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Flânerie

As an aspiring flâneuse, strolling undetected along the backroads, random thoughts for the weekend. Apologies to Baudelaire.

World Cup. Argentina’s twelfth player. Not fair to have Il Papa silently praying behind the scenes. Did he sway the Dutch coach to leave the tall goalie on the bench? Pazzo. Due dueling Papas Benedict v. Francis for the Final. Ave Maria. Germany does have the best team. We’ll see.

Yay for Jon Voight Emmy nom. Ray Donovan returns Sunday.

Border crisis. 3-year olds bunched into buses by Central American scam-lords. Christian Right says round them up and send them back. Are they less God’s children because they weren’t lucky enough to be born here? It’s not an immigration issue. It’s a question of humanity. Who are we? Beck  most “Christ-like”? Mediaite. Strange bedfellows. Bon weekend, Charles.

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This Old Neighbor

Will never watch This Old House the same way again. Always marveled at the skill of the craftsmen. Richard soldering pipes. Roger caressing root balls. Norm inserting rabbets into dadoes. Tommy tooling mortises and tenons. Drill. Screw. Fasten-ating to watch. What I never appreciated before was those poor suffering neighbors next door. What they went through. Now I do.

photo-47Trucks blocking the driveway. Earth-moving machines bigger than the house. Louder than B-52’s. Bulldozer guy who seems to enjoy banging boulders with his shovel just to get his rocks off. So to speak. For some reason shirtless young carpenters’ hammering doesn’t annoy me quite as much. Photo voltaic panels save energy. Great. As long as you don’t like trees. Oh, and the gigantic garbage bin couldn’t have been dumped anywhere but our front doorstep?! Bong. Clang. And it’s not a muted drab brown. No. It’s screaming RED. Like Brasil feels about Germany today. At least the porta-potty is on the other neighbor’s lawn. photo-43

The carbon footprint of a “green” home?

 

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Turkeys in July

cropped-dsc_01381.jpgEarly Sunday morning backyard. Mrs. Wild Turkey looked like the manager of a World Cup team. Which way is that goal?

Nederlanders kicked the ball backwards for most of 120 minutes. Costa Rica’s team and goalie waged a mighty defense when the ball did come their way. Tall guy beats short guy in the end. Really?! Silly game.

Recipes for the 4th. RecipeDetours. Cookout at Cathy’s. Kielbasa and cake. Birthday paloooza. mAdBen home. Weekend bon.

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mAd Story

2007 MadMen Season 1
Northampton High School Grad

2008 MadMen Season 2
NYU Honors Seminar- Ogilvy Exec speech inspires

2011 MadMen Season 5
NYU Grad Highest Honors, Econ
Ogilvy Associate

2014 MadMen Season 7
Cannes Young Lion

Happy 25th Birthday, mAdBen!

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Crying Wolves

It is refreshing to have a President who understands that foreign policy no longer demands a knee-jerk military reaction. Obama comprehends the nuances of geopolitical regions, their diverse and entrenched cultures. Where did Maliki come from? He was living in Iran before he came into power in Iraq under the coveted Bush/Cheney ‘Democracy Doctrine’. Big surprise. He’s not a uniter!

Current polls reflect remnants of neocon fear-mongering. People are being fed the frenzy that post-9/11 terrorists are lurking around every corner. Of course, it could happen again. If it does, Cheney and his McCain, Graham, Kristol hawks will all yell in unison, “We told you so!”  In the meantime, how much more blood and treasure are we to expend? Enough already of crying Wolfowitz.

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Got Away

Three ferries to the Hamptons. Only way to go. Last minute availability on our favorite plage. Left Northampton at 9am. On the beach in Amagansett at 2pm. photo-90

Stayed until sunset. Last cocktail with the seashore to ourselves. Bliss. photo-87Steamed lobster at perennial ClamBar. Breakfast at Bird on the Roof in Montauk. Crêpes and crispy bacon. A real roly poly pig in the middle of the road in the pouring rain. What?! Quite the sight. Shelter island ferries back again after a few fun days. Lunch by the dock at Blue Canoe in Greeport. Miso encrusted cod rivaled Nobu standards. Spicy mussels, too.

DSC_0044Stopped for a tasting at Kontokosta Winery on the way to Orient Point-New London ferry. Rosés in tow. Ready to go. Another great spur of the moment getaway.DSC_0040

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Get Away

Maureen Dowd addresses the Cannes Lions about storytelling. Best and brightest global MadMen amass on the Côte d’Azur as the world wrestles with another blunder into Iraq. Could it be that Biden was right? PartitionStan. Hillary and Barack are holding Town Halls today. What will they say?

Joey3Sticks will play with the Yankees this afternoon. Yup. The Bronx Bombers, not the BoSox. World turned upside down?  Fargo finale and then… bringing an old SanFran friend’s novel to read on the beach. Clam Bar, Ho! À bientôt.

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Daddy Bag

41 is 90 today. Sky dived. Yay. Bid Daddy had it right. Go into Iraq and get out quick. 43 the Inferior took advice from Neo-Con nuts. Now we are left with al Baghdadi and his ISIS monsters. I say let them fight Al Qaeda to the death. We can save money and lives. Stay away. Who are the good guys anyway? U.S. Army allowed an unstable kid like Bergdahl to serve. Sad for so many.

Speaking of evil. Fargo. Who is worse? Malvo or Lester? I say Lester. Finale next week. Game of Thrones, too. What will we do? U.S. Open Golf at PineHurst. Snooze.

Father’s Day. I have a radical opinion on that. Dads are as important as Moms. Bon weekend.

 

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Gray Matters

Thoughts for a foggy day. PrezO gave a refinement of his foreign policy at West Point yesterday. Everyone on the left and right decries lack of a clear doctrine. Current geopolitical circumstances are such that there is no longer the black v. white, good v. evil of World & Cold Wars of the past. It takes a more nuanced perspective to understand that the the world is gray. Choices between brutal dictators or Al Qaeda are not clear cut. Knee-jerk invasions v. isolationism. ‘Obama doctrine’ lies somewhere in between. It meets the modern reality.

Snowden. Traitor or Hero? As I listened to him last night, I went back and forth. Again, more gray area than right or wrong. At some points, he could have come across as arrogant with delusions of grandeur. At others, he made the case for saving Americans from potential dangers when information is held in nefarious hands. Imagine a leader that sorts data to alienate your ethnic, religious, political group. Chilling. So…  It takes more thinking to come to a cloudy conclusion.

 

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Mad Men 7

Episode 7 of MadMen7. Matt saved his best for last. Focus on the AdBiz. Ditch ancillary characters. Megan mercifully ends the charade. Pete consoles Don with the line of the night. “Marriage is a racket!” Don sheds his Dick (capital D), and returns to being fabulously Draper. Betty & the kids dismiss that phase. Peggy loses her surrogate son. Will her real kid with Pete show up again?

Nuclear Ad family is back. Don’s creative partnership with Peggy recaptures its heart and soul. Joan remains my favorite bottom line girl. So to speak. Roger takes advantage of bittersweet circumstances to enter the M&A era and keep Sterling Cooper intact. Under McCann Erickson. I thought Don would spin himself and a few others off. But, this works in the historical context even better.

As the Sixties ends with everyone gathered around their televisions to watch the first lunar landing in awe, song and dance man Bobby Morse takes us and Bert out in style. The Moon Belongs to Everyone. The Best Things in Life Are Free. See ya next year.