Can you spot him? This is a critical Titanic moment, as the waves surround and envelop him. He is about to go under, forever, into that cold deep watery grave. As any one of the last-man-standing heroes of history knows all too well, this is a tough place to be, fraught with all sorts of…
Shoes! My shoes! I gotta get my shoes on. The blood was good, real good. But the fist in the air was the telltale sign. Whoa! Who puts a raised fist in the air other than a Black Panther, or Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympics? And Donald Trump ain’t no Black…
The White House July 8, 2024 @ 3 A.M. EST The President of the United States has announced in an early morning news conference today that he has ordered the immediate move of the White House to a location near the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, Israel. “This is only intended as a convenience to many…
Unfinished Draft
Just about every routine conversation between my parents Lilo and Janos eventually evolved into a shouting match. This was especially true in the time that plans were being made to move permanently from Brazil to the United States. Major change, major fights. Every issue was reason for raising the heat and noise, and the level…
Much of my undergraduate career at Yale College was spent inside the film projection booth at 101 Linsley-Chittenden Hall on the Old Campus. The classroom-turned-screening room was the headquarters of the Yale Film Society, of which I was a member, factotum and primary projectionist. We ran screenings of films on an almost daily basis, films…
Ever since the publication in 1973 of Jean Raspail’s book, The Camp of the Saints, we have entertained ourselves at the thought of boatloads of brown migrants from the third world landing on the shores of the French Riviera, and snickered at the discomfiture of the poor French having to put up with the rabble. …
Yale College, New Haven, Connecticut When we were freshmen, we were required to eat most of our meals in a huge dining hall called Commons with a four- or five-story ceiling so high that the lights on the tables couldn’t reach it. It made us feel gloriously insignificant. It made one of our classmates, Steve…
Alas, he doesn’t look very happy about it. Britain’s newly crowned King Alfred holding a Pizza Primavera. The King said he was saving it for later. His manly wife is sporting a king-sized George-Raft gangster hat, and some really bad poison ivy on her right forearm. Meanwhile, the faces on that row of strange…
He always got such a kick out of parading in front of his adoring fans. Notice that superb touch of the little red velvet slippers peeking out from the lacy floor-length alb. And that javelin is positively Olympian. As far as we are concerned, the only thing the Roman Church did well was provide support…
You might say Annette was my first girlfriend, since we went to a prom together, sealing the deal. We were both seniors nearing graduation, and it must have been her high school prom. I hadn’t paid much attention to girls until then, except in slick magazines, since I attended an all-boys Catholic school in San…
Where have we been all this time? I’ll tell you. Got a minute? I’ll start with your note of December 9 in which you take on my pleonastic Class Book essay. OK, OK, you’re right. I larded it on (and only overshot the 500-word limit by a little), with delirious and overwrought descriptors. I failed…
It is rare that we burst into uncontrollable laughter at the instant that we hear something funny. On the radio this morning we heard the news that the central banks of Argentina and Brazil have engaged in talks aimed at creating a common currency in order to achieve eventual economic integration. Considering how well these…
Take the recent fawning adulation received by Roger F and Serena W on the news of their retirement Gentlemen’s game? Humiliating/Frustrating Brings out the worst in people We don’t get off on it, when we beat an opponent. And it is especially galling when an opponent beats you, and he clearly gets of on it. …
The Bethel Police Commission has not published an agenda or minutes of meetings since January 20, 2021; the Bethel Police Department itself hasn’t published any news since 6/12/2018. And what became of the old police blotter that normally is published in every small town newspaper? First, the commission meetings. Bethel residents have no idea what…
Et tu, Rubino?
