I can’t decide whether or not to tell you to watch Wes Anderson’s iTunes-only short, Hotel Chevalier, before you watch his new feature-length, The Darjeeling Limited. But I can tell you to watch both, in whichever order you choose. (I could also tell you that in the short Jason Schwartzman gets Princess Leia’s ma real [...]
Author Archive
Americans in Paris, part II
“Whenever we hit a city we haven’t been to before,” our friend Lynn told us as she put us on the bullet train to Paris from Aix en Provence, “we try to spend at least part of our time underground. The Paris sewer tour is a good idea, but if you have to choose, see the catacombs.”
Turns out [...]
Americans in Paris, part I
Abigail Adams was nearly 40 years old when she first saw Paris. It was 1784. Her husband had helped negotiate a peace treaty — the Treaty of Paris — the previous year. He was still in Europe, along with Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, to help secure commercial treaties with the new United States. When [...]
Withold yer labor
Labor Day in the Hamptons, 1987.
Who’s yer favorite character?
And where were you twenty years ago today?
Thursday playlist: Summer … It’s gone edition
Meat Loaf, “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night)”
DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, “Summertime”
Jens Lekman, “A Sweet Summer’s Night on Hammer Hill”
His Name Is Alive, “Summer Left Your Heart Behind”
Stan Getz, “Summertime”
Sam Cook, “Summertime”
Grandaddy, “Summer … It’s Gone”
Fotheringay, “Two Weeks Last Summer”
Simone White, “I Didn’t Have a Summer [...]
Crab camp
The Question: How has a mild-mannered boy like me, never prone to guns or fishing or traditional masculine sport in general, wound up each summer on the hunt for crabs near the San Juan Islands on the Washington coast? That’s what I love to do come mid-August, and have done half a dozen times since [...]
Summer Sunday at the confluence of the Wenatchee and Columbia Rivers
Photo credit: Gary Lee Smith
And a hat tip to Slalom.
Berkshire weekend top 5
Though we originally hatched the idea of spending this weekend in the Berkshires with a plan to reprise our Bang on a Can fun at MASS MoCA, we quickly decided that Slade’s country house and immediate environs had more than enough to offer to keep us busy.
Here are some highlights, the top 5, in descending order, written late at [...]
Hogwarts Square diary entry (no spoilers!)
My favorite part of the Harry Potter series has always been its attention to media and memory — gadgets and goodies like Dumbledore’s Pensieve, the Marauder’s Map, owl-delivered letters (some of which actually scream at you if you’ve been bad), text books on Monsters that are themselves eager to bite you, memory charms, photos that wave to [...]
In memoriam: Captain Donald Taube (1942-2007)
I’m not the only one who can’t believe Don’s gone.
Don Taube — some call him Captain Don — was a fixture in our seaport neighborhood. He lived on a ship in the harbor. He drank tea and talked and checked his email at Fresh Salt, our local bar. (He loved the cookies, too.) He was [...]
