A sine qua non of any hip and trendy enterprise during the late 1990s was a task force charged with profound, game-changing, and often metaphysical organizational goals and – more importantly – endowed with aContinue reading

More precisely, I admire classic rivalries that are mindlessly sustained. Following Duke’s victory in the 1992 championship game, I left the stadium in a bus full of (adult) Duke supporters. Within nanoseconds, the bus wasContinue reading

I have a thing for mascots, the more obscure the better. This year’s winner: The Iona Gaels.

I began watching the NCAA Basketball Tournament so long ago that I still automatically associate Gonzaga1 with Cinderella Team even though they have for years been more accurately characterized as a perpetual powerhouse (this yearContinue reading

Until this week, The Duchess and I were resigned to living at a level of domesticity no more sophisticated than the local Holiday Inn. Our cleaning service would arrange the end tissue of the rollContinue reading

My failure, thus far, to achieve a hip and trendy life notwithstanding, I persist in this aspiration. Having realized that the odds against traversing the classic routes to this goal, i.e., joining the Kardashian familyContinue reading

  Playing With Ideas by Daphne Merkin. New York Times. November 26, 2006 It may be impossible to write a boring article about an interview with Tom Stoppard. In any case, this longish New YorkContinue reading