DesDownunder

Here's a movie based on a famous book. Watch Steve Hayes tell you all about Maurice

Sometimes scientists have been so absorbed in their research that they discover the obvious, as something new.

I'd like to see an adaptation of Mary Renault's Last of The Wine into a modern love story, complete with an opening scene of the plague causing the death of a young man whose lover then drinks from a poison chalice, spills the contents on the floor, and as he dies, he manages to write with his finger, his lover's name in the last of the spilt wine. The rest of the story is much more positive, but no less romantic and emotionally moving. I imagine the best way to adapt the story would be to have a young modern archaeologist discover a scroll telling of what it was like to live in ancient Athens, whilst paralleling the archaeologist's own discovery of his sexuality, and search for love.

My Ken doll doesn't have genitals. He cried a lot, so I made him some underwear with a bulge, a huge bulge, and now he is very happy.

Very interesting, Cole. I might say that nothing seems to have changed since my High School days around 60 years ago. It should be noted that my state run all boys high school was modelled along the British classical education system with a preoccupation of all things sport; something I loathed. There was however a "blind eye" turned toward the 13 and 14 year old students who were discussing, comparing and generally becoming acquainted with each others' hormonal driven explorations. Very little bullying occurred, and I like to think that was due to the school authority understanding the nature of pubescent experimention. It seemed to say that given enough rope, the boys would grow out of the investigation of their fellow students. I had reached the conclusion that the preoccupation with sport was encouraged so that the students would become too exhausted to experiment sexually. That didn't work, thankfully. As Olly mentions in his story at Cole's link, homosexual education was not mentioned in the class. Of course I am referring to my time at school in the 1950s. So if nothing was revealed at school, even less was mentioned on the home front where fact was easier to avoid with extraordinary fictions. We boys had not even been told about the religious taboos, let alone the criminal code. The logic seems to have been that if no one mentioned the subject, no boy would commit the crime and the children would all be safe. The side effect of this logic was confounded by the lack of knowledge of the existence of same sex attraction, and inevitably ended up with each boy wondering if he was the only one who had these feelings. This resulted in self condemnation, especially if religious taboos had been a strong influence in earlier years. However, from a psychological view, and dare I say a more foretelling view of realisations yet to be investigated, there was a more horrifying aspect to the isolation from education on such an important issue. Armed only with the eventual discovery that the same sex attraction was not isolated, we boys defined ourselves as the criminals known as homosexuals. I think that is why so many older gay men have a difficulty with the young rejecting labels for themselves. The social and cultural taboos, rendered us as disadvantaged, unless we sought the acceptance to be found in some occupations and clandestine clubs. To what measure the current gene theory, as a cause or contribution to sexual orientation, permits us to sidestep our personal development into fully mature sexual beings, is to presuppose that being homosexual is somehow deficient. Yet, there is also the realisation that each of us has the great advantage of being placed in the position of having to question our existence by asking, and considering what is life, and love all about? A question perhaps that has now surfaced from the depths of deception in human consciousness. It's a question that is exposed for all to see, whenever a person who dares declare their love and affection for another person of the same sex. In short homosexuality might be thought of, as a Zen Koan to demand that we meditate on the impossible being real, and reality offers so much more than the obvious assumptions of male and female complementarity being the only meaningful relationship. If we can avoid the return to the Dark Ages of yesteryear, and there is no guarantee that we will, but if we can, then it will be because of those people who have dared to discover that love is not defined by what we call ourselves, unless we have questioned who we are, and that is something no LGBTQ person can ever really avoid.

Much of the choice for the start of daylight saving in Australia is dependant on local conditions for each state to take advantage of the amount of sunlight available. Victoria is often cold and overcast, and doesn't have anywhere near the same amount of yearly sunlight as does South Australia (very hot) and New South Wales.(hot.) Queensland is closer to the equator and is known as our "Deep North" where politicians have their own ideas about not needing Daylight savings. There is much discussion about daylight savings with the city dwellers favouring it more than those in country areas. Then there are the sun lovers, as well as those bronzed sons of Australia who manage to look hot, hot, hot, all year long.

Spurred on by my recent reading of Mihangel's The Middle Way, I decided to read Those Old Gods, and was rewarded with another tale of romance and history. It is a measure of tolerance and acceptance of the value of myth, in our modern lives, that we can look upon the old gods as still being a meaningful metaphor for psychological cognisance of spiritual and romantic realities. I agree with all the positive comments above, and thank you Mihangel for a wonderful story.

I love to see the lists rather than just someone's top twenty. It drives the fundies bonkers that there are so many LGBT movies available.

The Normal Heart deserves to be on everyone's watch list.

So Lover boy tells me that we watched them all, mainly because of the Video rental store we had that went bust as they do. I would have added Defying Gravity to the list. Other contenders: Eating Out (1-4) Latter Days Prayers for Bobby Victim The Servant Man With The Green Carnation (Peter Finch) Trials of Oscar Wilde (Robert Morely) Wilde (Stephen Fry) Stonewall Prick Up Your Ears (On the gay playwright, Joe Orton whose lover murdered him) Dorian Blues Poster Boy Prom Queen Shortbus Urbania Death IN Venice Another Country Cabaret Bent The Consequence (German 1977, but very much a landmark film for its day) Maurice My Beautiful Laundrette La Cage Aux Folles (1-3) French. #1 is the original The Birdcage A Very Natural Thing Something For Everyone There are some more that I haven't listed, but I think it is important to expand the list to include, at least, these, and some are really important in their influence on our history and self esteem.

