To my chagrin, I made it through college without ever having to read F. Scott Fitzgerald in an English course. I did, however, read Fitzgerald for my American history course. I had to write a paper on "Echoes of the Jazz Age," an essay where Fitzgerald used this memorable phrase to describe the 1920s —Continue reading “On Favorite Characters In a Book”
On A Brand-New Rutles Project
The Rutles! Who among us is not a fan of the Prefab Four? Who can’t remember where they were when Ron, Dirk, Stig, and Barry appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show? Who could forget the riots when they played the concert at Che Stadium? Who could forget the outcry when Dirk announced that he wasContinue reading “On A Brand-New Rutles Project”
On WordPress Plug-Ins and WordPress.Com Tags
On occasion, I can be a stat fiend. I used to write analyses each month of what people were looking for on my website, but eventually I lost interest. Not in looking at the stats — the information was interesting to me — but in sharing it with others — I’m not sure that itContinue reading “On WordPress Plug-Ins and WordPress.Com Tags”
On Emma Thompson and House
Emma Thompson received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame this week, flanked by Nanny McPhee costar Maggie Gyllenhaal and Cambridge classmate and House star Hugh Laurie. Seeing Thompson and Laurie together reminds me, besides Peter’s Friends (which I’ve not seen in far too long), of a House story I would love to see.Continue reading “On Emma Thompson and House”
On Counterfactual Doctor Who Musings
Over the weekend, with the world still in the afterglow of “A Study in Pink,” Sherlock‘s debut episode, reports began to surface in The Sun and The Daily Mail that Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch had been offered the role of the Doctor after David Tennant decided to leave. Really? The Sun? Really? The Daily Mail?Continue reading “On Counterfactual Doctor Who Musings”
On Sherlock’s “A Study in Pink”
“You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.” I first read this line, from the opening chapter of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, when I was ten. It was the meeting between Sherlock Holmes, soon to be the famous consulting detective, and Dr. John H. Watson, recently invalided home from the front dueContinue reading “On Sherlock’s “A Study in Pink””
On Things I’ve Been Reading
I have a long-standing habit, I call it the “binge read.” In college, I went on binge reads of Philip K. Dick and Larry Niven and Orson Scott Card and Ernest Hemingway, where I would gather as much of an author’s body of work as I could, and then I would read all of itContinue reading “On Things I’ve Been Reading”
On Sarah Palin and the 2012 Election
Should Sarah Palin, the Republican Vice Presidential nominee in 2008 and the former governor of Alaska, run for President in 2012? Some Republicans want her to. And, curiously, some Democrats want her to as well. At the Netroots Nation Convention, a gathering of progressive activists, over the weekend, a straw poll there gave Palin theContinue reading “On Sarah Palin and the 2012 Election”
On Daniel Schorr
I have a routine on Saturday mornings. I fix coffee. I listen to Weekend Edition Saturday with Scott Simon. And one of the things I listen for each week is Simon’s weekly discussion with Daniel Schorr. Simon tweeted a few minutes ago that “My longtime friend and colleague Dan Schorr has died. Please find aContinue reading “On Daniel Schorr”
On the Loss of a Watch
Yesterday, I lost my wristwatch. There’s nothing profound to the story. It’s a case of simple human mistake-making. This happens. At some point, maybe five years ago, I stopped wearing a watch on a regular basis. Actually, it was more recent than that, come to think of it. After I moved to Baltimore. I hadContinue reading “On the Loss of a Watch”