Safe At Home

I thought I might do a Top Ten list of changes I'd like to see in the New Year, but it turns out I only had one, an end to all Top Ten lists. No, wait, there's one more. I'd like for Dick Cheney to keep his mouth shut.
 

HAPPY NEW DECADE

2005. It's coming to the end of the year and I'm winging across the Atlantic going to Italy. The cabin is dark, most passengers are sleeping. I go to chat up the flight attendant and there's this fellow spreading out his prayer rug back opposite the galley, arranged to face Mecca. I run to my seat and get my sketchbook. People have asked me how I know he was facing Mecca. Duh.

Doggie Tales

I'm saddened by the death last Tuesday of David Levine, one of the world's great illustrators, at age 83. Usually referred to as a caricaturist, he was in fact, like Al Hirschfeld, an amazing creator of what Hirschfeld appropriately preferred to call character drawings. As with the finest magicians and acrobats, one looked at Levine's work and thought, "how the heck does he do that?"


To see more go to: http://www.nybooks.com/gallery/

Drink To Me Only

In a radio sketch with Charlie McCarthy, W.C. Fields described being tormented by birds. "Little tiny birds," he said. "Then you must need glasses to see them," Charlie said. "You bet," intoned Fields, "at least three or four."

It's All God's Fault

Figure this one out: Tiger makes love to lots of women and his career tanks. Charlie Sheen and Keifer Sutherland beat up their women and their careers thrive. Think we have our priorities out of shape?

Immaculate Consumption

The local news yesterday evening reported that after a day of rest shoppers were able to go back to their frenzied search for bargains. I wonder how Jesus would feel about what has become of the day that presumably was to commemorate his birth, a kind of time out to recuperate from unbridled consumerism.

Fly, Fly Again

"It were happy if we studied nature more in natural things, and acted according to nature, whose rules are simple, plain, and most reasonable." William Penn, Fruits of Solitude, 1693.