“We can’t just stay with the old. We need to acknowledge and still refer to and still play and be connected to older artists. But you can’t just do that because we’re all dying… Even… Read More
St. John’s has a complicated relationship with winter. First, it seems like it will never end. We’re weeks away from that period — the time of year when the rest of the country is bursting… Read More
It’s a snowy Friday, and I wish you could smell my kitchen. I have two pots on the stove, filled with chicken bones and water. By the end of it, we’ll have stock and plenty… Read More
“In America the president reigns for four years, and journalism governs forever and ever.”— Oscar Wilde Today’s quote comes from a posthumously published lecture Wilde gave called Decorative Art in America. It appeared in print… Read More
There’s been such a dark cloud over billionaire Jeff Bezos and his handling of the Washington Post, and for such a long time, that it’s perhaps difficult to remember there was a much happier relationship… Read More
“How extraordinary people are, that they get themselves into such situations where they go on doing what they dislike doing, and have no need or obligation to do, simply because it seems to be expected.”—… Read More
Two weeks ago, I launched this website, and with it a revived form of Dot Dot Dot, a blog I first started, um, 22 years ago. (Two weeks, 22 years; time is a construct, right?)… Read More
“Adjective salad is delicious, with each element contributing its individual and unique flavor; but a puree of adjective soup tastes yecchy.”— William Safire The American pundit William Safire was born in the same year as… Read More
Late in 2011, Kate Bush released her 10th album, 50 Words for Snow. The whole project is wintry, with all of the songs connected and fitting a seasonal theme. For the title song, Bush recruited… Read More
I got a good chuckle from a post on Facebook this morning. It imagined what the popular TV series Traitors might look like if everyone in the castle was a fictional character. Some months ago… Read More
“Beauty may be skin deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone.”— Redd Foxx Redd Foxx is best-known for playing Fred Sanford in the show Sanford and Son, although many people didn’t know that Sanford… Read More
No, Alan Alda did not get picked up by MASH co-star Mike Farrell for a warm-hearted reunion ride on a motorcycle for his 90th birthday. Nor did Alda have a warm-hearted reunion on a beach… Read More
“In the ’80s, there was a certain freedom, and a sense of immortality, that ended with that decade. AIDS cracked the earth. With everyone dying, everything shifted. Our history got cut off. We lost a… Read More
Curtis Mayfield’s Move On Up is a firecracker in every iteration, but you need to hear the album version — volume up, please — to get the full effect. Decades on, it still gets me…. Read More
“This thing that we call ‘failure’ is not the falling down, but the staying down.” — Mary Pickford Today’s quote o’ the day is from the Toronto-born actor and producer who became one of America’s… Read More