French for beginners

After Orlando

“Broadway for Orlando”: The Exclusive Music Video from Playbill on Vimeo.

Trump Trump

Here are a few lines from Frank Rich, our favorite we-told-you-so artiste, about Donald Trump, in a Q&A:

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Donald Trump's renewed call for a ban on Muslim immigration after the Orlando shooting not only drew condemnation from President Obama and Hillary Clinton, but appears to have deepened the gap between Trump and Establishment Republicans: Paul Ryan responded with a statement of support for Muslims, while Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn have refused to talk about their party's candidate to the press. Will there be any fallout for Trump within the GOP?

No. We’ve just passed the first anniversary of Trump’s declaration of his presidential campaign, and the dynamic within the GOP has never changed. We know the drill: Trump says something outrageous or hateful. A few GOP leaders timidly say that what he’s said is racist, misogynistic, “not what the Party of Lincoln stands for,” whatever. Then those leaders fall back in line. The dynamic will not change now, and for a simple reason. The GOP elites are frightened of Trump and frightened of their own party’s voters, who overwhelmingly supported Trump in the GOP primary.

What Trump has been saying post-Orlando, it should be added, is not inconsistent with what many other Republican politicians have been saying for years. When he claims that Obama is secretly allied with terrorists, he is echoing Sarah Palin’s charge that Obama was “palling around with terrorists” when she was on the GOP ticket in 2008. When Trump purports that failing to use the term “radical Islamic terrorism” is tantamount to surrender, he is following a time-honored Republican script. (I would hope that when he trots it out in a debate Clinton will ask him whether “radical Christian terrorism” should be applied to the fringe Christians who have, among other acts of terrorism, murdered abortion doctors or bombed abortion clinics.) Trump’s hate campaign against all Muslims, smearing an entire religion for its fanatics, is also nothing new in the GOP. It’s of a piece with the 2010 Rudy Giuliani–Fox News–led campaign against the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” (which was, in fact,a proposed cultural center, and not at Ground Zero).

Even so, Trump doesn’t care that his Muslim ban wouldn’t have stopped Omar Mateen, an American citizen born in New York. Nor did it matter to him that his Mexican wall would not have thwarted the Indiana-born federal judge Gonzalo Curiel. Spewing bigotry is its own reward for Trump. We have to hope that the American electorate will end his political career in November. But surely, a year in, there’s no point in hoping that feckless Republican elites can or will do anything to stop him.

Continues here: Frank Rich

Back in Switzerland

(These are Chang's pictures, of course, all taken yesterday:)

Fragment, fragment: Well, we used it before, but here we go again; it's from our as yet unpublished short story Rilke's Ghost:

Years later. We’re now summering in Bürchen, Valais, Switzerland, in the chalet of a friend, our own house is rented to holiday makers. The village of Bürchen is wonderful, 1,600 meters up on the Alp, and so much cooler than the muggy summer-Riviera (the road up to Bürchen was finished in 1934—the preceding thousand years the villagers were left to their own devices). There is only one problem: Rainer Maria is buried nearby, yes, Rilke, in Raron, a small, historic town right beneath Bürchen down in the valley, three klicks as the crow flies. We’ve given Raron a wide berth so far, but Chang is playing the social networks and has to feed the hungry Facebook beast. His Korean followers can’t get enough of snow-topped mountains and Geranium-studded chalets, and the 24 hour cycle dictates daily posting. We’ve ravaged the entire region already—natives of many cultures believe that you steal their image when you take their picture—along those lines we’ve grabbed photons until nothing seems to be left of the Valais—from the Matterhorn via the James-Bond-historic-marker up on the Furka pass to the longest glaciers and highest vineyards of Europe—save Raron. 

Lets get into the act

Donald Trump claiming today that President Obama should resign because he failed to use the words "Radical Islam."

If you are listening, Donald: How about using the words "fraudulent bankruptcy."

NYC (4) --- Modern times

NYC (3) --- History in the making

Exploring NYC, we're walking down 5th Av, unsuspectingly...

...and history strikes.

