Cranky Lesbian - Page 15 - Look what the homosexuals have done to me!

Superstition Ain’t the Way

On July 2, 2022

Muriel models my freshly laundered socks.

We’re nearly a week into Wimbledon and I woke up this morning as excited as I was for the start of tournament. On the men’s side there’s a third round meeting between Nick Kyrgios and Stefanos Tsitsipas with blockbuster potential. Nadal’s due to play Lorenzo Sonego, and Jack Sock faces off against Jason Kubler. Sock, who a long-suffering friend can attest is my perennial dark horse pick at every Slam, is up two sets to one as I write this.

On the women’s side, Harmony Tan, conqueror of Serena Williams, dismantled Katie Boulter with such efficiency that the match ended before I was awake (and I’m an early riser!). Coco Gauff takes on her compatriot, Amanda Anisimova, and Qinwen Zheng vs. Elena Rybakina is quite promising. Simona Halep, a personal favorite due to her ethereal movement, will also take the court. (At the peak of her marvelous footwork, her shoes rarely seemed to touch the ground.) She already gave us one of the best moments of the tournament with her emotional sendoff of Kirsten Flipkens; I’d love to see her in the second week here.

Cheryl Ladd’s Oddball Dancing with Danger

By Cranky Lesbian

On June 30, 2022

In TV Movies

Saving the last dance for Cheryl Ladd is a dangerous proposition.

How or why Dancing with Danger was made is a mystery lost to time, but the answer might be found in its love scene. Before we get to that, let’s reacquaint ourselves with this 1994 USA Network telefilm. Cheryl Ladd stars as taxi dancer Mary Dannon, whose various disguises (all-black ensembles, berets, large sunglasses) counterproductively raise her profile.

Mary is already as conspicuous as any Guess Who? character in the opening scene, when she witnesses a street slaying in Atlantic City. She then moves cross-country to the Pacific Northwest, where trouble follows. She lands a job at the Star Brite, punching a time card before and after each dance. Her profession, popular in the ’20s and ’30s, was moribund by the ’50s and ’60s. Virtually no taxi dancers existed in the US by the ’90s, but this isn’t a movie concerned with realism.

Wimbledon 2022 Begins

By Cranky Lesbian

On June 27, 2022

In Tennis

“My favorite Wimbledon warm-up is *Queen’s* Club, if you catch my drift.”

Stan Wawrinka’s 2014 Australian Open championship run meant more to me than any tennis victory besides Federer’s 2017 Australian Open triumph. It wasn’t just the thrill of him finally breaking through against Djokovic (who’d beaten him 14 times in a row) in the quarterfinals, or the distinctive sound of his ball strikes, or the lethal beauty of his one-handed backhand. It was Samuel Beckett.

Wawrinka’s now-famous arm tattoo of a Beckett quote read “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Those were words I needed to hear then. Even now, I think of Beckett, and of Wawrinka’s dedication to failing better, quite often. And I have tried, with mixed results, to fail again, and fail better, myself. I like to imagine I’ll never stop. Wawrinka certainly hasn’t: In an era thoroughly dominated by the Big Three, his Grand Slam singles total stands at an astonishing three.

As I write this, Wawrinka, now 37, is heading into the third set of his first-round Wimbledon match against Italy’s Jannik Sinner. He’s in the twilight of his career, which he, like Andy Murray, is struggling to finish on his own terms after being repeatedly sidelined by injury. (Murray’s another sentimental favorite of mine, someone whose on-court negativity stands in sharp contrast to his off-court decency and honor.) If either man advances to the next round, I will be quite pleased, even though deep runs are unlikely.

Sia’s “Hostage,” and a Walk Down Memory Lane

By Cranky Lesbian

On June 25, 2022

In Stories of Triumph and Inspiration

The first time I saw my wife it was February; I was as miserable as a woman could be, and unfit for human company. Still, there was a jolt of recognition, a feeling that if we met in better times, we would surely become friends. Our maiden introduction had gone absolutely nowhere, but when our paths crossed again that summer, a tentative bond began to flourish.

It was soon apparent that she was interested in something more, but I felt incapable of it. At the same time, I knew that if I ever rejoined the living she was someone I would’ve pursued. She was intelligent, mature, rational, kind and terrifyingly ambitious, all qualities I greatly valued—and she could quickly and unerringly select the right Arrested Development quote for every occasion. More than anything, I admired her emotional strength, deep reserves of empathy and dedication to a job that required every bit of both.

Pervy Things Charlie Said to His Angels: Part 2

By Cranky Lesbian

On June 23, 2022

In Charlie's Angels

The Angels fight crime but tolerate sexual harassment in the workplace.

In the summer of 2014, for reasons far too stupid to recount here, I decided to watch every episode of Charlie’s Angels. My goal was to meticulously catalog the disgusting things Charlie said to his Angels. Unbeknownst to me, my future wife was lurking just around the corner. After meeting her, I tabled that ambitious project in favor of slightly more respectable work.

Now I’m picking up where I left off, and you’re invited to join along. Here you can find my original coverage of the pilot episode and “Hellride,” the first episode of season one. With the exception of the infamous “Angels in Chains,” I’ll try to do future installments in multi-episode batches to keep this from becoming the In Search of Lost Time of sexually exploitative television.

Danger Calls for Lynda Carter in Hotline (1982)

By Cranky Lesbian

On June 21, 2022

In TV Movies

There’s a killer on the line in *Hotline*.

