News leaking out of BP indicates that wayward CEO Tony Hayward is stepping down in October, and will be assigned to a key post at TNK-BP in Russia, where he will presumably oversee all offshore drilling for oil in that part of the world. No one is saying it, but I have a deep suspicion…
Before Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, celebrities who are celebrated for doing nothing well or worthwhile except to promote themselves as celebrities, there was Hungarian-born Zsa Zsa Gabor, former beauty queen, socialite and occasional actress who starred in such howlers as Queen of Outer Space and Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood. There’s…
Having read about the new website “I Write Like” (http://iwl.me/), which matches samples of one’s own prose with those of famous authors, I decided to have the site analyze some of the longer entries from my “memoir in flux,” and here are the results. My recollection of the one time I met Arthur Miller was…
Sarah Palin has done it again! Although she was born in The Year of the Dragon (1964), she is not content being a mere Dragon Lady. Through the years, she has, by her own account, been a barracuda on the basketball court, an attack dog on the campaign trail for the GOP, a pitbull with…
I watch The Rachel Maddow Show assiduously, not only because it’s the best-researched cable news program on the air, not only because Rachel is erudite and isn’t afraid to use big words or to indulge in her love of puns, but also because Rachel herself is one of the most joyous and gleeful political commentators…
According to The Washington Post, U.S. Marines are being warned to be wary of foreign beauties they might meet and mate while they are on shore leave in the Seychelles islands. Pictures of Anna Chapman, the ravishing redhead who has been arrested recently as a Russian spy, are being circulated among the 3,000 sex-starved marines who have now been…
If men with erectile dysfunction can reach for Viagra and/or Cialis to make sure they’re “ready when the moment is right,” it’s only fair that women with libido difficulties should have a remedy of their own. According to an article in The New York Times, relief is just around the corner. Right now, the F.D.A.…
Scientists at Ocean Alliance, a research and conservation group, recently released a report which shows that “sperm whales feeding even in the most remote reaches of Earth’s oceans have built up stunningly high levels of toxic and heavy metals like cadmium, aluminum, chromium, lead, silver, mercury and titanium.” Industry dumps these things into the oceans,…
I’m hooked on MSNBC, which bills itself as “The Place For Politics.” But why is it that, whenever HARDBALL with Chris Matthews, COUNTDOWN with Keith Olbermann or THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW aren’t on the air after 10 PM at night, or on weekends, the programming inadvertently turns to something called LOCKUP, a prison documentary about hardened criminals? Is this a portent…
I wrote a play in 1988 about my mother. Although my father is talked about a great deal in Mother Tongue, he never actually appears in the play because I always thought he deserves a play of his own and that, one day, I would give him his due. I still want to, but every…