NYC (2)

(A walk through downtown, pictures by Chang:)

The 9/11 monument, partial view

Statue of Liberty, seen from the Battery Park

Cell phone use, skyline of Newark

The new World Trade Center 1

Great fun and well-writen --- New praise for the Green Eyes

5.0 out of 5 star
s

Bycharleson May 28, 2016

Format: Paperback

I too was given a book by the author and thoroughly enjoyed this publication.. It is erotic with a twist, it's chocked full of wonderful gay fantasies well and uniquely written by a master story teller! His style of writing is short, to the point and I found truly refreshing and unusual in style. Its a welcome bit of 'froth'---although Im not saying the content is light but its great fun, never misses a trick, and is a real delight. A good read with an creative twist. Its shaken and not stirred and good for a most amusing time! Buy it.

Now a Lambda Literary Award finalist: 

"Click"

NYC (1) --- The Martian

Chang took this picture from the v. Wyck express way

So we fly to NY, NY for the Lammies, nominated as we are in the category Gay Erotic Fiction, and watch The Martian with Matt Damon directed by Ridley Scott (international flights are practically the only effective opportunity for us to watch movies). We’ve read a few rave reviews when the film came out last year, among others by Manohla Dargis, the NYT chief celluloid critic.

Well…(you don’t have to read further).

Damon is stuck on Mars but will be rescued, yet not before an avalanche of complications has caused much nail biting hither and thither.

What we liked best were the potatoes---Damon cultivates potatoes in martian soil---although---although at one point his tarp-sheated indoor potato farm blows up of course.

Fragment, fragment --- or: the mystery of success

Okay, let's turn this around, and start with a fragment from the GREEN EYES, Chapter 44, "A surgical strike into semantic space," (Jack Horn talking to John):

He directs me to a large paper backdrop rolling off the wall, flips two Klieg lights, and points his Nikon D3x in my direction. He isn't even snapping, the thing is on speed repeat.
"In the past,” he says, “you would think first and then shoot. Now it's the other way round." Then he adds, as if bowing to conventions: "Give it to me, baby, give it to me." He's already done. “You no longer have to think at all, in fact, you dump the whole set on Tumblr and see which ones bounce back through re-blogging, those are the good pics. But the feedback takes weeks, we don’t have the time.”

We're sitting at a long desk that had to be cleared of the worst debris (think of Juras-sic Park, one of the best scenes, when Attenborough wipes the messy desk of the greedy programmer), and downloads the pictures from his Nikon. He flips through the pictures at high speed—he has me spinning like a dancer in a silent movie. "Hold on," he inter-rupts himself, "I forgot."

The screen changes to Google’s search window. "As outlined earlier, one should let somebody else do the thinking," he says. "Who’s going to make our life easier? The Windsors. That's it, the British dynasty." He googles for "Windsor porn pictures," and arrives on a page with royal obscenity involving all members of the dynasty, in particu-lar an elderly woman with petrified white hair. "How many have jerked off on Eliza-beth, you think," he asks as if expecting an answer. "I wonder whether the Queen realizes.”

And now what? Yes, the picture, or issue, or handle. Well, we posted a picture on Pinterest, and it's garnering 10 times the interest of other pictures we posted there ("likes," "repostings," "new followers," and the like). It's a good picture, sure, but still. You say:

Chang, sitting next to me on the king-sized bed of the Crown Plaza Hotel of Milan's Malpenza airport, turns his head, peeks at my screen, flabbergasted, and comments: "My God, this is really a sexy guy,"..."My God, this guy is really hot." 

Okay, so, case closed.

No-no, hold on. Scroll down.

Here's the next picture we posted on Pinterest, a picture taken by Chang tonight on our way back from a restaurant to the hotel. What do you think?

 

(Vote for it, vote for it!)

"If people blame Obama for anything 200 years down the road..."

Fragment, fragment, (very short) from a future part of the GREEN EYES, Alex and John talking:

John: "I voted for Obama, yes."
Alex: "If people blame Obama for anything, 200 years down the road, it'll be Donald Trump."



(We're off to NY, NY, for the red carpet event of Lambda Literary---cross fingers.)

"Let's find a hotel," I should have said...

