VERTIGO
In 1958, nearing the end of a decade of directing some of his most memorable and deeply profound films, Alfred Hitchcock completed...
SMILING THROUGH THE APOCALYPSE Esquire in the 60s
The era of great and influential and stylish and witty and provocative magazines is long gone, and our culture is the sadder for it....
ON THE ROAD (Episode 2) The Codex Leicester
Here's another entry about a trip I took with students. Before we saw a Broadway show in 2003, I took my AP classes to the venerable...
MY LIFE AT SEA (THE REREADING SERIES PART 2)
My actual sailing experience is limited to a few excursions on a sailboat on Long Island Sound. I have, however, gone back a few times...
THE NAKED HAMLET (Hamlet # 1)
Joe Papp was a New York City icon. In many ways, he still is because his legacy thrives. It was Joe, the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia, who convinced NYC to approve the creation of the New York Shakespeare Festival. In the early 60s, Joe introduced free Shakespeare-in-the-Park, with two or three plays a year presented at the Delacorte Castle in Central Park. Many of the world's greatest actors, from George C. Scott and James Earl Jones to Meryl Streep and Amy Adams
THE SUMMER OF LOVE (PART VI) "IT WAS FIFTY YEARS AGO TODAY"
Last piece on the Summer of Love, but it's been fun. Just so you don't think I'm viewing that period as those halcyon days of yore, I was inspired by a recent article on NJ.com to print some of the advertising from the era of the Summer of Love, just to give you a sense of the culture at the time. Right away one can see how women were viewed as second-class citizens. This was, after all, still the very first wave of the feminist movement, with the second wave still a few ye
THE SUMMER OF LOVE (PART V) POSTERIZED
When I reached my teen years I made it a point to try to cover every square inch of my bedroom with newspaper and magazine photos of my...
THE SUMMER OF LOVE (PART IV) DONOVAN
"The ancient book of changes, the “I Ching,” says, 'Music releases the obscure emotions of the heart.'” -Donovan If I associate any...
THE SUMMER OF LOVE (PART III) SGT. PEPPER
During the last week of May, 1967 history was made. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released and nothing was ever the same again. That's the impact one LP had. Music hadn't sounded like this before. The jacket cover was discussed for weeks. The songs' lyrics were printed on the back of the album jacket--basically declaring that the language of the songs was as worthy of inspection and appreciation as the melodies. This was the first rock/pop album to do such a
THE SUMMER OF LOVE (PART II) PRELUDE (PET SOUNDS)
In May of 1966, the Beach Boys released Pet Sounds, their eleventh album, and by far their most ambitious work to date. In fact, the Beach Boys were not thought generally to have desired to stray far from their proven musical path at all, regularly churning out wonderful harmonies about surfing, cars, and girls. It was, in fact, hard to find any song that they had previously recorded that didn't involve surfing, cars, or girls! But after a crippling anxiety attack, Brian Wi
