Year: 2015

HEAT

Frigid as the Northeast was this past winter, Bloomberg News tells us this was actually the planet’s hottest start to a year of any on record — with an animated chart and everything.  (Marco Rubio tells us the climate’s changing — it’s always changing — but there’s nothing we should be doing about it.  His view is neatly analyzed here.)

LIGHT

My pal Billy Bean — Major League Baseball’s inclusion ambassador and author of Going the Other Way — wrote this for Time last week.  Can he really be one of just two major league baseball players in the last 146 years to acknowledge (after retiring) that they were gay?  In part:

Jackie Robinson’s Lesson for Baseball Today

. . . As a closeted player, I was consumed with fear that my fellow players would find out about me. I was living a completely secretive life. The sudden death of my partner on the eve of my last season in 1995 was the beginning of the end of my playing career. I walked out of the hospital at 7 a.m. with his clothes in a plastic bag, the only evidence of a three-year relationship. I was in a state of shock until I realized that I needed to be at Angel Stadium in less than four hours. I drove home, showered, and, like always, I went to work. However, a part of me died that day with Sam, and not believing I could talk to anyone about it was my greatest mistake. I remember writing his name on the inside of my cap, hoping for strength to get through that game.

. . .This past November, I was asked to speak to all 30 general managers at their annual offseason meeting. A dialogue was created that resulted in invitations from 16 different organizations. On Feb. 27 I began a journey around the country, making early morning presentations, sharing my personal story and talking about leadership, responsibility, and the message of acceptance to big-league clubs. I suited up and threw batting practice with the Mets, Tigers, and Phillies. I spoke to entire minor league systems, met with coaching staffs, front office personnel, and watched games with general managers.

. . . Baseball asked me to lead this conversation, and I knew that this is where it really starts – with our players. For me it’s simple: The message of inclusion will save lives. An accepting example from our players can influence today’s youth and turn bullies into leaders who take care of their teammates and classmates instead of discriminate, ridicule, or perpetuate hate against them.

. . . After my long road trip this spring, I began to reflect on my return to the game and the irony of being back in baseball for exactly the same reason I walked away from it. Baseball changed the world 68 years ago, and in honor of its great history and its vision of the future, we are sending a message that is loud and clear: “Everyone is welcome.” How cool is that?

It is very cool.  And deeply American.

Dr. Stephen Tobias:  “We saw a screening of Soft Vengeance; Albie Sachs and the New South Africa recently at Boalt Hall, with the subject and the film maker.  Wow.  This 7-minute BBC interview is a taste of it.  There’s also a book.  Albie — everyone calls him that — was a South African freedom fighter (imprisoned, tortured, car-bombed), a leading drafter of the constitution (perhaps the most progressive in the world), and justice of the Constitutional Court, which struck down the death penalty in 1995 and established the right to same-sex marriage on 2005. He fought for a code of conduct in the ANC from the start of the revolution, which led to the constitution and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.”

☞ Seven minutes well spent.   Something short after yesterday’s 20,000-word post.  (Well, it seemed like 20,000 words.)  But did you listen to Harry Truman, at the end?  About low voter turn-out that gave us the “do nothing” Republican Congress in 1946?  Plus ca change . . .

MARCO RUBIO

The young senator promises bold ideas for a “new American Century” — like opposing the new relationship with Cuba, oppposing marriage equality, opposing the comprehensive immigration reform he helped broker before he decided to run for president — and like, certainly, that newest of bold Republican ideas: lowering taxes for the rich.  Specifically, lowering the rate on billion-dollar inheritances to . . . zero.  (See, also, Bill Press: “New Face With Old Ideas.”)

His party’s interest in eliminating the estate tax may ultimately help Democrats more than it helps Republicans in the next election.

To wit:

WHY ARE REPUBLICANS TRYING TO REPEAL THE ESTATE TAX?  IT’S THEIR NATURE

By Paul Waldman in the Washington Post, Saturday:

Yesterday, the House voted to repeal the estate tax, apparently in the belief that the American public needed a reminder that the Republican Party is the party of the wealthy. I’ll get to why the arguments they make about this issue are either problematic or just factually wrong (depending on which argument you’re talking about), but as a political decision, holding this vote seems rather foolish. They know that even if they got the 60 votes they would need to overcome a Democratic filibuster in the Senate, President Obama would likely veto the bill. So why bother?

