LShana Tova!

That means Happy New Year in Jewish. Which also means, I'm off duty today. Back tomorrow.

One Sentence Movie Reviews: "American Gigolo"

American Gigolo (1980): "A movie about loneliness does not need a murder mystery nor Lauren Hutton to spice up the proceedings."

Goodbye Paul Newman...

"I was always a character actor. I just looked like Little Red Riding Hood."

Paul Newman (1925-2008).

Welcome Boston Herald Readers!

If you're visiting this here site via this posting at Boston Herald Blogs, welcome. The essay referred to "Another Day at the Video Store," is in the anthology The Customer is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles which I contributed to and is now available at a fine bookstore near you.

This site's been online, in several forms, since 2001 and can followed the old fashioned way, via RSS or Twitter. I write her mostly in my spare time when I'm not writing books and articles and running Booktour.com, my day job.

Nice to have you come by.

Word of the Day: "Worsted"

Worsted (noun): "Wool cloth, spun smooth. Often in men's suits."

Seen: in, of all places, an Atlantic Monthly article about the Wall Street Journal. Thought about yesterday while buying a suit for my brother's wedding.

One Sentence Movie Reviews: "The Legend of Billie Jean"

The Legend of Billie Jean (1985): "There was a time in America (i.e. the mid 1980s) when being a teenager was seen as akin to being a Christian during the last days of Rome."

Seen: As part of a new project. More on that soon...

Thought of the Day: "Good Men"

"When good men die their goodness does not perish, but lives though they are gone. As for the bad, all that was theirs dies and is buried with them."

--Euripides (via The Writer's Almanac)

Word of the Day: "Argot"

Argot (noun): "The special vocabulary of a particular professional or social group."

Example: In the argot of my college friends, "Visage!" means "You have done poorly and I have done better at your expense."

Thought of the Day: "Welcome"

"The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome."

--Derek Walcott (via my friend Joelle Jay).

My Twitter Grade:

My Twitter Grade is 80: I can hold this over the heads of exactly no one that cares (via ChronicBabe).