Lucky

You didn't know that I speak with a lisp? Thanks for the correction!

I thought you guys weren't going to do spoilers!

And nothing here about the reports of Zac entering rehab earlier this year for coke and alcohol problems. (See NY Post: http://pagesix.com/2013/09/17/zac-efron-went-to-rehab-for-booze-coke-reports/) Let's hope the rehab worked.

I like to read reports that members post about their travels. Tomcal has done Rio and Brazil due honors, and it would be folly to try to imitate him. Likewise with Oz. Just take notice of his posting today about taking the train to Cambodia! Others too offer good reports. I just don't feel up to the competition. So my trip to Rio last week would start by thanking tomcal and lurkerspeaks for encouraging me to use rioapartmentrentals.com. They put my husband and I into a good 2BR apartment with an ocean view (Okay, you had to stick your head out the window to see it) in an area above the Copacabana Palace and a ten minute walk to Cardeal Arcoverde Metro station. There was an abundance of groceries in the area, and staying in an apartment gave us more of a feel for living there. We enjoyed our favorite restaurants: Bella Blue, Sequiera Grill in particular, as well as a downtown visit to the historic Confeiteria Colombo, which took us back in time to enjoy a meal with long-dead cariocas! Yes, we went to the saunas. Club 117 is no longer the top one, in our opinion. In the past, I have always liked it. We went on two occasions, and both nights had a completely different cast of boys with an exception or two. But these guys know their value, and it was rare to hear an offer below R100. The H went with a guy, had a great time for the agreed price, and then was stunned when he had dressed and the boy hit him up for another 50. It's always been common that guys try to get a little more money, or a drink, but after the fact trying to raise the price was a new one for us. We did say no. The main difference I noted in Club 117 was rudeness on the part of the boys. They would push their way through a crowd, or run up/down that narrow staircase without regard to anyone in their way. For the first time, I felt that the front desk was rude. In general, I think Club 117 has too much attitude. You might think that too if you went to Meo Mundo, where attitude and rudeness are almost unheard of. I had never been there before, and my first visit felt a bit overwhelming as it was so crowded on a Monday free cabin night. Once I relaxed a bit, it seemed to be a very friendly place, and prices were back in the 60 to 80 range. And what beautiful guys! An angelic looking fellow showed up at the right time to make my night a success. The H was having his own 7th heaven, and we left quite satisfied. I skipped free cabin night at Club 117 on Tuesday as I just didn't want to deal with the crowds, and H says they were big crowds and the place was so warm he couldn't wait to leave. Not that he would leave too soon. We tried Meo Mundo again on a Wednesday night and were disappointed at how quiet it was. That was foolish of us as it soon became crowded again, and we were now among familiar faces. H met a guy whose name seemed to be Haka, and this guy was the toast of the town. What a personality! I am told his dick is enormous too. We had originally intended to go to Meo Mundo on Saturday night. I followed instructions here and took a taxi there, but somehow the address I had read here said 118 Teofilo whatever, when the actual address is 18. So we instead went to Point 202, always my least favorite sauna. But this particular night was really good. Lots of muscle boys, but not the 117 attitude. I must have gone with the only non-muscle boy there, but we had a great time. Everyone was quite friendly, and the woman working the desk was a great improvement over the stuck up guy they used to have. We took a night off and went to Ipanema for some shopping. We had been there on Sunday as well for the Hippy Fair. We also went touring downtown. On Friday we flew to Porto Alegre, where we stayed at the new Cosmopolitan Palace hotel. It was nice, and any worries as to whether boys are allowed in the room abated when we saw that the lobby had several women of the night hanging out. The only "male of the night" I saw was very cute, but wore makeup to enhance his looks. We went to Porto Alegre because the Rock in Rio Festival was beginning, drawing some one million people to Rio. I didn't want to deal with the crowds so flew south as a previous visit there with tomcal was quite a success. I learned (hard) the value of having tomcal around at a sauna. He knows everyone! But the two of us (H and I) found it much harder to penetrate (figuratively) the local crowd. Essentially, the boys didn't give us much of a chance, and so many of them seemed to be taken already, especially the cutest ones. That left slim pickings, but doable. We were told that many of the guys might be in Rio for the Festival- just my luck. But both nights we went to Mixx bar after the sauna and enjoyed the colorful crowd there a lot. Shopping was also fun, and the Thomas Pub provided one of the best meals I have ever had. (It wasn't Pub food either!) One incident that hurt my view of Mezzaninu Sauna was the adding of a cabin charge to the bill. It took me a minute to realize it, so when I spoke up the desk clerk said it was too late to protest it as he had already run the charge. So, I asked to speak to Roy, the owner whom we had met last year. The clerk was quite surprised at that, but said he wasn't in. Nonetheless, the irreversible charge was refunded once the owner's name came up. Innocent mistake on the bill? Sure, why not? We had a good flight back, but are now jet-lagged, but satisfied. You'll note that I have no pictures, and what happened with me and certain young men at the saunas will stay between us. As much as I enjoy reading others' stories, mine always retain a few facts just for myself! Sorry!

