Well, I succeeded in keeping off the net for three days. The flight to Arizona, which I had been slightly dreading because of fears that my two children would be driven to the point of insanity by 9+ hours on a plane, actually went very smoothly. Both of them (the smug father will let you […]
It will probably be a few days until my next posting–as I think I mentioned earlier, I’m off to visit my wife’s family (well, now mine as well) in Arizona.It will probably do no harm to be away from a warm laptop for a few days. Aside from what damage having a mildly radioactive device […]
It would be unfair to suggest that this Monkey was entirely opposed to the election of Pope Benedict XVI. Al contrario thanks to some careful scrutiny of form, leading to a judicious bet on Ratzinger with Paddy Powers, the new Pope has earned me the princely sum of
Someone (St. Fintan O’Toole of D’Olier Street?) recently pointed out that the paradox of Pope John Paul II’s reign was that he was a fierce anti-Communist who kept control over his organization with a grip that would put General Jaruzelski to shame*.To flog the slightly divisive comparison, I wonder if, with the election of Pope […]
Martin McDonagh’s play, “The Pillowman,” which isn’t newly written but is new to Broadway, is receiving rave reviews from a wide range of American critics. I’m dubious about the acclaim. The grounds for my scepticism is slightly shaky—I’ve only seen one of McDonagh’s plays, “The Lonesome West,” a few years ago but I was taken […]
James Howard Kunstler is an entertainingly cranky writer based in the upstate New York town of Saratoga Springs. He is inordinately fond of the adjective ‘necrotic’ when describing the contemporary American landscape, he maintains a blog with the somewhat no-holds-barred title of Clusterfuck Nation, and has just written a book that predicts that many of […]
There’s a pretty nausea-inducing article about the influence of the super-rich in the recent edition of New York magazine (not to be confused with The New Yorker, which usually affects a patrician disdain for the discussion of moolah). Anyway the gist of the obsequious piece is that the ultra rich may provoke envy, may be […]
Following violent clashes at the weekend at various matches including Lazio-Livorno, Palermo-Messina, and Perugia-Ternana (it’s not confined solely to the big Serie A matches), Interior minister Giuseppe Pisanu threatened to take serious action against both fans and clubs. Then, on Tuesday night there were the absurd and shocking scenes from the San Siro stadium as […]
Talking about the disruption caused to Rome due to the arrival of so many pilgrims to the eternal city, a typically sardonic local shrugged and said “Vabbe’, per fortuna succede ogni morte di papa” or “Well, luckily it happens only when a pope dies”. The term “ogni morte di papa” has passed into Italian aphorisms […]