Pick up here
THE COUNTESS OF BUDAPEST CHARACTERS Johnny, a young man, about thirty Manya, Johnny’s lover, a young woman, about thirty Sissi, Johnny’s sister, a young woman, about twenty Lotti, Johnny’s mother, a woman in middle age, mid-fifties Katya, Lotti’s older sister and Johnny’s aunt, about sixty Vidor, Lotti’s husband and Johnny’s father, about sixty…
THE COUNTESS OF BUDAPEST – MetaData Title: _The Countess of Budapest_ Credit: written by Author: The King of Jesters Source: Notes: Filename: COB-Scene1 09162019.highland Copyright: kingofjesters.com LOGLINE: Indecisive hero must choose between his familiar toxic family headed by his narcissistic grande dame mother, and the unfamiliar lure of a loving, unselfish woman. SYNOPSIS: PAR…
Postmaster Bethel Post Office Bethel USA Dear Sir or Madam, We have just received a notice from the Bethel Tax Collector informing us that we are delinquent in our quarterly tax payment of $ 4,655.88. We now must pay $153.57 in interest and penalties. Oddly, this mysterious “disappearance” of our tax payment has occurred several…
Once again, we’ve been had. Bethel voters, on a paltry turnout of six or seven hundred voters, approved a $ 1.4 million package for equiping a driving range at the headquarters that looks like a prison yard. Hey, form follows function. Or was it a shooting range? There was so little publicity, or debate, that…
Greenwood Avenue in Bethel looks nothing like it did in the nineteenth century: it has no trees anywhere on either side of it. Our town fathers, and mothers, self-righteously rhapsodize about preserving the town’s “New England character.” Trees would be a good start in that direction, but since the town is only 80 or so…
Sixty shots, sixty bullets; we don’t know how many guns were involved . The most charitable thing one could say about Akron police is that they are not very good shots. The one-sided shoot-’em-up finally felled the vicious escapee. We hope the stray bullets did not harm any innocent life or property, and trust that…
In process… “Hell, no, I’m not going in there. The guy ‘s got a gun!” Dateline: Uvalde TX June 2022 -Grossly overweight
His acolytes in their yellow vests are Bethel’s finest. And two patrol cars. All this to control the little traffic that there is. Think of the overtime, and the imputed rent on the two cars. And it’s all on the taxpayer. On one occasion they arrived at 7:30 AM, an hour before the Butcher of…
The words “conservative” and “thought” don’t seem to go together anymore, as the people to whom that sentiment would have once applied have morphed into beings that are neither conservative nor thoughtful.
A cop from the town of Ridgefield shot a mother bear dead somewhere near his Newtown home. It was said that his reason for doing so was that she was terrorizing his chickens and ducks that he insisted be allowed to free-range on his property. “A terrorist is a terrorist,” the shooter said to his…
In Process… Every year, people hit themselves or others with sticks, often unintentionally. In the last few years, however, there have been uncountable violent incidents with sticks involving dozens of innocent people, perpetrated by young lone-wolf males of indeterminate origins, but usually white (duh…). Here are some good rules for proper stick management. DON’T handle…
Dateline 1625 Representatives of the twelve great Nations of the eastern seaboard met in conclave today in the wickiups of the Long Island to discuss the most important issues confronting their people, chief among them the existential crisis created by the landings of hundreds of ships with their cargos of unwanted white immigrants. Immigration is…
In progress…
In Process… Yale Commons is renamed after wealthy donor-Schwartzman Yale Drama School renamed for wealthy donor-Geffen Various Yale Buildings named for good earner-Swensen Yale University renamed for wealthy donor-KingofJesters (KingofJesters University?)
Caught you!
Sit yourself down and write yourself a letter. Once in print it might actually acquire the patina of truth. Letter To Self: 1 12 May, 1986 Dear Me, I cannot believe that you are only just now writing to me for advice. What did the doctor say when the skeleton walked into…
Hey, Howard… Thank you for the prompt turnaround; you must be spinning still. I will research their equipment on the film. Also, thanks for the tip on Sarah Polley; but I was onto her already. Can’t wait to see it, and then get into her mom’s pants too, if she’s still alive. And Sarah herself,…
Dear Mr. Eszterhas: I just finished reading your book, Hollywood Animal. I enjoyed it immensely: I also have a Hungarian background, and found many hilarious connections with your book. Generally speaking, I have yet to meet a Hungarian that I liked. For various reasons, they are variously arrogant, provincial, or rude. In short, typical European…
We have allowed the last few years to pass without comment. We know, don’t ask. In fact, it wasn’t necessary for us to opine on anything, as the targets were too rich and too easy. It would have been redundant. Nobody needed to read about the miserable failure of the Bush presidency (Iraq, the…
