BijouBlog

Randomly channel surfing on a blissfully quiet evening as I attempted to escape from the current political mudslinging, I came across a movie on Turner Classic Movies, Hollywood Canteen, from 1944. Yes, the supposedly good ole days, America's greatest generation, depicted in Norman Rockwell pictures. The movie definitely evokes a show (in more ways than one) of unity, in its context, a unity of the free world against the dictatorships of Germany and Japan. 
 

Two soldiers on leave spend three nights at the Hollywood Canteen (an actual place founded by Bette Davis) before returning to active duty in the South Pacific. Slim Green (Robert Hutton) is the millionth G.I. to enjoy the Canteen, and consequently wins a date with starlet Joan Leslie. The other G.I., Sergeant Nolan (Dane Clark) gets to dance with Joan Crawford and in a really funny scene, faints when she tells him she doesn't just look like Joan Crawford, but is Joan herself. (At that time, Joan had left MGM and had signed on with Warners, where Betty was queen; she didn't like the scripts her new studio offered her, and bascially went on suspension, only making a cameo in this piece as part of her support for the war effort.) 

Canteen founders Bette Davis and John Garfield give talks on the history of the Canteen. The soldiers enjoy a variety of musical numbers performed by a host of Hollywood stars, and also comedians, such as Jack Benny and his violin. Jack Benny actually does a “violin play off” against the really famous Hungarian violinist, Josef Szigeti. Soprano (later mezzo-soprano) Kitty Carlisle of Marx Brothers and later What's My Line fame sings Joan and Slim Green's theme song, “Sweet Dreams, Sweetheart.” 

Not much of a plot, but in the days before the 24/7 culture of celebrity, the parade of movie stars doing cameos seems unusual, but they do so not to build their own images, but to, like the country did at that time, present a united front during WWII. Looking back in retrospect, these were the days right before the Cold War hysteria, where Hollywood became the enemy, filled with Communists and Jews (pretty much stereotyped as being synonymous). 

A couple of other points that I found quite telling in retrospect. Eddie Cantor (he was Jewish, by the way) and Nora Martin sing “We're Having a Baby.” It takes Nora a while to tell Eddy she is pregnant (she can't say that word, of course). One can see that postwar baby boom essentially being advertised. The soldier will come home to a now stay-at-home wife in an apron and produce more little soldiers (as part of the banter, the possibility of a girl seems almost an afterthought). 

And those who make those babies are of course heterosexual. In this film, soldier boys Hutton and Clark are rewarded with girl kisses. In one scene, one of the comedians, whose name escapes me, jokingly kisses a sailor guy on the cheek. Of course, the sailor wipes off the cheek. It's a joke, of course. Boys don't kiss other boys. Boys are your pals. Hutton and Clark one could say are kind of in the bromance phase, but the separate twin beds and pajamas that could wake the dead in one scene reveal a world of male-male relationships far from today's sexually fluid, bi-curious bros. 

I also discovered that Bette Davis insisted the canteen be integrated, quite revolutionary for theat time period. In the movie, a quartet of African-Americans, The Golden Gate Quarter do a number (not as cringeworthy as some during that period), but they are an act, and they don't mingle with the guests and the movie stars. Still, the actual place was open to African-Americans and another significant ethnic minority in Los Angeles during that period, Filipino-Americans. 

Bette was always a risk-taker, and if she lacked Joan Crawford's glamour and charm, she never lacked for the sincerity of her convictions (which some people interpreted as abrasiveness). When she says at the end of the film that our hearts are with the soldiers, and that connection transcends, at least in that case, segregation, it isn't mawkish sentiment. She means it with certainty of Immanuel Kant's “starry heavens above and moral law within.” 
 

 

Every day for breakfast, except on weekends: a bowl of cold cereal. For me, the thrill of themed sugar cereals wore off quickly, even the Halloween-themed ones Count Chocula, Franken Berry, and Boo Berry (let's dump sugar and colored marshmallows in milk, yum!). 
 

For a brief while I enjoyed eating Captain Crunch dry, out of the box, as a snack, even as a young adult, especially during a hangover.

