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On the Map: Return to Philly, the Morris House Hotel, and Eddie Izzard at the Miller Theater
Click to hear audio version.
By Mark McNeaseIt was a whirlwind two days, as Frank and I headed to Philadelphia for another two-night getaway in a favorite city. After having spent decades in New York prior to our permanent move to rural New Jersey, we now enjoy taking trips to Philly just an hour away. It’s an easy drive, an easy city to be in, and it offers everything you could want in a major metropolis: museums, restaurants, theater, walking (and more walking), lots of history, and our preferred place to stay: the historic Morris House Hotel, located within a short walking distance of everything we enjoy.
This trip was my gift to Frank for our 10th wedding anniversary, and I didn’t want to scrimp. Fine food? You got it! Hotel we love to stay in? You got it! Surprise show at the Kimmel Center? You got it! And while we remember all our trips, this was special. I got a foot massage within an hour of arriving, while Frank racked up his multi-thousand-step daily routine. We had dinner at Buca D’Oro with his niece Jessica, who just started attending Drexel for her graduate law degree. Day two saw us walking with Jess, hitting 25,000-plus steps on my own pedometer and seeing her school up close.
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The Weekly Readlines September 15
BIG CUP: THE WEEK’S TOP STORIES
Sure to be repeated daily in what passes for breaking news, Hunter Biden has been indicted on gun charges no one else would be if their name wasn’t Biden. We wait patiently for an NRA statement in his defense.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy fed the last scraps of his soul to the MAGA hounds, ordering an impeachment inquiry into President Biden and his “crime family.” (Surely there has never been a more terrifying Mafia don than Jill Biden!). One good note: White House Counsel under Trump issued a ruling that an impeachment inquiry without a house vote was illegitimate and did not have to be complied with.
The Right’s war on diversity continues to take casualties, as more corporations drop their diversity training. Happy days are here again for white America!
Senator John Fetterman celebrated Biden’s win on marijuana, and Mitt Romney announced he will not run again in 2024, while expressing his belief that most of the Republican party no longer believes in the Constitution.
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Book Reading Notice in the Bucks County Herald. See You There!
It’s coming up fast! Join us for a Halloween-ish reading of my newest book: I, Warlock: The Warlock Wars Book I, at Bucks on Bridge coffee shop in Lambertville. Friday, October 13, 6 pm. It will be absolutely bewitching!
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9/11 Twenty-Two Years Later
Tuesday, September 11, 2001. I’d just started working at Reuters News in Times Square. It was a beautiful, clear day with blue skies. I got my coffee and went to my desk on the 19th floor … and soon the commotion started. I called my boss who was in London and told him a small plane had hit the World Trade Center. That’s what we thought had happened. It didn’t take long to know what it really was: a passenger plane flying into one building, with another soon to come.We could see the towers from a corner window in the newsroom. At some point we were told to draw the blinds and turn off the lights, in case more was coming. And now it’s 22 years later.I don’t spend much time reminiscing, especially about such horrific events, but when I see what’s going on in the country now, how deep the chasms are, how furious and angry and on-the-verge-of-violence it all is, I can’t help thinking: they won. They turned us into a paranoid, enraged, self-hating nation of tribes that blame each other for the perceived end of it all, this imaginary America with its imaginary past and its imaginary future. We live in a perpetual “culture war” fed by fantasies of civil war, and revenge, and the satisfying smell of the defeated bodies of our enemies strewn at our feet.What more could they have asked for, those terrorists? How much more completely could they have destroyed us than we are destroying ourselves? We’re constantly trying to “take our country back,” without admitting that the people we fight to take it back from is us. They won. And as long as we continue down this road of destruction that appears to have no exit, they will continue winning. “To the victor go the spoils.” No one ever said the victor had to be alive. -
The Twist Podcast #239: Embracing the Clutter, Spicey Food Trends, and a Catch Up Interview with Performer Scott Kaske
Join co-hosts Mark McNease and Rick Rose as we reconsider clutter, check out some spice do’s and don’ts, and enjoy Rick’s catch up interview with performer Scott Kaske.
Enjoy The Twist on Libsyn, iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, and TheTwistPodcast.com.
Copyright 2023 MadeMark Publishing
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Book Review: Not Forever but For Now, by Chuck Palahniuk
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Bookworm SezNot Forever but For Now” by Chuck Palahniuk
c.2023, Simon & Schuster $25.99 256 pagesYou always wanted the family business.
