King Kong never made it to the opera. I’m not advocating that he should have, but he came closer to it than you might think. Let’s face it: it’s not like he wasn’t qualified. It’s not such a big leap from giant gorilla that falls in love with a beautiful woman to magic ring protected […]
The surest way to make something popular is to tell people they can’t have it. Or that it’s terrible for them. The Adam and Eve story with the apple has to be considered Exhibit A. Slightly less well known is the story of how Frederick the Great made the potato into a thing: he ordered […]
I know myself well enough by now to have figured out that I shouldn’t make New Year’s resolutions. There’s no need for us to talk about just how long most of mine have lasted. Yet there is something I can’t resist about the inexhaustible optimism that lies behind a resolution—New Year’s or otherwise. So here […]
On the off chance that you’re not a fan of Justin Bieber’s and Mariah Carey’s duet rendition of “All I Want for Christmas is You”, just remember: it could be worse. There was a Christmas with no music at all. In fact, there were many. In one of history’s more egregious examples of governmental overstepping, […]
Maybe I just run in the wrong circles, but I can’t recall an incident in recent memory in which someone required me to defend my honour. There was a time not so long ago when throwing down the gloves was serious business, and it could have life-altering consequences. For centuries, the only appropriate action in […]
I don’t want to betray my sappy side, but there’s nothing quite like a love letter. I mean the good old-fashioned, hand-written kind. I don’t claim to have the finger on the pulse of modern romance, but I assume the majority of it is done though Tinder, iMessage and Facebook. (Maybe Instagram too, but I […]
Hope can be found in the unlikeliest of places, and a bottle of moonshine may top this list. Today, the day of the American election, we could use a little hope. This campaign has been a downright nasty feud. Watching from a relatively safe distance north of the 49th, it’s hard to understand just how […]
One of the realities of my line of work is spending a lot of time thinking about dead people. I don’t mind. I find it quite interesting to try to piece together a picture of the personalities of these misty characters. The longer they have been gone, the trickier this becomes. We do have a […]
YouTube is a modern miracle. It’s an unparalleled resource that enriches our lives in ways never possible before. I will admit there is some content on YouTube that will leave you somewhat less intelligent (check out British Animal Voiceovers); and I have learned that astoundingly, the site has approximately two million cat videos. It does […]
About a year ago, I was stuck on a plane for many hours, so I decided to watch the movie Whiplash. I had heard about this movie, and some people recommended I watch it. It’s about a famed conductor at a prestigious New York music school; I’m a conductor, and I went to a prestigious […]
