Cross Town Thoughts
Riveting How To Fix a Drug Scandal. Documentary set in Northampton, Amherst, Springfield, and Boston Massachusetts. Also, Ryan Murphy’s Hollywood is entertaining with great acting and clothes. Both Netflix.
Downton Abbey movie on HBO starting tonight. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt movie with originals and Daniel Radcliffe on Netflix. Adapted from one of my favorite books, Defending Jacob by William Landay, now on Apple+ with Michelle Dockery.
May 15 Reunions album by Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit.
Right-wing bad-boys. Bill O’Reilly. Roger Ailes. Donald Trump. Left-wing bad-boys. Teddy Kennedy. Jack Kennedy. Bill Clinton. Harvey Weinstein. Yeah. It all depends. Hypocrisy rules. Always. Follow the money.
And. Please. Can we finally dispense with all things Sylvia Plath?
People on United Airlines. Animals are treated well. Get to keep their seats. Allergic people passengers get kicked to the back of the cabin or booted off. Remember when cigarette smokers had to sit in the back? For health reasons?!
Smith College. Relegated to runner-up for Veep Selena Meyer’s Presidential library after Yale dumped her. Then Smith dumped her, too. Not feminist enough.
Free speech. On college campuses no less. Censorship is the new academic ideal.
Pocahontas. Why tag her with Granny Warren? Liz will be swinging her tomahawk on Real Time with Bill Maher tonight.
White House Correspondents Dinner. Incestuous glitterati fest. This year no guests.
Rainy Monday on Central Park West. Schools closed up North. Hampton. Snow.
Mermaid Inn has moved. Expanded. Little necks still sweet. Mussels too. Kept its ambience and character. Politics seems so remote all of a sudden. Furniture deliveries trump everything.
Around town and out the door. Cabin fever. Too much snow. Nice day at Pebble Beach, though. Bill Murray was busy. Golf to SNL show.
Our home chalets on a snowy Saturday. 
Who needs a ski retreat?
GOOD
mAdBen & Neil deGrasse Tyson at CannesLions. 
Parts Unknown. Bourdain in Massachusetts.
MadMen7. Bobby Morse’s dancing exit.
Of Mice and Men O’Dowd Franco
Realistic Joneses. Letts Collette Hall Tomei
Sushi Nakazawa
Eleven Madison Park
BAD
Rape of the leaves. Construction next door.
Sochi Olympics. Return of Putin.
Crying Wolfowitz. Right-wing and media fear-mongering.
Ebola.
Women’s Lib. Coinage of the day circa 1970. Misandry replaced romance. Friedan. Steinem. Started a political movement. The fib. That women could have it all. Work-life balance morphed into a myth. Recent Harvard Business School study says it’s not kids but husbands who determine a woman’s climb up the career ladder. Today’s Supreme Court considers whether pregnancy merits the same benefits as a disability in corporate terms, the UPS case.
Before the Libbers, Helen Gurley Brown maybe had it right. A woman who chose a sexy single life. Starting as a secretary at Foote Cone & Belding ad agency, she rose to the top of the publishing world. Brooke Hauser’s upcoming book, Enter Helen has already been optioned to be made into a movie prior to the book’s 2015 debut.
Just finished Sarah Waters’ The Paying Guests. 2014 feminist lit. Post-WWI England when all the good men had been lost and women had to find solace in each other. Makes one wonder. Have women come full circle back to spinning their domestic wheels? What will millennials do.
Back to CNN’s Parts Unknown. Anthony Bourdain this week brings us to Massachusetts. Assumed it would focus on Boston dining scene. Wrong! After taking us to his beginnings in Provincetown, land’s end of Cape Cod, he reveals that’s where his heroin addiction began. From there, he comes here. To Western Massachusetts. Route 91 North to SideTrekFalls. And Greenfield.
Heroin has been epidemic in these parts for decades. My former “facialist” first clued me in to the problem in Northampton in the late ’90’s. Kids of clients dead. From smack. It has only gotten worse as the economy declined. And when hometown sports heroes get injured, need surgery, they get hooked on oxy’s. Yup. Doctors as dealers.
Behind our red barns, beyond our fertile meadows, under our bridges of flowers. What you don’t see is a sorry scene. Bourdain is a brilliant journalist. 
The Judge movie produced by and starring Robert Downey is finally hitting the screens. Filmed in SideTrek Falls locations around Western Massachusetts. Just follow the road over that red bridge. Speaking of which, Jennifer Garner’s production company has sold a sitcom to Fox about a young couple wanting to move to New York City but get pregnant and are stuck in Agawam. Down 91.
Michelle O finally got through to Barack. Man up! Fire that blankedy blank woman. Then there’s Zeke Emanuel who advises President on medical issues. Don’t worry. Ebola won’t come to our shores. It’s not good to listen to a physician who has announced that people should only live to 75 anyway.
I don’t dwell. Much. That often. Bon weekend.
Side Trek . NYC 