Monday, September 30, 2013

Medicine Show


For one reason or another - possibly because the flat is in such a state of extreme chaos that we've simply given up - Mr. Muscat and I have been watching more television than normal.

Sunday, September 29, 2013

Having a Moment...


...Greta Gustaffson style.  I love this shot; I don't think I've ever seen her looking so peeved.

Friday, September 27, 2013

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Birthday Boy: The Feats of Strength


Let's wish a very happy 99, shall we, to the decorative creature seen here on one of your finer Eisenhower-era periodicals?

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Here We Go Again...


Hey, kids!  Remember that fun time back - oh, it feels like forever ago, but it was really only a matter of weeks?

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Birthday Girl: Unlucky in Love


We reach rather further than usual back into the mists of history to salute today's birthday girl - all the way back, in fact, to 1515, when the girl so resplendently adorned here in Mr. Holbein's fine portrait came into the world in, of all places, Düsseldorf.

Saturday, September 21, 2013

Shameless Saturday Camp Explosion: Flyin' High Now



Camp taste turns its back on the good-bad axis of ordinary aesthetic judgment.
- Susan Sontag, "Notes on Camp"

Ladies and gents - the Moranbong Band!

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Two for the Road


One thing this photo tells me:  it is unwise to attempt an Adrian look unless you actually have Adrian dressing you.  This comes close - but Norma really should have known better.

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Birthday Boy: The Continental


On the 97th anniversary of his birth, let's spend a moment admiring the European charms of dear Signore Rossano Brazzi.

Monday, September 16, 2013

Always Jam Today


You know what's different in a small apartment as compared to a large house?  Well, I'll tell you:  one of Mr. Muscato's jam sessions.

Monday, September 9, 2013

First, Last, and Always a Star


There's nothing like a ten-hour flight to plow through a good book, and that's exactly what I did yesterday, flying back from Vienna.

Saturday, September 7, 2013

Friday, September 6, 2013

Vilia, O Vilia...


My perfectly adequate little business hotel (sadly, a triumph more of function than gemütlichkeit) is located across the street from the Stadtpark, which even among the very high competition set by Vienna parks stands out as especially pretty and insistently themed.

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

A Simple Man


The last "real" Emperor of the unlikely entity that was the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Franz Josef I (his great nephew, Charles I, reigned for two short years at the end of the First War, to no avail) hovers like a gray ghost over the capital in which he ruled for nearly 70 years.

Monday, September 2, 2013

Memento Mori


So how was your Labor Day?  Had a few friends over; saw some family?  Me?  Oh, I spent the afternoon with a cryptful of dead Hapsburgs...

Sunday, September 1, 2013

First Impressions


After only a few hours in this curious city, I think I can safely pass on one thing:  Vienna is, if nothing else, a city utterly unafraid to be itself.