Like any savvy investor, I am always on the lookout for signs that the economy may be overheating, that things may be getting a bit frothy. Of particular concern are exotic businesses that pop up at the very end of economic booms, selling products or services that will be the first items struck off…
In the deceptively thoughtful 2014 action film John Wick, Keanu Reeves plays a recently widowed assassin who comes out of retirement after Russian gangsters beat him up, steal his car, and kill his dog. Miffed about the car, not too happy about the beating, but furious about the demise of his…
In the deceptively thoughtful 2014 action film John Wick, Keanu Reeves plays a recently widowed assassin who comes out of retirement after Russian gangsters beat him up, steal his car, and kill his dog. Miffed about the car, not too happy about the beating, but furious about the demise of his…
In 2014, a little-known nutritionist in Milwaukee, one of the more portly cities in America, developed an ingenious system to get his clients to lose weight and keep it off for good. He told his morbidly obese clients to pair each pound with a descriptive adjective, noun, or euphemism they hated,…
In 2014, a little-known nutritionist in Milwaukee, one of the more portly cities in America, developed an ingenious system to get his clients to lose weight and keep it off for good. He told his morbidly obese clients to pair each pound with a descriptive adjective, noun, or euphemism they hated,…
When Donald Trump was elected, I promised friends I would do everything in my power to retaliate against his craven Red State supporters. That winter getaway to Florida was off. So was the spring jaunt to the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. And my cheese-head friend up in Milwaukee would…
When Donald Trump was elected, I promised friends I would do everything in my power to retaliate against his craven Red State supporters. That winter getaway to Florida was off. So was the spring jaunt to the Rock ’n' Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. And my cheese-head friend up in Milwaukee would…
Most people figure that when Homer finished writing The Iliad, publishing houses were breaking down his door to get first crack at it. Nothing could be further from the truth. When Homer put the finishing touches on his opus magnum, he was just another blind Greek poet who had to go out and market…
Most people figure that when Homer finished writing The Iliad, publishing houses were breaking down his door to get first crack at it. Nothing could be further from the truth. When Homer put the finishing touches on his opus magnum, he was just another blind Greek poet who had to go out and market…
In preparation for an interview with Dustin Hoffman that never happened, I went to see Kung Fu Panda 3. This is something I would not have done unless I was preparing to interview the great American actor.
In preparation for an interview with Dustin Hoffman that never happened, I went to see Kung Fu Panda 3. This is something I would not have done unless I was preparing to interview the great American actor.
Last year I had an annoying medical issue that cost me several thousand dollars to explore. I say “explore" because the problem never got solved, at least not by the two physicians I originally consulted. Nonetheless, I had to pay for the relief that I sought, but never got. The biggest expense was…
George Santayana was sitting in his stately, well-appointed Cambridge home when the housekeeper announced he had visitors. Seconds later, Mrs. Hudson ushered three oddly garbed men into the parlor, where he greeted them with sherry and cheroots.
For as long as I can remember, harbingers of doom, naysayers, outcasts at life’s rich feast, and garden-variety curmudgeons have been saying that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Or words to that effect. Politicians and religious leaders are particularly fond of this admonition.…
It is often said that a little knowledge can go a long way, but I have not found this to be true.
In the uplifting, if somewhat confusing, film Tomorrowland, George Clooney plays a brilliant scientist who suffers from a broken heart. Long ago and far way, he fell in love with a girl named Athena when they were children. Athena was smart and spunky and seemed genuinely to like George Clooney as…
The very old ones—los viejos—still tell the tale of the Cubs and the Fed.
