Music

Beard rhythms

Comic-Con 2017 Preparing for Preview Night

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Today’s LA Times featured this ARTICLE about Comic-Con’s famous Hall H, the most important room in all of Hollywood. If you definitely want to see Stars, you can see them in Hall H. In all of my trips to Comic-Con International I’ve never made it through the doors of Hall H. Comic-Con has yet to start and right now there are people camped out waiting for Hall H to open tomorrow morning. Hall H is the largest panel meeting space at Comic-Con, but it only holds 6,500 people and daily attendance at Comic-Con is merely 130,000. If I attend a panel, it’s in a smaller meeting hall with lesser known personalities and no overnight waiting lines.

Comic-Con for me is the convention hall floor. People watching nirvana. I’ll be there soon, say around 4:30 pm this afternoon, to grab my spot in line for the official opening of Preview night at 6:00 pm.

 

Happy Pride!

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It’s officially Pride weekend in here in beautiful sunny San Diego California!

Given we live in a state with three major cities, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco, Pride celebrations are spread out in order to allow celebrants the options to be able to celebrate more than once and not have to choose between. There are also celebrations on other weekends in various smaller, yet just as important, locations such as Long Beach and Palm Springs. Having our many California celebrations over numerous weekends also allows tourists from to catch a Pride celebration while traveling through California if they so desire.

My first ever Pride experience was in Seattle back in 1990. The city where I grew up didn’t have such a thing and my travels through east coast cities back in the 1980s never seemed to coincide with one. I haven’t missed a Pride since that first one in Seattle and my official relocation to the West coast.

For me Pride has so many more meanings that just being gay. Pride is love. Pride is joy. Pride is acceptance. Pride is understanding, forgiving, righteous, brotherhood, sisterhood, humanhood, sexuality, sexual identity, identity, political, non-political, peace, justice, black, white, brown, yellow, red, giving, gratitude, sharing, respect, service, caring…Pride is a place to just simply be yourself. Just be.

A tune from my dance floor days before that first ever Pride celebration surprised me on Sirius XM Studio 54 today. A tune that I had probably not heard since seeing Pamela Stanley perform it live during RSVP Cruise Lines 10th anniversary party in Puerto Vallarta back in 1996, which was probably about the 10th anniversary of the tune itself. A tune that seems perfectly appropriate to kick off another absolutely fabulous Pride 2017 weekend in lovely San Diego.

Happy Pride Y’all!

Fireflies

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Summer childhood memories.

Punching holes in a metal lid for the glass relish jar that in which I would later imprison several unlucky ones.

Lightning bugs, as I called them, were always a summer highlight. Little did I realize the depth of their striking beauty.

We don’t have fireflies here in Southern California. While I do prefer my SoCal summer weather over the sweltering humidity of my native southeast, I sure do miss my mesmerizing little friends.

Whats one of your favorite summertime childhood memories?

…oh and Happy Summer Solstice 2017!

Is your god dead?

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Fearsome Beard …a place for beards to contemplate and to grow their souls.

It’s been a while and it’s due time Fearsome did just that.

Contemplate.

Every human has their own personal right to have, or have not, a relationship with a power, an essence, a universe, an energy or a god of their own choosing. Common human decency, at least my common human decency, allows one to respect all others in their choices surrounding such personal matters.

I call the power of my choosing god. God is a simple word, or acronym if you will, that stands for good orderly direction, or group of drunks, or is simply dog spelled backward.  My god is love. Period. Love. (My dogs are love too, what a coincidence.)

How do I treat my brother? Do I show love? Do I respect? Do I even acknowledge?

Is my god dead?

How about you? Is your god, or something like it, dead?

The New York Times article under the highlighted word “HERE” below is worth the read whether you have, or have not, a source energy outside of yourself. The article is about being human. Being a good human.

Click HERE to go to said article and contemplate on a deeper level.

I’m not perfect. I will never be perfect. I can strive to be better. I can strive to remember to love, to remember to respect, to remember to share. I can try, and try to try daily. I can love.

