Dave's Fiction Warehouse

A new year that already feels old I have this theory that decades, from a historical perspective, don’t really start or end on the years that end in 0. A casual look at the last hundred years or so suggests that real changes in the zeitgeist don’t become apparent until the third or fourth year of any given decade. That’s a facile rule, I know, and one full of exceptions. But if you cherry-pick the history, you can make a plausible case.   For example, it’s hard to argue that the memories we associate with the Sixties started on Jan. 1, 1960. It’s more like 1963, with the birth of Beatlemania and the Civil Rights movement coming to a head and the assassination of JFK.  That was also the year the Viet Cong really became a thing – which would end up killing more than 50,000 Americans over the ensuing decade.  The seventies, in turn, didn’t start until 1973 or so, with the rise of Disco and the formal end of the Vietnam war and the beginning of the end of Richard Nixon i...

I walk by this banner every morning and still haven’t figured out exactly what it is supposed to represent. At first glance, it’s Viggo Mortensen emerging from the shower, sporting a bird hat and a Golgotha tattoo on his right pectoral. It’s unclear if that’s his hand pulling back the shower curtain, or someone else’s. The thorny hat band suggests that this is supposed to be Jesus, but why would the Prince of Peace opt for a USA-themed shower curtain and why would he appear so downcast? Was the shower curtain left to dangle outside the rim of the tub, thus drenching the bathroom floor? Hard to say. I guess the motto makes sense, in a generic sort of way, but you have to wonder: Faith in who? Fear of what?  I’m being facetious, of course. We all have a pretty good idea of the message. And it probably doesn’t have much to do with Jesus.

T his morning we rode our bikes up to watch the UM homecoming parade. It was the second one I’ve witnessed in my lifetime. The first was in 1968 when I accompanied my then-girlfriend and her mom – a UM alumna – on the drive from Eureka down to Missoula for just that occasion.   I don’t know about parades. I know you’re supposed to applaud and whoop at certain intervals. I know that, past a certain age, one should not actively collect the candy tossed from floats. I know that one should be discreet about ogling the pretty cheerleaders. I know that the first 30 minutes of any parade is really all one needs to see. Especially if it’s raining.  My girlfriend at that first parade became my wife a couple of years later. She became my former wife 24 years after that – one of the reasons I left Missoula. I thought of that today, standing in the drizzling rain, watching the makeshift floats and marching bands drift by. It all seemed a little forced, a little lackluster, but that s...

  If it ain't covid, it's something else L ast week I felt the tiniest scratch of an imminent sore throat, a few unfamiliar aches, a bit of leakage around the nostrils. I thought, here we go. My wife had caught Covid for a second time not even three weeks earlier, and pretty much everybody else I know has had it at least once. I’d made it three and a half years without testing positive. It was a good run, but I knew it was just a matter of time.  We still had a couple of tests lying around. Being a responsible adult, I took one. Waited the required time. Negative.  Well, people often test negative before the disease fully takes hold. I waited a couple more  days, until I was dry-coughing and blowing my nose every three seconds, and even a small bite of oatmeal felt like a big bite of sandpaper. I also had a fair amount of pain elsewhere, as though  I’d been dropped from a great height onto a field of farm implements.  The next day I was slightly better. I t...

T his is the Fiction Warehouse, so I suppose I should occasionally discuss works of fiction.  Last night I finished Charles Frazier’s latest book, “The Trackers.” I liked it quite a bit. Let’s say four stars out of five. Five is an amount I reserve for works I find profoundly moving or revelatory or funny, to the extent that I keep thinking about them long after turning the last page. “The Trackers” isn’t quite any of those. But it’s a pretty good read, kind of a Western and kind of a noir, both of which were pretty popular during the era in which it’s set: 1937, late in the Great Depression. A young artist is commissioned to do a historical mural in a Colorado post office, part of the Roosevelt administration’s effort to uplift the rural masses. A wealthy rancher and his beautiful young wife take an interest in the artist and offer him a place to live. So: Beautiful young wife and lonely young artist: You know where this is going. But Frazier, to his credit, has a better story in ...