The answer can be found in the parable of the scorpion and the frog, which you probably know. The scorpion asks the frog for a ride across the river; the frog says, “But you’ll sting me.” The scorpion replies, “Why would I do that? If I sting you then we both drown.” The frog agrees, and midway across the river the scorpion stings the frog. As they begin to sink to their deaths, the frog says, “Why did you do that?” The scorpion answers, “It’s my nature.”

In this case, the frog is the eventual GOP presidential nominee, and the scorpion is congressional Republicans. At a time when everyone is talking about income inequality and stagnant wages, the nominee will want to convince voters that he understands their concerns and will find ways to improve their lot. Meanwhile, his congressional allies are trying to make sure Donald Trump’s kids don’t have to pay taxes.

It isn’t that the estate tax is incredibly popular, because it isn’t. If you ask people in a poll whether they think it ought to be repealed, a majority will say yes. (I discussed some reasons why here.) But this isn’t a problem because voters will be angry at Republicans for trying to repeal the tax, it’s a problem because it demonstrates what Republican priorities are, in exactly the way they don’t want. You can bet that Hillary Clinton will contrast her economic plans with those of Republicans, who want to cut upper-income rates, as well as taxes on investments and inheritances. This is a concrete demonstration of what she’ll talk about.

Republicans say that they aren’t really trying to help wealthy heirs; instead, this is motivated by their deep concern for the fate of family farms and small businesses. But today, the first $5.43 million of any estate is exempt from taxes. That’s the single most important fact to understand about this tax.

And what about those family farms Republicans are always talking about, the ones that are constantly being sold off to pay the estate taxes? They’re a myth. When The Post’s fact-checker Glenn Kessler was doing his estate tax fact check, he asked the office of John Thune, the sponsor of the Senate version of repeal, about the farms we keep hearing about. “Thune’s staff conceded that they could not identify a single farm that had been sold because of the estate tax, but they said some farms had to sell acreage in order to pay the tax.” Nobody else seems to be able to find one, either. You’ll notice that when Republicans talk about this, they always posit a hypothetical family farm being sold off and not “My constituents the Millers had to sell off their farm,” because the Millers are the equivalent of a unicorn. According to the Department of Agriculture, in 2013 only .6 percent — or 1 in 167 — of the estates of farmers who died owed any estate tax at all.

Because of that large exemption, currently at $5.43 million, the numbers for all estates are even smaller. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, “In 2013, the most recent year for which final numbers are available, there were 2.6 million deaths in the United States, and 4,700 estate tax returns reporting some tax liability were filed. Thus, taxable estate tax returns represented approximately one-fifth of one percent of deaths in 2013.”

That’s 1 in every 553 estates that owed any tax. Which does make you wonder why repealing the estate tax is an issue of such terrible urgency to Republicans. You’d think that if they were smarter, they’d say to themselves, “We want to do this eventually, but it isn’t going to happen with a Democrat in the White House. And we won’t get a Republican president unless we show the voters we care about ordinary people. So let’s just put this off until 2017.” But if there’s just one wealthy heir out there who might have to pay some tax on his inheritance, and heaven forbid decide to get a Porsche instead of a Ferrari next year, then that’s an injustice they simply can’t ignore. Politics might dictate otherwise, but Republicans can’t help themselves. It’s their nature.

And by the way?  Eliminating the eestate tax is bad for nonprofits (making the after-tax cost of contributing to charity that much higher); bad for the deficit (which will only swell, if this revenue stream is shut off); bad for the economy generally (gross inequality slows economic growth, as does entrusting capital allocation decisions to the decedent’s often less-astute heirs) . . . and, to top it all off, as Jim Burt of Fort Worth, Texas, reminds us, it’s unAmerican:

JIM BURT ON THE ESTATE TAX

The latest proposals from the Republican presidential hopefuls include a “tax plan” from Marco Rubio that would entirely eliminate inheritance taxes.  This flies in the face of both Republican history and American history.

The estate tax was championed by Republican Teddy Roosevelt but had precursors in other forms.  America’s “Founding Fathers” showed their concerns about accumulations of great wealth even before the Constitution was adopted, by enacting the Northwest Ordnance of 1787, which established the terms for settling and governing the “Old Northwest.”

This law, which was immediately readopted by Congress under the Constitution, prohibited primogeniture and entail, which were the principal methods of accumulating and preserving great landed estates at that time, in the new territories.  As fans of “Downton Abbey” should already know, primogeniture vested the bulk of an estate in the first born male heir, while entail prevented the distribution by gift of an estate during the life of the owner, so that once formed, a great landed estate could only grow and grow.  This practice was outlawed in the new territories because our Founding Fathers feared the political effects of the accumulation of great fortunes and wanted to see them broken up periodically.

