Following up on my pal Denis Munro from the previous post .. he sent a reply once to a letter I mailed him in my early twenties. “Good to see your sardonic wit still intact,” he wrote. “Guard it always.” It was sound advice from an older friend that I perhaps failed to fully appreciate. […]
Category Archives: Posting
A Plain-Living Scotsman In America
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
My long-standing Scottish friend Denis Munro was in town last week completing the final leg of an Atlantic cruise with a short stint in Manhattan. Denis isn’t what you’d call a “man of excess.” His rule of thumb for both food and language is the same: keep it simple. ‘Exotic cuisine’ includes anything with salt […]
Boston Strong
Monday, April 22, 2013
Quite the one-week news cycle. From my somewhat skewed perspective, there are two distinct sides to the recent occurrences in Boston. There are the facts, which in this case are blatantly disturbing: innocent people losing their lives and limbs for no defensible reason. Long after all of this has receded from the general public’s frontal lobe, […]
The Ebert List
Friday, April 5, 2013
R.I.P. Roger Ebert. I’m not a big fan of list-writing but in this case it seems appropriate. Ebert will be missed for the following five reasons, and more. 1) He was an excellent and prolific writer who never over-wrote. Ebert’s ideas and interest in his subjects were paramount but his prose was accessible. If you […]
Eat-In Kitchens
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
“Of course the coffee’s HOT! So don’t be stupid!” Mazzola bakery, down the street on Union, includes this admonishment on their coffee cups. It’s the little shit that I appreciate about New York, still found in select corners and available to anyone willing to pay attention. I was giving a young visitor a tour of […]
In Like A Lion
Sunday, March 24, 2013
It snowed Monday night following St Patrick’s Day, beginning in the afternoon as a fine, gritty sleet peppering my face as I tried to run. By evening it transformed in to large, fluffy flakes that stuck together and accumulated on the street a few inches thick. I decided to find a bar, an infrequent instinct […]
Privateering
Friday, March 15, 2013
I’ve been listening to Mark Knopfler’s ‘Privateering‘ of late. It was released six months ago but I wouldn’t have tripped on it had I not seen him in November when he opened for Dylan in Brooklyn. A friend bought the double CD for me after we attended the show and made fun of the ‘Knopfler […]
Noodle Town Close
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
I get off the train at East Broadway and cut past Seward Park on to Canal, through Chinatown and toward the restaurant. It’s cold in New York, maybe twenty-five degrees, and I haven’t been in the city for months. By ‘the city‘ I mean Manhattan. That’s what they call it here as simple distinction from […]
The Secret Life of Gomer Pyle
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
‘Gomer Pyle’ Star Marries Male Partner. I caught this Internet headline at 3 a.m. this morning in my typically sleepless state. 82 year-old Jim Nabors decides to ‘officially’ come out of the closet and tie the knot with his partner of almost four Hawaiian decades. To steal a line from Dennis Miller in reference to similar […]
Best of World View
Monday, January 21, 2013
I’m expressing with my full capabilities And now I’m living in correctional facilities – Dr Dre /NWA “Express Yourself” Been a while since I’ve written anything. I was in California for a long stay necessitated by a family situation .. but this probably overloaded the thought process as opposed to leaving no time to riff. I’m sure […]