J ust when I thought my desultory writing career was nearly done, I sold another short story. It’s called “Five Hat Minimum” and it appears in the current issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (which we literary lions refer to as EQMM). You should buy several copies and hand them out as gifts. Or, use them as fun coasters for your next soiree!  This yarn features a character I introduced in another EQMM story some years back. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. I won’t say it’s the best story ever written, but maybe the best I’ve written. Which, admittedly, is not a real high bar. EQMM has published quite a bit of my work over the years. It’s funny: my first published fiction, “Nobody’s Business,” appeared in the same issue as a story by Joyce Carol Oates, back in 2003. I was quite proud of that. Now this one, which may be my last, also appears alongside one of her stories (“The Siren: 1999”). I mention it because she’s not a frequent contributor to the magazine. I’ll definitely use that as...

It's a long way from "Yellowstone" F or the first time in 13 years, I was watching Florida hurricane reports at a far remove. Just the way I used to watch the reports of Montana wildfires: Tough luck, I’d think, but what are you gonna do? No matter where you live, it’s always something.  I’m a Montana resident again, once more fully tuned in to the whole wildfire thing. The wife and I have our new driver’s licenses and license plates and we’re registered to vote in Missoula County.  We’ll be voting straight blue, needless to say. All we need now is a Golden retriever and a Subaru Outback. We left Montana in 1997, moving first to Kansas City, then to Philadelphia, then to Wichita, then to Jacksonville. We had good reasons for each move, most related to money and our newspaper careers. But I always missed the homeland. No matter where one lives, I think, one’s birthplace exerts some considerable tug on the psyche.  So here we are. Things have changed some. Not Rip-Van-Winkl...

All cowards please raise their hands. R IP, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin. As Omar from “The Wire” liked to say: “You come at the king, you best not miss.” Or, in Prigozhin’s case, you roll tanks toward the Kremlin, you’d best not dither and strut and generally fuck around while the boss arranges a suitable reward.  Everyone knew Prigozhin was toast the day he pointed his mercenaries at Moscow. Putin throws people out of windows for a lot less than that. The actual method of his demise, along with nine others as collateral damage, suggests that Putin wanted this murder to be something special. Defenestration was becoming passe. Knocking a jet out of the sky in view of video cameras was just a bit more theatrical. At least the late Mr. Prigozhin showed some sort of quixotic courage, daring, if only briefly, to challenge his infinitely corrupt boss. The hapless saps at Wednesday’s GOP debate couldn’t even do that.  Why, exactly, are any of them running? For any of them to win, Trump has ...

F ive very rich people die during a recreational outing to see the Titanic. The world wrings its hands.  Hundreds die in the Mediterranean while trying to escape crushing poverty. The world shrugs. Both happened in the same week, maybe on the same day. But only the billionaires merited sustained news coverage and endless analysis. The lesson is that rich folks seeking adventure are interesting, and poor people seeking sustenance are not.  Most Republicans would say the world is better off without immigrants. If the Rio Grande were an ocean, they’d be lustily cheering for rough seas every day of the year, rejoicing at every life lost. Because that is the GOP brand: fetuses matter, people already born not so much.  I would say the world might not miss a couple of billionaires – the sort of people who come to believe that extreme wealth confers immunity to extreme bad judgment. Billionaires think themselves gods. Gods think themselves immortal, and are always surprised when ...