When the Constitution was adopted shortly thereafter, it also included a prohibition against titles of nobility.  While today a noble title confers only social cachet even in the Old World, at the time of our founding a noble title conferred “privilege,” a word descending from two French roots meaning, literally (and I use the word literally), “private law,” including, in many countries, a dispensation from the payment of taxes, especially taxes on the ownership of land and the sale of its products.  When ownership of land was the foundation of all wealth, freedom from land taxes was the functional equivalent of Marco Rubio’s proposal to eliminate taxation on investment income from interest, dividends, and capital gains, just as his proposed elimination of the estate tax is functionally equivalent to the re-institution of primogeniture and entail.

Our Founding Fathers wanted to discourage the political power of great wealth.  The Republicans want to do the exact opposite.

What Rubio and his like propose is profoundly un-American: an assault upon the vision of our Founding Fathers, and a disguised step toward the elevation of a new class of privileged hereditary nobility in the United States.  There could hardly be a more radical and extremist economic vision than the Republican parade toward an 18th century exaltation of wealth and privilege.

Democrats have long embaced a different perspective.  As in this example:

HARRY TRUMAN

From Andrei Cherney’s The Candy Bombers (thanks, Tom!):

Truman arrived in Chicago that afternoon, driving slowly past two miles of waving supporters in an open car, on his way to a nighttime address at the city’s stadium. . . . He spoke of Woodrow Wilson’s dream and Franklin Roosevelt’s United Nations, but said, “We must do more than just avert war. . . . [T]he American way of life which most of us have been taking for granted is threatened today by powerful forces of which most people are not even aware.” . . . This insidious cabal was known as the Republican Party.

The Republicans, Truman charged at this moment of heated worry about war and despotism, had “opened the gate to forces that would destroy our democracy.” He pointed out that “again and again in history, economic power concentrated in the hands of a few men has led to the loss of freedom.” And there was always one invariable constant to the rise of despotism. “When a few men get control of the economy of a nation, they find a  ‘front man’ to run the country for them. Before Hitler came to power, control over the German economy had passed into the hands of a small group of rich manufacturers, bankers, and landowners. These men decided that Germany had to have a tough, ruthless dictator who would play their game and crush the strong German labor unions. So they put money and influence behind Adolf Hitler. We know the rest of the story. We also know that in Italy, in the 1920s, powerful Italian businessmen backed Mussolini, and in the 1930s, Japanese financiers helped Tojo’s military clique take over Japan.” Truman did not need to reveal the identity of this front man he was claiming was a would-be-American Hitler – right down to his mustache. If anyone failed to pick up the analogy, the next day’s papers did it for them.

Dewey retorted that Truman was soft on communism, and the next day, in Boston, Truman fired back.  (It was a heck of an election; the one Truman went to bed thinking he had lost, and the famous Chicago Tribune “Dewey Wins!” headline.)

I couldn’t find the speech excerpted above, but here’s the 24-minute Boston speech, debunking Dewey’s charge . . . and blaming the disastrous mid-term election results of 1946, that gave the Republicans a majority in both houses of what would become known as the “Do Nothing Congress,” on the two-thirds of elgible Democrats who didn’t bother to vote.  Sound familiar?

I first heard them in Vancouver at TED . . . then went last weekend to hear them in Brooklyn . . . and you can hear them, here, free, from the comfort of your own easy chair.  Moon Hooch!

And now this:

Why Americans Are Screwed and Europeans Are Not

The U.S. economy is picking up steam but most Americans aren’t feeling it.

By Robert Reich / Robert Reich’s Blog

March 15, 2015

The U.S. economy is picking up steam but most Americans aren’t feeling it. By contrast, most European economies are still in bad shape, but most Europeans are doing relatively well.

What’s behind this? Two big facts.

First, American corporations exert far more political influence in the United States than their counterparts exert in their own countries.

In fact, most Americans have no influence at all. That’s the conclusion of Professors Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University, who analyzed 1,799 policy issues — and found that “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

Instead, American lawmakers respond to the demands of wealthy individuals (typically corporate executives and Wall Street moguls) and of big corporations – those with the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns.

The second fact is most big American corporations have no particular allegiance to America. They don’t want Americans to have better wages. Their only allegiance and responsibility to their shareholders — which often requires lower wages  to fuel larger profits and higher share prices.