It’s what he said to me, inside the emergency room. He got it right away. He understood. In the midst of the controlled chaos of the emergency room, my son, my baby, looked at me with his bruised and battered face, and said, “Papa, thank you for everything.” As I crushed his hand in mine,…
Dear Mike, I have been wanting to write, to reach out, to you, since our Class reunion and your last communication with some of us on the Committee. Alas, I must write you now on a quite different subject. Dear friends and classmates, our Reunion team,After five weeks of unexpected turbulence, my family has entered…
An urban story of a young couple renovating a dilapidated Philadelphia row house, and finding that the entire neighborhood made good use of it. Manya and I had just arrived at that age when the urge to create our own space became overwhelming. That is to say, we had to act on something, anything. There…
Lotte could not be challenged, on anything. If you, or it, didn’t conform with her view, either it did not exist, or it was a personal insult. She could ignore anything not on the approved list. (eg. Myra’s announcement of pregnancy…Lotte contonued to speak right over it). It was awesome to behold, and scary…she could…
Dom Emilio and the others in São Paulo Father Neyron and Sister Teresa of NDV in San Francisco The Jesuit goons at SI in San Francisco The Jesuit who left the order for money management
When Johnny lived in São Paulo in the early 1950’s, he couldn’t speak Portuguese, so he didn’t talk very much. He had come from somewhere else, far away; he was very white, with long, blond curly hair. His folks had fled the European War, and here they were. Once, coming back from the ice cream…
[…] JERUSALEM! The arrival of the seven-mile-long motorcade was preceded by the descent on the scene of hundreds of Israeli local police and even more Israeli Defense Forces regulars, bristling with every weapon imaginable, from long sabers to bazookas and shoulder-mounted mortars. Colorful tourists and sombre religious Hasidim were all shooed out of the way…
Something has come between Lord Blankfein and King Cohn, both of the legendary Goldman Sachs investment bank. We just can’t put our finger on it. They appear to be having fun however. Boys will be boys. It is always gratifying to see two old friends and professional colleagues getting it on with one another, but…
(IN PROGRESS) No memoir of ours can be complete without some mention of this man. Sure enough, another priest, a sorry excuse for a man, unsexed and unloved, except maybe by his mom. The SJ part is a reference to the Society of Jesus, to which he belonged, having been ordained a priest by the…
Where the boy and his barn are given some background and information.
Wearing their new Party outfits, Putin & Trump give each other their secret protocol handshake. If you’ll put it up mine, I’ll put it up yours, they each think in their own thought bubbles. I’ll bet my dick is bigger than his, thinks Putin. My chin is better than his, thinks Trump. What a loser,…
In Process In Process Who the heck is George Kaplan? Back to Land’s End Stories: Contents Page
Notes: Eva and I bring home a dog…
A baby infant deer was found under the ferns; so she came to live. She was called Fern; Fernie to her intimates. She believed the humans, the cats, the dogs, were all her family. What did she know? She slept in bed with her family. Slowly she grew up until she nearly hit the ceiling….
Max Unfortunately, he was killed by our negligence.
Story about this girl who loves to read, anytime, anywhere. The last time we saw her, she was wandering around the house, deep in communion with a book. Every few minutes she passed by the windows in the room where we were sitting. We don’t know how many times she went around the house.
Polo lives at the Train Bleu Restaurant inside the cavernous Gare de Lyon. From there Polo explores the neighborhood and meets many of its residents. And sometimes he actually catches a ride on the real Train Bleu, the once-famous overnight train to the Riviera. Polo is a cat. The story opens with an assortment of…
The New York Times piece today on James Comey revealed an interesting datum that resonated with us. It appears that Mr. Comey keeps on his desk one of those calendar aphorisms that always seem to go stale after a while. It reads: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. The moment…
Excerpt from Johnny’s Diary November 1973 Dear Diary: It has been more than seven years since I met Manya on that brilliant fall day in New Haven; it seems like yesterday. Oddly, I haven’t made and kept many friends who are women; yet Manya and I have stayed friends over the years. I can’t…
We get that strange creepy tingling in our gums when we feel an Official Lie coming down the pike. This latest one reminds us of WMD, or Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the Catastrophic Iraq Blunder (CIB), if you have forgotten. We are being told by our government that the drones used to blow up…