Started by your grandfather, nurtured by your parents, aunts, and uncles, you hoped to be the next generation of caretakers to help it grow, succeed, and readied for its owners in the future. You trained all your life to take the reins of the Family Empire, and in the new book “Not Forever but For Now” by Chuck Palahniuk, you’ll do it, even if it kills you.
They were probably too big to be in a nursery, but he didn’t care.
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The Weekly Readlines September 7
BIG CUP: THE WEEK’S TOP STORIES
Burger King will have to face a lawsuit claiming it’s Whoppers are too small to be whoppers.
Bomb threats against public libraries are on the rise. Home insurers are dropping natural disaster coverage in light of the climate change we’re told isn’t real, and Hunter Biden is being indicted in one of the biggest ‘whatever’ media narratives of the modern era.
Ron DeSantis had his handlers man-handle a 15-year-old in New Hampshire whose question made him uncomfortable. And a Massachusetts teenager died after eating a spicy tortilla chip, attributed to the ‘one chip challenge’ TikTok craze.
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The Weekly Readlines September 7
BIG CUP: THE WEEK’S TOP STORIES
Burger King will have to face a lawsuit claiming it’s Whoppers are too small to be whoppers.
Bomb threats against public libraries are on the rise. Home insurers are dropping natural disaster coverage in light of the climate change we’re told isn’t real, and Hunter Biden is being indicted in one of the biggest ‘whatever’ media narratives of the modern era.
Ron DeSantis had his handlers man-handle a 15-year-old in New Hampshire whose question made him uncomfortable. And a Massachusetts teenager died after eating a spicy tortilla chip, attributed to the ‘one chip challenge’ TikTok craze.
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On the Map: Provincetown Paradise with a Side Trip to Wellfleet
On the Map is a feature at LGBTSr.com offering travelogues and recommendations. Narration provided by Wondervox.
By Mark McNease
As we come to the end of another annual trip to Provincetown, I’m reminded why we value our visits here. Frank has had a timeshare for 35 years or so, at a place called Eastwood at Provincetown. It’s like a sprawling motel complex on the far east side of town, and has been very lesbian-centric for years. Plenty of gay men, too, but a lot of women come here. This time I noticed several children with their opposite-sex parents, and I found myself hoping it’s not losing its edge. We’ll see.
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On the Map: Provincetown Paradise with a Side Trip to Wellfleet
On the Map is a feature at LGBTSr.com offering travelogues and recommendations. Narration provided by Wondervox.
By Mark McNease
As we come to the end of another annual trip to Provincetown, I’m reminded why we value our visits here. Frank has had a timeshare for 35 years or so, at a place called Eastwood at Provincetown. It’s like a sprawling motel complex on the far east side of town, and has been very lesbian-centric for years. Plenty of gay men, too, but a lot of women come here. This time I noticed several children with their opposite-sex parents, and I found myself hoping it’s not losing its edge. We’ll see.
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The Weekly Readlines September 1
The Weekly Readlines is a feature at LGBTSr.com offering news you can use every Friday.
BIG CUP: THE WEEK’S TOP STORIES
First things first: Happy belated birthday to Peanut, the world’s oldest living chicken! What’s her secret?
Hurricane Idalia slammed into Florida, causing a 100-year-old oak tree to fall on the governor’s mansion in retaliation for his anti-woke policies.
Canada issued a warning to LGBTQ travelers to avoid the United States. Mitch McConnell froze again during a press conference, with the ever-classy Marjorie Taylor Greene calling him unfit for office.
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The Twist Podcast #238: P-town Paradise, Summer’s Finale, and an interview with Mark S. King
Join co-hosts Mark McNease and Rick Rose as we chat with Mark from Provincetown, enjoy the waning days of summer, and catch up with Mark S. King, founder of My Fabulous Disease, in Rick’s exclusive interview.
Enjoy The Twist on Libsyn, iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, and TheTwistPodcast.com.
Copyright 2023 MadeMark Publishing
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On Dreamshaping: The Slippage of Time
Are human beings the only animals aware of time passing? Do cats know they’re getting old? Do fish ever wish they’d swum in this direction instead of that one? Is a tree concerned at all with the number of years it has stood rooted in one spot?
When we were children, most of us had occasion to hear those words, “When you’re older …” We were told that someday we would be able to drive a car, or go on a date, or leave home. Patience was required, tested by anticipation and desire. We waited because we had to, and each time we reached that milestone, that magical “older,” and we got our driver’s license, or we went on a first date, we looked ahead to the next thing we could experience when the time came.