Fast Away the Old Year Passes

So here's to us, for the rest of our beautiful days...

Alarums and Excursions

So there we were last night, the four of us, two large and two small, sleeping quietly in our little room...

Forget Christmas...

...I'd like someone to get me this for Boxing Day.

Mamie Christmas!

What does it say about me that one of reasons I treasure the holidays - not a major one, granted, but an annual moment to cherish nonetheless - is the opportunity to appreciate again the Eisenhower's 1960 Christmas card?

Heavenly Peace

Another time the year goes 'round; another chance to revisit one of my earliest memories...

Keep It Together... (Holiday Edition)

Oh, God - even Liza's got her shopping done!

Ho Ho Ho

I always think of Finland as such a Christmassy kind of country, don't you?

Ya Gotta Do What Ethel Does

After yet another day of enforced office festivities, this is just exactly what I needed...

Shopping Daze

Well, I'm glad to see that Alice Faye, at least has finished her Christmas shopping...

Distinctly Not a Fruitcake

In many ways, I truly don't feel like the holidays are upon us until I've seen this a few [dozen] times.

The Younger Sister Says Goodbye...

Last night I dreamed she went to Manderley again...

Shameless Saturday Camp Explosion: Accept No Substitutes

"...the Camp sensibility is one that is alive to a double 
sense in which some things can be taken." 

- Susan Sontag, "Notes on Camp"

In the recent televisual Sound of Music, Poor Miss Carrie Underwood was given the unenviable task of filling the shoes of the likes of Miss Martin and Miss Andrews.  The phenomenon is hardly new.

Gloria in Excelsis

Tiny Gloria Swanson and her great big Christmas tree...

File Under "Architectural Ornamentation, Unlikely"

The dogs and I, in the course of our daily 6:00 a.m. morning constitutional (a time I generally devote to heartily missing the Villa Muscato's small but exceedingly convenient garden, a household feature that rendered 6:00 a.m. morning constitutionals an extremely rare feature of life), regularly pass this formidable gentleman.

Nice Rack

One means the antlers, of course...

My Head So High Above the Clouds

If you remember this song from childhood, and then remember being surprised/annoyed/bereft when it suddenly disappeared from the annual broadcast, you're probably about my age, more or less two-score-and-ten.

Question Time: Ask the Oracle #7

Well, who knew?  Turns out some people - even serious researchers - really do Ask the Oracle.

Make My Spirits Rise Again

Oh, kids, I won't lie to you...

Why Don't You...

...don you now your gay apparel?

Shameless Sunday Camp Explosion: The Divine

Taste has no system and no proofs.

- Susan Sontag, "Notes on Camp"

Since it's Bette Midler's birthday, herewith, Dear Readers, a gift for you.

Birthday Boy: The Pre-Impressionist

Male Nude, 1850

William-Adolphe Bouguereau, a sprightly 188 today, was the toast of Paris at the height of his career, but his brand of meticulous technique and strict adherence to the conventions of that dread monolith, The Academy, guaranteed his place as a principal villain of each successive aesthetic revolution that changed the world's perception of painting from the rise of Manet until just the past couple of decades.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Have you started cooking yet?

Turkey Trot

A very happy Thanksgiving to all my favorite seasonal fruitcakes...

Birthday Boy: C'est Lui

Today's celebrant falls into a sadly unfashionable category:  the full-throated singing leading man.

Truth. That's Her Nature.

Heroes come in unlikely packages.

Irma la Douce

This week ushers in the season in which millions of Americans, whether they know it or not, pay homage to the mild-mannered matron seen here clutching her magnum opus...

Redux: Freeze Tag

Stop time.  Have her remember why they need to leave.  Decide to fly out that night, back to the capital, fly back to the children.  Think of a reason.

Sales Pitches of Yesteryear

Hard to imagine trying to make this slogan work in one of today's Madison Avenue campaigns, no?

Portrait d'une Demi-Star

There's not nearly enough shouting about Mary Astor.

Pull All the Stops Out

Well, she certainly got herself a gimmick...

Birthday Boy: Rock, Star

It hardly seems possible, but it seems I've never seen Lover, Come Back...

Shameless Saturday Camp Explosion: Dance, Dance, Dance Little Lady

One is drawn to Camp when one realizes that "sincerity" is not enough. 

- Susan Sontag, "Notes on Camp"

Birthday Girls: Bang Bangs!

Many happy returns today to two of the Café's favorite (for very different reasons) ladies...

Winging It

You know what's nice to come home to on a cold November evening?

Such Devoted Sisters

It doesn't surprise me a bit that they were terrier gals...