A trio of young friends living on the edge of Point Lobos in San Francisco find love and friendship in a breathtakingly dramatic setting. Coming of age are Johnny, Gary and Denise. Back to Land’s End Stories: Contents Page
Work in Progress THE CRIME? Well, there was a crime, but as is not unusual, we can’t figure out what it is. The only crime here is Benny Frisco’s wisecracks. Assume a crime, then. THE INVESTIGATION Heck, let’s just assume there was an investigation, too. You know how cops make stuff up. There are are…
(IN PROGRESS) No memoir of ours can be complete without some mention of this man. Sure enough, another priest, a sorry excuse for a man, unsexed and unloved, except maybe by his mom. The SJ part is a reference to the Society of Jesus, to which he belonged, having been ordained a priest by the…
We were not the only ones to think of Scaramouche and the Commedia dell’Arte when learning of Anthony Scaramucci’s appointment to the White House staff. The association prompted the King of Jesters to contemplate at long last the sorry state of the republic for which we weep. You will note that ever since this tragicomedy…
(Photo: Jonathan Ernst, Reuters) He’s thinking… (Picture credit: Jan de Bray) If only they could talk…
Not everybody gets a second chance in one lifetime. Before I came to Yale, my family of stateless refugee immigrants led a hardscrabble itinerant life; all you had was family. We left post-war Europe for a crummy garage in the suburbs of São Paulo. Ten years later, life in Brazil’s tropical mayhem hadn’t panned out. …
The recent stock market gyrations seem to be caused by the imbecile’s daily lip-pursing pronouncements on the economy, or trade tariffs, or war with assorted countries. We realize that he’s not that stupid, after all. Of course, he’s trading ahead of his tweets. This is the real fake news. He announces tariffs on billions of…
Dear Jeff, Thank you for your kind and generous note. It was devastating to learn of your triple by-pass and its attendant problems. It made me infinitely sad, reminding me how fragile our physical presence really is. But medicine these days can work miracles–I am happy that you write of feeling great. That is indeed…
No, alas, the KingOfJesters is not Rigoletto; I am not a hunchback. Try again.
Because it has a tilde over the A and an S instead of the Z. That’s just the way it is. ❖ Long before coming to Land’s End, my family had to pass through Brasil for ten years or so after leaving Budapest, where I was born in 1947, after the War and the arrival…
Max did not go gently, and I was not there to help him along. It appears that I needed one last urgent service from his brief life. I negligently let him go out at night (he was always so insistent) in a strange new place, where I dragged him against his wishes. He didn’t want…
The New York Times revealed today that the poor, beleaguered mayor of Baltimore made a reference to “thugs” in the midst of the recent riots. We immediately thought that she was referring to the police in that fair city, an excusable error on our part. It turns out that, unbeknownst to us, the term is…
Turns out it’s run by Mike D’Andrea. You know Mike. He used to run the CIA’s detention and interrogation program, the water thing. So now he runs the targeted killing program. Much cleaner, you don’t even have to see or smell your enemy. None of that messy, Hemingway mano a mano stuff, just kinda long…
The following story turned up in our local paper. We swear we didn’t make up any of it. A suspended Roman Catholic priest who authorities say dealt pounds of methamphetamine and bought a sex shop to possibly launder his drug money is asking a federal judge for leniency when he is sentenced next week. Monsignor Kevin…
Wonders will never cease. From the massive concrete bunkers poured into the once pristine alpine meadows, comes the news that the subject of global income inequality was actually on the agenda. It’s hard to imagine a lively discussion since no one from the lower 99% was likely to be attending, and we weren’t there either. …
A Play in One Act Version 3 by JP Morgan CHARACTERS LOTTI, a woman in her 80s KIRA, Lotti’s older daughter JOHNNY, Lotti’s son SISSI, Lotti’s younger daughter ARMIN, Lotti’s husband KATIA, Lotti’s sister MANYA, Johnny’s wife And, incidentally, A NURSE INGRID, a disembodied voice from Lotti’s past THE PLACE: A room…
Dear John, Ave! I finally have the opportunity to reply to your kind, thoughtful, optimistic, and impossibly joyful e-mail. How could you dismiss my mischievous rantings with such gleeful finesse, and completely ignore all the bait I tossed in your path? Good for you, you clever Jesuit. I was pleased that you thought my letter…
Dear Sir: As I begin this letter, I realize that you may not remember me, in which case this whole thing will be very funny, and totally pointless. That would be fitting, wouldn’t it? In any event, I recently stumbled into the Saint Ignatius High School website. I haven’t had any contact with SI since…