While traveling in the west of England recently, I had occasion to dine in an organic restaurant just outside Cirencester. The restaurant was clean and inviting and resolutely wholesome, with a small but equally wholesome grocery off to the side. Everything in the building was radiantly,…
It is always strange to stumble upon seemingly modern turns of phrase in books that are quite old. It proves that catchphrases and colorful expressions believed to have entered the vernacular in recent times have actually been around for decades, even centuries. What’s more, they often originated…
When writers become famous, it is easy to forget that they were once obscure, and sometimes very poor. Yet with few exceptions—Homer, Tacitus, Omar Khayyam, Jonathan Safran Foer—even the greatest writers had to slave away at menial positions before their careers took off and they could support…
A few years ago, I was offered two very good tickets to a New York Knicks game at Madison Square Garden. I invited my daughter to the game, but almost immediately my wife complained, “Why don’t you ever let me go?” So I gave them the two tickets and went to see the legendary pianist Alfred Brendel…
The New York Times recently ran a story about college students requesting “trigger warnings” to alert them that something in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or The Great Gatsby might freak them out. Such warnings would alert a student that The Merchant of Venice contains anti-Semitic elements…
Until the consumer really, really jumps back into the thick of things, the experts agree that this economy is doomed to sputter. Until the average American believes he has the wherewithal to go out and buy that new house, that new car, that new kitchen, unemployment will stay right where it is.…
Last June, scientists at the Astrolabe Institute in Houston made an electrifying discovery. While listening in on sounds emanating from deep space, they heard what seemed to be a conversation between two sentient creatures located on Nardalus X-50, a small, recently discovered planet.
Recently, a close friend told me that he had to cut our conversation short because he had tickets to see Steve Martin and Edie Brickell in concert. He clearly expected me to covet his immense good fortune, though my immediate reaction to this statement was, “Better you than I.” Then, “There but for…
The national conversation about simplifying modern life continues unabated.
The other day, I decided to see how long I could go without reading the word “iconic.”
For years, perhaps even decades, waiters and waitresses have been stopping by tables to ask, “Is everything all right over here?” or its variant, “How are you guys doing?”
For years, perhaps even decades, waiters and waitresses have been stopping by tables to ask, “Is everything all right over here?” or its variant, “How are you guys doing?”
Recently I read a story in my local newspaper reporting that high school kids routinely throw out tons of vegetables because the food in their school lunches is so awful. It would seem that the youth of America particularly object to the lettuce.
Consumers are justifiably confused when it comes to picking out a smartphone. Many high-end iPhones and Androids contain features that are not terribly useful in everyday life. Not-so-early adopters also worry that they will purchase a state-of-the-art phone for $399 and then, just a few months…
Americans, particularly older Americans, continue to ignore the devastating effect that hackers can exert on one’s life. No matter how often they are warned to be vigilant about computer security, to erect firewalls to ensure that hackers do not infiltrate their PCs and steal credit card numbers,…
Recently, as I was putting the finishing touches on a story, an editor suggested that I “give props” to the people I was writing about. The idea came from a superior who felt that I should also give a “shout-out” to the subjects of my essay. It was a suggestion which my editor, after considerable…
Every month I get a prescription for a Lipitor generic filled at my local pharmacy. I also get a prescription for another medication, but I don’t want to go into that. Each month, when I report to the pharmacy to pick up my prescription, the person manning the counter asks my name, and I dutifully…
Have you noticed that whenever a newspaper columnist uses the phrase “full disclosure,” it’s primarily for purposes of self-aggrandizement?
When the pitiful octogenarian Hugh Hefner got ditched by his scheming fiancée a few weeks back, it was a pitiful reminder that the only living “playboy” who can still be considered suave, debonair, sexually irresistible, and, well, cool, is the middle-aged man in the Dos Equis commercials.
LeBron James, who choked away the NBA championship with another dismal fourth-quarter performance on Sunday, is the most despised athlete in America, possibly the world. No, make that the solar system. I, like most basketball fans I know, rejoiced when the Dallas Mavericks beat the Heat last…
Like most Americans, I have constructed my personality and lifestyle almost entirely by consulting magazines. I have purchased the “10 Stocks You Need to Own Today!” and long ago mastered the “7 Ways to Drive a Woman Wild!” I have also benefited from such superb articles as “Six Weeks to Tighter…
For decades, Hollywood has been waiting for the full-service artiste—writer, director, producer, screenwriter—who can lay claim to the scepter of Renaissance Man once held by Orson Welles. Woody Allen couldn’t quite pull it off. Neither could Mel Gibson or Spike Lee. But now, in James Franco, who…
A few weeks back I was coming out of a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden when I happened to glance up and see a massive, brightly lit billboard promoting a TV show about pawnbrokers. The pawnbrokers were really scary-looking, so scary-looking that the friend I was with didn’t even want to look…
No painter in history is more taken for granted than Meindert Hobbema.