Thanks for the list Colin, I'll get to listing those I have watched as soon as my spouse lets me know which ones I've seen or slept through. Hey, I'm old.

If you had based it on such a teacher, then I would say she deserved it. My own teachers, grade 4-7, didn't actually smell, but their skills as compassionate human beings certainly did stink.

That was really well written, Colin. I laughed more than once.

I just love what Mihangel has done with this story. Fact and a little fiction rolled into a history that could even be thought to parallel our own times, but more than that, for me, there is a moral, the Middle Way, of Buddhism in its most tolerant, and expansive existentialism. Romance, love, and realism; what's not to like? The amount of research that Mihangel must have done is beyond mere congratulations. His incorporation of the research is outstanding, entertaining, and certainly inspires much appreciation and applause. Recommended.

Do I have to start posting all the tracks of all the music I like from the past 70 years? Can I even find "Sippin' Soda" from 1950 something? I found it...1953~I'd be embarrassed but I plead innocence at age 9. Here it is :

My IE has been missing for months?

My first full-time job was as an assistant projectionist in a drive-in theatre. I was just 17, and the stories about the back seat of the cars were matched only by the realities of what went on, and off. My favourite was the couple who had done the deed and then fell asleep. After the show, the projectionist and I saw the lone car in the middle of the theatre and we went over to it and knocked on the window. The car appeared to be empty, when suddenly two figures sprang to life in the vehicle, very, very naked. I didn't know that you could drive a car with only one leg in your jeans. Drive-in theatres were commonly known as "sin-bins." It was easy to tell when the occupants were trying to avoid a child as the cars would rock backwards and forwards. When the drive-ins eventually closed due to TV (we have one left here,) I think the birth-rate halved as each theatre went out of business. As a patron, my most wonderful experience was during the screening of 2001; A space Odyssey. I would go anywhere to watch the movie, and on this occasion when the shuttle was headed towards the moon, a plane took off from the nearby Adelaide airport and suddenly appeared above the giant screen, lit by, and seemingly headed towards the real moon, in imitation of the scene on the screen. The scene and irony was not lost on the audience which quickly sounded their cars' horns. Having been inspired, by the scene, they then sounded their horns, "beep-beep" in time with the Blue Danube waltz playing on the soundtrack Whoever said that drive-ns had no sense of audience participation never experienced moments like these.

That's fine with me, Mike. Glad you are enjoying the thread.

My version of Firefox is 33.0. I won't be updating until we know more. I generally use Chrome, so I was surprised that opening Firefox also brought up an Adobe Flash Player update, to which I was alerted by Winpatrol wanting to know if it should permit a run once set up program (for the Flash Player) when I next start windows. I'm suspicious, and will wait before I accept. And while typing this I have received notice that FireFox 33.1 is available for download. Yeah Right. I'll do some research first I think. Additional: Flash Player 15.0.r0 is showing up on Googling, as having problems. Isn't this fun...not!

And if you don't want to wade through the whole album, here is the final word

Oh what in the cosmos matches the opening of this album?

"Thinking is the Best Way to Travel" ~ from the Moody Blues album, In Search of the Lost Chord. (1968)

Good for you Colin.

Post duplicated itself. I have no idea why.

Rick, you're dislike of extrovert performance in manner, dress, hair and speed is the very thing I love about Cameron and Virgil Fox. However, I'm not going to attack you for your position; I have long since learned that people have different appreciations of performance. What I would do, is ask that we don't condemn such flamboyance when it is the artist's means to expression of their vision. I make no bones about my own preference for an artist who, for example, looks like he is direct from the stone age, covered in hair, wearing perhaps only a loin cloth, walks out onto a stage, sits down at the piano, and accompanied by a full symphonic orchestra, then performs, say, Rachmaninov's second piano concerto with all the style, nuance, and aesthetics of romance and human tenderness that the piece demands. I have been fortunate enough to see ballet dancers who are technically brilliant gymnasts, but lack the flair and style that turns those acrobatics into movement that conveys the human experience of life and love contained in the music. Emotional distance just doesn't provide me with that kind of satisfaction. I love that the artist dares exhibit his/her involvement with the message, whether it be a performance of Shakespeare or Mozart. I thrill to see artists daring to be moved by the involvement of their talent with the work they perform. Of course, it sometimes transpires that their performance is best viewed with the lights off, but then again the most virtuosic of lovers is often not fully appreciated until they are performing without a spotlight, and that may well be a personal preference. A related, but often overlooked relationship with music is the one with recorded music where there is no accompanying visual image. I often wonder if modern videos of musicians performing, lessens the depth of the musical experience for the audience. To explain what I mean by that statement, consider the famous recording producer, John Culshaw, who said that no opera performance on even the best equipped theatrical stage, could ever compete with the images that we, as listeners, conjure in our own minds, when listening to a recording of a performance in a darkened room. We can revel in watching the artist's enthusiasm for the work, but watching them perform may well be a different experience to letting them convey the listener to where the composer wanted to take them. There is so much to say in this context that I will finish by saying that the flamboyance of an artist is often the means to an extraordinary performance. Sometimes we should want to see that flamboyance, whilst at other times we just want to hear the music that they make. I'd encourage everyone to enjoy seeing how the music is made, but to also appreciate the sound of the music.