It made my night to discover that the first known lesbian magazine in America was the creation of a twenty-five-year-old secretary for RKO skiving gayly off on the clock, writing, editing, and distributing nine monthly installments of Vice Versa (1947–48) before Howard Hughes cratered her free time along with the rest of the studio. It turned out I had heard of her as an early science fiction fan, but somehow not in her equally groundbreaking capacity as a queer folk singer. I could find a cover, but I hope someone has at least a cassette of her own rendition of the superbly sapphic "Always True to You, Darling, in My Fashion," which I like to imagine made its way back around to Cole Porter. I love her queer bridges of filk and fanzine, not to mention the plus ça change of her expressed interest in the occult. Her film reviews are both attentive to their queer content and appreciative—four decades ahead of Boyd McDonald—of their content for queers. I will certainly be trying to find a copy of Club de femmes (1936). The internet has vastly failed me in not providing the lyrics to "I'm a Boy Being a Girl."
2025-04-29
Tonight for the first time in more than five years, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch and I went to a bar. To be precise, we went to the Medford Brewing Company, which we have walked past for two and a half years without checking out despite its invitingly open-air set-up and outdoor seating. The salient facts are that I am medically limited in my consumption of alcohol and dislike most beers on grounds of tasting like soap—cilantro I get on fine with, but hops are a long-lost cause—and their bartenders managed to draw me a sour cherry ale and an Irish dry stout which I can't tell if I drank in the wrong order because one of them was astringently floral and the other ate like a meal, but I enjoyed both immensely and would drink them again, especially the sour cherry, which is inevitably about to run out for the season. I could barely get near the extra special bitter which Rob ordered, but did trade off tastes of my stout for his imperial porter which went by the inspiring name of Rude Panda. It was glimpsingly sunny through the warm overcast and breezy enough to kick fallen bits of blossom constantly through the tap room with all its windows open and both of its garage doors rolled up where I would have felt safe taking a seat if not for the volume of the music. I got into an unexpected conversation with another patron who had noticed my digital camera, approvingly. I had run back to get it so as not to miss out on the trees.
( My own life, I guess. )
I should have taken some kind of conclusive picture of the experience, but instead we cleared out ahead of the impending pub quiz—after making sure to express our gratitude to the bartenders, who had actually given me tastes of both of my ales after I explained my situation with hops—and got our dinner from El Vaquero, whose quesadillas we need to remember are officially more than one person can eat at a time. We ate as much of them as possible on the bleachers of Playstead Park where a pair of commuter trains crossed on the tracks of the Lowell Line and walked home through the twilight with ice cream from CB Scoops. It was a far nicer end to a day which had begun when our next-door neighbor, not content with blasting his radio until nine o'clock last night at a volume requiring earplugs in our own living room, began power-washing his driveway this morning at the crack of legality. I feel it should be more than justified for me to respond with uKanDanZ's "War Pigs" (2025). The only cover of comparable quality I have ever heard is Bonerama's, but this one is in Amharic.
spatch and I went to a bar. To be precise, we went to the Medford Brewing Company, which we have walked past for two and a half years without checking out despite its invitingly open-air set-up and outdoor seating. The salient facts are that I am medically limited in my consumption of alcohol and dislike most beers on grounds of tasting like soap—cilantro I get on fine with, but hops are a long-lost cause—and their bartenders managed to draw me a sour cherry ale and an Irish dry stout which I can't tell if I drank in the wrong order because one of them was astringently floral and the other ate like a meal, but I enjoyed both immensely and would drink them again, especially the sour cherry, which is inevitably about to run out for the season. I could barely get near the extra special bitter which Rob ordered, but did trade off tastes of my stout for his imperial porter which went by the inspiring name of Rude Panda. It was glimpsingly sunny through the warm overcast and breezy enough to kick fallen bits of blossom constantly through the tap room with all its windows open and both of its garage doors rolled up where I would have felt safe taking a seat if not for the volume of the music. I got into an unexpected conversation with another patron who had noticed my digital camera, approvingly. I had run back to get it so as not to miss out on the trees.( My own life, I guess. )
I should have taken some kind of conclusive picture of the experience, but instead we cleared out ahead of the impending pub quiz—after making sure to express our gratitude to the bartenders, who had actually given me tastes of both of my ales after I explained my situation with hops—and got our dinner from El Vaquero, whose quesadillas we need to remember are officially more than one person can eat at a time. We ate as much of them as possible on the bleachers of Playstead Park where a pair of commuter trains crossed on the tracks of the Lowell Line and walked home through the twilight with ice cream from CB Scoops. It was a far nicer end to a day which had begun when our next-door neighbor, not content with blasting his radio until nine o'clock last night at a volume requiring earplugs in our own living room, began power-washing his driveway this morning at the crack of legality. I feel it should be more than justified for me to respond with uKanDanZ's "War Pigs" (2025). The only cover of comparable quality I have ever heard is Bonerama's, but this one is in Amharic.