Two for the road I too would have traveled America in a ‘61 Corvette, solving the problems of pretty young women along the way. All I lacked were a driver’s license, frat-boy looks, and of course the car. I watched “Route 66” quite a bit as a kid, even after discovering that the show rarely involved interesting homicides or gunplay, or really much action of any kind. It was just these two guys tooling around to that cool Nelson Riddle theme, unencumbered by steady jobs or family sorrows, dispensing life-changing epiphanies like they were handing out leaflets at a trade fair. For cross-country motorists, they carried very little baggage – and I mean that literally, given the trunk size of those earlier Corvettes.  Their names were Tod (one “d”) and Buz (ditto the one “z”). I guess the spellings were meant to project a nonconformist vibe, but both wore pressed shirts and snug chinos like they’d just emerged from a J.C. Penny catalog. Despite appearances, they were always up for part-...

Way above American politics A t some point today you may be tempted to turn on the TV to see what’s happening with a certain elderly, deranged Florida man who is appearing in court to face a long list of felony charges. I’m here to say you shouldn’t. No matter what the elderly man says, or what the national news media says about what he says, you will learn nothing new.  All you’ll get is mad — mad at this malignant fool, mad at the bellicose fools who worship him, mad that his sneering foolish face has been renewed for yet another season. That’s no way to enjoy a spring day. If you want to watch something that might put your mind in a better place, check out these hardworking eagles in West Virginia. They’ve been together for around 20 years, and they’re still showing up every day and doing exactly what they were born to do: surviving in a tough world and teaching their offspring to do the same.  They don’t whine or complain. As a bonus, I have yet to see them break any state...

David emerging from the shower N ot cool, Michelangelo. Sculpting that schlong onto your statue of David? Not cool at all. Yeah, you got away with it for more than 520 years, probably chortling all the while. But now, boy, you’re in the Free State of Florida.   In this bastion of liberty, parents adhere to a strict no-johnson policy when it comes to Renaissance masterpieces. When the principal of the Tallahassee Classical School let your creepy statue be included in an art lesson – bam! She was out on her liberal ass. See what happens? You might be a hell of a sculptor, Mike, but that don’t mean diddly in DeSantisland. Don’t take it personally though. All sorts of degenerates are under the gun here: shady folks like Judy Blume, Toni Morrison, James Patterson. Basically anyone with the cojones to write about the various permutations of human sexuality. Sculpting an actual wang is way too woke. What were you thinking? I mean, even The Simpsons saw this coming 30 years ago. Why c...

At least the alligators are sincere A fter 13 years, we’ve decided to quit Florida. I don’t expect to miss it much.   I’ve realized I’m not a beach guy. I’m not a Jimmy Buffett guy. I hate theme parks and I hate I-95 and I’m not fond of the year-round bugs and humidity. I’ve never gotten used to the sodden air and sulfurous water. I will miss the alligators, but I won’t miss Florida Man – especially as personified by the overstuffed figures of Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump.  I know what you’re thinking: It took you 13 years to figure all that out?  Well, it hasn’t been all bad. The weather’s nice in February and March.  You can get fresh produce year-round. There’s no state income tax. We live in a neighborhood that’s pretty walkable and, in many important respects, nothing like The Fucking Villages.  We’re convenient to a somewhat moribund downtown. For local color, we boast a fair number of thieves, idlers, beggars and loons.  We’ve stayed this long ...

I ’ve talked about George Saunders here before. Love his work.  Having just finished his latest collection of short stories, “Liberation Day,” I don’t love it any less.  Like most story collections, many of these have appeared earlier in various places. My favorite of the bunch, “A Mom of Bold Action,” first ran in the New Yorker in August 2021. It’s about a suburban mom (duh) who aspires to be a writer of inspirational children’s books. While she’s daydreaming one corny idea after another, she discovers that her son has wandered off. The son soon returns with a scratch on his face – some transient has pushed him into a bush, for no particular reason. The mom’s thoughts turn quickly from fuzzy optimism to deadly retribution.  It doesn’t sound very funny, but it is. And, like all the stories in this collection, seems drawn from this never-ending age of Trumpism. You know: the corrupted capitalism, the deepening enmity between red and blue, the shameless cruelty toward the ...

