Virtual Memories

No one will pay to see Scarlett Johanson. You know your career’s in trouble when you’re being compared to Ben Affleck: Years back, it was Eddie Murphy, who went from mega-star to loser when he churned out such bombs as Pluto Nash and I Spy before recovering his stroke. Kevin Costner still seems to be [...]

My other point of pride is how quickly and how well some of my dear readers (and great friends) offered up resources to help out The Brooding Persian. I forwarded everyone’s messages to him, and he was enormously grateful. He’s going to try to follow through with our advice and see where it gets him. [...]

Maybe (?) it’s dweebish to take pride in being able to help put on a good pharmaceutical outsourcing conference, but it’s an awfully good feeling when an event works out as well this one has. The first day of the event is the more stressful one: We had 130 companies at the one-day tabletop exhibition [...]

In honor of the Saints’ return to New Orleans, I made a dirty martini for Amy with some “Cajun infused olives” that we picked up this weekend (Amy accented it with a little Tony Chachere’s). If I didn’t have this crazy work schedule this week — big issue, our conference, then another conference — we’d [...]

I’ve got a request for you, dear readers. A friend of mine (the Brooding Persian, whom I met in grad school) is suffering through a psychotic breakdown and an undetermined autoimmune disease (the latter seems to be causing the former, as an organic brain disorder). He’s living in the Seattle area, doesn’t have money, and [...]

We missed Jackass Number Two this weekend, as the only theater on the trajectory of our Saturday morning errand-run was showing it at an inopportune time. So we’ll have to catch it later on. I will laugh a bunch if it’s showing in Paris when we arrive next week. During my last trip there, I [...]

Happy Jewish New Year, dear readers! In honor of Rosh Hashanah, this week’s Unrequired Reading features a bunch of Jewish-connected links and others that have nothing to do with Judaism. First, we have Michael Totten’s interview with Yaacov Lozowick, author of Right To Exist: A Moral Defense of Israel’s Wars. He thinks neither of the [...]

Sorry to be writing less frequently, dear readers. I’m in the midst of a work-crunch of monumental proportions. Gotta finish a giant issue of the magazine by next Wednesday, then help put on our annual conference & exhibition Thursday and Friday, then get on a plane Saturday for a chemical ingredient conference. On the doubleplusgood [...]

I discovered With Nails: The Film Diaries of Richard E. Grant in 1998, as I was walking through a Borders bookstore in a mall. The book was on the New Releases table and its cover — the grimacing face of one of my favorite actors, framed by a cardboard box — caught my eye. I [...]

. . . pretending not to know what size Breathe Right strip your husband wears. (If you must know: Magnum)