Droning On Today was a perfect day in many ways with the exception that we are still quarantined and kept from our loved ones. That circumstance may, indeed, have made the small pleasures of the day seem so much more. To begin with, the temperature rose from a cool and brisk 56 degrees to a midday high of 70 degrees. That meant that a morning hot tub was ideal in its warmth. It was there…
The 600 Year Blink I read two enlightening articles this morning, one from The New Yorker and one from The Atlantic. It has occurred to me lately that in the age of digitized content, several magazines have seemed to be in ascendancy rather than decline like so many other magazines. In the pattern unfolding of the Coronavirus era, I sense that magazines will not be excluded from the tendency to accelerate the prevailing trends. The…
Deposing Views Today I was involved with an all-day deposition in a case where I am acting as an expert witness. I spent about 10-12 hours reading all the materials I had written on the case (1 46-page Report, 2 20-24-page Rebuttal Replies), the two rebuttals (each 25-30-pages) and various summary motions, articles, etc. I had worked on the case from late November through mid-January, when I wrote the first report. I spent 56 hours…
A Hitch in the Ointment Mixed metaphors are a wonderful thing. People who use them are usually not the sharpest cookie in the jar. Take Donald Trump….please (apologies to Henny Youngman). He’s never metaphor that he didn’t like and he uses them so much that it’s hard to tell which he feels are intentionally doubled up and which he doesn’t even realize are metaphorical. And it’s not like he has a problem distinguishing between metaphors…
The Big Ass Effect Before you get too excited, let me explain that yesterday I hosted a Zoomathon for my American Flyers Motorcycle Club, who formally celebrates its Silver (25th!) Anniversary this month. There were eighteen participating callers with a total of thirty-four attendees plus two (Nik and Charlene) who I inadvertently left out in the Zoom waiting room, failing to admit them after I had admitted three tranches of other entrants waiting. Oops. I…
Ultimate Democratization The year was 2000 and we had just come through the Y2K scare relatively unscathed. It was not for lack of scrambling and effort as you may recall, so who knows whether we averted a crisis by getting out ahead of it by sounding the alarms, or if the concern was over-hyped and was never really a big risk. Either way, it was nice to see that Y2K did little to slow the…
Conquering Paradise It’s Monday morning and another great day in Paradise. Yesterday I started watching the 1992 movie 1492: Conquest of Paradise with Gerard Depardieu. I was prompted in that direction by a National Geographic article on a great new Mayan (more likely Toltec) artifact find in Chichen Itza in the middle of the Yucatán jungle. That reminded me of the Mel Gibson directed film Apocalypto about a manhunt by tribal people though the jungle.…
Another Pleasant Valley Sunday I don’t mind outing myself as a Monkees fan. In the 60’s everybody my age was a Monkees fan. And then for thirty years or so I had to secretly hanker for a little Daydream Believer not to mention Another Pleasant Valley Sunday . Now that both Davy Jones and Peter Tork are dearly departed, only Mike Nesmith and Mickey Dolenz are left and between the two they have over 150…
Keeping Busy Yesterday, Kim and I made the trip from our home to Ventura, which, for those not familiar with California geography, is 175 miles north of here on the Pacific coast north of Los Angeles. I had ordered that new motorcycle seat for the new bike and I didn’t want to trust or suffer the over-burdened package delivery services since I had to both get my new seats and drop off my old seats…
Needless Mark-up I hear that Neiman Marcus is likely to declare bankruptcy soon as the latest signal that the retail business sector is the next in what promises to be an ongoing array of zombie business segments in the new normal. This morning I heard a retail analyst talking about it. He was actually quite balanced about it all. Clearly Neiman Marcus is an iconic brand that has been around for 113 years. It originated…