Archive for March, 2009

The New Old Age

Monday, March 23rd, 2009 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

There's an article about my book, "How to Live," on the New York Times's website today. (Read it here.) The writer, Anne C. Roark, asked me a lot of questions about the best ways to interview older folks or parents. (The ...

Elderism #44

Monday, March 23rd, 2009 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

A father to his son in Wells Towers' funny and slightly terrifying new short story collection, "Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned": "'Burt, fight to death before you let somebody put you in his car. Either way, you're probably dead, and believe me, ...

Papal Passion

Monday, March 23rd, 2009 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Comedy legend--and right-leaning diabetes and animal rights spokesperson--Mary Tyler Moore has been dancing on some tabletops on behalf of her new memoir, "Growing Up Again." She got pretty dishy with Kevin Sessums in Parade this weekend, telling him that when ...

Elegy

Monday, March 23rd, 2009 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Helen Vendler reminds us in the new New York Review of Books that M.S. Merwin (born 1927, the same year as fellow poets John Ashbery, Galway Kinnell, and James Wright) wrote Elegy, "the best brief poem of mourning in English." ...

V. Day, Part Deux

Sunday, March 22nd, 2009 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Well, given that it's taken me five days to report back about the fabulissimo New York City opening of  Matt Tyrnauer's documentary,"Valentino: The Last Emperor," I can only conclude that the event's glittery charms have  magicked me into slackjawed catatonia. ...

V. Day

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Tonight I am going to the New York premiere of "The Last Emperor," the hilarious and lovely documentary about fashion designer Valentino that  Matt Tyrnauer made. The premiere is at the Museum of Modern Art, and is hosted by every ...

Cambooty

Sunday, March 15th, 2009 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

I have a story in today's New York Times about traveling the Cambodian coast on the Gulf of Thailand. Other than the temples of Angkor Wat--which are staggeringly, curl-up-and-die-calibre amazing--my two favorite parts of the trip (as I write in ...

Love Sam

Saturday, March 7th, 2009 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

The early letters of Samuel Beckett--between 1929 and 1989, when the otherwise taciturn playwright died at 83, he issued some 15,000 missives--have been recently published. As Tom Stoppard has pronounced, "The prospect of reading Beckett's letters quickens the blood like ...

Elderism #43

Thursday, March 5th, 2009 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Can I just say that Chita is one of my all-time favorite names, alongside Marshall, Viv, and Ethelred? So it was an especial treat to see the greatest of the Chitas--that's Miss Rivera to you, bub--get some love in yesterday's ...

The Eternal Appeal of Hairlessness

Thursday, March 5th, 2009 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

The New York Times is very concerned (ie, they have published a front page story about) the fact that President Obama's hair is getting grayer. The reporter Helene Cooper talked to a founder of RealAge--the web site that considers your ...