If you’ve ever wanted to see Lynda Carter wear a trucker hat, operate a microform reader, or wield a harpoon as she takes down a deranged serial killer, have I got a movie for you. Hotline premiered on CBS in 1982, and, unlike other made-for-TV fare of the same vintage (see: 1981’s No Place to Hide), it backs up its suspense with some genuine scares.

Carter plays Brianne O’Neill, an art student and part-time bartender at a country-and-western watering hole. Widowed when her Navy pilot husband died in an accident—fortunately, there are no Thin Ice shenanigans afoot—she attracts unwanted attention wherever she goes, and particularly at work. “Watch out, Bri,” a waitress cautions at the start of her latest shift. “I think there’s a full moon out tonight. The fanny-grabbers are out in force.”

Stalked by My Doctor Violates HIPAA, Good Taste

By Cranky Lesbian

On June 17, 2022

In TV Movies

The doctor is in(sane) in *Stalked by My Doctor*.

Written by a bot, directed by a Pomeranian recovering from dental surgery, and starring Eric Roberts (supported by a cast plucked at random from a Target parking lot), Stalked by My Doctor has no reason to exist. Since premiering in 2015, it has spawned 78 sequels, because something must fill the void in our hearts left by the conclusion of Syfy’s Sharknado saga. Recently, when curiosity about this morbid, unrepentantly tacky franchise finally got the better of me, I went to Amazon to see what I was missing.

Before pressing “play,” I invited my wife, Dr. Crankenstein, to share in this special viewing experience. (As previously reported, that was a terrible mistake. I’m now obliged to watch its sequels.) She personally knows a physician who was stalked by a patient, but no patients stalked by doctors. Of this premise, Crankenstein somberly remarked, “That’s not just a violation of the Hippocratic Oath, it’s also a violation of HIPAA.”

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

By Cranky Lesbian

On June 10, 2022

In Music

I don’t have many prized possessions, but this old poster follows me wherever I go. Judy at Carnegie Hall is one of those albums, like Pet Sounds, The Queen is Dead or Sweet Old World, that helps make life more understandable — and more bearable. Today, to commemorate Judy Garland’s centennial, I’ll listen to it “and swing it from Virginia/to Tennessee with all the love that’s in ya.” And I’ll also look for time to rewatch The Clock, my favorite Garland film, this weekend.

In keeping with the spirit of this website, I did a little digging to see if Garland’s younger daughter, Lorna Luft (of Grease 2 fame), had any TV movie credits. Behold, the poorly titled Fear Stalk from 1989, by director Larry Shaw. (I enjoyed his Mother Knows Best but wasn’t as keen on The Ultimate Lie.) The plot sounds rather thin: a purse thief stalks a producer in Beverly Hills.

“JAAAAA!”

By Cranky Lesbian

On June 4, 2022

In Tennis

Do I think Casper Ruud actually screamed “JAAAAA!” at Holger Rune in the locker room after their Roland-Garros semifinal clash? No. But did I yell it in my living room after Iga Świątek won her second major title today? Yes.

And then I retrieved from the freezer the same pint of ice cream I’d tossed in the grocery cart during a Ben & Jerry’s sale four weeks earlier. “This is for when Świątek wins the French,” I told my disinterested wife that day. For Wimbledon maybe I’ll mix things up and get some cookie dough ice cream instead.

Tomorrow I hope to celebrate a Coco Gauff win in doubles, and for Rafael Nadal to further extend his lead in Grand Slam singles titles over Novak Djokovic. As a Federer purist whose second-favorite player for many years was Djoker, that’s a strange situation to find oneself in. But Djokovic’s attitude of late has made him difficult to support, and I think there’s a decent chance Nadal retires before the end of the weekend, so let’s make hay while the sun shines.

Barbara Stanwyck Charges Ten Cents a Dance

By Cranky Lesbian

On June 2, 2022

In '30s Films

It’s not every day that you dust off a 1931 pre-code Barbara Stanwyck film because of a ’90s-era Cheryl Ladd TV movie, but I wouldn’t mind if it happened more often. While toiling on an upcoming post about Ladd’s Dancing with Danger (1994), in which she played a taxi dancer, I was reminded of Stanwyck’s turn as a woman in the same profession in Ten Cents a Dance.

Stanwyck is my favorite American actress. This is a play on the possibly apocryphal Clifton Webb quote about her (“My favorite American lesbian,” discussed more below), but it’s also the truth. Behind my desk is a framed original insert poster for There’s Always Tomorrow, and I own nearly all of her films that have been released on DVD. When, years ago, I cheekily volunteered to die for assorted femme fatales, Stanwyck didn’t make the list. That’s because I would’ve been a comically dazed Henry Fonda in her presence, not a Fred MacMurray.

Barbara Stanwyck with Ricardo Cortez in *Ten Cents a Dance*.

Ten Cents a Dance is one of her least scandalous pre-code films, and has strange origins. It is, as the credits note, “based upon the popular song by Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers.” Stanwyck plays Barbara O’Neill, a young woman with dim prospects employed at the Palais de Dance. When a crude, tobacco-chewing sailor asks “What’s a guy gotta do to dance with you gals?” Barbara replies with half a sneer, “All you need is a ticket and some courage.” Her irritation is palpable as he drags her across the floor.