If You Truly Wish To Be

I'm sorry. Some things I refuse to believe. He couldn't have been 83. That stunning, mad, sparkling mind couldn't have been extinguished even before he boarded the Great Glass Wonkevator this last time. Not that one more thing, right now.

Run Ragged

So this week has featured a houseguest, and at the moment, I feel nearly as weary as poor Miss Mary Cassatt here...

Evening in a Garden

So I didn't kill anybody.

Family Plot

Well, kids, it turns out I'm not immune to friendly (read: highly aggressive) persuasion.

Shameless Monday Camp Explosion: So Special

Thus, the Camp sensibility is one that is alive to a double sense in which some things can be taken. But this is not the familiar split-level construction of a literal meaning, on the one hand, and a symbolic meaning, on the other. It is the difference, rather, between the thing as meaning something, anything, and the thing as pure artifice.

- Susan Sontag, Notes on Camp

I... Like... Lucy?

America's best-loved redhead would have been 105 today.

Ordinary People

It's amazing how, in a time of general confusion and - to steal a word in the news earlier this week - pure malarkey, a simple, solid dose of decent behavior and common sense can resound like a bell. Ghazala and Khizr Khan gave that, and more, in their appearance at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday..

File Under "Commercial Establishments, Unfortunately Named"

O, Egypt. I do love you, but how I wish your entrepreneurs would occasionally invest in a native-language proofreader.

...*والآن رسالة من المعلن لدينا

A little Bondische derring-do, featuring a rather unusual protagonist.

* More or less "And now, a word from our sponsor.".. for all you non-Arabophiles out there.

Soon, Says the Whisper...

I'm aiming to be more cheerful this weekend, but for the moment I'll just leave this here. Not particularly original at the point, but what else is there to say?

Current Mood

Courtesy of Miss Minnelli, keeping it together quite admirably in 1986. At the moment, I really don't want to know.

Life, Infinitely Rich and Beautiful

I think that these difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever.

- Karen Blixen, letter to her brother, April 1931

O Cohors, Induamur Spectaculum!*

And now for something completely different...

Weekend Update

A quiet weekend at home, and herewith few random notes on life chez nous, at least a part of which will explain the choice of dear Mrs. Mortenson Baker Monroe DiMaggio Miller indulging herself in a little treat...

What's My Wednesdays: Mystery Gamine

It's been far too long since we checked in on the gang over at What's My Line?, and here to do something about that are regulars Mr. Cerf, Mr. Daly, and Miss Kilgallen, joined by Mr. Linkletter and the enchanting Miss Betty White.  They do well against some stiff competition, not least from a Mystery Challenger who was, indeed, to me a total mystery.

Shameless Holiday Weekend Camp Explosion: Art Film

Carissimi, I have a shocking admission to make...

Run It Up the Flagpole

Here's to a happy Fourth of July to all the Café's Yankee Gentle Readers; I know you'll join me in appreciating this dear boy's very obvious, um, patriotism.

Centenary Star

So she's 100 today, this dewy-eyed ingenue. I suppose it's hindsight, but it seems to me that even here, at the very earliest end of her long journey, there's more to her than meets the eye. Now, some 80 years later, it's indisputable: Miss Olivia de Havilland is very much the real thing.

So Long, Farewell...

Of course, we're really more dog people, but these traveling cats are just so twee I couldn't resist. Consider them an artist's impression of my early evening.

It's Indescribable

Although the celebrations worldwide now spread hither and yon across June and beyond, this weekend - if only because it is so celebrated in our two cultural homelands, New York and San Francisco - is somehow the Most Official Pride Weekend of them all.