{"id":94150,"date":"2025-08-24T11:59:27","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T18:59:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=94150"},"modified":"2025-08-24T11:59:27","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T18:59:27","slug":"now-you-see-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2025\/08\/24\/now-you-see-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Now You See It&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It takes a lot to get my goat (even single fellas need someone to cuddle with occasionally).&nbsp; But consider my goat gotten with news from Orlando \u2013 a city where they do a helluva lot more with the goat than just cuddle!&nbsp; Under the dark of night, the rainbow crosswalks commemorating the shooting at the gay nightclub <strong><em>Pulse <\/em><\/strong>mysteriously disappeared.&nbsp; There\u2019s a whole lotta passing the buck.&nbsp; The <em>Florida Department of Transportation <\/em>issued a memo in June ordering all cities in the state to remove rainbow-colored crosswalks, or they could face withholding of transportation funds.&nbsp; But they say the order came from the top.&nbsp; US Transportation Secretary <strong>Sean Duffy <\/strong>(who I would never term as a \u201ctop\u201d) sent an edict to all states saying intersections should be \u201ckept free from distractions\u201d.&nbsp; He added, \u201cTaxpayers expect their dollars to fund safe streets, not rainbow crosswalks.\u201d&nbsp; That may be so, but the Orlando mayor <strong>Buddy Dyer <\/strong>points out that this particular crosswalk is part of a larger memorial, which was set to be completed in 2027.&nbsp; \u201cThis callous action of hastily removing part of a memorial to what was at the time our nation\u2019s largest mass shooting, without any supporting safety or discussion, is a cruel political act.\u201d &nbsp;Not to be deterred, area children corrected the situation by filling in the crosswalk colors in chalk.&nbsp; Temporary but touching.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/colorbar1.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-568\" src=\"http:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/colorbar1.gif\" alt=\"colorbar1\" width=\"500\" height=\"1\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d like to weigh in on an item you may have heard elsewhere, <strong>Colton Underwood <\/strong>has let it be known that he\u2019d like to be partnered with <strong>Mark Ballas <\/strong>on <strong><em>Dancing with the Stars<\/em><\/strong>.&nbsp; It bears noting that Ballas retired from competition when he won the <em>Len Goodman Mirrorball Trophy <\/em>in 2022.&nbsp; And, with all due respect to the fence-hopping former <strong><em>Bachelor<\/em><\/strong>, you are neither a dancer nor a star.&nbsp; Keep it in your pants, cowboy.<\/p>\n<p>Months ago we told you about the <em>HBO <\/em>documentary <strong><em>Enigma<\/em><\/strong> which compared the lives and careers of <strong>Amanda Lear <\/strong>and <strong>Lady April Ashley<\/strong>.&nbsp; In it, the director attempted repeatedly to get Lear to admit she was transgender and previously worked at <strong><em>Le Carrousel <\/em><\/strong>under the moniker <strong>Peki d\u2019Oslo<\/strong>.&nbsp; Lear stubbornly said, \u201cPeople say that, and I never deny.&nbsp; I say think what you want.&nbsp; You\u2019re free to think.&nbsp; But I know who I am, you know?&nbsp; Like the <strong><em>Queen <\/em><\/strong>\u2013 never complain, never explain.\u201d&nbsp; But she\u2019s got some explaining to do \u2013 like why she sat down for the interview in the first place.&nbsp; She claims that she was lied to by the filmmaker.&nbsp; \u201cThey said they wanted to celebrate my career.&nbsp; Instead it was a pretext to spread the usual fake news about my alleged transgender identity.\u201d&nbsp; Lear is considering taking legal action against the filmmakers and <em>HBO<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It takes a lot to get my goat (even single fellas need someone to cuddle with occasionally).&nbsp; But consider my goat gotten with news from Orlando \u2013 a city where they do a helluva lot more with the goat than just cuddle!&nbsp; Under the dark of night, the rainbow crosswalks commemorating the shooting at the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94150"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94150"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94154,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94150\/revisions\/94154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}