Bonus Camp Explosion: Birthday Stupenda

It was Dame Joan Sutherland's birthday earlier this week (November 7), and I felt badly about missing it, not least because of the marvelous treat you have in store, just after the jump...

Shameless Saturday Camp Explosion: A Piece of Happiness...

It's simply that the process of aging or deterioration provides 

the necessary detachment - or arouses a necessary sympathy. 

- Susan Sontag, "Notes on Camp"

Les Feuilles Mortes

Since we last saw it in August, the view from my office has changed...

Birthday Boy: Beautiful Stranger

It can, on an abstract level, be a blessing when the beautiful die young.

Early and Often

So tomorrow is Election Day here in the Old Dominion, and even though it's an off-off-year round, I'm inordinately excited at the prospect.

Meanwhile, at a Fashionable Soirée...

Another fraught moment of the Gilded Age...

Shameless Saturday Camp Explosion: "Galli-Curci, Flagstad, and Myself"

"Camp rests on innocence. That means Camp discloses 

innocence, but also, when it can, corrupts it." 

- Susan Sontag, "Notes on Camp"

It struck me suddenly as odd that we'd gotten this far into this apparently endless series without ever addressing some of the most basic ur-texts, as it were, of the Camp canon.

Why Don't You...

...frame your entire approach to this year's Hallowe'en in the context of this sublime work, Sally Cruikshank's magnificent Face Like a Frog?  Even if it's only all in your mind.

All Hallow's Roz

Funny, really - you don't think of Rosalind Russell as someone who spent too much time in the stills gallery, at least doing this kind of theme-y leg art.

Here's to You...

...Mrs. Brooks.  We're watching The Graduate right now...

There Comes a Time...

When all you really want...

Birthday Boy: On the Beach

One of my first crushes, and still one today - dear Mr. Kevin Kline is an improbable 66.  He may not today have quite the youthful je ne sais quoi so much on offer here, but still...

Question Time: Ask the Oracle #6

I was interested to see today that the UN has picked up on on one of my own little obsessions...

Three Notes on an Ill-Spent Life

The Dook and his Duchess arrive in Manhattan, October 22, 1941.  If there was a war on, you wouldn't know it...

Self/Image

One actress, two takes.  Funny how we can think of ourselves so differently from how we may seem to others...

My Book Crush

What joy it is to have my books around me.  The only thing I'm really liking a lot about our new digs is that the books are once again a part of daily life.

Birthday Girl: What a Character

There is never not a good reason to visit this little moment of TV insanity...

Rainy Days and...

...nearly naked Bollywood stars.  A step up from that treacly '70s lyric if you ask me.

Shameless Saturday Camp Explosion: Hart Attack

Camp introduces a new standard: artifice as an ideal, theatricality.

- Susan Sontag, "Notes on Camp"

The glory days of camp were made possible because the mainstream culture fed it - with fodder both ridiculous (the lows of vaudeville and burlesque; the rigid norms of an inflexible society, so ripe for travesty) and, as here, in a song by Rodgers and Hart, sublime.  Wit, kids - whatever happened to it?

Life's Little Joys

The weather in Our Nation's Capital has turned - decisively - toward fall, even as the mood of the city has soured in light of the parlous state of current politics.  The gray, chilly rain, steady and unrelenting, seems entirely apropos.  All the more reason, then, to take a moment and appreciate a sight as pretty as Rock Hudson resplendent in a pale pink bathroom with matching princess phone.  Isn't it sad that things like coordinating telephones are no more?

Birthday Girl(s): The Thespic Spectrum

Miss Helen Hayes, First Lady of the American Theatre (seen here as HIM Maria Feodorovna, Dowager Empress of Russia) turns a spry 113 today.  That is not in itself remarkable.

The Angelic Avenger

A few years ago, on a whim, I created one of those pages on that Facebook thing that everyone was talking about back then, and in short order - in what I'm sure is an experience familiar to many Gentle Readers - I was suddenly surrounded, virtually, by a raft of people I hadn't seen (nor, often, thought of) in a decade or three.

Prix de Beauté

Apparently, all it takes is a few discreet swipes of Maybelline to turn the dullest plain jane into a creditable Loretta Young impersonator.  Who knew?

The Quarter-Millionaire

So, I don't know how much you look around when you visit here, but over there on the right-hand column there's a lot going on.

Interesting Times

So, isn't this a... fascinating... time to be living in Our Nation's Capital?

Birthday Boy: Anybody up for a Cocktail?

Let's have a little something, shall we, to celebrate dear Mr. Matthau's 93rd?

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.

Having a Moment...

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

The Way We Live Now...

...in squalor.  You might as well slap a skirt on my head and call me Edie.

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?