JUST OUTSIDE A LITTLE TOWN…………………….BEHIND A LONG STONE WALL, LIVED A LITTLE BOY IN A QUIET OLD HOUSE………………………… THAT WAS ONCE A FARM, NOT LONG AGO. AND BEHIND THE HOUSE, SAT A BIG RED BARN, JUST AS OLD. “YOUR MAMA BOUGHT THE HOUSE, AND I BOUGHT THE BARN,” LAUGHED THE BOY’S FATHER. THE BARN WAS…
The Boy and His Barn One. (double page) JUST OUTSIDE A LITTLE TOWN……………………..BEHIND A LONG STONE WALL Long shot of New England style town (church steeples, town square, with a little farm away on the side: a white clapboard house with a red barn behind it, trees, fields, gravel road, stone walls, stone arch…
(The boy with the long, curly red hair is in almost every illustration, growing from little boy into young manhood) 1 I live just outside a little town, behind a long stone wall and under three heavy maple trees. 2 My latest family lives in the old, old house that was once a farm, not…
Hank Paulson, known around the house as Lurch, is back in a documentary produced by the Wall Street fellow traveller Bloomberg Businessweek. It’s called “Hank: Five Years From the Brink,” and extensively features his wife Wendy. Hank and Wendy are bird watchers, we are told. Raptors like bird watching too. Now Hank is back, in…
NICOSay, Alec, you know we’re really not supposed to be here in this playground. ALECOh, yeah? Why not? NICOWell, we’ve been coming here for sixty years, and just because our appearance hasn’t changed doesn’t mean we have to come here all the time. Somebody’s gonna figure it out one of these days. We oughta be…
Howard, Of course, I feel like a jackass now. I must have been feeling neglected and sorry for myself that particular day. Please don’t take it amiss. I apologize for being a grinch. As I recall, I was curious about Saint Ignatius High School after, lo, these many years, having realized that the fiftieth anniversary…
Previously, when asked “Is the Pope Catholic?”, we erroneously replied “No, he is a Jesuit.” The correct answer should have been “No, he is Argentinian.” We stand in shame of our ignorance.
Work-in-Progress… Lotte became a refugee in 1947, and since the war had taken everything she had, she took the war with her, wherever she went, and continued to fight it for the rest of her life in exile. She would bring it up seemingly every other day, and she would pick at it, reminding her…
On most days the sun burns off the fog covering Land’s End by mid-morning. But on that day in 1961, it lingered and thinned, diffusing the sun’s light to a dazzling thick haze. Even the normally gloomy woods of brooding Monterey cypresses that cover the land on the Point were surprisingly bright. The light appeared…
While watching the recent D-Day festivities on French television, we noted the arrival of our President in a caravan of black Chevy Suburbans, right there on the beach in Normandy. And as the camera panned past the rear end of his SUV, we saw not a French license plate, but one that read: Washington D.C.! …
September 26, 2013 Dear Members of the SI Community, On behalf of the St. Ignatius College Preparatory’s Board of Trustees, I am writing to tell you about some immediate changes to the membership of the Board. On Wednesday, September 25, 2013, with focus on the mission of SI as a Jesuit school, the Board of…
We received the following item not long ago, and present it herewith without comment, except for the snide headline above. Well, maybe just one question. Is this board-packing? Read on…
We just reviewed our website’s Google Ænalytics report, hoping to find evidence of NSA sphincter snooping. Alas, nothing. Nobody ever visits, only the gastroenterologist. There were a few feeble “hits” from France (go figure) and Durham (New Hampshire?). The French ones came from some downmarket Paris suburb and others from Marseille, indicating some posssible French…
We ran across this item recently in the Class Notes of our alumni magazine: Reed Hundt from his Blackberry: “I just invested in an off-Broadway play, Old Jews Telling Jokes. Betsy and I attended the opening in mid-May. Please go often so we can have a hit. We still live in Chevy Chase and I…
We were thrilled to see some of our heroes be honored by the Nobel for economics (let’s not call it economic science, not yet): Robert Schiller of Yale and Eugene Fama of the University of Chicago . Later, we watched the press conferences that each man gave at his respective university. Our respect and admiration…
Edward entered the crowded Art Deco lobby of the landmark New York City building, pushed along by the rush, through the revolving doors. Once inside, he weaved back and forth, in a kind of embarassed paranoia, avoiding the people that raced past him in all directions. He was an old-fashioned-looking man, short, stocky, wearing a…
Worry no more for Timmy Geithner. Our prior speculation about where he would end up after leaving office was erroneous. No, it’s not Goldman Sachs, alas. It’s Warburg Pincus, a house of private equity where, fear not, Timmy will be able to work on many deals with Goldman.