I briefly toyed with Golden Grahams and granola-based cereals in high school, but my aversion really developed when I had to empty a bowl of half-eaten milk-sodden Cheerios into the kitchen sink when I was babysitting my youngest brother. The family dog at that time got Cheerios for breakfast too, and that dog would eat anything, even her own poop. 
 

Let's just say I have developed an aversion to this staple of the breakfast menu, and it's not just an American phenomenon. The traditional English breakfast of eggs, bacon, kippers, tomatoes, beans, and fried bread (hello, cholesterol attack) didn't appear on the household table when I studied in London in the early eighties except when I stayed at bread and breakfast establishments (so, maybe it is strictly for tourists, perhaps). Guess what? We ate cold cereal with milk. 

Sometimes Muesli, a breakfast and brunch dish based on raw rolled oats and other ingredients like grains, fresh or dried fruits, seeds and nuts, that may be mixed with milk,was available, apparently very popular in Europe. I thought it resembled vomit. 
 

Even Dame Joan Sutherland, the late great Australian soprano, asked a house guest what type of cold cereal he wanted with breakfast. She was taken aback when he responded that he never ate cereal in the morning. 
 

The anti-masturbation crusader John Harvey Kellogg of Kellogg's Corn Flakes fame pretty much started this whole breakfast-cereal-in-the-morning fad which soon became a tradition. His “granula” treat was produced to prove that a healthy diet with plenty of fiber could keep one's hands off one's wanker. At that time, in the late nineteenth century, processed foods were becoming prevalent in American diets, especially in urban areas, and consumers embraced the convenience perhaps more than the health benefits. 
 

Well, John Harvey, I find it quite interesting another name for the now traditional image of the rooster on a box of Corn Flakes that evokes images of the sun rising on amber waves of grain on the fruited plains of American the beautiful is cock. Ha! 

And John Harvey would probably collapse if he found out about an idiosyncratic genre of gay porn, cereal porn. Yep, guys get off on watching hot guys eating cereal, like Dave Daniels in our title Morning, Noon and Night!
 

 

 

Maybe the fetish has got something to do with the guy's mouth, and maybe the act of eating cold cereal, because it involves ingesting something both solid and liquid. And of course, cum is often compared to milk. De gustibus. 

If you get excited by someone eating smoked salmon and spinach for breakfast, come over to my house. You can have all you want!

I date from the times when people could smoke in bars, or, in at least one place I worked, in the building. 

Yes, no one was exiled outside for furtive puffs. (But being a nonsmoker, I didn't think it was quite fair that the smokers could take smoke breaks. No one at that oppressive institution was allowed any official 15-minute breaks.) 
 

Two of my friends used to smoke, until quite recently, but their respective doctors ordered them to quit. (One of those persons gained weight after he quit.) 

I live in a building that used to forbid smoking (I used to sneak a cigar now and then). And where I currently work full-time, one cannot even smoke outside anywhere on the official boundaries of the institution. 

Yet persons still do it, and I'm not here to get into the health issues. I understand the cigar fetish, given that I move in BDSM circles, and I've also encountered in those circles the Marlboro cigarette fetish, with its obvious iconic macho male image connections.

You know, that mustached hunk, the Marlboro Man himself … 
 

No, I'm thinking of casual, social smoking, which was assumed well into the 1970s and 1980s. It seemed like everyone lit up, and not just Bette Davis (a notorious chain smoker) and Joan Crawford. 
 

I remember proto-hipster parties I attended in the 1980s where all kinds of smoking occurred, legal and illegal. And usually in kitchens! 
 

And smoking in bed after sex was de rigeur as well, and not just in the movies. 
 

 

And I've often thought that some intimate interactions, which don't always end in sex, seem to need a cigarette or two. In those smoke-filled kitchens, I've made mind and soul connections with all sexes (alcohol helped too, of course) on topics ranging from Jesus Christ Superstar lyrics to Nietzsche to retro roosters to Finno-Ugric languages. 

I don't know, there's something je ne sai quoi about a guy holding a cigarette, when he is not trying to be seductive. And it's not the phallic connection (I get that more from a cigar). It's sexy because it isn't necessarily trying to be sexy. 
 

He stimulates desire by claiming to be more interested in that cigarette. And the next one. He knows I'll hold out for that last one.