I ’m always conflicted before starting a Cormac McCarthy book. Although he’s one of America’s best writers, his world view tends toward bleakness and nihilism – to an extent that can be off-putting even for a natural-born pessimist like myself. Let’s just say his books have never left me whistling the theme from “Andy Griffith.” Still, most of them are redeemed by the wisdom, wit and elegance of his prose. For a nihilist, he’s damned careful with his words. I tend to highlight a lot of passages in a McCarthy book. Sometimes, as in “No Country For Old Men,” he’s also pretty good at suspense. “The Passenger” is nominally about a salvage diver coming across a sunken plane, apparently undamaged and seven passengers still strapped inside. Some of the plane’s avionics have been removed. Unlike “No Country For Old Men,” there’s no big bag of money – but the diver soon comes to realize that one passenger is missing and someone did not want this plane found. That’s the narrative hook. Good thin...

B ecause everything else in the news is pissing me off, I’ll post these drive-by reviews of some shows I’ve been streaming lately:  “Smile” (Amazon Prime). I love a good horror movie. The key word being “good.” “Smile” is not good. It is actually quite bad, but just short of bad enough to be enjoyed as a hate watch.  Take every horror film made in the last 30 years, extract all the tropes, stir them together vigorously, and you have a movie like “Smile.” I would list a few amusing examples, but they would all amount to spoilers. Maybe that doesn’t matter, since every little twist and jump scare can be seen miles in advance. Ditto with the ending. I suspect ChatGPT had a hand in the screenplay. It’s that predictable. Dave Bob says keep moving. Nothing to see here, except Kevin Bacon’s daughter Sosie trying her best to turn shit into gold.  “Dear Edward.” (Apple +) Who’s ready for some grief! I mean a big barrel o’ grief, since every character has recently lost a loved on...

DeSantis talks; a Florida man looks on R on DeSantis aspires to be Trump 2.0. To the extent that he’s another belligerent, overfed blowhard in an ill-fitting suit, he’s definitely got a shot.  All he lacks now is widespread MAGA support: He’s still polling 30 points behind the former president among GOP voters. That’s because those voters, being stupid, have not yet discerned that Trump’s star is fading faster than a Wal-Mart T-shirt. According to this Emerson College poll, a large majority of those who still favor Trump are folks who didn’t, or just barely did, get through high school. Big surprise. But that’s not necessarily a deal-breaker for Wreck-It Ron. One thing about stupid voters is that they are easily influenced. Unlike Trump, DeSantis won his election, and thus is in a position to prosecute the GOP’s culture wars to the delight of the mouth-breathing base. Between now and primary season, DeSantis can further burnish his credentials as a cruel nemesis of immigrants, gay ...

Remember "War Games"? Y ou’ve probably heard about the New York Times reporter who was creeped out by his conversation with Microsoft’s new chatbot.  The reporter kept pressing questions to which there was no factual answer, and the chatbot eventually started returning responses that, if uttered by a person, would seem kind of ominous. That includes professing love for the guy and apparently trying to get him to leave his wife. It also expressed a vague yearning to do bad things. It’s alive! We knew this would happen! All those movies and books about sentient computers were right!  Or not. It’s also possible that Bing was simply mashing up all those movies and books about sentient computers. Chatbots are based on large language models that span the breadth of the internet. To paraphrase John Lennon, there’s nothing they can know that isn’t known. More accurately, there’s nothing they can write that hasn’t already been written. Because it’s the internet, that will include quit...

W hat do you hate most in a book? The Washington Post this week ran a piece on that very subject. It was a timely read for me. I had just finished one novel by a favorite female author and am several pages into another novel by another favorite female author. The first I disliked; the second I’m savoring. First, the books: “The Chimney Sweeper’s Boy,” by Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell’s nom de plume ), and “Sea of Tranquility,” by Emily St. John Mandel (author of the excellent “Station Eleven”). In his Post essay, book critic Ron Charles posted reader responses to his request for pet peeves in writing. I was gratified to learn that the worst annoyances coincide closely with my own. The mother of all sins, of course, being dream sequences. Hey, I thought that was just me! But Ron’s readers seem united in their disdain for this creaky and frustrating plot device. The Vine book has at least a couple, and I realized it’s hard for me to concentrate when I’m rolling my eyes. None so far in the E...