I followed the lead of others here who used rioapartmentrentals.com.

Andy Towle at the blog towleroad.com reports" Gay Teen Novel 'Two Boys Kissing' Makes National Book Award Longlist for Young People's LiteratureThe National Book Awards released its longlists today for Young People's Literature and Poetry. Among those up for the award in Young People's Lit is David Levithan's gay teen novel Two Boys Kissing. Levithan's novel interweaves the stories of a number of gay teens, foremost among them one couple who decides to break the world record for longest kiss. Wrote the L.A. Times' Louis Bayard of the book: Levithan interweaves all these players with surgical skill and with an unabashed attention to bodies. If the book's title doesn't get it banned from a thousand school libraries, its frankness will: "Peter lingers his hand down Neil's back, slips his fingers beneath his waistband, rests on the skin there, the heat. Neil moves in the opposite direction, his hand rising under the back of Peter's shirt, between his shoulder blades. ... Neil touches the nape of his neck, then slowly retreats back down, fingernails raking skin…." What sets this book apart from Levithan's previous work (including the charming "Will Grayson, Will Grayson," co-written by John Green) is its yearning for tragedy. For brooding over these youths is a Greek chorus of ghosts: the generation of gay men who lived and loved and died in the first onslaught of AIDS. "We are your shadow uncles," they declare, "your angel godfathers, your mother's or your grandfather's best friend from college, the author of that book you found in the gay section of the library." Among those longlisted in Poetry is Frank Bidart's Metaphysical Dog. Towleroad book critic Garth Greenwell praised the book in a review earlier this year. For nearly half a century, Frank Bidart has been obsessed by a single theme. In this brilliant new collection, he calls it “hunger for the absolute”: our seemingly inescapable need for purity and perfection, for some significance that transcends the organic. Whether this hunger leads to philosophy or religion, politics or love or art, it both instills our lives with meaning and makes them intolerable. ...I’ve been reading Bidart for more than half my life, and with this new collection I feel again how much his work has become crucial to my sense not just of poetry but of my own "ordinary divided unsimple heart." Bidart’s work is one of the unfolding wonders of the literature of our time. Read this book. Posted Sep. 17,2013 at 6:00 PM EST by Andy Towle in Awards, Books, David Levithan, Read more: http://www.towleroad.com/#ixzz2fC0ysLwn (For some reason, propriety perhaps, the boytoy software will not permit me to post a picture of the book.)

Last Friday I was able to change dollars for Reais at the rate of 2.35, and today at the rate of 2.30 I could not find a good rate for my traveler checks, with flat out refusing them and the other offering only 1.80. Still, Rio feels much cheaper than it did on my last visit.

Would cheep e-books be designed for little chicks to read Easter stories?

Since I first saw this post, I have been stretching my mind, using both cylinders, trying to think of a time when Oz might have had a public disagreement with someone. I can't come up with one! Isn't that amazing that a guy with so many posts is so calm and collected all the time? And kitty claws? I so doubt that! But I do see where it can be hard to be both a poster and an admin. I'd have a separate name for one of them.

I guess when it is in an Arts & Literature forum, the idea of two boys kissing loses some sexuality. So I thought I might juice it up a bit with pix of...

Great video! Thanks, Townsend P. Locke. Were you in Melbourne for the paper convention?

Eric Bana is gorgeous in this movie, where he stars with Rebecca Hall in a legal thriller about defending a terrorist in the post 9-11 age. Reviews are mixed, and it is definitely flawed as well as fatalistic. I would recommend it for the small screen, but I did enjoy it and thought most of it was well done. It's unsettling, and that may account for some of the less stellar reviews, but it does raise important questions and was easy on the eyes with Eric Bana as well as the London scenery. Slate: "But there are enough genuine moments of surprise to make this genre exercise an invigorating one." NY Times: "“Closed Circuit,” a slick, tasty slice of late-summer nonsense from Britain, comes soaked in gunmetal blue and paranoia. The anxiety is well founded: they’re watching us. A lot — especially through the ubiquitous closed-circuit television cameras that dot London like neighborhood constables or plague sores, depending on your view of life in the surveillance state. Millions of these cameras watch over Britain, at least half of which seem as if they’d been tapped for this movie to lord down from lampposts and buildings over the little people below, including a concerned-looking yet manly Eric Bana and an equally fretful, fetching Rebecca Hall." LA Times: ""Closed Circuit" is a crisply enjoyable, professionally executed paranoid thriller of the "everyone is out to get us" variety. In an earlier, simpler day, its plotting would have been dismissed as far-fetched, but that was then and this is now."

When did he become Edward? Are the two of you personal friends? Do you know him at all? Why the first name basis?

I agree with EXPAT on this partisan rhetoric, but it's a fact that the British and the American people have tired of Mideast wars. And they should be. It may come at some cost to the Syrian rebels, but frankly, they aren't exactly our allies. This entire country has been anti-American and helping stir shit in the MidEast, and now the chickens come home to roost. I abhor chemical warfare, but a few bombs after the fact that seems to be the Obama plan isn't going to help. We need a rest and a recovery here before we can help other countries in the Mideast.

