We are closing in on a full week of being on tenterhooks. The phrase means to be in a state of anxiety, suspense, or painful anticipation. The expression comes from a very practical origin in the textile industry: A tenter was a wooden frame used to stretch woolen cloth after washing, preventing it from shrinking as it dried. The cloth would be attached to the frame using metal hooks (tenterhooks) to hold it taut. This…
Last night we rewatched a 2024 movie that we had seen, but which must not have left much of an impression on me since I was intrigued by the snippet of Prime that advertised it. The movie is called Lonely Planet and its about some people that go off to a writer’s retreat in Morocco. One of the attendees is Liam Hemsworth, younger brother of actor Chris. He is not a writer, but rather a…
Do you remember those scenes in the epic 1992 film, My Cousin Vinnie, written/produced by my friend Dale Launer, when freight trains rumble past his hotel night after night making him sit bolt upright? Well, I’ve found a spot where they could’ve filmed those scenes. There are three coast-to-coast Interstate highways in the United States: I-10: Running from Santa Monica, California to Jacksonville, Florida (the southernmost transcontinental route) I-80: Running from San Francisco, California to…
This is the year of Bob Dylan. The recent movie about his life and rise to fame, called A Complete Unknown, starring Timothee Chalamet, certainly has returned the iconic song writer to the front of our collective consciousness. Ive noticed that there are simply more stories, cartoons, articles all about Bob Dylan that are clearly a function of the new movie. His biggest songs were: Based on commercial success and cultural impact, here are some…
Last night I was at a dinner of a dozen of us from the neighborhood. I got a call from my sister, Barbara, who lives in Las Vegas. I ignored it out of phone politeness to those around the table. When the phone rang a second time I got up to answer it because you never know when an emergency might arise. She was calling to make sure we were OK based on what she…
There is an old joke that involves a guy who goes to Hell and is asked by Satan to choose his preferred poison. The first room is freezing cold with snow and ice all around and everybody in that room is shivering cold. The second room is your classic hellscape with fire and brimstone and everyone in that room is in agony as their flesh burns. In the last room, everyone is standing around in…
We, like so many people, used to say that we were not cruise people. It’s funny how that has changed over time and once you get a look at the people who do cruise you understand that unless you are going on Carnival, Celebrity or Disney (all of which tend to cater to families with kids), the adult cruise lines have an older demographic. Our choice of cruise lines is the one that gets consistently…
I have to admit that as strange as it may sound coming from someone who has spent his entire adult life over 300 pounds, I am eating less and less every day. The prevalence of reduced food intake (also called anorexia of aging) among seniors is a very real phenomenon. According to studies, approximately 15-20% of older adults living independently experience significant decreased food intake. The percentage rises to 30-40% among those living in assisted…
As I started my senior year in college, 1974, a guy by the name of Robert Pirsig wrote this philosophical novel as an exploration of the concept of Quality. What he called the Metaphysics of Quality (MOQ) originated with his college studies as a student of biochemistry. He found the number of rational hypotheses for any given phenomenon appeared to be unlimited. It seemed to him that this undermined the validity of the scientific method.…
Back in the summer of 1971, when I was 17 and not really legal yet, I anxiously left my home in Rome, Italy (actually skipping my high school graduation) just to get myself to, of all places, Cleveland, Ohio. It was my first real summer job since leaving the States in 1968 and it was at Case Western Reserve University, so it felt like the start of my college career even though I was just…