The Attraction Game Today I got an unexpected call from my friend Travis. Travis is a wonderful guy I met about seven years ago. He is a guy who always has a bright smile and easy laugh. He is a guy who I would always choose to have a meal with because he is simply an interesting guy. He lives in Croton-on-Hudson with his Kiwi wife Fiona and his two boys, Connor and Jack. They…
The Swordfish In The Trunk Back in 2004, I moved from the Gramercy area of New York City to The South Street Seaport. I bought a lovely penthouse apartment on Beekman Street with a large 1,700 foot terrace. It had the distinction of actually being within the Seaport blocks and was thus part of the Seaport. In 2004 the Fulton Fish Market was still an active part of the South Street Seaport even though the…
Knowing The Score For years I was looking for a Robert DeNiro movie that had caught my fancy the one time I saw it years ago. It was a movie where he played a seasoned safe-cracker of global renown who pulls off heists in the U.S. and elsewhere and then works his way back to his real life home in Montreal. There he lives in an Art Deco designed apartment and owns a classy, but…
Moving On I’m ready. I always liked that old adage, “I was born ready.” We have had a long twenty years as a nation. We are in our third major national crisis by my reckoning. I guess that since I have no military background and don’t have kids or relatives who have served in the various wars in the Middle East (Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan), I tend to think of the national crises as being the…
Wakey-Wakey One of my favorite movies is The World’s Fastest Indian, starring Anthony Hopkins. The obvious reason for my affection is that the subject is motorcycle speed racing on the Bonneville Salt Flats of Western Utah. Any movie about motorcycling is of interest to me, but this one holds a particularly special place in my heart. It is about an old New Zealand codger named Burt Monro from Invercargill on the South Island, who spends…
Brad Moon Rising I have now given Handy Brad eight months of more or less continuous employment. Assuming an average 35 hour per week, that means I practically have had a full-time staff member most of the year to help me with my projects around the house. Those have included re-stuccoing the back side of the house and deck, re-flashing the deck, power-washing the entire house’s stucco, replacing the utility room outer doors, building concrete…
We’re Not In Kansas Anymore I worry about Kansas. My friend David bought the rights to a recent book about the life of Carry Nation, the hatchet-wielding leader of the temperance movement who was also a Suffragette. He asked me to write a treatment of the book for a possible movie. I did that and ended up learning more about Ms. Nation than I had intended. The project hasn’t gone anywhere just yet, but we’ll…
The Gambit of Life I have begun watching the Netflix series called The Queen’s Gambit. It is a series set, like so many others of interest to me these days, in the 1960’s and it centers around chess. It is the story of a global chess Grandmaster by the name of Beth Harmon who is the orphan of a mathematics professor and a very troubled mother with a great deal of intellect. She is raised…
Perfection Redefined It is a cloudy and mildly rainy day here on the Escondido hilltop. To begin with, what brings all of this to mind this Sunday morning is that I have been awaiting this rain day for over ten days now. I know that by March I will be wondering what I was thinking wishing for rain, but to the best of my recollection, it hasn’t really rained here since April. I know that’s…
Backing Up On Ice Have you ever driven a car or truck with a trailer attached? And did you try to back-up with that trailer attached? I’ll bet almost everyone has at one time or another. It’s challenging the first time and it takes a long time for it to get less challenging. I’m sure a neurologist can explain why our brains are not wired to easily handle doing things in reverse with lots of…