Babylon Revisited After two days of raucous holiday festivities on the hilltop (22 in attendance on Christmas Eve and 14 in attendance on Christmas Day), by late afternoon we were ready to crash hard as the day wound down and the travelers hit the road for points known and unknown. We were left with Tom and Jenna and Kim and I with the added knowledge that Tom and Jenna would be leaving in the morning…
The Quantum of Life I have written in the past about string theory and ring theory, but doubt I could give you an elevator pitch on either. I think I am a reasonably intelligent guy, and I’m certainly well-educated by most standards. Nonetheless, I know a fair bit about my limits. I hit some of those limits ( a funny mathematical pun which gets me right to my “limit” when it comes to mathematics) as…
The Enchanted Village Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, and Kim gotta sing. Now that we live out here, Kim is singing with a choral ensemble called Encore. Technically they only have two big shows each year and one of those was last month in La Jolla, where she gave the Eleventh Hour solo, which was a big hit. Here we are a month later and Kim has volunteered with the group to sing in…
Where’s Waldo? I am thoroughly confused. I consider myself a very rational person. I am a sequential reasoner. If A=B and B=C, then A=C. What is so hard about all of that? Isn’t that what made America great? Well, I am once again staring at the clock and it says 4:44 and I don’t mean in the late afternoon. Both Kim and I were very tired last night after a long day traveling back to…
Polymals on the Loose I have a funky few days here in Manhattan this week. Usually I’m in New York either to see the kids or for Kim’s singing performances. We did the whole Lincoln Center gig thing last visit and the early kid Christmas activities were this weekend. I’ve been doing early Christmas with the kids for 33 or so years, so I’m pretty used to that program. My older kid’s mother is a…
Skin Tags We were watching a movie last night, The Family Stone, staring Diane Keaton and various other celebrities. Two of the actresses who were in the younger generation of the family were Sarah Jessica Parker and Rachel McAdams. During the camera close-ups, it became obvious that each had a similar mole on her right-side chin, which distinguished her face with what our society generally calls a beauty mark. It was funny seeing a well-known…
The Club What has ever become of the Club? No, I do not mean that kryptonite steel bar that we used to use to secure our steering wheels so that when we parked on the streets of New York, perpetrators could not easily steal our cars. I checked and those contraptions are apparently still available for about $40, so I assume that they still work. Old school, but, I guess, pretty effective. No, I am…
Fresh Garbage When I was in high school, my sister Barb was a groupie of a European band called The Free Love. Their hit song was called Fresh Garbage and it’s tagline was “Look beneath your little morning, see the things you didn’t quite consume, the world’s a can for your fresh garbage….nah, nah,nah,nah,nah,nah, Na-nah, nah…” It was quite a hit. My pal Mike gets a regular 8+ hours of sleep each night. He goes…
The World Needs More Italians I am perhaps the least Italian-looking person you may ever meet. People might mistake me for German, Eastern European, Russian, Scandinavian and yes, I even get mistaken for being Jewish more often than you might think (must be the Eastern European shtetl look I have about me). But for the three years I lived in Rome, the many times I have visited Italy and spoken reasonably fluent Italian and any…
A Hallmark Card One of Kim’s favorite things about the holidays is to watch countless numbers of Hallmark holiday movies. Approximately 56 million people have access to the Hallmark Channel via their cable or satellite TV access. Since 2004, this cable channel has zeroed in on what is obviously a very powerful demographic. They really do two things throughout the year, produce and play holiday movies and mystery movies. I’m not sure why that combination…