A chef has recommended on social media that, if the butter is too cold to spread, you grate it over the roll or piece of bread — or your significant other, if that’s the kind of life you lead.
No judgment.
When I read that butter tweet, I thought: Who says journalism is dead? Then I thought: Yeah, OK. Maybe.
What would I give for a real L.A. Times sports section again? It now reads like expired milk. Doctor, doctor, give me the news!
Honestly, is that a smile on Judas’ lip? Every day something we cherish goes away.
Macy’s is shuttering stores. Outback, too. At inflated prices, I’m bagging my own groceries.
Wendy’s is reportedly considering “event pricing.” Chew on that greasy morsel a moment: When you wait longest in line, Wendy’s will jack up prices — as if it were the Louvre.
For three weeks, I tried to solve a laptop glitch no “help desk” could explain.
Imagine that, an old Whig like me taking on technology.
Worst of all, none of us can work our TVs anymore. And where does this surface in the political campaigns?
Look, I don’t expect much from our presidents anymore. We quote Ted Lasso far more than we quote our political leaders. To me, politics is more effective when there’s a whiff of poetry to it.
In every realm, we seem to have lost our way with words.
Take Hollywood (please). It should be holding an intervention, not some Oscar party.
As you know, I am the poet laureate of my local Starbucks (self-appointed, because you could wait all day for corporate to make the right move). And there’s a multiplex nearby, and I’ll sometimes wander over with the dog to look at the day’s movie lineup.
It’s become one of those eerie “Twilight Zone” episodes – the lone man in a barren wasteland, looking for one last love story (or even a laugh-till-you-cry comedy).
My only hope is that I look over one day to see Lana Turner working in the ticket booth, popping her gum.
“Two tickets,” I’ll say. “One for you, one for me.”
FYI, Hollywood now exists only for Hollywood’s sake. For the past few years, it has preferred dark little stories about human dysfunction. Hey, you want dysfunction, check out my laptop.
Or the executive suites at Sony.
And this just in: Experts say the moon is shrinking and warping and quivering a bit. Not enough to affect the tides. But what about our hearts? What about my new wife, Lana Turner?
Oy, the universe and its lovely lies.
As life becomes more unhinged, it gets harder to be hopeful. But there is so much left. Hope is shrinking and warping and quivering a bit. But it still fires the human furnace.
Indeed, the classic movies we love will never go away. How lucky were most of us to grow up at a time when music was thoughtful, inventive … bawdy, pulp-fiction hymns. And, try as they might, no one can take away the great books.
Meanwhile, artificial intelligence has the potential to cover the news like nothing we’ve ever seen before. Or completely blow up the First Amendment. Stay tuned on that one.
Meanwhile, here are 10 reasons to go on, amid a world of feckless leaders and trembling moons. Because as Montaigne once wrote: “The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.”
- Irish butter
- Mozart
- Montaigne
- Books
- Belly rubs
- Tin sheds
- Old barns
- March Madness
- This year’s Dodgers
- Next year’s Cubs
- Sailboats
- Smoked fish
- Boysenberries
- Jon Stewart
- Jimmy Stewart
- Al Michaels
- Lambeau Field
- Rainy-day friends
- April in Paris
- Autumn in New York
- Dogs
- Dolly Parton
- Cat Stevens
- Fenway Park
- Spring fever
- Hot mustard
- Bill Murray
- John Mulaney
- Seventh-inning stretches
- Deli pickles
- The Fourth of July
- John Prine
- Flora Purim
- Bouncy houses
- Grunion runs
- Beach bikes
- Old bakeries with creaky floors
- Cakes
- Dairy farms
- Ferris Bueller
- Bill Maher
- Groucho
- Graham Greene
- Sarah Silverman
- Martin Short
That’s my robust list of “10 Great Things.”
What’s yours?
Vin Scully’s cheerful words wrapped us like quilts. A new book, “Perfect Eloquence,” features tributes to him by Bob Costas, Joe Buck, David Halberstam, among others (even me). Order online or at Vroman’s, Pages, Chevalier’s, etc.
First published April 4-6 in Outlook Newspapers.
