Wednesday, December 24, 2008

A Christmas Eve Mash-Up

“I HAVE endeavoured in this Ghostly little blog, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.”This has been a dark holiday season. Does anyone...
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Monday, December 22, 2008

QQF: Sleek Wreaths and Evergreen Trees

As Christmas decorations go, I have a soft spot in my heart for the white/silver variety, planted long ago when I saw the windows of Saks as a kid. The theme was “Christmas Across the Country.” Each window showed a different family’s holiday: a farm family, Southern family, people in Florida, San Francisco,...
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Friday, December 19, 2008

Ave Atque Vale, Avery

At a time that sees Doubt in the midst of the “Christmas season,” a special man gave one last gift to the people at large whom he served: the beauty of his own Mass of Christian Burial. Some lives are replete with gifts from cradle to grave—-such was the life of Avery Cardinal Dulles.  As the weekday...
              

Sunday, December 14, 2008

QQF: Mr. Monk and the Kick-Ass Promo

USA’s Monk came out early with its Christmas episode, the day after Thanksgiving. The episode was so-so, but the real holiday gift was the 30-second promo for the new season as Monk, p.i. It was a pitch-perfect mimic of the Magnum, p.i. opening. Starting with the declarative downbeats of that familiar...
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Friday, December 5, 2008

QQF: The Holiday Windows of Bergdorf Goodman

Midtown is decked out in its holiday finery. The TREE has been duly lit, and Cartier has wrapped itself in its annual bow, which is now a shocking LED red, instead of its classy velvet ribbon of old. Depending on how your holiday equilibrium calibrates, the decorations can lift you up, or bring you...
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Saturday, November 29, 2008

The Rockettes: High Kicks In Solidarity with their Bollywood Sisters

The shocking news from Mumbai coincided with our national day of Thanks-giving. It’s true every day that people are suffering at home and abroad. But this was an extreme juxtaposition between the formal day we give thanks for family, friends, and the beauty of this nation, and people being individually...
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Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Thanksgiving: A Time to Be Grateful for So Much

Those people cannot enjoy comfortably what God has given them because they see and covet what He has not given them. All of our discontents for what we want appear to me to spring from want of thankfulness for what we have. Robinson Crusoe, Daniel DeFoe It’s an oversimplification, but the thought...
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Thursday, November 20, 2008

November 22, 1963, to be seen from May 19, 2044

In the modern era, the death of one man stands apart from all others in American history. You don’t need to be a conspiracy fan to wonder what and who really was behind the death of John F. Kennedy. Forty-five years out, the story of the loner Oswald, then murdered by the nightclub owner Ruby, just...
              

Saturday, November 15, 2008

"Quantum of Solace": Shaken Beyond Belief

For my review of Skyfall, please go here. The title of the new Bond film begs attention be paid to its distinct words. Quantum is a great Latinate word meaning “the smallest discrete amount of any quantity.” As for "solace": “This flower is fair and fresh of hue,It fadeth never, but ever is new;The...
              

Monday, November 10, 2008

Happy Birthday, USMC

Today is the date of birth of the United States Marine Corps. It’s not something that gets much attention in the broad press.I first learned about it a few years ago, of all places, in front of the 21 Club in New York City. As I was walking by an employee was raising the distinctive Marine flag on one...
              

Thursday, November 6, 2008

My Three Best Friends: Malleus, Incus, and Stapes

My grandmother used to say that people get the funniest things, except that they are not that funny.I have fallen into that category a few times, where, among other things, I have learned new words. The one was CSF leak. That condition now has a celebrity face to it in George Clooney.The other was...
              

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

November 4, 2008: A Turning Point in History

Out of the ashes of the worst eight years in American history comes the most progressive moment in the life of this young country.I didn’t grow up in a very political household, but a socio-political moment from my childhood took form on this historic day.Somewhere in the early seventies my mother had...
              

Saturday, November 1, 2008

What are the Odds (or should I say Oods)?

