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?