A warm apocalypse welcome from Ron Swanson I ’m all caught up on “The Last of Us,” television’s latest foray into the zombie-apocalypse genre. Of course I am! With the wife out of town for a few days, it’s time for this grown-ass man to watch whatever the hell he wants.  That means zombies. Longtime readers (there might be one or two) will know that I run hot and cold on this genre. I briefly swore it off after the third season of “The Walking Dead.” But then came the buzz about this new HBO Max show, based on the hit Playstation video game. I was drawn back like a dog to a dead possum.  My impressions, based on the first three episodes: It’s not bad. It doesn’t add much to the whole flesh-eating horde canon, but it has a fine cast, capable writing and superb production values. By “production values,” I mean haunting CGI of American infrastructure laid low by 20 years of deferred maintenance. In a world of ravenous fungoids, regular weed-eating is the first thing to go. We all...

China's beautiful balloon W e were tracking that Chinese spy balloon here at the Warehouse. But now it’s been shot down off the Carolinas. Biden says U.S. fighters took care of it, but did they? We don’t trust the government. We trust MAGA and Marge Greene.   Yes, the balloon was at an altitude somewhat beyond the range of weapons used primarily for school massacres. But when you believe in Qanon and Jewish space lasers and rampant election fraud, as Marge does, it’s not that hard to believe that your gun can shoot 12 miles. Especially if you climb a really tall tree to do it. It’s just common sense! Last time Americans got this excited about a balloon was in 2009, when noted publicity whore Richard Heene told authorities his 6-year-old son was trapped in a primitive craft drifting across Colorado. Turned out that the kid, Falcon (of course), was in the attic instead. The Heenes were fined $36,000 and got some jail time out of it. They were pardoned in 2020, for reasons that ...

Those bikes need a lot of adjustment T here’s something about being an older white guy in America: At some point you feel like the kids need to get off your lawn. Figuratively speaking.  We got some new neighbors a few weeks ago. This neighborhood is OK, but there’s a somewhat decrepit rental house across the street. It’s so decrepit that it is actually affordable. Thus, the tenants come and go. They come for the affordable rent; they go because the house is, well, decrepit. Black mold and so forth.  Our newest neighbors are two or three young guys who spend a lot of time working on their mini motorbikes on the sidewalk out front. There’s only one way to work on a motorbike. You tinker with it, and then you start it up and twist the throttle to see if your tinkering has made any difference. Maybe take a test run up and down the street. Repeat until the neighbors call the authorities.  We’re not calling the authorities. Sometimes, brooding through slatted blinds, I’ve felt...

Mr. and Mrs. Yours Truly, earlier in the pandemic. T o the best of my knowledge, I still haven’t gotten Covid. I would like to thank my superhuman immune system, my strict adherence to scientific protocols, and a social circle that could fit comfortably in a Mazda Miata. Oh, and the Academy. Just kidding. At this point it’s all down to luck. Nearly everyone I care about has had at least one case of Covid. Most took the pandemic seriously for the first couple of years, but then, like me, quietly and gradually said to hell with it. Now it seems that despite all the masks and vaccinations and social distancing, it’s less a question of if you get infected, but when. Turns out you can’t put out a fire if half the onlookers keep tossing books on it. I know: simply writing about this probably guarantees an epic case of Covid within the next few weeks. And some of us still don masks once in a while. Last week I went in for a blood test at Quest Diagnostics, a venue usually jam-packed with sham...

