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?

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?

Question Time: Ask the Oracle #5

An odd set of questions, to be sure.

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.

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!

Le Weekend!

It's been that kind of week...

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.

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.

Isn't This World a Crazy Place?

Wanna feel old?

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.

Shameless Saturday Camp Explosion: Joey, Joey

Camp discloses innocence, but also, when it can, corrupts it.

- Susan Sontag, "Notes on Camp"

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.

At the Fleamarket

So this was my last day in Vienna, and a lovely one it was, too.

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.

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.

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...

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.