We're still in Switzerland, up on the alm, at 1,600 meters, where the air is thin---as are the pretexts needed for posting yet another post. 

 Pretext no. 1...

 ...which is bound to inspire Pretext no. 2...a fragment from our recently finished short story Le Trayas Station. The narrator, a certain Michael, has unexpectedly happened upon a pretty youth, who's stepped off at the wrong train station and is now in need of a ride to the venue of an exam he's obliged to take. So Michael takes the pretty youth, Muhammed, to the venue, knowing already that they will arrive hopelessly late:


We arrived at the school short of 11 o’clock. I stopped at the main gate in the NO-NO-traffic-zone. He shouldered his satchel and dropped off and reappeared 10 minutes later, a wistful smile on his lips.

“Your career is in shambles now,” I said---which---I shouldn’t have said. I should have said: ‘Let’s find a hotel,’ or ‘let’s find a hotel now, you must be tired’---it would have worked, there and then. Anyhow, he climbed back onto the SUV and explained that he had to wait another year, although it wasn’t the end of the world. We entered a conversation about his future and his family until I had to ask where he lived. He studied marketing, what else. The father worked in Paris, hopefully, and his brother ran the show.

He lived in Nice, in the Ariane quarter, on the rue Darius Milhaud. “The composer?” I asked. He wouldn’t know. “Ariane?” I asked. It’s the neighborhood next to the power station, he explained, exit Nice-est on the A8: you can see it from the motorway when you are coming from the other side, from Monaco—yes, I remembered now.

I had never been inside an immigrant housing project---eight-story structures this one, mostly, although they looked better from the inside than coming-from-Monaco. And the narrow kitchen balconies where the aboriginals keep goats and hang their laundry, they weren’t so narrow and there were no goats. Wouldn’t be easy to find a parking space, Muhammed said. I parsed this briefly, inhaled, and replied: “I, just, drop you off.”

You're still there? Then you may like Michael's Lambda-Literary nominated book:

("click")

We're still in Switzerland

We've arrived in Switzerland

As every year, we rent our house to holidaymakers during the season and stay in the chalet of a friend in Bürchen, Valais, Switzerland, up on the alp at 1,600 meters. This is an evening view from our place, taken by Chang two days ago.

Anything GREEN EYES have to say about Bürchen, or Switzerland, or sunsets? Strangely enough, the answer is "no." But we have a short story set in the chalet, titled Rilke's Ghost, and as yet unpublished. So here's a fragment (Context: we already had a close encounter with the ghost of Rainer Maria Rilke once, in Duino, on the Adriatic coast, where the famous poet wrote his Duineser Elegien. And coincidence has it that his mortal remains are interred nearby; enjoy:) 


Years later. We’re now summering in Bürchen, Valais, Switzerland, in the chalet of a friend, our own house is rented to holiday makers. The village of Bürchen is wonderful, 1,600 meters up on the Alp, and so much cooler than the muggy summer-Riviera (the road up to Bürchen was finished in 1934---the preceding thousand years the villagers were left to their own devices). There is only one problem: Rainer Maria is buried nearby, yes, Rilke, in Raron, a small, historic town right beneath Bürchen down in the valley, three klicks as the crow flies. We’ve given Raron a wide berth so far, but Chang is playing the social networks and has to feed the hungry Facebook beast. His Korean followers can’t get enough of snow-topped mountains and Geranium-studded chalets, and the 24 hour cycle dictates daily posting. We’ve ravaged the entire region already---natives of many cultures believe that you steal their image when you take their picture---along those lines we’ve grabbed photons until nothing seems to be left of the Valais—from the Matterhorn via the James-Bond-historic-marker up on the Furka pass to the longest glaciers and highest vineyards of Europe---save Raron. 

Find a caption

(Hat tip: Andreas Hardinger)

Do we have anything to say about this? Yes, the picture shows, irrefutably, that our GREEN EYES are about everything, including the Sydney Opera House, and here's the proof...(from the final chapter, the happy ending is approaching, John and Alex in conversation, Alex laboring under a serious amnesia)...

