The Politics of Coping We had dinner last night with the husband and son of one of Kim’s old Los Angeles friends. Neither of us knew them very well, but there was history and they were in New York on business, so we met them for dinner. What we did know about this man was that he was in commercial real estate and that he was from Orange County. Normally, that would not make for…
Another Farewell Back in 2002 I went to Las Vegas to see Cher in her farewell tour. It was a fabulous show with Cyndy Lauper as an energized opening act. Cher had a schtick at the beginning of the show where she said she had been a “fricken’ Diva” for forty years and that she had killed it in that role. This was classic Cher show of extreme self-confidence, the sort of thing only a…
Stand-up Comedy If you’ve seen the movie The Aristocrats, you know how demented comedians can be. The Aristocrats “joke” is purposefully lewd and disgusting. In fact, the joke perpetuates and magnifies the crudeness and pushes comedians to try to out-do each other with more and more sick imagination. It does not help burnish the image of the profession. I’m sure one of the biggest challenges for new comedians is to know where to draw…
The Pain of Free Will As part of my obligatory SAG/AFTRA movie viewing to help Kim with her nomination work, I have now viewed thirty-six of the fifty-four screeners we have been sent. That represents exactly two-thirds of the stack and I have another eighteen or so to get through. I have been doing a bit of binging this past weekend to play catch-up. I watched The Mustang, Parasite, Marriage Story, Cliffs of Freedom, Etruscan…
See the U.S.A. In seventeen days we will get in our leased Mercedes Benz 450 GLS, loaded up with luggage, the dog (and his dog seat…complete with seatbelt) and my Audible book files. We’ve done this before a few times, the biggest reason being that its the only way to get the dog cross-country. I like driving, so this is not something I dread. The last time we did this, we did it in three…
To Be or Not to Be In the pendulum swing of politics, Mr. Trump and his Republican lackeys in Congress have caused the pendulum swing as far right as I can imagine. When I was recently on a motorcycle trip with a solidly red friend, he asked me with genuine curiosity why I thought some people in the country are throwing their support behind Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren when their positions are clearly…
Bloomberg v. Buttigieg I am, needless to say, watching the field of Democratic contenders to the 2020 election nomination with great interest. In fact, I am watching it with a level of interest I have never once before experienced in my life. I’ve been an adult of voting age for twelve prior presidential elections, starting in 1972 and I can honestly say that I’ve watched more candidate maneuvering for the 2020 election than I have…
Virtual Reality More and more I am hearing of people who are working from home. I am unclear how I feel about this. Who among us hasn’t said something like, “I can do my work from anywhere.” There is a very big difference between occasionally working virtually on the fly, organizing your job so that you spend one way of the workweek at home for convenience, and closing down your office altogether and working entirely…
Giving Thanks I am tempted to write a Thanksgiving post in the usual manner all about counting our blessings and remembering all that we have versus most other people. I sort of thread that theme through my normal writing anyway, so I am inclined to take a very different tack today. I am sitting in an office overlooking New York Harbor with all its splendor of the Statue of Liberty and the Verrazano Bridge. It…
Shutting Down for the Holidays There are two times a year when everyone can be certain that nothing will get done. One is the dog days of August. When I lived in Italy fifty years ago (did I just say fifty? Wow!), if you took ill or had a toothache in the middle of August, you might just as well fly back to New York for treatment. I recall that the only emergency room…