Many many years ago, I was waiting for a bus on a bitterly cold day. Typical Chicago winter. The bus stop was located across the street from the local ABC station, in Chicago known as the Channel 7 Eyewitness News. The weatherguy, Mike Kaplan, emerged and strode resolutely across the street, and before I could say Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up, I was on television. And I didn't freeze up in front of the cameras like Cindy Brady on The Brady Bunch. 

Mike just asked me some general questions about the weather situation, and if there were any issues with the CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) that day. I said I had experienced no problems with the buses, and I proceeded to explain my fashion strategy for keeping warm, layering, ear coverings and hat, big scarf around the neck. I said cheekily, “If you want to stay warm, you have to dress like a dork.” 
 

Those who saw me on television later that evening (I appeared on the 6 p.m. broadcast) enjoyed a good laugh, but a couple of years later, when I did a vanity google search on my name, someone said, _____ said he was a penis on the ABC Eyewitness News. 

Yes, dork also means penis. Well, kind of. According to Leigh W. Rutledge inThe Gay Book of Lists, the word dick probably came from the the Middle English word dirk, meaning a small sword. Dirk actually came from the word dorke, which meant the horns (origin of the expression horny?) of an animal. Dirk and dork later became slang expressions for the penis. 

Now, there's some controversy that the work dork means a male penis. It actually means a whale's penis. And it's big. Really big. 
 

So, I am a big penis. And thus I am a small sword, and I am the horns of an animal. I guess I am not what I eat. 

All I know, is the day I wake up without that morning wood, I'll really feel like a big dork. 
 

 

Summer in Chicago, the season of construction, is also the time where the masses finally divest themselves of jackets and coats and sweaters (pretty much de rigeur from October through April), fret about their beach bodies (or the lack thereof), and try and live outside (but ultimately end up fleeing into air conditioned quarters because of the humidity). 

June 9-11, is the Andersonville Midsommarfest, now in its 52nd year. The Andersonville neighborhood, was originally Swedish (very few Swedish places remain now, especially now that the famous Swedish bakery has closed), then Middle Eastern, then the lesbians entered and it became “Girlstown,” the gay boys followed in their wake, and now the married couples roll their strollers (same-sex couples now included) on the gentrified thoroughfares around Clark and Foster. 
 

Midsummer celebrations held throughout the United States are largely derived from the cultures of immigrants who arrived from various European nations since the 19th century. Midsummer, also known as St. John's Day, is the period of time centered upon the summer solstice, and more specifically the Northern European celebrations that accompany the actual solstice or take place on a day between June 19 and June 25 and the preceding evening. 

For example, Geneva, Illinois, hosts a Swedish Day (Swedish: Svenskarnas Dag) festival on the third Sunday of June. The event, featuring maypole-raising, dancing, and presentation of an authentic Viking ship, dates back to 1911. 

In fact, many midsummer celebrations around the United States hark back to Scandinavian origins, especially in the Midwest, home to many descendants of immigrants from that part of Europe who came to farm the plains and prairies in the nineteenth century. 

In Sweden, Midsummer is such a big deal that it ends up being a de facto public holiday, with many shops and offices closed. It's usually a Saturday between June 20 and June 26, but the actual celebration is on the Friday evening before. 

In Sweden, yes, the phallic maypole is a very important component of the celebrations; in earlier times, small spires bedecked with greenery were erected, in honor of the Norse fertility goddess Freya. 
 

Given the usually lethal relationship of LGBTQ persons with Christian religious establishments (which, especially after the Reformation, banned many of the midsummer rituals obviously taken from paganism), many now embrace the festival as more than just a boozy time at a street festival. Midsummer is also the same month as Pride Month, but the neopagan and Wiccan movements which attract many LGBTQ persons laud this as a time called Litha, when, as William Blake says, when the “doors of perception” expand to reveal a wondrous, life-affirming energy in every blade of grass, every erect cock: 

“There’s a powerful juxtaposing of realities going on right now: one is the world as we know it, with an ethos of fear and scarcity, and an ugly underbelly that’s so evident in the horrific news of recent weeks; and the other is a life-centered ethos revealed in Nature’s emerging summertime landscape of stunning beauty and overflowing abundance.” – Karen Clark, “Three Lessons from the Summer Solstice”