Howard, I started getting these calls last week… “Abdul? Abdul?, it’s Mohamid.” “Who? I think you’ve got the wrong number, sorry.” Click. An hour later, the same thing. “Abdul?” “No, sorry, man.” Click. The next morning, “Abdul?” “Mohamid, listen, you got the wrong…” Click. This went on for the last ten days, some even in…
It’s just no fun to be an investment banker anymore.
The new airline philosophy of everything-has-its-price became terrifyingly clear to me on a recent flight from Paris to New York. I flew into a panic even before take-off when I couldn’t find the little vomit bag “in the seat-back pocket in front of you.” And it was nowhere to be found; I looked everywhere. Anxious…
The shopworn airplane was packed, every seat was occupied. While the Delta flight from Paris went smoothly enough, everything else about it was a disaster: cheap cramped seats, non-working entertainment system, smelly bathrooms, and food that no one should eat. On arrival in New York, we barged our way off the plane, and raced through…
“It’s red!” I shouted in the delivery room, startling everyone in the place. Dr. Goldstein, looking down and then up at me, surprised, then glancing over to my wife Manya, who mumbled curses at us in her delirium, joked lamely about a milkman. We both looked down again at the round wet dome between her…
We can’t help but wonder indelicately what Pope Francis was doing during the time of the desaparecidos in Argentina. Perhaps he was just lying low, like the thuggish Pius XII during World War II.
This obituary is assembled from a variety of sources, mostly recollections from various people who knew him at different times and places. You know how Hungarians always introduce you last name first (see above). This causes no end of confusion about people’s names. Try “Mr. János.” Actually, in the American South Mr. John would work…
It is not true that Manya and I never connected. We did, many years later. We made children, and created a family and a home. Wow! My first encounter with Manya represented some form of recognition. No, alas, not a hunger, really, but something more inevitable, something that could be satisfied, that harmoniously fell into…
Aye, she’s a bloodthirsty wench, isn’t she? Ms. Power’s hyperactive conscience would have her do some bloody cleansing of her own. Send in America’s military might once again to right all the wrongs that this messy world perpetrates. Let’s bomb the Syrians, who are committing such atrocities. But which Syrians? And whose side are they…
So, duh, is the Pope Catholic? No, he’s a Jesuit.
We would love to have the metadata on Goldman Sachs et. al. Anybody selling?
If you have ever come rolling off the West Side Highway at around 56th Street, and had the bad luck to get stopped by a red light, then you are familiar with what we are about to tell you. You’ve already guessed from the title. [more]
He stayed behind in the garage/basement of that grim, brightly painted San Francisco box house, rooted in place, trembling and terrified by her anger, until she had climbed the inside stairs, and closed the door of her mother’s apartment, turning off the lights as she went. In the darkness, he could hear her angry steps…
Right in the middle of this whole NSA snooping scandal, our government has issued an urgent terrorist threat based on what it calls “unusual chatter.” What an amazing coincidence; surely it must be some sort of a prank. It has become axiomatic that we no longer believe anything that our government tells us, especially when…
Dear Mr. President, On the question of who is to replace Ben Bernanke as chair of the Federal Reserve, can you seriously be thinking of appointing the fox to run the henhouse? The New York Times wrote this morning (7/26/13) that the choice is between Lawrence Summers (the fox) and Janet Yellen (the hen?). Summers…
Dear Whom: My alumni magazine recently published the following note from one of our more distinguished graduates: (Note follows) After brief consideration, I could not contain myself: herewith is an update of my own. (Reply follows)
Brasil, early to midfifties, on the sixth floor of a newish apartment building in São Paulo. Lilo brings a boy my age, same complexion, into the apartment. He was probably some Hungarian kid, the son of one of their numerous fellow Hungarian refugees. She was probably just taking care of it, as a favor to…
my Papa From: Rachel To: The King of Jesters Hey my Papa, I know what a tough time you’re going through right now, and I wish I could be there to give you love and cheer and distract you by asking you political questions that get you all riled up. I can’t give you hugs…
Draft Back to Land’s End Stories: Contents Page Saint Ignatius High School Stories: Charles Henry, S.J. To this day, nearly fifty years after the event, Father Henry’s gratuitous act of spiritual violence still astonishes me. Out of nowhere, he served up one fantastic moment of revelation: that a priest could be so casually…
He lingered, motionless, for a while longer, watching Gary disappear into his house, not knowing what he would do next, just staring, but once again feeling the pull of the amniotic sea beyond the edge of the land. The result of the game they had played had startled him. While he felt good about his…
March 2013 I went to my GI doctor today to see about my third colonoscopy. Pretty routine stuff by now: I’ve survived two already. I’ve been going to his practice since forever. Once he fixed my H. Pilori and twice got rid of polyps on my colon. I’m sixty-six now. We joke around a…
The fog was like gray cotton, suffocating. I knew the sunlight was up there somewhere and the dark ocean somewhere below, but all around me everything was gray. I could see the ground around me, of course, and the nearby trees, but the light was muted, and the sound was dimmed; it was all…
–Two bits says he ends up at Goldman, Sachs. –Naah, he wouldn’t dare. –So, bet me.
