Tag Archives: TheSideTrek

ArrestedDevelopment

Never a show fan, its reprise seems apt. Everyone in government is infected with the disease. Including the White House. IRS chief, Lois Lerner, pleaded the 5th on our local law school commencement speech the day before. Whatta mess.

Weiner’s name a deal-breaker. If that’s your moniker, pick a different deviant behavior than package tweets. Can’t even say he played stick ball.  Jodi jury deadlocked. How are they going to seat a new one that hasn’t seen her on every television outlet? And, how do you say ‘fried chicken’ in Spanish, Sergio?

Good arrested development. Cancer patients’ survivor longevity and improvements in post-treatment care. Congrats to E. Gould on 5 years as patient editor of MSKCC’s award-winning Bridges newsletter.

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Filed under Politics, Publishing, Sports

DeleGate

It’s not WaterGate. In retrospect that wasn’t… Anyway. The DOJ is wire-tapping AP and IRS is obstructing Tea Partiers to thwart reporting and funding of Benghazi-Gate. A good manager does delegate. PrezO has taken it a bit too far. Sometimes you’ve just gotta buck up and be the boss.

We hear… JeanJean rocked AveQ…BL Cool is leaving the Bronx for Manhattan…renovated LordJeff is gorgeous.

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Filed under New York, Politics, Writing

WhoDoneIt

Jodi Arias cray cray. After hearing her first degree murder verdict, she insists on doing a television interview. Bascially says, he had it comin’. Then asks for death rather than life in prison. So, now she’s stuck in a suicide cell. That’s not the best part of the story. Coverage pre-empted live Benghazi hearings on Fox. Hahaha.

Speaking of who done it. Harlen Coben, the mystery writer extraordinaire, sets his recent thriller, Six Years at Amherst College, where he’s an alum.

Sad news. Katherine Chancellor, aka Jeanne Cooper, no longer young nor restless. Glad news. NYU excited about David Boies speaking at Commencement.

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Filed under Books, Media, Writing

FatWednesday

Mercredi Gras. No. It’s not a party or parade in New Orleans. It’s obsession with food. Theme of the week continues. Chris Christie’s lap-band surgery. Fat Dad, Jim Gaffigan’s hilarious look at living with 5 kids and a wife in a 2-bedroom apartment in lower Manhattan. Morning Joe’s Mika’s new book and guests who keep talking about McDonald’s and other ailments. If it weren’t for Mickey D’s, the tortured captive Ohio women wouldn’t have gotten rescued.

It’s a distraction from sleazy men getting re-elected, no verdict yet in the Arias no-brainer trial, Syria, Libya. Benghazi. Benghazi. Benghazi.

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Filed under Journalism, Media, Writing

MayDay

M’aider. Distress signal. First of May. Hooray hooray. Outdoor blanking starts today. And all that. Nod to NellieK. Congrats to NellieD. Enough inside baseball. That begins anew, too. Go Yankees!

Golden Boy. Our favorite series on the telly. Brilliant time travel arc. Revival Tony nom for original Odets’ Sammy Davis show. Media and decades collide.

Kelly Ayotte and Ted Cruz are kindred spirits. Washington’s witch and warlock. Obama’s become a friendly ghost.

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Filed under Television, Theater, Writing

BrothersKaramazOff

A tale of brothers struggling with morality, religion, ideology? Or, one brother whose psychology emanated from an unbalanced family dynamic influenced the other? I believe the latter. Russia, Chechnya, Islam are peripheral to this story. Elder son coddled by an obsessed mother, who seems a bit off. Her shoplifting conviction a case in point. As her first born began to behave like an angry bully, she tried to steer him away from evil booze and drugs. He dragged his young brother into an ideological excuse for escalating a violent nature into an act.

It could have been just guns, like other recent mass murders. But, the Boston Marathon Massacre had the added firepower of bombs. Yet, it was still a plot born of psychology and not ideology. Apologies to Dostoyevsky.

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Filed under Books, Writing

MadLaise

Matt Weiner on CBS This Morning, says we are in a malaise just as he is portraying the MadMen mood in 1968. A precursor to one of the most tumultuous years in modern memory. Tet Offensive. Assassinations. MLK, RFK. Birth of Nixonian era. Are we on the brink again? He thinks so.

Meanwhile, MadMen6 continues to disappoint. Joan is acting more like a secretary than a partner, in and out of the office. Peggy betrays her former colleague, but at least it’s part of the mAd game. Don has devolved from a conflict in progress to a hypocritical jerk. Sylvia is really unattractive, in every way. Blech. Keep hope alive for a better show. Next week.

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Filed under Television, Writing

ReliefGrief

Quite the rollercoaster ride these past few days. Hard to stay away from the fray. Family, friends in the midst of it all. Neighbors, spectators, police, reporters. Boston shut down. Marathon bombers killed and caught. Relief, grief. There will be more to the story. Take away. Another horror perpetrated by young men left bereft in a world that renders them invisible. No matter the race, religion, political persuasion. Jobs, nuclear family ties. Raison d’être is key.

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Filed under History, International Affairs, Writing

DaffoDilly

Daffodils up. Finally. Welcome distraction from bombs, cowardice, guns. Explosions, more blood. Ted Cruz gets scarier every day. Turning off the tube to take long-awaited refuge on the porch. Until Sunday night.

Lured back to MadMen. Once more, Creamer nails it. His hero is Ted Chaough, the real Ad Man. Ruthless, shrewd, but not morally corrupt in his personal life. Peggy has escaped to an agency where boundaries are defined by the office door. Not sullied by unseemly relationship spillover. SCDP the whorehouse, with no clear pimp. Hard-drinking, bad-living aging johns in an ever decaying brothel. Still want to see more triumphant Joan for a modicum of redemption.

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Filed under Media, Television, Writing

Patriot’s Daze

Another mid-April violent incident. Waco ’93, big bad government raids cult nut. Oklahoma City ’95, militant American bomber who hates big bad government. Columbine ’99, crazy kids with guns. Virginia Tech ’07, assault-armed psycho student. At the site of original Patriot’s Day, Boston Marathon Massacre, ’13. Who this time? Could be an indoctrinated insane Saudi or a disgruntled other. In any event, terrorist mayhem has not always conformed to stereotypical covers.

 

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Filed under History, Media, Writing