When the Obamas get settle post-White House my best friend Meesh (short for Michelle, only her best friends call her that) and I will spend Saturday afternoons harvesting whatever bounty is in her garden and then cooking up delicious, healthy vegetarian meals for Barry and whichever of the daughters and their friends…

Gasp! You just described my husband! But I would argue that I’m even lower because I am a WASPy gay atheist who “threw my life away” by throwing in my lot with his. It’s one thing to be black and gay and an atheist; it’s quite another to willingly marry one. (I am joking. My friends and family have been nothing but…

I love misfiring ads that must have seemed perfectly fine in the past. Here are a couple I poached off of someone’s pinterest:

Yeah, I think Canada would want to hang on to Alberta, those natural resources are handy things to have. Plus we (Americans) maybe don’t need any more oil influence, given that the CEO of Exxon/Mobil is proposed as our new Secretary of State.

Off-topic, as usual, but I wanted chime in to point out that founder of the Revolutionary Communist Party was (is?) named Bob.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis

Another of the pluses of reading the WSJ is their arts coverage, which is outstanding. Stay away from those editorial pages, though, although I confess I like the Peggy Noonan columns because I too am an aging New Yorker, I’m just aging and thinking in a different way.

I think I have to disagree here. The ability/power to vote is a right, not a privilege. As long as you’re 18 and older and an American citizen you are allowed to vote in American elections. Driving a car is a privilege: when people turn a certain age they aren’t automatically issued a driver’s license with a cheery…

I’m not sure that it’s that common among dogs, actually, at least not adult ones. I’ve raised other dogs from puppyhood, both male and female, and none of them ever exhibited this kind of interest. But he was a retriever puppy, they’re bred partly for their heightened sense of smell (the better to find something you…

I am a huge fan of articles that try to guess how much apartments on TV shows set in New York might cost. This is one of them, it’s an awful slideshow, but it’s one of the few I could pull up without pushed ads that would crash a normal browser.

And Im back, and we have traveled far from the discussion of Christmas music, but I have an appropriate anecdote to share:

I was once in a wedding party and learned pretty quickly that none of the bridesmaids (I’m a guy, so I was a groomsman, but more friendly with the woman than the man) didn’t like the new husband at all. After the first dance, and the bride/father dance, and the groom/mother dance (it was that kind of wedding) the best…

I will now conclude this conversation (because I am in NYC and have to go into an office tomorrow) by thanking you for the Yvonne Elliman, and reminding me that during the pre-teen disco dance party I used this song to teach a little partner dancing (“and remember, when you look at your partner, you have to look very…

You are so right. When my MIL was alive she used to send us something Christmas-y every year (a Santa, a manger scene, a candy dish) and then we’d see her and get something else Noël. When she died my husband distributed useful stuff that she had, like furniture and even food she had in a stand-alone freezer, to…

Yes! Are you in New York? You’ll go to the top of the invite list if you know any Spice Girl routines and/or can tap dance along to “Anything Goes”!

And why Ambassador to Italy I wonder? Because New Jersey has a lot of residents of Italian descent? That has to be one of the best of the “no foreign policy background needed” postings for major donors/supporters. He’s an idiot for turning it down.

I have posted fairly recently about how we throw these huge and elaborate holiday Christmas open houses every year. We are starting to bring down all this crap we have tucked away, the black angels are already up, the snow globes and music boxes have been distributed, black Mr. and Mrs. Claus are staring at me while I…

AND AND AND who can forget the 1978 Star Wars Christmas Special featuring, who knows why, Bea Arthur! Here she is:

The Crosby/Bowie “Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth” video is the best. Bing, for some reason, is in England at some baronial house and David shows up because the owner (who is his neighbor) lets him use the piano and they can’t resist a duet. The Seventies were a magical time:

That most certainly is Tamsen Donner herself. I chose this latest nom-de-Jez because I live in NY but go to CA a lot, and as grueling as the JFK-LAX-JFK voyage is, I always think, while stranded in one of the airports because of flight delays, at least I’m not doing it in a broken-down covered wagon as the winter…