The Circus is in Town

Politics

They’re selling postcards of the hanging They’re painting the passports brown The beauty parlor is filled with sailors The circus is in town Bob Dylan Desolation Row Like many Americans, I find the Rick Perry Prayer Rally in Houston troubling.  And like many Americans, I wonder why we haven’t been able to once and for [...]

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The Man Who Stole the Zombie

Americana

He was an Englishman, the man who stole the Zombie, an ineffable cocktail better known by reputation than by taste. He was an Englishman who made something of himself in New York in the 1930s as a furtive publicity hustler and an erstwhile front man for the mob before his inevitable relocation to Las Vegas. [...]

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The Tough Guy and His Impossible Dream

Sports

There I was ignoring French or Latin or some other toxic distraction. A fourteen year old kid slouched on his desk, sacrificing academic achievement for the Red Sox, leaning on his arm, his hand hiding the earphone of a transistor radio broadcasting the 1967 World Series. That was the season we remember as the Impossible [...]

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Ahwatukee Foothills News Hatchet Job

Arizona

The Ahwatukee Foothills News, tossed onto our driveway three times a week free of charge, has managed to sink even deeper into its own droll stench of infantile reporting. We really don’t need this low rent hatchet job.  A piece that unabashedly admits its origins lie in a Tea Party email attacking Phoenix mayoral candidate [...]

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A Room in Coronado, California

Americana

Raymond Chandler inevitably comes to mind when I look at this picture I took late one afternoon, years ago in Coronado, California. Philip Marlowe could have gone inside to question one of Southern California’s miscreants. Except that Marlowe never sleuthed in Coronado. Some other private eye would have been in this room though.  Some guy [...]

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When the Sahara Hotel Rolled

Americana

For more than a thousand nights in Las Vegas none of the other lights on the strip burned brighter. Later on there was always that patina of sadness about the Sahara Hotel.   For the last forty years of its life the Sahara was trapped in a doomed position in the pecking order of the Vegas [...]

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A Letter to Secretary of State Clinton

Politics

Dear Madam Secretary, It’s a delightfully simple question for you to ask the American people. Do you think we should be sending billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan? You and I both know that since 9/11, we have sent $20 billion to Pakistan.  So come with me, let’s walk into my five favorite bars [...]

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The Path to Sublime Bliss

Americana

Unbridled exhilaration and sheer delight. The self-help gurus, the fundamentalist preachers and the pharmaceutical companies can now shutter their businesses.  We don’t need them anymore. As evidenced by this remarkable bill stuffer from Southwest Gas, our lives take on new joy and new meaning simply by paying a gas bill online. Take a close look [...]

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A Not So Private Pleasure

Europe

When you go looking for information about someone who is at least a bit noteworthy you expect a Wiki entry. Not the case with the Italian lithographer Giuseppe Ugonia.  I wanted to learn about him after falling in love with his  Sera di Festa. Ugonia’s landscape is soft and spectral.  And it is more than [...]

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Essential Ghosts

Europe

The Paris of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald in one room.  This is what you get when you are in Paris and you go to Auberge de Venise in Montparnasse. In April, 1925, the establishment was known as the Dingo, the Dingo American Bar and Restaurant.  When F. Scott Fitzgerald walked in with Dunc [...]

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