When GM went public again in 2010, it boasted of making 43 percent of its cars in place where labor is less than $15 an hour, while in North America it could now pay “lower-tiered” wages and benefits for new employees.

American corporations shift their profits around the world wherever they pay the lowest taxes. Some are even morphing into foreign corporations.

As an Apple executive told The New York Times, “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems.”

I’m not blaming American corporations. They’re in business to make profits and maximize their share prices, not to serve America.

But because of these two basic facts – their dominance on American politics, and their interest in share prices instead of the wellbeing of Americans – it’s folly to count on them to create good American jobs or improve American competitiveness, or represent the interests of the United States in global commerce.

By contrast, big corporations headquartered in other rich nations are more responsible for the wellbeing of the people who live in those nations.

That’s because labor unions there are typically stronger than they are here — able to exert pressure both at the company level and nationally.

VW’s labor unions, for example, have a voice in governing the company, as they do in other big German corporations. Not long ago, VW even welcomed the UAW to its auto plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee. (Tennessee’s own politicians nixed it.)

Governments in other rich nations often devise laws through tri-partite bargains involving big corporations and organized labor. This process further binds their corporations to their nations.

Meanwhile, American corporations distribute a smaller share of their earnings to their workers than do European or Canadian-based corporations.

And top U.S. corporate executives make far more money than their counterparts in other wealthy countries.

The typical American worker puts in more hours than Canadians and Europeans, and gets little or no paid vacation or paid family leave. In Europe, the norm is five weeks paid vacation per year and more than three months paid family leave.

And because of the overwhelming clout of American firms on U.S. politics, Americans don’t get nearly as good a deal from their governments as do Canadians and Europeans.

Governments there impose higher taxes on the wealthy and redistribute more of it to middle and lower income households. Most of their citizens receive essentially free health care and more generous unemployment benefits than do Americans.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that even though U.S. economy is doing better, most Americans are not.

The U.S. middle class is no longer the world’s richest. After considering taxes and transfer payments, middle-class incomes in Canada and much of Western Europe are higher than in U.S. The poor in Western Europe earn more than do poor Americans.

Finally, when at global negotiating tables – such as the secretive process devising the “Trans Pacific Partnership” trade deal — American corporations don’t represent the interests of Americans. They represent the interests of their executives and shareholders, who are not only wealthier than most Americans but also reside all over the world.

Which is why the pending Partnership protects the intellectual property of American corporations — but not American workers’ health, safety, or wages, and not the environment.

The Obama administration is casting the Partnership as way to contain Chinese influence in the Pacific region. The agents of America’s interests in the area are assumed to be American corporations.

But that assumption is incorrect. American corporations aren’t set up to represent America’s interests in the Pacific region or anywhere else.

What’s the answer to this basic conundrum? Either we lessen the dominance of big American corporations over American politics. Or we increase their allegiance and responsibility to America.

It has to be one or the other. Americans can’t thrive within a political system run largely by big American corporations — organized to boost their share prices but not boost America.

We need a President who will appoint Justices who do not believe that corporations are people, who understands it is the middle class not the wealthy who are the job creators, and who favors things like a higher minimum wage and tax equity.  (The Republicans would eliminate the tax on billionheirs.)  Oh — and who “believes in” science and evolution and stuff, but I digress.

Have a great weekend.  Moon Hooch!

I am neutral among all the fine Democrats contemplating a run for President.  Truly.

In 2008, the Obama folks were all certain the DNC was in the tank for Clinton; the Clinton folks were all certain we were in the tank for Obama.  Which suggested we did a pretty good job of remaining neutral.  (It was actually easy, because both were such completely compelling choices.  Even privately, in the voting booth, I was torn.)

That said, should Hillary win, she will enter the White House with an exceptional intellect; an extraordinary knowledge of the presidency; a track record of working across the aisle in the Senate; a deep knowledge of foreign affairs; working relationships with scores of her fellow world leaders; and policy positions that favor the 99%, while embracing science, diversity, and investment.

And as I read this profile of Robby Mook, 35, tapped to run her campaign, I’m thinking: you know what?  She just might win.

Some fanciful solutions are just too good not to share.

With California in devastating drought and Chicago recently deluged, the clear win-win is for Chicago — fiscally strapped — to sell California water: fiscal problem AND drought solved.

And we could call it the Keystone Pipeline and create loads of jobs building it, instead of the other one, and if there were leaks or spills . . . who cares?  It’s just water!

Political impasse resolved!

