Peckerwood Manor

Like many of you, I was nearly moved to tears when I saw Dick Van Dyke in a music video the other day, and it got me to thinking about how many octogenarians are around and how much we cherish them, like the always lovable, supremely talented Carol Burnett and the forever ageless and stately Catherine Deneuve, to name just two. But then I thought, "What about regular folk?" That's when Mike Petross and Phil Pugh came to mind. Three years ago, they gobsmacked everyone when they appeared in a Washington Post article entitled, " Black, Gay and Graying Gracefully in Love " by Black journalist  Jamal Jordan . At the top of the article, Jamal admitted,  "The idea of growing old as a gay man used to terrify me. I simply had no concept of what longevity looked like for gay Black men." Representation is everything, and there simply wasn't much coverage about older gay men, and there was almost none if they were Black. There still isn't. In the article...

Have you ever re-watched a movie you once treasured as a child or a teenager and realized that it was low-grade crap? It happens! Recently, a friend watched "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" with her 7 year-old, hoping to share what she once enjoyed as a youngin'. "Ooo, I loved that movie when I was a kid," I told her. "Me, too," she said, "but when was the last time you saw it?" I had to think for a moment. I'd watched YouTube clips of my favorite scenes over the years, but probably hadn't watched the entire movie since I originally saw it on TV as a 10 year-old. "Trust me," my friend added, "it's junk."  Sadly, she was right. Warily at first, I re-watched it, and I'll be blunt, the movie is a dirge, moving at a snail's pace from one insipid musical number to the next, like the soul-curdling "You Two" with those offensively squeaky children; or "Posh," featuring the "eccentric" gr...