Big news in the Dr. Who universe, which I learned, as I do many things, via Alan Sepinwall. David Tennant has formally announced he is leaving the role, and now we have the delicious suspense of waiting to learn who will be the eleventh doctor.Thank goodness the Irish bookmakers are on the case. They...
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Friday, October 31, 2008

A Tidbit of Terror for Halloween

The annual night of ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties is the time to talk about terror. Not the political kind, the personal kind.I’ve experienced the usual doses of fear: we sailed through the tail end of hurricane on the Schooner Appledore, and I was afraid for most of it; fear of the...
              

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

“How Long Is a Piece of String?” Lou Dorsfman, 1918 to 2008

Lou Dorfsman died last week. He was a legend in the world of graphic design for having designed “every aspect of the Columbia Broadcasting Company’s advertising and corporate identity, including the set of Walter Cronkite’s newsroom and the typographically elegant sign system for CBS’s New York headquarters,...
              

Friday, October 24, 2008

Live Blogging Mad Men: Crisis Management 101

It is possible to undergo a profound crisis involving non-ordinary experiences and to perceive it as pathological or psychiatric when in fact it may be more accurately and beneficially defined as a spiritual emergency. -- Stanislav GrofThe end of season two of Mad Men finds us all in crisis. Crisis....
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Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Entry-to-the-World Day

I’m sending me and all my fellow celebrants this bouquet of autumnal flowers, and some October-love from the poets.Today’s celebrants include Samuel Coleridge, Dizzey Gillespies, Carrie Fisher, Elvin Bishop, Manfred Mann, Ursula K. Le Guin, Whitey Ford, Patrick Kavanagh, Peter Graves, George Solti,...
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Friday, October 10, 2008

Mad Men: EST, aka Even Suckers Transform

When we last saw Don, he was in the glow of sunlight through the window of DC8 on his way to Los Angeles to get away from his domestic travails. It’s the primal tactic of flight when fight doesn’t work. Good old running away. After the week we have witnessed, we should all be so lucky if we could escape...
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Wednesday, October 8, 2008

QQF: Looking on the "Brite Side" of Wisgeuy

I was a fan of Stephen Cannell’s Wiseguy from the very beginning. I don’t know what made me start watching it back in 1987 when it debuted as a lead in to Knots Landing, amid a landscape that included Matlock, thirtysomething, and Beauty and the Beast. But Vinnie Terranova (Ken Wahl) and Sonny Steelgrave...
              

Friday, October 3, 2008

From Photojournalism to Changing Philanthropy: Signs of Sanity

Photography is a major force in explaining man to man. Edward Steichen, Time, Apr 7, 1961A spirit in my feet said 'go', and I went.Matthew Brady, on why he photographed the Civil War.In the ongoing revolution of instant information-—now led by ireporters with cell phones and bloggers around the globe...
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Saturday, September 27, 2008

Echoes of a Movie Legend in the World of Mad Men

It’s been a week of certifiable madness. Stock market insanity; bank and company failures on an epic scale; the dollar amount of 700 billion said with a straight face.And now the maddening reality of the loss of Paul Newman, who embodied the sea change of generational sensibility that is rocking Don...
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The Last of the Light in Those Blue Eyes

Paul Newman has a unique place in the history of American film. He bridged the leading-man archetype between the classic stars of the thirties and forties-—Tracy, Gable, Powell, Flynn-—and the antiheroes of the seventies-—Pacino, DeNiro, Hoffman-—having traits of both in spades.Drop-dead handsome in...
              

Friday, September 26, 2008

My Bank Failed First

In another era, nearly everyone in Brooklyn got their mortgages at the Dime Savings Bank of New York. It had been around since 1859. Not as old as The Bank of New York, founded by Alexander Hamilton, but old enough for comfort.I wasn’t part of that era, but when it came time to open a savings account as a teen on Long Island, the Dime at the mall was just fine. And years later, when I needed a mortgage,...
              

Sunday, September 21, 2008

An Eye on Television

The Emmys are the most insane of the award shows.The evening’s first two awards set a dreadful tone. Jeremy Piven won for a third consecutive year for Entourage. How does that make any sense. We all love the character Ari Gold, but three consecutive wins just shows how stupid the tabulating is for the...
              
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