It’s easy to forget what a good piano player Elton John is. Through the decades of well-crafted hits and flamboyant showmanship, he’s become a pop icon, not someone known for his skill at the keyboard. But last night, he gave a master class in rock and roll piano. It was the St. Louis stop for […]
No one needs to be awakened at 5am to be served blue jello. I speak from experience. I spent most of the last few days in Barnes Jewish West County Hospital recovering from a gall bladder infection. It hit me, hard, on Wednesday night, and you don’t want to know the details. Ironically, I was […]
Yesterday, I saw a man walking down the street wearing a surgical mask. He was not headed into the operating room, nor was he a Michael Jackson impersonator. He was just another addle-brained American who bought into the swine flu panic. The media deserves much of the blame. The panicky tone of coverage this week […]
Last week, the Obama administration loosened some of the restrictions on the US relationship with Cuba that his predecessor had put in place. Cuban-Americans will be allowed to make more visits to their homeland and transfer money to family members still there, but you and I still can’t go to Havana whenever we want. US […]
More notes from our recent vacation in Jamaica… I always liked Bob Marley’s original version of “I Shot The Sheriff” until I heard it a hundred times in four days. I suppose the idea is to make American vacationers comfortable with reggae music by giving them songs they might recognize everywhere you go, like “Sheriff” […]
Call it the husband’s dilemma. There I am on the beach with my wife and daughter in Jamaica, enjoying our vacation in the sunshine. We’re surrounded by dozens of others, all doing the same, and the occasional beach hustlers who want to rent you a jetski for a half-hour ride, sell you cigars, or braid […]