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Jean Stapleton, Comic Miracle, 1923-2013
June 3, 2013
What a sweetheart. Made me laugh out loud in everything from All in the Family (as Edith Bunker) to Klute (in a cameo as anxious secretary). What versatility-be it musicals (she was in the original cast of Funny Girl and Bells are Ringing) or drama, hers was a career that ranged from Broadway to TV…
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RIP: Smash
May 28, 2013
Ask any rabid television fan: the road to hell is paved with the carcasses of shows that are too out there, too cerebral, too genre, too tiny-demographic-by-way-of-special-interest-esoteric. You could go back as far as Adam’s Rib (a short-lived comedy series starring Blythe Danner and Ken Howard) or Honey West (Anne Francis as a karate-chopping private…
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Death Letters
April 10, 2013
No time for visits or pleasantries with friends. Not meaning to be rude, I am all in my head and heart, completely consumed, driven to record as much as I can before you fade from me. I know this behavior is futile. You are gone and my efforts will not bring you back but somehow…
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Disappearing Acts
March 25, 2013
Before: Thirty years ago I thought, This is too good to be true the first time I laid eyes on the view from my living room window. The overcast day could not disguise the miles and miles of sky that unfurled. That, combined with the space of 5 rooms sold me. My spouse at the time hadn’t…
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More Oscar Bait!
February 10, 2013
Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell, director). Two zanies meet cute, overcome a boatload of wacky complications to find love. The setup sounds like a plot spun from the delicious mind of a Preston Sturges or Howard Hawks. Russell, returning to the brand of comedy he minted in such films as Spanking the Monkey…
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Random Thoughts on Mortality
February 3, 2013
1) Woke up from a dream involving my ex. I and some friends and strangers found him sprawled on a divan in what seemed an abandoned office building. Like a pieta he was sprawled, and looked the way he had at the end of his life—thin, riddled with Karposi’s sarcoma, listless. 2) No surprise, but…
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Oscar Bait!
January 21, 2013
In Hollywood no one can hear you scream: that thought went through my head as I watched Rebecca Miller on the red carpet parade preceding last Sunday’s Golden Globes. Miller is Mrs. Daniel Day-Lewis; she’s also a fine film director, so it was a touch dispiriting to see her introduced as merely “the wife” (okay,…
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Richard’s Blanco’s One Day
January 21, 2013
Nothing like an inauguration and a pop of poetry to inspire one’s day. Happy MLK Day to all. “One Today” One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores, peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies. One…
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Eating Art for Lunch
January 6, 2013
Best Saturday ever: first, Ann Hamilton’s installation at the Park Avenue Armory, then the George Bellows retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ann’s from Lima, OH; Bellows hails from Columbus. As a Cincinnatian, nice to know that our state’s renown extends beyond it being a swing state, and a conservative bastion. If either work…
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