When did we get so damned mean? And so stupid? Forgive my partisanship here, but I’m not sure the Republican Party could continue to exist without meanness and stupidity. It always seems to show up at the worst times, whether it was Donald Trump throwing paper towels to hurricane victims in Puerto Rico or Ron …
I saw a meme this morning suggesting that if someone was annoyed at all the unwanted phone calls they were getting, the solution was to get rid of their landline. Just another snark at people supposedly too old or unhip to have a cellphone. It isn’t even true anymore. Once was the time when one …
One thing you will rarely hear an old person say: “Things are so much nicer now than they were when I was young.” If you look at the picture above, you’ll see a place that was the closest thing to heaven for kids growing up in Brooklyn in the first half of the last century. …
Everybody makes lists of what they consider the greatest movies. Or the worst movies. Or their favorite movies. I want to do something a little different. I’m going to pick 10 movies that weren’t in the running for big awards, that didn’t make any best-of-the-year lists, that no one would call the director or the …
MY 10 FAVORITE GOOFY MOVIES I’LL WATCH OVER & OVER Read More »
I saw a post on Facebook by television personality Roy Firestone in which he expressed annoyance that he made a reference to Howard Cosell on a morning TV show in Los Angeles and the host had no idea who Cosell was. He cited other shows in which various people had no idea who Bing Crosby …
COSELL JUST AN EXAMPLE OF OUR FRAGMENTED CULTURE Read More »
In explaining his midlife crisis in the movie “Middle Age Crazy,” Bruce Dern’s character says life was good when his father was still alive. His father was Daddy to him and he was Kiddo to his dad. Now he’s 40, his father is gone and he doesn’t like it. “I want to be the kiddo …
When I was much younger, I had a close friend who was extremely homophobic. So much so, in fact, that he used to say if he learned that a friend of his was homosexual, that person could no longer be his friend. Some years later, he thought he was showing tolerance by calling gay men …
I was 20 years old the first time I heard a song by Elton John. “It’s a little bit funny, this feeling inside …” It was one of the worst autumns of my life. My first real girlfriend had returned from a summer at home in New England. to say she still loved me only …
If there’s one thing true, it’s that far too many Americans no longer believe in the words from Emma Lazarus’s poem “New Colossus” that are inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. Don’t kid yourself. Our tolerance and inclusiveness have nearly always been something better in ideals than in reality. Ken Burns’ brilliance in studying historical …
BURNS’ HOLOCAUST SERIES IS SOMETHING WE MUST SEE Read More »
$1,250. $2,342. The first number is the approximate Blue Book value of my car, a Hyundai Tucson we bought new in Van Nuys, California, in August 2009 for about $25,000. We have put 161,000 miles on it, coast to coast east and west and Florida to Massachusetts north and south. (Not all at the same …
