THUMBNAIL MOVIE REVIEW: LA-LA LAND
Originally written in 2017 I almost never see a film more than once, but I have now seen LA-LA Land twice, and I have to say I think it is a masterpiece, destined (I hope) to become a film classic. For young or old dreamers and for anyone with artistic, dramatic or musical ambitions, it […]
WISTFULNESS IN THE SONGS OF TOM JOBIM – A TOUCH OF BUDDHISM?
Originally written in 2017 Recently, having attended a concert devoted to the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim at Seattle’s Columbia City Theater, on the occasion of his 90th birthday, I posted about the transformative quality of his lovely bossa novas. Each simple and haunting tune nails itself into one’s head, where it cannot escape until […]
SPIRITUAL IMAGERY IN “BLACK ORPHEUS”
Originally written in 2017 Several years ago, I viewed the classic, 1959 film “Black Orpheus,” for the second time. Although I was only seven years old when the Oscar-winning film first premiered, I clearly remember going to see it for the first time with my parents. The hypnotic drumbeats, the vivid images of colorful Carnaval […]
THE BOHEMIAN ENIGMA
January 7, 2023 Fifteen years after the “Summer of Love,” I lived briefly in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. The hippie era was decidedly over, but like a retreating wave leaving a trail on the sand, its bohemian aura lingered on. Whether you were gay or straight, the order of the day was to lead a […]
WHAT MAKES A GREAT HIT?
January 5, 2023 TikTok. Spotify. YouTube. Pandora. Playlists. Sirius XM. Amazon Alexa. How is a newly-minted senior citizen supposed to know where to find today’s biggest hits? Long ago, before pop music was diced into as many slices and sub-genres as possible, a new hit record was embraced on commercial radio by whole neighborhoods and […]
YOUNG SENIORS AND OLD SENIORS
January 5, 2023 We like to speak of senior citizens as a class, but in fact they come in two types: young seniors and old seniors. Young seniors are the ones in the retirement home ads: they play tennis, walk on the beach, and flirt with white-haired people of the opposite sex. While engaging in […]
LOVE AS A FRENCH INVENTION
January 2, 2023 Years ago, I read a wonderful book called “How the French Invented Love.” The author, Marilyn Yallom, traces nine hundred years of French literary history in an attempt to explain how and why French attitudes toward love and sex are so different from those of the English-speaking world and, frankly, nearly every […]
REFLECTIONS ON APPRENTICESHIP
January 2, 2023 In the November 21, 2022 issue of The New Yorker, my eyes were drawn to an article called “Deadwood – An American’s brutal apprenticeship in the delicate art of bonsai.” While I have at least a cursory interest in bonsai, what really captured my attention was the phrase “brutal apprenticeship.” It turns […]
ON OBJECTIFICATION
January 2, 2023 One cannot be sexually attracted to another person without objectifying them, at least a little. As in: ‘Get a load of those Bazongas!;’ ‘Those pecs, those delts!;’ ‘Baby got Back!;’ ‘Did you see his basket?;’ ‘Oh, those luscious legs!;’ and so on. There, I’ve said it. Whenever and wherever lust arises, it […]
FROM TAIL FINS TO STEEL ORIGAMI – TRENDS IN CAR STYLING
December 20, 2022 Bristling with tail fins, chrome, two-tone paint, and white sidewall tires, the American cars of the 1950s were works of art in motion. Growing up in that era, I watched the pageant roll by our living room window with such rapture that I learned to identify most any car by nothing more […]