood that I couldn’t explain. And as we ate dinner I wasn’t very nice to him; I was naggy and sarcastic and just plain unfriendly to the most important person in my life for no reason whatsoever. And yet with every snide comment I made he didn’t get angry, he just answered me back.

After dinner I went back to the office by myself and did some work on the computer but I kept going back to my nasty mood. I was about to get up and go talk to him when he came into the office to ask a question, and I said:

“Let me say something first.”

“Okay.”

“You know I love you, right?”

“Of course I do.

“Well, I have been nasty since I got home and there’s no excuse—”

“You have a lot of things on your plate.”

“It’s no excuse. I shouldn’t have said what I said and acted like I did.”

“I know, and I know you didn’t mean it, and I know you’d realize it, and that I love you.”

That’s why he’s the most important person in my life; he takes that kind of mood and understands it and doesn’t get mad but lets me work through it.

That’s the Tale of Carlos I love most of all.

This Tuxedo Memory is creatively entitled ‘#TuxedoInABox,’ and is from November 2017

‘Recently we returned from a CostCo run and set one of the boxes on the living room floor.

Tuxedo loves to sleep in them, but something about this box got him all kerfuffled and he was rolling around it in like a mad man.

Huh. Does CostCo sell catnip in bulk?’

Lynn Conway has died at age 86. She is credited with developing a simpler method for designing microchips that are now used in cell phones  in the 1970s but it’s what happened a few years earlier that’s important.

In 1964, Lynn Conway joined IBM Research, where she made major innovations in computer design; recently married and with two young daughters, she lived a seemingly perfect life but she had a secret: she had been born a boy.

Having struggled with her gender identity since childhood, Conway had made a failed attempt at transition in the late 1950s but in 1967, she learned of the pioneering gender-transition work of Dr. Harry Benjamin and sought out his help, She began the life-changing, and perhaps lifesaving, transition from male to female but  when IBM’s Corporate Medical Director learned of her transition plans in 1968, he alerted CEO Thomas J. Watson, Jr., who fired Conway to avoid the public embarrassment of employing a transwoman.

Not just a transwoman, but a brilliant transwoman.

In 2020, fifty years later, IBM apologized to Lynn Conway and awarded her a lifetime achievement award for her work. Conway has had five U.S. patents, a career at Xerox, the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, part of the U.S. Defense Department. She also had honorary degrees from many universities, including Princeton University. But most of all she was trans and she made it easier for y’all, even the anti-trans haters, to use their phone.

Say her name; and Thank her.

The person—and he will never be named on this blog—who murdered five people and maimed nineteen others during a mass shooting at Club Q, an LGBTQ+ bar in Colorado, has been sentenced to 55 concurrent life sentences plus an additional 190 years in prison.

Good.

This past week Romans came out for Pride dressed like Pope Frankie, wearing papal hats and T-shirts that read:

“There is never too much frociaggine.”

That’s a reference to the offensive anti-gay slur that Frankie has been accused of uttering … twice … complaining that there was too much “gayness” in the church. Martina Lorina, an Italian actress, called the phrase “the slogan of the 2024 Pride”, using a longtime tactic to turn insults into words of pride.

Homophobic bigot who says one thing about us, and behind closed doors uses slurs against us.

A lady picked up several items at a discount store. When she finally got to the checkout she learned that one of the items had no price tag or bar code so the checkout girl got on the public address system and asked:

"Price check for Tampax super-size."

Sadly, someone at the rear of the store  mistook the word 'Tampax' for 'thumbtacks' and called back over the PA system:

“Do you want the kind that you push in with your thumb or the kind that you belt in with a hammer?"

Ouch.

Four years ago Christian Cooper, an avid birdwatcher and out Black gay man, was in the Ramble in Central Park, birdwatching he noticed a dog running off-leash, violating park rules designed to protect his beloved birds, so he approached the dog’s owner, Amy Cooper, requesting that she leash her dog.

