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This is not what it looks like!
Throughout my career, I can honestly say I never dipped my pen in the company ink, if you get my meaning. I came close, once, at a Christmas party, with a recordist from the Sunset-Gower lot, but some friends realized I was making a total ass of myself and intervened. I was really drunk. I…
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The man who almost destroyed the planet… twice
This is a cautionary tale. History is full of inventors who changed the world. Thomas Edison gave us the light bulb. Alexander Graham Bell, the telephone. The Wright brothers taught humanity that flying was not just for the birds. Then we have Thomas Midgley Jr.: environmental historian JR McNeill said of him that he may…
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The day fish was cancelled
We had fish for lunch yesterday. To be more accurate, I should say they served fish for lunch yesterday. I had an egg salad sandwich. Around here, the kitchen always offers an alternative when seafood is the entrée. It’s usually chicken. But yesterday the kitchen whipped up a batch of the most delicious egg salad…
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Welcome to the gerontocracy
Mitch McConnell is alive! And heading back to work. See? There’s no conspiracy here, as some of the dim bulbs in Trump’s orbit were suggesting, like Laura Looney – um, sorry, my bad… I mean Loomer – who, amidst the four weeks of secrecy and cagey information released about the senator’s condition after being hospitalized,…
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You probably don’t need to know this
We have already established that as a young boy I was rubbish at sports. It wasn’t for lack of trying. My father, may he rest in peace, had me “try out” for everything, but when it came to a ball, I was simply no good at kicking one down a lawn, hitting one with a…
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You’re a cool guy
Sometimes support and kindness comes when you aren’t expecting it and from the least likely of places. For me, it was yesterday in the ER. It all started last Sunday. The dining room here was serving vichyssoise, a chilled soup made from cooked and puréed leeks, potatoes, onions, and cream. I’d been making hay all…
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A message from Gordon
For most Americans, the Fourth of July is a glorious celebration of national independence from a tyrannical king. It is a day filled with backyard barbecues, potato salad of questionable age, patriotic T-shirts that somehow feature more eagles than the national seal, and enough grilled meat to keep cardiologists gainfully employed for another year. As…
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Then there’s this
Think, thoughtful reader, about something you use everyday, that everybody uses everyday. If you are Taylor Swift, the Pope, or Vladimir Putin, you use it. Got a PhD in Physics or just completed your training on the deep fryer at McDonalds and are finally moving up from the drive-thru window – you use it. The…
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Two Tribes
I have long wondered what makes contemporary Republicans tick. It is sophomoric to dismiss them outright because their leader is a vulgar half-wit, but, I’ll admit, Donald Trump’s Svengali-like hold over them confused me. After all, this is the party that has been banging on about family values ever since Dan Quayle launched a crusade…
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The Plus Sign
Happy Pride! The first Pride march was held 56 years ago tomorrow, on June 28, 1970, the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. The Stonewall Riots were a tipping point for the gay liberation movement in the United States, where, after that first march, the last Sunday in June was initially celebrated as “Gay Pride…
Your mileage may vary.