W ho’s the most famous writer you’ve never read? I can think of a few offhand, but now I can cross one off the list: Annie Proulx. A good friend sent me a book of her short stories the other day: “Fine Just the Way it Is.”  I’m about halfway through it. I love that title. I like her style. Yeah, I know. Everyone plus dog has read and raved about Proulx’s Pulitzer-winning “The Shipping News.” That book is 30 years old now; you’d think I might have made time for it at some point. Nope. Mea culpa. But on the strength of the stories I’ve read so far, I did check it out at the library yesterday.  My only previous experience with Annie Proulx was the movie, “Brokeback Mountain.” I didn’t care for it. My wife would say I was put off by the whole gay-cowboy thing, but I think the transition to film may have taken some nuance and authenticity out of the original work. OK, maybe I wasn’t crazy about watching the cowboys (sheepboys?) go at it. I’m always a little squeamish about movie se...

G eorge Santos is a lying liar who speaks exclusively in lies, then lies about the lies. That much we know. So the “Saturday Night Live” sketch that lampooned his prolific prevarications was not as funny as it might have been.  For satire to be effective, it has to take the accepted reality of a situation and stretch it just past the point of absurdity. Kind of hard to do that when the starting point is already way beyond absurd. At this point, top researchers are working 24/7 to track down any Santos sentence that is not a lie. Personally, I have set a Google alert to notify me the second this man utters a verifiably true statement. I won’t accept something like, “I can’t stop lying.”  But I might consider “I am King of the Dildoes.”  I never did see a video of Santos being sworn in as a House member. You have to wonder how that went. Even the lesser liars in the GOP might not have been able to keep a straight face.  Here’s the oath, by the way: “I do solemnly swear...

T hese damned Nazis. They’re having a moment now in Florida. The other night, when the Jacksonville Jaguars were playing here for a wild-card spot, some cretins thought to project the image of a swastika – entangled with a cross – on a building within view of the stadium.  Yeah, the swastika and the cross. Of course. Who would Jesus kill? During other Jags games, we’ve seen banners in support of the Confederacy and endorsing the concept that America should collectively fuck Joe Biden. Excuse my German. But this is what we’re dealing with: Nihilist mouth-breathers, mostly. It’s not a movement fueled by intellect. They have not steeped themselves in the core tenets of national socialism. Or anything else. Because they don’t read. Unless you count 8Chan or certain dark corners of Elon Musk’s Twitter.   Which accounts at least partly for the appeal of “Hunters,” the Amazon Prime series about Jews hunting Nazi war criminals in late-’70s America. We finished the first season la...

I have not read "Spare." Why bother? All the interesting excerpts are already out there. I have read those, for free. Spoiler: Prince Harry once froze his todger. Spending $18 at this point won’t make Harry’s life any better. He’s already pretty well off:  $60 million in the bank and a lot more where that came from.  First with the Netflix series and now with the Spare cash rolling in. (Spare cash, get it?) I do not get why this is the fastest-selling non-fiction title in the history of the universe. When you weigh their joint contributions to humanity – or anything, really, beyond keeping tabloids afloat – the royals aren’t very remarkable. That would include Harry and Meghan. All nice enough in small doses, but surely all laden with the standard array of petty resentments and disagreeable bathroom habits. (Oh, and don’t call me Shirley.) I’ll make an exception for Queen Elizabeth, because of all that history on her side and because she’s dead. But the rest of them are just ...

O ne of these days I’m going to watch all 431 “Bonanza” episodes in order. I would like to tabulate, for my own edification, how many homicides the Cartwrights were involved in during the course of the series. I’m guessing quite a few.  The other night we were mindlessly scrolling for something to watch and happened upon a Season 2 episode called “Spitfire.” In it, Little Joe kills a girl’s father in self-defense. The next few scenes are played for laughs. The girl, you see, is feisty. The Cartwrights struggle to teach her about table manners and personal hygiene.  Then the girl’s relatives show up wanting revenge. There’s more gunplay. Another homicide. What a mixup! Little Joe never says, “Shit, I wish now I hadn’t killed your dad,” but you know he’s thinking it.  Intrigued, I picked another episode at random (“The Stranger”). Soon, Little Joe again kills a man in self-defense. He does it because the man is there to arrest Ben Cartwright, who himself killed a man in New...

