Having spent the better part of three years thinking and writing about Levon Helm, I have inevitably also devoted a lot of thought to The Weight, the mournful, elegiac, mysterious, inscrutable song written by Robbie Robertson and made famous by The Band. Somehow over the years, it evolved from a simple if elusive pop song …
On December 20th, Janet Maslin of The New York Times listed her Ten Favorite Books of 2013. Among them: “JOHNNY CARSON by Henry Bushkin (Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). That rare celebrity tell-all by an author who knows whom and what he’s talking about. Perhaps Mr. Bushkin, a young lawyer in 1970, should have wondered why …
On December 18, Fox News reported that the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania is considering removing prints that depict Robert E. Lee and other Confederate generals after at least one official questioned why the school honors those who fought against America. The college is currently conducting an inventory of its paintings and photographs, and …
Last night on 60 Minutes (December 1st) Amazon chief Jeff Bezos said the company is testing delivering packages using drones. The idea would be to deliver packages as quickly as possible using the small, unmanned aircraft, through a service the company is calling Prime Air, the CEO said. This idea will never happen, of course. …
The writer Penelope Green once used the term “our set’’ to describe all of us who came up together in the early eighties, and I knew exactly what she meant. Whether we were at Spy or The New York Observer or 7 Days or Wig Wag or one of the established magazines, we were all …
On November 26, Pope Francis framed as a call for Catholics to embrace a new evangelization. Prominent among his remarks was this stinging critique of the inequality tolerated by western capitalism. Said the Pope:: Just as the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, …
Rob Ford has been thrown out of a Toronto Maple Leafs hockey game for being drunk and belligerent. He groped a female politician at a fund-raiser for a Jewish community group, and was asked to stop coaching a high school football team after having a violent confrontation with one of the players. He has admitted …
Among this year’s projects, coffee table books for The New York Times, Life and Time, as well as The Book of Levon. All four titles are available in print or electronically from Amazon, except The Book of Levon, which is available in print from lulu.com Trat you rafmily, treat your froends, treat yourself.
Anyone who believed that the GOP would carry the shutdown around its neck like a dead albatross into the 2014 elections has surely begun to grasp what a bit of wishful thinking that was. Already people have begun to move on–the shortcomings of the health care act, eavesdropping on Angela Merkel (I’ll admit it: I …
As we all know, the idealistic sixties died in the selfish eighties.The spirit of “All You Need Is Love” was cooed away by the spirit of “Material Girl.” In the eighties, the spirit of making money was wild upon the land. Big takeover companies took over businesses and fired all the employees to raise the …