Sounds nuts — is nuts — but they did reverse the flow of the Chicago River (did you know that?), so why is this any more fanciful?

Here‘s why:  Even from Alaska, which would make more sense than Chicago, it apparently makes little sense.  (My favorite line:  “Alaska is North, but not uphill.”)  You’d need pumping stations every 150 miles.  Something of this nature this was proposed 50 years ago at a cost then estimated to be $100 billion ($420 billion in today’s dollars).  Still, we may yet have to give it another look.

Janet Tavakoli:  “In Iran, pre-Islam engineers tunneled qanats through mountains to bring water to the desert:

. . . The qanat system consists of underground channels that convey water from aquifers in highlands to the surface at lower levels by gravity. The qanat works of Iran were built on a scale that rivaled the great aqueducts of the Roman Empire. Whereas the Roman aqueducts now are only a historical curiosity, the Iranian system is still in use after 3,000 years and has continually been expanded. There are some 22,000 qanat units in Iran, comprising more than 170,000 miles of underground channels. The system supplies 75 percent of all the water used in that country, providing water not only for irrigation but also for house-hold consumption. Until recently (before the building of the Karaj Dam) the million inhabitants of the city of Tehran depended on a qanat system tapping the foothills of the Elburz Mountains for their entire water supply.

“Water is everything,” Janet continues. “Without it, money means nothing.”

Bring on the solar desalinators!  I have no clue whether WaterFX will succeed, but I bet someone will.

“I would put my money on the sun and solar energy,” Thomas Edison told Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone in 1931 shortly before he died.  “What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”

And yet the real solution to California’s problem may be much simpler. Behold this CNBC commentary by Terry Tamminen, former secretary of the California Environmental Protection.  Instead of letting rain water run off into the Pacific, catch and store it for later use, as he explains and illustrates:

. . . About a decade ago, the blue-collar community of Sun Valley in Los Angeles County was faced with flooding that impacted homes and businesses during winter rains. The county had planned a $47 million storm sewer system to drain the flood waters from streets and dump it in the Pacific Ocean via the Los Angeles River (itself now a mostly concrete flood management canal). Instead, clever community planners decided to invest those funds in underground cisterns that would capture the water for later use.

A dilapidated city park was remodeled with cisterns below, as were medians along broad boulevards that were themselves underwater during heavy rains. The result was a system, using ancient Roman technology (see photo above), that captures 8,000 acre feet of water each year, about twice what the entire city consumes, solving the flooding problem and creating a source of fresh water for thousands of residents. The investment also gave the city a new park with ball fields and picnic grounds and higher adjacent property values.

But could something this simple be the solution for a thirsty state that is getting hotter, growing faster, and producing more food crops than ever before? . . .

The answer seems to be . . . yes.  Read on.  (Thanks, Brian!)

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IT’S APRIL 15.

DON’T FORGET TO FILE YOUR 2014 TAX EXTENSION

AND, IF YOU HAVE SIGNIFICANT INCOME FROM WHICH TAX HAS NOT ALREADY BEEN WITHHELD, YOUR FIRST QUARTERLY 2015 ESTIMATED TAX RETURN

The only things this terrific New York Times calculator seems not to take into account are the truly “soft” factors.  Like: what psychic value, if any, do you place on owning your own home?  Or, for that matter, on the freedom you get from not owning your own home?  (Fewer responsibilities; easier to pick up and move.)  Like: how much more, if at all, do you prefer the house or condo you are looking to buy to the one (with that great view!) you might rent?  Like: how much will the discipline of a mortgage payment help you to save for the future (“forced saving”), as after 15 or 30 years, you’ll own the home free and clear?  Will you really take whatever cash you save by renting and invest it for 15 or 30 years?  Or will it go to a more lavish wedding for your daughter or a daily skimmed latte?

The one “hard” factor perhaps missing is, “how much higher (or lower) will mortgage rates be when you ultimately do decide to buy instead of rent?”  It’s impossible to know, of course — but so are several other relevant variables this calculator asks you to assign values to.  And the answer could be, “a lot,” which would be one  more reason to buy now, if there’s a reasonable chance you might be staying put for a long time.

All that said, the Times has done a great job with this.  Just answering its quesions is an excellent way to think through all the variables, even as “your gut” ultimately makes the call.

[HILLARY:  She would make a spectacularly qualified president and world leader if she were elected — I am neutral until we have a nominee — and, yes, it does look as though she will be the nominee, and, yes, I did like the launch video.  But we have 575 days until the election — you think that 19-inning Yankees Red Sox game dragged on! — so no rush to say more now.]