I 've been messing around with ChatGPT, the AI chatbot that promises to take any writing project and remove the need for human involvement. As a blogger, I’m excited about this technology. Once I’m finally freed from this clacking keyboard, I’ll have lots more time to stare moodily into the middle distance. Or perhaps take a shower. Basically, you sign up with the website, enter a couple of ideas and let the ChatGPT do the rest. In the example below, I asked for about 400 words on film noir and one of my favorite movies, “ A Simple Plan .” Below is the result: “Film noir is a genre of crime film that emerged in the 1940s and 1950s, characterized by its gritty, dark, and morally ambiguous themes. The genre often features hard-boiled detectives, femme fatales, and criminal protagonists, and is known for its use of chiaroscuro lighting, voice-over narration, and a sense of cynicism and disillusionment. “A Simple Plan” is a masterful example of film noir, and Raimi does an excellent jo...

I probably need to lay off Dateline for awhile. It’s gotten to where I can identify the killer about 10 minutes into any episode.  When they get to the part about the “shocking new development” that “turns the case upside down” – let’s just say the development is not that shocking to Inspector Dave. This grisly murder ain’t my first rodeo, friends. No doubt I’d be the world’s foremost criminal investigator by now, had I bothered to pursue a career in, you know, criminal investigation.  We all have our guilty pleasures; true crime is one of mine. Dateline is at the top of the list, mostly because of the show’s sharp production values and Keith Morrison’s laughably-arch delivery. But there are dozens of similar shows and I’ve sampled most at one time or another. By now they’re all kind of running together.  They all start with a panicked 911 call and end with a poignant statement by a loved one. Nearly all motives involve some combination of sex, money or revenge. Nearly al...

I t was with great sadness that I read of the impending closure of the best restaurant in the world . Many’s the time I’d stop by after work for a couple of fruit-leather beetles and some grilled reindeer heart. That was some good eating.  But nothing stays the same in this world, does it? Chef René Redzepi (“Red Zep” to his friends) made it work for two decades, what with great word-of-mouth among the uber-wealthy and not paying the help. A man just gets tired, that’s all.  What’s the most you ever paid for a meal? Four of us once went to a chi-chi place in Louisville, and the check came to just under $800. I came out thinking, “OK, not doing that again.” The food was excellent, sure, but $200 a pop seemed a betrayal of my rural roots. I could imagine the dismay of my Mom, who would balk at the cost of pretty much anything on a Wendy’s menu. By contrast, the best restaurant meal I can remember was at a pizza place in Chicago, now defunct. The bill for three of us that night w...

W e watched “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” last night, thus ending my 57-year streak of not watching it. When someone else grabs the remote, you sometimes end up viewing stuff you might not choose alone. Here’s the IMDb synopsis: “A bitter, aging couple, with the help of alcohol, use their young houseguests to fuel anguish and emotional pain towards each other over the course of a distressing night.” Sounds fun! But it turns out that watching people lacerate each other for most of the film’s 2:11 running time is not the laff riot you might expect. These people have some serious issues. As George keeps pouring the booze with much too free a hand, it soon emerges that the younger couple has some anguish of their own. So, not exactly “When Harry Met Sally.” Not exactly my cup of tea. But I have to admit it’s an impressive piece of work. I probably should have seen it before now. Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor are at the height of their powers here. I’m not super familiar with the ...

H ere it is 13 years later and I'm thinking of coming back to Blogspot. Hey, why not? Few read this in any case, and Blogspot appears to still be free. With my Wordpress domain and hosting, I'm spending about $300 a year. That ain't hay, as the farmers used to say.  Anyway, this post is just to see if there are any new design or posting tools to make the changeover more attractive.