The Life Aquatic The Life Aquatic Ever since Moonrise Kingdom, I have had my concerns about Wes Anderson, less as a film director and more as a person. In that film I was simply offended by him having a young pre-adolescent girl running around flashing her white underwear. Strangely enough, if he had put her in colored or flowered underwear I would have had less of a problem. To me it was like having a…
The Cheesecake Connection The Cheesecake Connection It’s 2020 and I am working through my self-assigned chores as diligently as I can. I have started on the garage door openers. What can be more suburban than garage door openers? They scream that we live in car country and that we are all about technological convenience. I choose not to call it laziness, and God knows I am lazy, but garage door openers have entered the realm…
Here Comes the Sun Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been clear Here comes the sun Here comes the sun, and I say It’s all right – The Beatles, Abbey Road, 1969 (50 years ago) Out here in California I wake up every day to the sunrise over Mt. Palomar to the East. It’s a perfect setting for my morning joint-soothing dip into the…
Imperfect Vision How many stories will be written about the implications of entering 2020? I suspect they will be many and they will carry on throughout the coming year. I will even anticipate a whole spate of stories about leaving 2020 behind symbolically. I just wish all the analogies and metaphors were justified. Any implication that the future is clear and readable in this messy world we live in is naive. The stock market is…
Car Culture Do you remember American Graffiti with Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfus and Harrison Ford? It was 29-year-old George Lucas’ breakout directorial and screenwriting debut. It was set in 1962 Modesto, California. That feels perfectly normal and to be expected for this American coming-of-age classic, except that it was only filmed a decade after the time it was set, which makes me scratch my head about how Lucas and all of us could get so…
The Truth About Duluth Ever since I gave up on wearing tidy whiteys, which must now be over thirty years ago, I have been in search of the perfect underwear. That may sound like a mundane quest or one that should never have been in play, but the technology of clothing and materials has come a long way. We were all raised to think that only cotton could keep you comfortable, and that keeping it…
Bye-Bye Bernie I want to write a piece about the resurgence of Bernie Sanders in the latest polls. I want it to be a well-balanced discussion about the man, the politics and supporters that stalwartly stand behind the guy. I was torn between this title and the more obvious Weekend at Bernie’s. Since I’m publishing this piece on Sunday, the alternate title seemed initially more appropriate, but it was just too easy so I chose…
A Call to Greatness Today, while wandering through a Home Depot looking for flashlights and varmint spray I got a call from Lulu Publishing. They are the the self-publishing company that I have used to publish three books written mostly in 2017 when I had lots of time on my hands as the New York Wheel went into legal rigor mortis over the issue of construction costs, which were under firm completion-guaranteed fixed-price contract, but…
Boxing Day San Diego this morning seems stuck in that mix of sunny skies in one direction and threatening rain in another.I am adjusting more and more every day to my new existence out here and trying my best to think like someone who will be doing this for a long, long time. I am already well over any jet lag, which is to be expected since I didn’t jet out in the first place,…
The Jabrone Preamble As it turns out, there are Gibronis, Jibronis and Jabrones and they collectively attest to the power of urban lexicon. The differences between the words is pretty insignificant, even though some seem to want to parse that some are meant to declare rather than denigrate; designate, but not condemn. I find that all pretty funny and more indicative of our Uber-concerns about political correctness, or more accurately our fervent wish to not…