In a New York Times article about the rise of the Urban Caveman (the Paleo Diet is heavy on meat) that I recently happened upon, the celebrity harbinger of doom Nassim Taleb remarked: “New York is the only city in America where you can walk.” Taleb, bestselling author of The Black Swan, has been…
Last year I was talking to a literary agent and friend about the dire manuscripts I am sometimes asked to read by neighbors, troubled youths, swains of hairdressers, and the man in the dark trench coat who stands at the back of the room at every book-signing, and then thrusts a grimy manuscript…
Recently I got around to reading Donald Kagan’s majestic study, The Peloponnesian War. Boy, was it majestic. Adroitly delineating the circumstances that led to the demise of the Athenian republic, Kagan makes it clear that the unnecessary conflict was one of the worst tragedies ever to befall…
Since my late teens I have had a deep fear of women lurking behind pianos. This is probably because of early exposure to the work of Nina Simone. Dubbed--not without justification--the High Priestess of Soul, Simone was an imperious, striking-looking woman who would take up her position behind her…
Like many whodunit fans, I made a fatal error at the outset of my reading career. I devoured Edgar Allan Poe, Sherlock Holmes, the Father Brown stories, the best of Agatha Christie, and scores of books featuring Georges Simenon's indefatigable Inspector Maigret. By the age of 30, I had polished off…
In heartrending news for fans of half-baked information everywhere, the top guns at Wikipedia have announced that they will no longer allow the Great Unwashed to go online and add or delete material from Wikipedia entries. From now on, any changes will have to be approved by an editorial review…
Old timers insist that if you go to a baseball game, you will always see something you never saw before. On Sunday, August 23, I saw something at Citi Field in Queens that nobody had ever seen before: the first unassisted game-ending triple play in the history of the National League.
History is filled with many exciting "What ifs?"
Looking for a surefire sign that the economy is poised for a recovery? Here it is. A few weeks ago, the Associated Press ran the story "Bartering makes a comeback for those short on cash." It reported that cash-strapped consumers were increasingly bartering goods for services, rather than…
These have been heady times for fans of motion pictures about overbearing totalitarians.
Nothing in entertainment history is more shocking than the overnight collapse of the televised cribbage craze. Prime-time cribbage came and went faster than Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? and for the same reason: greed, overexposure, copycat programming, the television industry's constitutional…
Living Like Ed
Some weeks ago the esteemed pianist Leon Fleisher wrote an op-ed piece for the Washington Post discussing the moral qualms that assailed him when he was honored at the Kennedy Center. Fleisher, a onetime child prodigy who lost the use of his right hand at age 37 and did not perform the two-handed…
The Power of Body Language
Men of goodwill dread the moment when an autocrat morphs into a tyrant, when a power-hungry dictator descends into outright madness.
Two years ago, CNN heavyweight Lou Dobbs inexplicably began propagating the theory that illegal aliens were unleashing an epidemic of leprosy in this country. In an April 14, 2005, broadcast that was recently exhumed by 60 Minutes, the man who has become a champion of the middle class in the…
In the astoundingly popular best-seller Freakonomics, Steven D. Levitt argues that people with absurd names have trouble landing jobs not because of their names, but because people with ludicrous names tend to come from poor backgrounds, and it is a crummy education that creates the roadblock to…
The regurgitation of foodstuffs is one of the least appetizing human activities, and certainly not a Kodak moment. Why then has on-screen vomiting become such a fixture of motion pictures in the past few years? The situation is so dire that upchuck has even begun to appear in animated form, with a…
A History of the World in Six Glasses
DISCUSSING THE LATEST SIGHTING of a dimly remembered sixties pop star, my local paper cautioned: "Make no mistake. Lesley Gore's certainly no kid anymore."
THE RECENT SHOOTING OF RECORD mogul Suge Knight at a music industry celebration has evoked the usual handwringing about mindless violence in the world of rap. The incident is merely the latest, and by no means the most deplorable, in a wave of crime that dates back to the murders of Notorious…
INNUMERABLE THEORIES (well, let's say six) have been put forth to explain the phenomenal success of the documentary March of the Penguins. The most obvious is that everyone loves penguins, as opposed to wolves, deer, or mandrills. A recent film by the revered German auteur Werner Herzog, about a…
100 People Who Are Screwing Up America
NOT LONG AGO, THE belligerently-mannered New York radio personality Jonathan Schwartz confided in his listeners that he could not go on living without being able to hear Frank Sinatra's memorable version of "Our Love Is Here to Stay" at least one more time.