The Play that we have been working on (“The Countess of Budapest”) will be shelved for the time being. After numerous playwriting classes and workshops, we have found that the story, when based strictly on the facts, is simply not as interesting as we thought. There is not enough weight to the material. The characters…
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The King of Jesters has received his first letter ever! Yay! This is a truly exciting moment. But, alas, it is not a very kind email. It describes the Jester’s entire life as a sequence of miserable failures in breathtakingly malicious and hateful terms. Now that really hurts. We didn’t know whether to laugh or…
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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…
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…
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?
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There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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,…
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.
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.
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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 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…
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…