Around Here

"Postmodern analysis derived significant traction from the discovery of metanuance and reflexive emanation." "Did I pack the ranch dip?"

Share my joy! I won second prize of Harney & Sons Hot Cinnamon Spice Tea at Blue's One World One Heart giveaway! Yee-ha!

So here, at last, was the answer. But not the one that I had expected… or wanted. “Someone left the cake out in the rain. Who was it, Joe?” Jacob’s words came back like an ancient, fateful bell. “Find that, and you’ve found yourself.” Latent image. Ashes to ashes. What would the fat lady sing now? Another wine, another dream, had come.

A good book, coffee and cream, an open window, rain dripping off a tree. Negative ions dancing in the air like bubbles off a glass of champagne. A song sung blue. Once in a while, with the world rain-sequestered, tenderly deferred, and hooky on my mind, I like a rainy day. Do you?

Inspired by Gawpo's stunning Triple Can Trick, I've decided to reprise, at great risk to my reputation, my logic-defying Balancing Chair On My Nose trick. It's rather dangerous, and the last time it was performed, I smashed a coffee table, and aunt Madeline's fibula, but I've summoned the inner resources to bring it back - for one performance only - for you, my blog buds, in all its jaw-dropping, gravity-defying wonder...

Today is Maurice Ravel's birthday. Here's a New York memoir. “Thirty premiers in one season,” said Steph, as she put down her wineglass. “There’s never been anything like it.” We were having drinks at the Ginger Man, across from Lincoln Center, prior to catching an evening performance at New York City Ballet’s Ravel festival in 1975. It was an era of extravaganzas in New York, the like of which may never be seen again. The Ravel centennial was followed a year later by the Bicentennial, and ten years after that by the 100th birthday celebration of the Statue of Liberty. Oh, and the birthday bash for the Brooklyn Bridge a couple years earlier. Looking back, that astonishing decade was, for me at least, peak New York. And to kick it all off, the Ravel festival. City Ballet uncorked the party, and it never stopped until the last jewels of the last skyrocket burned out and fell from the night sky over Lady Liberty in New York harbor a decade later. The waiter brought fruit cocktai...

Sports is about the only beat I miss from my newspaper days. Like it's entertainment counterpart, sports exists to be seen, and it never vexed me with the ambivalence or nagging sense of predation that sometimes haunts coverage of hard news. The color, the settings, the action, drama, excitement, humor, and interplay of men and women at the peak of their physical skills, or just having fun, all come together in a way that challenged and excited me as much as any subject I've had a swing at.