Why Don’t He Write? We all remember Dances With Wolves, that wonderful Kevin Costner epic about life on the plains for a post-Civil-War soldier who befriends the local Indian tribe and realizes that they are better people than most western settlers he knows. Costner gets to his lonely and desolate frontier fort by means of a buggy ride from a noxious frontiersman who eats pickled eggs and farts loudly. He has one great line as…
Untamed Heart I believe the best movie ever made by Christian Slater and Marisa Tomei may be the obscure 1993 Untamed Heart. He was 24 and she 29 when it was made. He played a quiet, questionably intelligent young dishwasher who was an orphan with a severely damaged congenital heart problem. She is a working-class young woman who works as a diner waitress, trying to better her position and who has her share of boy-problems…
I Think I’m Going to Cry Again Kim and I enjoy watching Michael Douglas and Akan Arkin in The Kominsky Method on Netflix. They are Hollywood friends of a certain age even though Arkin is 85 and Douglas is ten years younger. I am ten years younger again than Douglas, but I find this show hilarious. Maybe that’s because it’s written by Chuck Lorre, creator of The Big Bang Theory, and a man of…
On My Sleeve It is said by Shakespeare that Iago, Othello’s less-than-faithful servant, wears his feelings on his sleeve. We all know what a crafty fellow Iago was, so it seems somewhat like a head-fake to think that he would be so obvious. And long before that, the Roman army, which strongly discouraged its legionnaires from marrying (presumably for fear that they would go less than all-out if they had something to lose), allowed…
The Clown Show I argue every day about who are the bigger clowns in Washington. All my readers know I have strong views on the happenings on Capitol Hill. Too many people these days default to the notion that bad behavior is matched by the antics of the opposite side. In fact, it seems to be used as a response to, if not a rationalization for, the bad behavior altogether. This is simply not…
Donna Azucar In 1974 I was a student at Cornell majoring in Economics and Government. My studies had taken a decided focus on development economics and third-world government. It’s not complicated, my mother was a UN diplomat living in Rome and serving as a director of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). She was the dominant force in my life, my role model, my muse. I assume I wanted to follow in her footsteps. …
One Fine Day Again I am staring out across New York Harbor at the Verrazano Bridge from my dining room table. It is the last week of October and we are an hour from sunset, so its that loveliest time of day. I wandered home, walking the entire half block along State Street with a pleasant breeze blowing. There is not a cloud in the sky and the water is just mildly choppy, just enough…
Thick as Thieves Bankers stick together. The concept of a Club Deal and a Syndication were both invented by bankers. They love to hang together so that no one looks too stupid when a deal goes bad. Everyone likes to free ride on the other guy’s diligence or smarts. I should know, I was a senior banker for over forty years. And you’ve heard the expression “honor among thieves”? That implies that one banker would…
Limping Towards Greatness We all want to believe that the path to success is about moving in a straight line towards our goal, gaining momentum as we go and charging across the finish line with a building sense of certainty and satisfaction. That may happen for some people, but I would like to meet them. Success is far more often a four-cushion shot or even a random walk. I have even seen people accidentally…
Why So Serious? As of today, the fifth-ranked movie of 2019 is Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker, the non-Marvel prequel to the Batman franchise. I went with my youngest son, who has been addicted to the Joker character ever since Heath Ledger made it his swan song for all intents and purposes. The trend in movies has clearly moved to a combination of Disney animation blockbusters for kids and Marvel superhero blockbusters for adolescents. In fact,…