Passing by the Tattoo Parlor
An almost Norman Rockwellesque tableau, if the old master painted urban types. A tattoo parlor in downtown San Francisco.
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Ellen Degeneres’ Tweet Heard ‘Round the World
It was a rich moment: Ellen Degeneres snapped an impromptu selfie as she hosted the Oscars, and requested that viewers retweet it with the goal of breaking the record for most retweets. The Twitterverse responded with a frenzy. I'm trying to decode the …
Clarence Thomas, Where Are You?
I’m a huge fan of Jeffery Toobin, the CNN commentator and New Yorker writer. Among several other books, he wrote the definitive account of the O.J. Simpson trial, The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson. A great read.
I greatly enjoyed his …
Television is So, So, So…Dead
It’s odd that TV still has as much life as it does, given as close to the bottomless grave as it is. No one under age 35 or so cleaves to the cathode ray teat like in the golden era of classics like Love Boat and Mork & Mindy.
And it makes sense. TV …
The Great Gatsby is…Kind of a Snooze
I knew that the Great Gatsby didn't get great reviews, but I had high hopes anyway. The trailer looked good, the NYT's A.O. Scott offered a dissenting, positive review, and it's a film based on a classic novel. It ought to be hard for it not to contain …
Deep Thoughts
The university's llama appeared deep in thought this morning, as if pondering the eternal interconnectedness of all things. What's up, Mr./Ms. Llama?
A Seriously Romantic Piece of Music
Yeah, okay, you might say the arrangement gets loungey at times, but the feeling comes through. Diana Krall lights a warm candle with this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it1NaXrIN9I
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Great Moments in Film: The Dude Abides
The final scene from The Big Lebowski. Damn. One of the finest, deepest, most lyric moments in American cinema. Period.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYsw0KVRjCM
Living in a Hyperconnected World
Great column by Tom Friedman in the New York Times:
"Here is what I mean: Something really big happened in the world’s wiring in the last decade, but it was obscured by the financial crisis and post-9/11. We went from a connected world to a …
Rockin’ Beethoven
Sure, Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata is a tired warhorse, abused and over-played by generations of pianists, from the so-so to the geniuses. Think of it as a staple of the Classical Top 40. But in the hands of Valentina Lisitsa, it takes on new power and …
The Place Beyond the Pines
Saw the new Ryan Gosling/Bradley Cooper movie, The Place Beyond the Pines. It has ambitions as a Seriously Meaningful film, which it mostly lives up to. It’s a gritty flick, about what gets handed down from father to son – which isn’t always pretty – and …
The Strip, by Brian McFadden
A bright spot in political humor: Every Sunday the New York Times runs The Strip, by Brian McFadden. Mordant, brilliant, and well drawn, this insightful bit of political commentary is almost always worth checking out. Here's the title panel from this …
Agamemnon
Great show: Agamemnon, the 2,500-year old Greek play, put on in a barn in B-Burg. This play has it all: family love, complex characters, crazed rage, lust, hubris, poetry, blind prophecy, timeless questions. The shows also runs Saturday and Sunday, 8 PM, …
The site is under construction
Yup, I'm redoing my web site. Please pardon the mess! In theory, progress will be be made in the immediate future....