Isn't it interesting that the Pope can now be credited as a credible world leader again? Not to say all is well, but it's sure a breath of fresh air. But then, who am I to judge?

The LA Times today has an interesting review of novelist David Levithan's new book, Two Boys Kissing. It gives us a good look at the novel, but also tells us about a previous novel he wrote, Boy Meets Boy: http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-david-levithan-20130901,0,2856052.story But, at only 208 pages, is it a novel or a short story? Well, if it's interesting, then it doesn't much matter.

Now this post might seem to be about Rio de Janeiro, or Brazil, and thus in the wrong forum. But no, it's about humor, and thus in the proper forum. Just checking! The NY Times today has an interesting article about a comedy troupe, Porta de Fundos, in Rio which has politicians and church leaders fuming. One skit is about cutting embezzlement temporarily in the face of protests. But one funny one took on the numerous sightings of the Virgin Mother of Christ. This one is seen in a gynecologist's office, where the doctor saw the image of Jesus between her legs, leading to the poor woman caught in stirrups for hours while doctors, nurses, and devotees hold candlelight vigils to observe the phenomenon. It's on You Tube as well, where it has become a sensation with millions of viewings. Learn about more of the funny skits in the Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/world/americas/on-youtube-comedy-troupe-tickles-brazil-and-ruffles-feathers.html?ref=world. And, if your Portuguese is good, try this link: http://www.youtube.com/user/portadosfundos

The Washington Post only allows me to read so many articles a month, so I read that all you have to do to get around that is remove their cookie. That brought me to look at my cookies, and again I am just amazed at how sites that I visited for as little as a few seconds put tracking cookies on my computer. So I removed a bunch of them, especially if they had the word "ad" in them. But I usually go too far and remove cookies I want or need. So I wondered if someone here who knows these things could tell us just why cookies are attached to computers that have just dropped in. Do they really then follow us around the internet, watching what we do? isn't that usually non-productive for them?

No privacy left anywhere, is there?

We really enjoyed this place. It's like going back in time, to an old Rio. Well worth a visit.

MsGuy, what are you currently reading? As much as I like these two novels, I have read both twice and don't think a third will be a good use of my time. Same with The Front Runner- I loved the novel, read it 2 or 3 times, but don't see any benefit in reading it again. BTW, I am not inferring that Patrica Nell Warren wrote as well as Mary Renault, but her novel sure was good for its time. And why is it that women write such good gay male novels?

Fidelity is much more important than monogamy.

Fire From Heaven is an immaculate love story. Your heart will be touched, believe me.

Kindness and generosity can never be found too often, so if Daddy found it, I quote Pope Francis and ask: "Who am I to judge?" He does run a popular escort review site, and if that brings some escorts his way for whatever reason, then why not? Ace has been a very popular attendee at several Palm Springs Weekends, and no doubt he went with Daddy out of the friendship that came from that. Recently two local escorts (Dane Scott and Steven Kesslar) went to lunch with me. We even went Dutch. It was kind of them to join me with no expectations. I'd hate to have someone come here and say I had hit a new low for doing so. And, as for Fred fixing Daddy's car, Fred, PM me!....I can use the dime(s)!

Perhaps there are guys here who like to read but never came across the two novels mentioned above. These are two of the best gay novels you could ever read. The Persian Boy: Published in February, 1998, author Mary Renault. Amazon sums up thus: The Persian Boy traces the last years of Alexander’s (the Great) life through the eyes of his lover, Bagoas. Abducted and gelded as a boy, Bagoas was sold as a courtesan to King Darius of Persia, but found freedom with Alexander after the Macedon army conquered his homeland. Their relationship sustains Alexander as he weathers assassination plots, the demands of two foreign wives, a sometimes-mutinous army, and his own ferocious temper. After Alexander’s mysterious death, we are left wondering if this Persian boy understood the great warrior and his ambitions better than anyone. Fire from Heaven: Amazon sums up thus: Alexander’s beauty, strength, and defiance were apparent from birth, but his boyhood honed those gifts into the makings of a king. His mother, Olympias, and his father, King Philip of Macedon, fought each other for their son’s loyalty, teaching Alexander politics and vengeance from the cradle. His love for the youth Hephaistion taught him trust, while Aristotle’s tutoring provoked his mind and Homer’s Iliad fueled his aspirations. Killing his first man in battle at the age of twelve, he became regent at sixteen and commander of Macedon’s cavalry at eighteen, so that by the time his father was murdered, Alexander’s skills had grown to match his fiery ambition. These two novels are love stories as well as excellent historical fiction about Alexander the great as he conquers the world, well, a part of it. They are so well-written as to make you feel present at the events described, including the intimacies of the lovers. Even though they were written and popular 20 or so years ago, they are timeless gay stories that you won't regret reading, assuming that you like to read. Renault has written several other novels, but these two are the place to start, or so I see it.