“One for the Money,” the latest Katherine Heigl vehicle to park itself in the multiplexes, is also the title of a best-selling novel by Janet Evanovich. It is worth stating this fact at the outset to avoid the mistaken but entirely plausible assumption that the phrase somehow made its way onto the lobby posters from the subject line of an e-mail from Ms. Heigl’s agent.
– A.O. Scott, The New York Times
Back in 2007, when Barack Obama was running for president, a mildly surprising bit of news emerged: He and Dick Cheney were eighth cousins. Today, though, it appears that report was wrong. Judging from Obama’s record in office, the two are practically brothers.
– Steve Chapman, “Czar Barack.”
… everything in life, directly or indirectly, has a great degree of mystery. To paraphrase Warren Zevon, “Some days I feel like my shadow’s casting me.” Persons, places, things … time itself is a mystery. You know, like, who can explain it? It’s really difficult to define anything. What’s slow can speed up. Love can turn into hate. Peace can turn into war. Pride can turn into humility. Anger to grief.
How would you define a simple thing like a chair, for instance—something you sit on? Well, it’s more than that. You can sit on a curb, or a fence. But they are not chairs. So what makes a chair a chair? Maybe it’s got arms? A cross has arms, so has a person. Maybe the chair doesn’t have arms? Okay, so it’s a post or a flagpole. But those aren’t chairs. A chair has four legs. So does a table. So does a dog. But they’re not chairs either. So a chair is a mystical thing. It’s got a divine presence.
There’s a gloomy veil of chaos that surrounds it. And “chaos” in Greek means “air.” So we live in chaos and we breathe it. Is it any wonder why some people snap and go crazy? Mystery is ancient. It’s the essence of everything. It violates all conventions of beauty and understanding. It was there before the beginning, and it will be there beyond the end. We were created in it.
The Mississippi Sheiks recorded a song called “Stop and Listen.” To most music aficionados, it’s but a ragtime blues. But to me, it’s words of wisdom. Saint Paul said we see through the glass darkly. There’s plenty of mystery in nature and contemporary life. For some people, it’s too harsh to deal with. But I don’t see it that way.
– Bob Dylan, on painting
A dog makes a splash at Harborfest in Norfolk, Va.
See the rest of the photos I took during my trip last week to the beautiful Hampton Roads area of Virginia, including Hampton, Yorktown and Virginia Beach.
The sun rises over the red rocks of Sedona, Ariz.
Earlier this month, Elizabeth and I traveled to Sedona, Ariz. — and then floated above it, courtesy of Red Rock Balloon Adventures. The shot above is one of my favorite pictures from our journey into the skies over one of the loveliest spots on Earth.
Click here to see the rest of my pictures from the trip, or view them as a slide show. Here is a slide show from an earlier trip to Sedona.
Click here to see the rest of my photos from a recent trip to Kalamazoo, Mich. These gourds were among the finer wares available at Gene the Pumpkin Man‘s pumpkin patch.
Also, pumpkins were for sale.
Most of the photos, though, are from the Al Sabo Land Preserve in Kalamazoo. It was a gorgeous fall weekend in Southwestern Michigan.
Here is a little something I wrote a few years back, but given the news it seems appropriate to publish it now.
City of Chicago
Richard M. Daley, Mayor
Come from the East
Come from the West
Back to the town
We love the best
By boat, by plane
By land, by air
We find this tidbit
Everywhere
To remind us of our master
As if we hadn’t been aware
It says, “City of Chicago
Richard M. Daley, Mayor”
It seems no inch of property
Escapes Hizzoner’s glare
Without his leaden stamp
Is it really even there?
Why, even babies’ heads
Are marked before they grow their hair
Welcome to the world, my boy
But you had better beware
You’re in the City of Chicago
Richard M. Daley, Mayor
Bundled up in business cazh
Or attached to fanny packs
On a muggy Mag Mile morning
The throng is making tracks
Past dem purty flower boxes
Past a prophet’s jumbled prayer
Much to do, much to see
Can’t stop, can’t spare
In the City of Chicago
Richard M. Daley, Mayor
He arrived as “Rich”
But today he’s Da Mare
In daddy’s footsteps
City Hall’s rightful heir
Cronies and crooks
Creep up on the screen
We’re so damn amazed
By a magical Bean
Behind every denial
Just a hint of despair
In the City of Chicago
Richard M. Daley, Mayor
Click here to see the rest of my photos from today’s trip to the Chicago Botanic Garden — which, for the record, is actually in Glencoe, Ill. As a side note, what’s the deal with some city’s gardens being called “botanic gardens” while others are known as “botanical gardens”? Is somebody screwing up?
No, says the Grammarphobia Blog. Both are grammatically correct, and have the same meaning.
When I picked out today’s Mets-Cubs game as my one Wrigley outing of the year, I figured that it would meet the minimum standards I regularly set for such matters in order to avoid disappointment. Sure, I thought, the Cubs may be out of the playoff race by then (which they pretty much are) and they may stink it up on the field that day (we’ll see how that turns out) but at least I’ll be in for good weather in late August.
It’s unlikely to be miserably hot, I anticipated, but it certainly won’t be April-or-October cold. Hmph. That 65-degree-high, of course, does not take into account the wind off the lake. Seems no matter how low I set the bar, the Cubs still manage to avoid clearing it.
Update: Yes, it was very, very cold, though I was able to dress warmly enough. But who doesn’t enjoy wearing a sweatshirt, overcoat, gloves and a knit cap to a ballgame in August? And, as expected, the Cubs lost 4-1.
Bob has got a lot going for him, the way I see it:
In no particular order:
So, let’s say you’re Kirk Ellis – the guy who got the chance to turn David McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize-winning, popular biography of American founder John Adams into a top-shelf, seven-part HBO miniseries. You could stick to the facts of Adams’ life, which are more than dramatic enough, in telling a gripping tale.
Or you could construct a totally bogus subplot about how Adams’ son, Thomas, drank himself to death due to resentment over his father’s (inaccurately represented) long absences from home. That is just one of the many, many needless and pointless inaccuracies, not to mention egregious distortions, in the miniseries. After all, what better way to honor a national hero than to lie relentlessly about his life and family?
Look, screenwriters: If you want to make stuff up, write fictional screenplays. If you want to write “fact-based tales,” then stick to the facts as opposed to, say, conveying the notion that Adams’ daughter Nabby’s husband deserted her and her family when in reality he did not. Whatever. I keep telling myself I will stop getting worked up about this sort of thing, but I am compelled to watch these biopics and then discover how brutally and stupidly they disort the truth.
