Chinese Menu We have just seen the conclusion of a pow-wow between Xi Jianping of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia. In theory this should be no big deal since the dynamic duo have met together over 25 times (I heard a pundit say it was 40 times, but I can only verify 25 or so of those), and that’s a lot. That speaks to a number of things, not the least of which is…
Cry Me a River Twenty years ago, Justin Timberlake broke up with Britney Spears and sang a song that has become a hallmark of “she done me wrong” weepy love songs. Cry Me a River has become the ultimate breakup song even though it was first sung in 1955 by Julie London. If you ask someone to define what the title means, they are likely to tell you that its about a public display of…
Forget Paris In 1995, Billy Crystal wrote, directed, produced and starred in a movie for which he enlisted Debra Winger as his love interest. That movie was called Forget Paris and it gets a modest 6.5 rating on IMDb, but is actually a very funny and somewhat poignant movie about life and love and how hard it is to expect that things don’t move on in life, whether we want them to or not. Who…
Bracing for Survival In my youth and up to age 40 or so, I was 6’5” tall. I am now less than 6’4” and still receding. I know everyone shrinks a bit as they age, but I feel I have less shrunk than been compressed by gravity. When you carry around the amount of bulk I have for almost 70 years, its quite amazing that my muscles and bones have been able to hold up…
The Worm Comes Home to Roost Worms are not terribly likable beings. The ones in the ground seem pretty harmless and some people, mostly organic gardeners, will tell you about all the good things that worms do for biodiversity and eco-balance. The ones that find their way into our bodies in various ways are a lot less pleasant, whether causing a crescent mark on the head of some ten-year-old Opey or being the subject of…
One Fine Day In 1963 the Chiffons came out with their version of the Carol King song, One Fine Day. In 1996, what have become two of the most iconic stars of the big screen, George Clooney and Michelle Pfeiffer, made a movie with the same name and which used the Chiffon’s recording as it’s theme song. In the movie, two single parents with one young child apiece and struggling careers, spend a day chasing…
Insuring Eternity Back in the late 1970’s when I was beginning my career in banking, I was traveling across New England almost every week, visiting a combination of banks and insurance companies to sell them our banking services. I was a member of FI or financial institutions side of the bank. For some strange reason, the FI side of banking was always the red-headed step-child of the banking business compared to the corporate side. The…
Marshaling an Effort In 1991 I bought my first ski condo in Park City. Technically it was in Deer Valley, actually, an out of the way corner of Deer Valley, not near any of the ski runs. The houses and condos adjacent to the ski runs cost about $1 million more since the ability to ski-in and ski-out is so desirable. I seem to recall that I paid something like $230,000 for this three-bedroom, three-bath…
Itchy Brother Do you remember your cartoons from childhood? There were so many, but some were so good that they were memorable. Then again, it might have been that we watched them over and over again since the networks had figured out that kids actually liked the repetition and familiarity if bred, as opposed to the adults who scorned re-runs as below-grade entertainment. And in those days, TV advertising was geared to the mothers of…
COVID Schmovid I have just travelled through seven different global airports on eight different flights, spending some fifty hours in airplane cabins with their recirculated air, over the past few weeks. We stayed in seven different hotels and ate in something like thirty different restaurants ranging from an elegant Middle Eastern Lebanese restaurant on the Nile to Tre Scalini on the Piazza Navonna in Rome, all the way to a Martian Dome eating hall at…