Saturday Gallimaufry

I'm retreating ever further from what passes for the real world - with very good reason, given its state, if you ask me - and finding ever more consolation in taking pictures that keep my mind off the headlines. Herewith, a late-summer iris from August, recalled today, which has seemed like our first real day of Autumn.

Redux (and an Obit): Up to the Glitter

Word that Hugh Hefner has shuffled off this mortal coil at 91 seems like news from a vanished era. I ran this marvelous clip from 1969, of soul diva Carla Thomas at a televisual Playboy party, a couple of years ago, and it seems right to revisit it today.

Who Could Ask For Anything More?

As our national discourse continues to descend (with the man who in other circumstances would be Leader of the Free World now basically spending his time sticking out his tongue on social media), a little escapism seems in order...

Blossoms, Dearie

So I've been taking pictures of flowers lately, and I've decided to inflict them on you. No special reason, really, but looking at things like this have been one of my ways of coping with mad times, and I thought you might like them, too.

Redux: Severe Clear

[I wrote this in 2015; with every passing year it recedes a little. It will never really fade. The sky so blue...]

A day so perfect, so crystalline; one on which there's truly not a cloud in the sky.  That's what it was.

News of the Rialto

So Miss Peters is set to succeed Miss Midler as Mrs. Levi.  It seems a fully respectable, but somehow deflatingly predictable, sort of choice.

Beautiful Dreamer

Birthmark, 1980

One of the unexpected boons of the sometimes-plague that is Facebook is the chance to catch up with all kinds of onetime crushes.

Birthday Boy: Genius

On a good day, when I knew him, this is how he looked.

Birthday Author: The Fresh Hell Girl

Miss Dorothy Parker was born 124 years ago today.

Leave it to Joan, Joan, Joan

A moment with The Greatest Star, just because.

A Mimic Life

I think we could all use a break, don't you?

It May Happen Here

Here's how it could go down.

"Very Fine People"

Yeah, I know it's a cliché, and I've run it before. But Jesus Christ. The President of the United States, in his golden tower, defending a mob of torch-bearing fascists. To paraphrase Miss Vicki Lester, in a mood that now to me feels strangely familiar: "How do we live out the days?"

And then there's that thudding, nerve-shattering last line: "Still think you can control them?"

And We Need Them Most Of All

I've been sitting, these last few days, and thinking, hard, about what one could say...

Women of Distinction - and an Aesthetic Opportunity

As another blessed week limps to a close, and in the face of bad news from all over, today more than ever I needed a lift...

Project Runaway

I don't know about you, but I think that sounds like a perfectly capital idea...

Redux II: Mother of Exiles

I already reposted this once this year, but it's never too soon to be reminded of what we're really all about. Or at least the country I knew and loved was...

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, 
With conquering limbs astride from land to land; 
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand 
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame 
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name 
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand 
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command 
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. 
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she 
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, 
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, 
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, 
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

- Emma Lazarus

Man About The House

At some point in the last four years, I've realized, I've turned into a thoroughly domesticated husband, almost along the lines of this game if rather puzzled-looking Kennedy-era paragon.

The Broadway Melodica of 2017

Just to show that it's not griping 24/7 hereabouts, something that's been making me exceedingly happy over the last day or so.

Is a Puzzlement

Because there's never a bad reason to get a good look at Yul Brynner,
nearly shirtless. No Puzzlement there...

Over in the FaceBookVerse, dear Cookie has come up with a list of 10 Things He Doesn't Understand, and he's challenged his Gentle Readers to do the same. Some dares I can't resist, so herewith, just that number of cultural phenomena that leave me cold: