Up at Night It’s 3:30am and do you know where your mind has wandered off to? There is nothing so frustrating as insomnia. The older we get, the more we come to realize that the simplest of bodily functions are the ones that give us the most peace and happiness. Few things that I want to discuss in a story do this more than a good night’s sleep. I characterize a good night’s sleep…
The Big Uneasy I’ve never been to New Orleans, which is amazing because there aren’t many places in the U.S. or abroad that I’ve missed visiting. I don’t know when I first heard the nickname The Big Easy, but I’m guessing it was about the time the James Conaway novel by that name was published in 1970, or at least by the time Dennis Quaid played Remy McSwain in the 1986 movie, again of the…
Birth of a Movement I am coming up on my 66th birthday next week. That used to be a relative nondescript milestone, but now, thanks to the shifting retirement standards of social security which make me a part of the first cohort to get pushed back on their retirement date by a full year. I am now technically eligible for “full retirement benefits” as of January 30, 2020. Those who are sixty now will wait…
Let’s Get Physical With the move to San Diego there are many tasks and transitions needed to make everything flow smoothly. Kim and I have the good fortune to be in good health. I am in surprisingly good health given my size and my ongoing lifestyle choices. My family and I joke about how 23&Me designates me as being predisposed to be a performance athlete. I care little about that, but I certainly do prefer…
The Life Aquatic The Life Aquatic Ever since Moonrise Kingdom, I have had my concerns about Wes Anderson, less as a film director and more as a person. In that film I was simply offended by him having a young pre-adolescent girl running around flashing her white underwear. Strangely enough, if he had put her in colored or flowered underwear I would have had less of a problem. To me it was like having a…
The Cheesecake Connection The Cheesecake Connection It’s 2020 and I am working through my self-assigned chores as diligently as I can. I have started on the garage door openers. What can be more suburban than garage door openers? They scream that we live in car country and that we are all about technological convenience. I choose not to call it laziness, and God knows I am lazy, but garage door openers have entered the realm…
Here Comes the Sun Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been clear Here comes the sun Here comes the sun, and I say It’s all right – The Beatles, Abbey Road, 1969 (50 years ago) Out here in California I wake up every day to the sunrise over Mt. Palomar to the East. It’s a perfect setting for my morning joint-soothing dip into the…
Imperfect Vision How many stories will be written about the implications of entering 2020? I suspect they will be many and they will carry on throughout the coming year. I will even anticipate a whole spate of stories about leaving 2020 behind symbolically. I just wish all the analogies and metaphors were justified. Any implication that the future is clear and readable in this messy world we live in is naive. The stock market is…
Car Culture Do you remember American Graffiti with Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfus and Harrison Ford? It was 29-year-old George Lucas’ breakout directorial and screenwriting debut. It was set in 1962 Modesto, California. That feels perfectly normal and to be expected for this American coming-of-age classic, except that it was only filmed a decade after the time it was set, which makes me scratch my head about how Lucas and all of us could get so…
Boxing Day San Diego this morning seems stuck in that mix of sunny skies in one direction and threatening rain in another.I am adjusting more and more every day to my new existence out here and trying my best to think like someone who will be doing this for a long, long time. I am already well over any jet lag, which is to be expected since I didn’t jet out in the first place,…