Swirl it, twirl it, twerk it, swerve…

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…Work it if you’ve got the nerve

SWERLK

Scissor Sisters & MNDR team up to help the Contigo Fund which emerged out of the aftermath of the Pulse Nightclub shootings in Orlando. All proceeds from this single will go to support the Contigo Fund and you can click HERE to donate and get a download of this fabulous dance anthem.

Thanks to JMG for grabbing our attention!

Firsts

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🎶 The best part of breakin’ up, is when we’re makin’ up 🎵

It’s funny how music sparks memories. This tune was pulsing the dance floor one night back in 1982 as I was shakin’ my little tushy dancing with my friend Mike.

I hadn’t heard nor thought of it in like ages. A couple a days ago there it was pulsing outta the speakers of my Ford Fusion Energi Titanium as I was a drivin’ along listening to Sirius XM Studio 54.

Rush!

Memories rush. Suddenly Mike was in front of me on that smokey disco dance floor as we pulsed to the beats. Vivid is the memory. Suddenly there was a body behind me pulsing behind me holding me at the waist. I asked Mike who it was and he said he’d never seen the guy. I then asked Mike if he was cute. Mike said “fuck yeah”. I then pushed my tush back into him and turned my head. I got the first glimpse of my first lover.

Wow. What a vivid memory. Our relationship would last for 6 years and has much to do with the man I am today. I was young. So was he. I wondered often. He was patient, loving and forgiving. I’ll never forget him. I’ll always be grateful for his inspiration. He has his life. I have mine. We don’t talk. I hope that I gave him even a 10th of what he gave me.

Funny how this tune became the theme of our years together. I didn’t realize it was so on target of a theme, until I heard it this week. No worries as there is no “makin’ up” a happening. That was a first lover and a first relationship that started the first time I ever heard this song the very first moment we met.

Festival – Evita!

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Happy Memorial Day Weekend Y’all!

Now get those toes a tappin’ and bootys a shakin’ to Festival’s1979 Evita!

Side A

…and side B…

Disco music of an era … shirtless sweaty mustached men pulsing on the dance floor.

Gershwin Wisdom

/ fearsomebeard / 5 Comments

Rumors are running rampant today that Thursday may bring sweeping orders allowing religions to legally discriminate against me. Yes me personally if they don’t approve of who I love.

I’ve been discriminated against most of my life because of who I love. This is nothing new. Tides rise, tides receded. I’ll be contemplating how I will handle such ignorance.

Today I need not  fret, but think. I do have a message for those religious folks who wish to discriminate against me, to discriminate against anyone. That message is perfectly conveyed in the words of a tune made famous in a Gershwin number from Porgy & Bess…

It Ain’t Necessarily So
George Gershwin

It ain’t necessarily so
It ain’t necessarily so
The t’ings dat yo’ li’ble
To read in de Bible
It ain’t necessarily so.
Li’l David was small, but oh my!
Li’l David was small, but oh my!
He fought big Goliath
Who lay down an’ dieth!
Li’l David was small, but oh my!
Wadoo, zim bam boddle-oo
Hoodle ah da wa da
Scatty wah!
Oh yeah!
Oh Jonah, he lived in de whale
Oh Jonah, he lived in de whale
Fo’ he made his home in
Dat fish’s abdomen
Oh Jonah, he lived in de whale
Li’l Moses was found in a stream
Li’l Moses was found in a stream
He floated on water
Till Ol’ Pharaoh’s daughter
She fished him, she said, from dat stream
Wadoo…
Well, it ain’t necessarily so
Well, it ain’t necessarily so
Dey tells all you chillun
De debble’s a villun,
But it ain’t necessarily so!
To get into Hebben
Don’ snap for a sebben!
Live clean! Don’ have no fault!
Oh, I takes dat gospel
Whenever it’s pos’ble
But wid a grain of salt
Methus’lah lived nine hundred years
Methus’lah lived nine hundred years
But who calls dat livin’
When no gal will give in
To no man what’s nine hundred years?
I’m preachin’ dis sermon to show
It ain’t nece-ain’t nece
Ain’t nece-ain’t nece
Ain’t necessarily…so!