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My friend John had in mind a book of local color and characters set in a history-steeped, moss-draped Southern town.  He had no idea where it would go, but kept working on it, year after year — I even visited him for a tour — and finally it was finished . . . but his big-time agent politely suggested he find a different agent (which he did) . . . and you can actually buy his book right now.  I think it took him seven years to write.  But I won’t plug it because he’s way past needing any help — it was called Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, longer on the New York Times bestseller list, at 216 weeks, than any other book book, ever.

My friend Cyrus has been talking to me for seven years about the book he wanted to write . . . and then was writing . . . and writing . . . and writing.  And guess what!  He did it!  And guess what!  He sold it!  And guess what!  Library Journal just published this review:

“Copeland’s book traces a personal, emotional, and ultimately satisfying journey of a son trying to discover who his father really was. Using journals, interviews with his father’s friends and former coworkers, and frank discussions with his mother, the author here puts the pieces together to find out if his father was a CIA agent in Iran during the revolution in the late 1970s. Born in Oklahoma, Max Copeland toured the world at a young age, married Shahin, an Iranian woman, converted to Islam, and moved the family to Iran to eventually become an employee of Westinghouse. Things turn as Max is accused of being a CIA spy and is put on trial for his life. The author weaves a tale full of uncertainty, tension, and drama. The character that shines the most is Shahin, who fights with all of her strength, intelligence, and will as she tries to save her husband and family, not knowing for sure if he is truly a spy or not. VERDICT: This brilliant, touching tale of espionage, discovering family, and balancing cultures is recommended for fans of memoirs, spy stories, and Iranian culture.“

If you are one of those fans, you can buy it right now: Off the Radar: A Father’s Secret, a Mother’s Heroism, and a Son’s Quest.

Meanwhile, my friend Janet (Tavakoli, financial genius) married an Iranian and moved to Teheran in 1978 — the year before the hostage crisis — and recently published Unveiled Threat: A Personal Experience of Fundamentalist Islam and the Roots of Terrorism.  Short, powerful, informative, and — like any account of radical Islam, let alone its treatment of women — deeply troubling.

(By coincidence, as I was writing this, a letter came from my friend Dave . . . “I was cleaning out some old files recently and came across the enclosed” . . . the original invitation to attend our college Commencement in June of 1968, principal speaker at which was “HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY MOHAMMAD REZA PAHLAVI SHAHANSHAH OF IRAN.”  I remember clearly not going, not out of protest — although we now know that, as bad as he was and as bad as we were to install him, he was not remotely as bad as his Ayatollah successors — but because it was too embarrassing not to have a girlfriend when everyone else did, and not to be able to explain why.)

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And now — on a note so different it could give you whiplash — wanna have dinner this Thursday as my friend Seth entertains at New York’s 54 Below?  HuffPo tells his story (“After Years Behind The Scenes, Seth Sikes Brings His Love Of Judy Garland To The Spotlight”).  I just read that “Judy Garland Put JFK to Bed at Night By Singing ‘Over the Rainbow'” — an interesting story in its own right — suggesting that (to shorthand it) you don’t have to be gay to love Judy Garland.  Though it seems to help.  If there are tickets left, get them here.

I WANT ONE

Here’s the story of how we got to the iWatch.  This will be the first time I pay more than $50 for a watch in my whole life.  (Charles, as you may recall my telling you, had a watch that cost THREE HUNDRED dollars  . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . . to clean!  Which he had to do every year or two.  And is why he was the fashion designer and I was the guy telling you to buy cans of tuna in bulk on sale.)  But I live for April 24 . . . which is to say, given the mayhem that will doubtless surround the launch, a minute after midnight Pacific time today, April 10 — when I presumably pre-ordered mine but didn’t tell you about this yesterday for fear you’d get in line before me.

INCONCEIVABLE

Could you never have seen “The Princess Bride“?  I assume you have, and assume you loved it — as folks as disparate as Pope John Paul II and Bill and Chelsea Clinton did — in which case I commend for your weekend power-walking pleasure Cary Elwes’s As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride, read by Wesley himself.  This may not seem like the manliest recommendation I’ve ever made in this space — I am a guy who insists his server bring him his pomegranate margerita in “a manly glass,” not one of those dainty martini glasses, because, as I explain to her, “I have masculinity issues” — but this is a movie about swordplay and pirates and giants — and rodents of unusual size — and, of course, about true love.  What could be more manly than that?

Have a great weekend.