Instead, Amy, er, #CentralParkKaren, Top of Form

Bottom of Form

threatened to call the police and make a false claim that “an African-American man” was threatening her life. Christian captured the incident on video, which quickly went viral and Amy Cooper was rightly vilified in the press and also lost her job.

Then Christian Cooper’s story caught the attention of National Geographic, leading to the creation of his show, “Extraordinary Birder,” which premiered in 2023. The show has since garnered critical acclaim, culminating in Christian Cooper winning the Daytime Emmy Award this week for Outstanding Daytime Personality.

Winning.

Money raised by The Felon’s 2024 campaign is being sent right back into the con artist’s pockets in various forms, according to a The ALLEGED billionaire criminal has not donated any money to his 2024 presidential campaign, $4.6 million worth of donations has been transferred to his business empire. And MAGAts keep sending checks.

Tell me how this isn’t a cult.

Matty Carrington, a UK based model who once worked as a roofer and rugby player before walking in shows for Astrid Anderson, Givenchy, Sibling and Bobby Abley is this week’s Would You Hit It?

Bobservations

Thank you for all the kind words about the passing of Ozzo, AKA The Pocket Dog. It really broke my heart to let him go—and hit Carlos very hard—but there was the idea of quality of life versus quantity, and we finally felt that his good life, and the good life he was us, was more important than the number of years.

Still, that little round ball of love is going to be missed something fierce.

This Tuxedo Memory is from October 2011 and is all about the real love between BFFs Tuxedo and MaxGoldberg.

Caturday: Snuggle Buddies

MaxGoldberg and Tuxedo

Their whole lives together they were buddies and it’s a wonderful thing to relive, especially this past week.

California Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom will appoint Laphonza Butler, president of the pro-choice women’s political action committee EMILY’s List, to replace recently deceased Senator Dianne Feinstein in the US Senate,.

A woman of color, Butler will also be   the first out LGBTQ+ person to serve as California’s senator and that sound you here is MAGAt heads exploding everywhere.

It appears that as her husband faces his ninety-one indictments, Melanie AKA Mrs. Inmate # P01135809 has “quietly” renegotiated her prenuptial agreement with her criminal husband.

Her “team” says Melanie is “most concerned about maintaining and increasing a substantial trust for their son, Barron” but the new agreement also provides Melania with money and property … cuz that’s her main concern.

I am thinking of going as Helen Lawson from Valley of the Dolls for Halloween so when people answer their doors, I can say:

“They drummed you out of Hollywood, so you come crawling back to Broadway. But Broadway doesn't go for booze and dope. Now get out of my way, I've got a man waiting for me.”

“The only hit that comes out of a Helen Lawson show is Helen Lawson, and that’s me, baby, remember?”

I’ve been driving Carlos crazy practicing my inner Helen …

Mr-Former-Fake-One-Term-Twice-Impeached-Currently-Four-Time-Criminally-Indicted-Not-My-President-Gurl has sought to discredit a New York judge’s ruling threatening his “empire” by arguing that Mar-Illegal alone is worth more than a billion dollars.

But, um, Demented Donald, please to explain why just three years ago, your tax representative told Palm Beach County officials it was worth just $26.6 million?

That’s quite an increase in 36 months …

In another desperate attempt to keep Catholic from fleeing their bigoted criminal church, Pope Francis suggested that some Catholic priests could bless same-sex unions. But then  he also said the Church only recognizes marriages only between “a man and a woman” who are “naturally open to procreation” so, yeah, lying hypocritical bigot.

Oh, and those of you heterosexuals who marry but don’t want children, it kind of sounds like the Pope doesn’t like you either. Pedophiles and Nazis are okay, though.

And we’ll finish up with The Girls … Consuelo Roca Jones and Miss Rosita, who have both been mourning the loss of Ozzo this week. We cleaned up the sunroom where Ozzo lived these past months and opened both French doors to the living room, but it took several days before wither one of the cats would cross the threshold into Ozzo’s old room; nearly every day they sat right on the line and looked at the room wondering where that black dog had gone.

It was sweet and heartbreaking.

Jaden Goetz, Canadian hockey player, model and actor and the latest member into the Would You Hit It sweepstakes …