Wondrous Italian Clarinet Player and Some Russians in Evening Wear
Now and then I come across a song on Youtube I’d love to play on my radio show,...
Goat Testicles in Other Hands
I got a check this week from my agent, payment connected to my book Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous...
Rosa Bathurst
I was in Rome not long ago and went to visit the graveyard where Keats and Shelley are...
Went to See the — No, I Can’t Say It
“Actors’ Equity Association…announced this week that it would cease using the title ‘Gypsy Robe’ to describe one of its most...
Melodious Veep
You know the song “All in the Game”? (“Many a tear has to fall/But it’s all in the...
The Gone
Yesterday I got in touch with Alicia Mayer, the grandniece of Louis B. Mayer, in connection with some...
Artificial Intelligence
World History for 11 points! In 1521, after the excommunication of this religious reformer, a Holy Roman Emperor...
Unsolved
Famous Last Words: “Mrs. Tope’s care has spread a very neat, clean breakfast ready for her lodger. Before...
Double Doody
I learned yesterday that Carl Bernstein, the legendary Watergate reporter, won a Howdy Doody lookalike contest when he...
Children of the Corn
Last fall a new book of mine, Another Fine Mess: Life on Tomorrow’s Moon, arrived on little cat...
Fame
I discover I’m mentioned in Adam Gopnik’s latest memoir, At the Stranger’s Gate, when he describes going to...
Gershwin Hatches the Egg
Pick hits from my program last week: In 1924, three weeks before he premiered Rhapsody in Blue and...