If you want to have some fun poking around in the underbelly, and sometimes in the dirty linen of the art world you could do no better than Bryan Cooke’s book, “Art Can Kill: Crooks, Clowns & Connoisseurs”. Winner of LA’s 2022 Best Art Services Business Award, Cooke’s Crating has been servicing the city’s prime […]
My Policeman – A Film Review
It was one of those sleepless nights. Waking at three, I was kept awake for the remaining hours, first by persistent worries, then by thoughts provoked by the film we watched yesterday evening. I’ll leave aside the worries. The thoughts were about the persistence of love, a theme of the truly beautiful, infinitely sad British […]
Dear Harry: Letters to My Father
I see that copies of “Dear Harry” are finally being received from Amazon and elsewhere. If you have a copy, or are expecting one, thank you! If you enjoy the read, if you find something there that elevates, inspires, enlightens, thank you again. And third thank you to anyone who’ll take the time to rate or […]
BIPOLAR BARE: A BOOK REVIEW
I’m posting today about “Bipolar Bare,” a memoir by my friend Carl Davis–a man whom many of you know from his presence as an artist and architect in Los Angeles. As you’ll see, it is not an easy read, but one that I found insightful and rewarding. Because his story is so very personal and […]
A VISIT TO THE GETTY VILLA
I can vouch for the truth that there is no better way to celebrate a birthday marking the all too swift passage of the remaining years than a jaunt with beloved family to the Getty Villa. We went yesterday, Ellie and I, with our daughter Sarah and her boyfriend from the Netherlands and her rambunctious young 10-year-old, Luka—another constant reminder, if one were needed, of my own declining years.
DRAWING DOWN THE MOON: AN ART REVIEW
I am a reluctant driver these days, in Los Angeles. I’ve had enough of rude and clueless drivers, of endless traffic snarls around road works, of mad speeds on the freeways. The drive west from where we live at the far east end of the Hollywood hills used to be a pleasant, easy, even somewhat romantic drive along Sunset Boulevard. Nowadays, it’s a nightmare.
A LINE TO KILL – A BOOK REVIEW
I read mysteries. I love the genre, and have done so ever since starting out at a young age with Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown, Hercule Poirot and the rest of them. I wrote a couple myself. They’re a part of my literary heritage. So it was with pleasure that I read an early birthday gift […]
A SOFT SPOT: TWO SORT-OF FILM REVIEWS
But first, can I share a secret? It’s relevant. This is something I have never told anyone in my life before, not even Ellie, who knows everything about me, because I always found it acutely embarrassing. And here I am, about to say it out loud, in public. It’s a pleasure to be too old […]
THE ANOMALY: A BOOK REVIEW
I picked up a copy of “The Anomaly” by Hervé le Tellier at our local bookshop on the basis of rave reviews and touted best-seller status (“more than a million copies sold world-wide”!) I should have known better. It turned out to be what’s known in the lit biz as a “novel of ideas”—look it […]
FEMME OSAGE
I was reading an interesting essay in yesterday’s new NYT Opinion section (replacing the Sunday Review. Why?) about the recent surge of interest in the use of hallucinogens as an aid in psychotherapy. It reminded me of my own (single) experience with LSD back in the 1960s.