Thursday, October 31, 2013

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.

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

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.

Thursday, October 24, 2013

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...

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

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...

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

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.

Monday, October 14, 2013

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Rainy Days and...


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

Saturday, October 12, 2013

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?

Friday, October 11, 2013

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?

Thursday, October 10, 2013

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.

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

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.

Monday, October 7, 2013

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?

Friday, October 4, 2013

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.

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Interesting Times


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

Tuesday, October 1, 2013