We still talk occasionally, though it is now several decades later. Our children know each other, having attended some of the same schools over the years, and the same social gatherings of various acquaintances. Yet, to this day, I’ve never mentioned it; neither has she. I’m not really sure it ever happened. It still saddens…
This obituary is lovingly assembled from various accounts given by her children, friends and various relatives and acquaintances. But no single piece of writing could possibly do justice to this complex, exasperating, and disturbed adversary. Liselotte J., known throughout her life as “Lilo”, died on August 28, 2007, at the age of 88 or maybe…
Dateline: Jerusalem Sunday, July 29, 2012 AMERICAN REPUBLICAN MORMON PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE MAKES PILGRIMAGE TO JERUSALEM’S WESTERN WALL Willard Mitt Romney and his enormous entourage of American Secret Service and Israeli Mossad agents, along with dozens of news-media reporters, were observed today at Jerusalem’s Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall….
I used to drive a Ford Pinto. I even boasted about its road-handling abilities. And about how its two-liter engine block had a high nickel content, though I wasn’t sure what that meant. And how I was going to bore it out, and put a four-barrel Weber carburetor on it. And torsion bars on the…
I live just a couple of blocks away from Manya now, in a two-bedroom apartment above the Riviera Cafe. Each bedroom is barely larger the bed in it, so there is no need to buy any other furnishings. At night, the rattle of the train underneath Seventh Avenue is muffled by the noise of the…
It was on one of those fall men’s college weekends that I first met her. I did not know then that the course of a life could change forever, in the briefest of instants, though the change didn’t become fact until many years later. The light from the sun came at sharp angles, making long…
Obituary assembled with little editing from candid interviews with various people who knew and had experiences with AMK over many years and places. Anne Marie K. was born in Prague in 1916 to Hans Ebinger and Daniela Marky. The family lived with Mia’s maternal grandmother, the imperious Teresa. Teresa, who had worked for Mia’s grandfather…
Chapter Seven I had by now come to dread every occasion when Manya’s work required me to appear at some function, a cocktail party or a dinner, as the trailing spouse. Dread, as in full-blown, dry mouth, gut-churning panic, like getting on an airplane, when flying is not your favorite thing, or like pushing long…
Johnny raced out of the boy’s locker room, still wet under his clothes and smelling of chlorine. He actually liked the smell because it made people ask about it. That way he could talk about his swimming, otherwise there was never much to talk about with anybody. It was something he was good at; besides,…
Jamie. Such a frivolous nickname for America’s Banker. He once laundered the name to hide its ethnic origins. Haven’t we all tried to hide our ethnic origins at one time or another? But he is present at every financial crash. There are many ways to achieve stardom in America. XXX
Jon Corzine: Exercises in Magical Realism
Hey, Howard…where d’ja eat? I was in town, too, but left early. Ran out of stuff to do, and got bored and fuckin’ cold. Shoulda called you. Maybe we coulda had a few laffs. Can you tell I took a writing course at SLC? So I saw the NYC Grid exhibit at the Museum of…
Hey, Ho… How delightful to hear from you, after our college trustee spouse reunion and graduation ceremony. I had a great time. Sorry to run off like that, but I couldn’t take the heat. Not to mention the glandular moisture that Julianne Margulies was giving me. I heard that she was totally naked under that…