We’re both watching the water tower. We could be brothers.
“The water tower,” I say to Alex. 
“Yes, I know,” he replies.
“You remember?”
“What?”
“Us, talking about the water tower?”
“No.”
“How do you know, then?”
“I know about the water tower, and Georgia Beach in general, just get confused about directions. Directions appear to be borderline. Amnesia-wise. Forgot everything about my personal life, remember a lot about everything else.”
“You like the water tower?”
“You like it?”
“I’m like the only person in the world who doesn’t like the Sydney opera house.”
“The Sydney opera house, right. Don’t remember whether I liked it or not. Let me think. Let me get it on my mind’s eye. Looks like a clam, right, several clams, clams playing domino, right?”
“Sort of.”
“You have a picture somewhere?”

He looks around. His eyes fall on the iPad on the kitchen table, the i-thing he gave to me the night before his suicide. “Let’s have a look,” he says, grabs it, hits the touch screen a few times. The internet isn’t willing though, Safari returns an error message.
“You’ve got no Wi-Fi?” he asks. 
“Yes,” I say, “but never had a chance to use your pad, it doesn’t know the WEP code for the Wi-Fi connection.”
“This is my pad?”
“Yes, you gave it to me, the day before your, uuhh, accident.”
“Right,” he says and hands it to me.

I dreamt of the GREEN EYES and woke up happy

Here's a new glowing review of our GREEN EYES which appeared today on the pages of Queer Voices---enjoy:

By Andreas Fragoso Jr.

I’ve have never actually told someone to leave me alone until I started reading Green Eyes: an erotic novel (sort of) by Michael Ampersant. I held it in my hands and read the first chapter when someone came up to me to ask me a question. I literally held my hand to his face and told him to stop talking, and that I was reading. He didn’t talk to me for a few days. He got over it and read the book. I tried to interrupt him and he stopped me. Karma.

Michal’s protagonist, John Lee, is narrating the story. He’s so funny that I really want to meet him. His descriptions, side notes, and remarks are so powerful. I’ve never met someone so funny, entertaining, and naive in some ways. Okay. I admit I’m naiver that he is. My point is that I love the character. If I met him I would ask, “How?”

The style of the book was new for me. I don’t particularly write in this style. Now that I have I admit I wouldn’t even know how to start. Michael’s style is unique, part description, part I’m telling you what happened, and he also shows you what’s going on. And there is a lot of things going on. He has this unique talent of introducing something traumatic in a very nonchalant way that when the shocker comes out I jump.

What I like the most of the book is that it took me to worlds where I’ve never been. I have never known men could do the things they did in this book. When I’m reading I feel what John is doing and seeing. A few times I cinched because I thought I was there. I can honestly say, I have yet to read another book like this. I’m an honored man for having read Michael’s book.

I dreamt of the Green Eyes and woke up happy. The reality is that I almost called 911 and to see what happens.

The back cover of the book holds no lies. There are a lot of things going on. I don’t know how John keeps it together. I for sure would seek professional help and go through therapy for years. But, John. He takes in like a man, he handles everything very well. I honest believed that the tow truck was dropping from the heavens.

Get your copy today. And stop reading whatever you’re doing because you’re not going to regret it.

"Click"

Cannes Film Festival opens

We went to Cannes yesterday, because we're writing a story about terrorism, and the Festival's opening would be the ideal multiplier of terrorism's effect: one Brad Pitt is worth thousands, if not millions of other innocent victims, you'll agree. We're not sure we'll have an actual blast in the story, so here's one from the Pulitzer-winning last novel of Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch:

[hang on; under development]

The opening has always been on a Tuesday, because the festival has always lasted for 12 days, the festival competition always featured 22 films, two per day, with the last day, a Sunday, dedicated to the awards ceremony.

So it's Tuesday, May 10, and we leave the house at 15:30  to arrive at the red carpet event at 17:00. 

German for beginners

Reality beats fiction...

...as usual.

And here's just one line from Politico:

Cruz woke up on the morning of the Indiana primary to rain and the news that Trump was touting a National Enquirer story that claimed, without evidence, that his father was involved in John F. Kennedy’s assassination.