“It was bought amid a flurry of raised eyebrows and has sat uneasily in a global broadcasting and media stable ever since — and yesterday Lonely Planet was once again the subject of speculation, uncertainty and possibly even a little controversy. “The backpackers’ essential guides to, well, pretty much everywhere may, it seems, be heading [...]
Archive for October, 2009
Lonelier Planet?: BBC Plans to Sell Off “Lonely Planet” Guide Series
Posted in Books, Business, Foreign Travel, U.S. Travel on October 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The Jerry Smolin Collection of Historic Baseball Programs Headed To Auction in April
Posted in Antiques & Folk Art, Baseball, Collectors & Collecting, Ephemera, Popular Culture, Sports, Sports Memorabilia on October 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Shameless self-promotion, I know, but . . . “Since the 1970s, as a collector, as a dealer, and as an auctioneer (one-half of the highly respected Sloate & Smolin Auctions and the sole owner of About Time Auctions), Jerry Smolin has been well known as a baseball historian and as a true connoisseur of baseball memorabilia. [...]
R.I.P. – Milton Supman, aka “Soupy Sales” (1926-2009)
Posted in Actors & Acting, New York City, Obituaries, Popular Culture, Television on October 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Soupy Sales, whose zany television routines turned the smashing of a pie to the face into a madcap art form, died Thursday night. He was 83. “Mr. Sales’s former manager, Dave Usher, said the entertainer died in a hospice in New York City after suffering from multiple health problems. “Cavorting with his puppet sidekicks White [...]
Not So “Beloved”?: Is Toni Morrison’s Magnum Opus “The Most Overrated Novel Ever”?
Posted in Book Reviews, Books, Literature, Race, Writers & Writing on October 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“The most overrated novel ever has got to be Beloved. Upon its initial publication, it was rightly passed over for the 1988 National Book Award, which went to Larry Heinemann’s Paco’s Story, while the National Book Critics Circle handed its fiction award instead to Philip Roth for The Counterlife. In protest, forty-eight ‘black critics and black [...]
Burning Passion: Matchcover Collectors & The Return of a New Old Restaurant Freebie
Posted in Business, Collectors & Collecting, Design, Ephemera, Food & Wine, Media & Advertising, Popular Culture, U.S. Travel on October 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“If smoking was their sole raison d’être, restaurant matches should by all rights have disappeared by now. After being overtaken by the disposable lighter, they have run into smoking bans of varying severity. (Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia now have laws prohibiting smoking in restaurants, according to the American Lung Association, and local [...]
Mixed Bits: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States
Posted in Book Reviews, Books, Food & Wine, U.S. Travel on October 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Is there anything more American than Chinese food? Remember that scene in ‘Manhattan’ where Woody Allen and Mariel Hemingway cozy up in bed in his cramped apartment with cardboard boxes of something in black-bean sauce while W. C. Fields plays on the television? Or the scene in ‘A Christmas Story’ when the holiday meal is [...]
The Perils of Pastrami: David Sax’s “Save the Deli”
Posted in Book Reviews, Books, Food & Wine, Jewish Life, U.S. Travel on October 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“He may have written a book about Jewish food, but David Sax is quite a ham. He refers to a deli’s finances as ‘pastraminomics,’ describes a knish as being ‘baked to a George Hamiltonesque hue,’ and titles a chapter on Las Vegas’s deli scene ‘Luck Be a Brisket Tonight.’ “But in addition to Catskills shtick, [...]
Mindful Fiction: Marco Roth on “The Rise of the Neuronovel”
Posted in Books, Health & Medicine, Human Behavior, Literature, Writers & Writing on October 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“The last dozen years or so have seen the emergence of a new strain within the Anglo-American novel. What has been variously referred to as the novel of consciousness or the psychological or confessional novel—the novel, at any rate, about the workings of a mind—has transformed itself into the neurological novel, wherein the mind becomes [...]
You Can Go Home Again: Philip Roth Attends H.S. Reunion Tour of Hometown Newark
Posted in Books, Jewish Life, Literature, U.S. Travel, Writers & Writing on October 19, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Philip Roth came home again Saturday, which is not so unusual because he’s been a frequent visitor in recent years. ‘As you get older, you get closer to home.’ Roth said this as he entered the Newark Museum yesterday as the surprise guest on a bus tour of Newark. Now 76, the man once called [...]
Greenhouse Effect: Berlin Brothel Boosts Business with Sex Discount for Cyclists
Posted in Business, Economy, Environment, Europe, Foreign Travel, Sex & Gender on October 16, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“A Berlin brothel is claiming the title of Germany’s first ‘green’ sex establishment after offering clients eco-discounts if they can prove they arrived by bicycle or public transport. “The concept has been dreamed up by the Maison d’Envie (House of Desire) brothel in the city’s fashionable Prenzlauer Berg district where Germany’s Green party won 46 [...]
