Dear Mike, I have been wanting to write, to reach out, to you, since our Class reunion and your last communication with some of us on the Committee. Alas, I must write you now on a quite different subject. Dear friends and classmates, our Reunion team,After five weeks of unexpected turbulence, my family has entered…
An urban story of a young couple renovating a dilapidated Philadelphia row house, and finding that the entire neighborhood made good use of it. Manya and I had just arrived at that age when the urge to create our own space became overwhelming. That is to say, we had to act on something, anything. There…
Wearing their new Party outfits, Putin & Trump give each other their secret protocol handshake. I’ll bet my dick is bigger than his, thinks Putin. My chin is better than his, thinks Trump. What a loser, each thinks about the other. Say, who’s the guy in the white coat? He’s the party of the whites,…
The New York Times piece today on James Comey revealed an interesting datum that resonated with us. It appears that Mr. Comey keeps on his desk one of those calendar aphorisms that always seem to go stale after a while. It reads: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. The moment…
Excerpt from Johnny’s Diary November 1973 Dear Diary: It has been more than seven years since I met Manya on that brilliant fall day in New Haven; it seems like yesterday. Oddly, I haven’t made and kept many friends who are women; yet Manya and I have stayed friends over the years. I can’t…
We get that strange creepy tingling in our gums when we feel an Official Lie coming down the pike. This latest one reminds us of WMD, or Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the Catastrophic Iraq Blunder (CIB), if you have forgotten. We are being told by our government that the drones used to blow up…
A trio of young friends living on the edge of Point Lobos in San Francisco find love and friendship in a breathtakingly dramatic setting. Coming of age are Johnny, Gary and Denise. Back to Land’s End Stories: Contents Page
Work in Progress THE CRIME? Well, there was a crime, but as is not unusual, we can’t figure out what it is. The only crime here is Benny Frisco’s wisecracks. Assume a crime, then. THE INVESTIGATION Heck, let’s just assume there was an investigation, too. You know how cops make stuff up. There are are…
(IN PROGRESS) No memoir of ours can be complete without some mention of this man. Sure enough, another priest, a sorry excuse for a man, unsexed and unloved, except maybe by his mom. The SJ part is a reference to the Society of Jesus, to which he belonged, having been ordained a priest by the…
We were not the only ones to think of Scaramouche and the Commedia dell’Arte when learning of Anthony Scaramucci’s appointment to the White House staff. The association prompted the King of Jesters to contemplate at long last the sorry state of the republic for which we weep. You will note that ever since this tragicomedy…
(Photo: Jonathan Ernst, Reuters) He’s thinking… (Picture credit: Jan de Bray) If only they could talk…
Not everybody gets a second chance in one lifetime. Before I came to Yale, my family of stateless refugee immigrants led a hardscrabble itinerant life; all you had was family. We left post-war Europe for a crummy garage in the suburbs of São Paulo. Ten years later, life in Brazil’s tropical mayhem hadn’t panned out. …
The recent stock market gyrations seem to be caused by the imbecile’s daily lip-pursing pronouncements on the economy, or trade tariffs, or war with assorted countries. We realize that he’s not that stupid, after all. Of course, he’s trading ahead of his tweets. This is the real fake news. He announces tariffs on billions of…
Dear Biff, Thank you for your kind and generous note. It was devastating to learn of your triple by-pass and its attendant problems. It made me infinitely sad, reminding me how fragile our physical presence really is. But medicine these days can work miracles–I am happy that you write of feeling great. That is indeed…
No, alas, the KingOfJesters is not Rigoletto; I am not a hunchback. Try again.
Because it has a tilde over the A and an S instead of the Z. That’s just the way it is. ❖ Long before coming to Land’s End, my family had to pass through Brasil for ten years or so after leaving Budapest, where I was born in 1947, after the War and the arrival…
The New York Times revealed today that the poor, beleaguered mayor of Baltimore made a reference to “thugs” in the midst of the recent riots. We immediately thought that she was referring to the police in that fair city, an excusable error on our part. It turns out that, unbeknownst to us, the term is…
Turns out it’s run by Mike D’Andrea. You know Mike. He used to run the CIA’s detention and interrogation program, the water thing. So now he runs the targeted killing program. Much cleaner, you don’t even have to see or smell your enemy. None of that messy, Hemingway mano a mano stuff, just kinda long…
The following story turned up in our local paper. We swear we didn’t make up any of it. A suspended Roman Catholic priest who authorities say dealt pounds of methamphetamine and bought a sex shop to possibly launder his drug money is asking a federal judge for leniency when he is sentenced next week. Monsignor Kevin…
Wonders will never cease. From the massive concrete bunkers poured into the once pristine alpine meadows, comes the news that the subject of global income inequality was actually on the agenda. It’s hard to imagine a lively discussion since no one from the lower 99% was likely to be attending, and we weren’t there either. …
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Dear John, Ave! I finally have the opportunity to reply to your kind, thoughtful, optimistic, and impossibly joyful e-mail. How could you dismiss my mischievous rantings with such gleeful finesse, and completely ignore all the bait I tossed in your path? Good for you, you clever Jesuit. I was pleased that you thought my letter…
Dear Sir: As I begin this letter, I realize that you may not remember me, in which case this whole thing will be very funny, and totally pointless. That would be fitting, wouldn’t it? In any event, I recently stumbled into the Saint Ignatius High School website. I haven’t had any contact with SI since…
JUST OUTSIDE A LITTLE TOWN…………………….BEHIND A LONG STONE WALL, LIVED A LITTLE BOY IN A QUIET OLD HOUSE………………………… THAT WAS ONCE A FARM, NOT LONG AGO. AND BEHIND THE HOUSE, SAT A BIG RED BARN, JUST AS OLD. “YOUR MAMA BOUGHT THE HOUSE, AND I BOUGHT THE BARN,” LAUGHED THE BOY’S FATHER. THE BARN WAS…
The Boy and His Barn One. (double page) JUST OUTSIDE A LITTLE TOWN……………………..BEHIND A LONG STONE WALL Long shot of New England style town (church steeples, town square, with a little farm away on the side: a white clapboard house with a red barn behind it, trees, fields, gravel road, stone walls, stone arch…
Hank Paulson, known around the house as Lurch, is back in a documentary produced by the Wall Street fellow traveller Bloomberg Businessweek. It’s called “Hank: Five Years From the Brink,” and extensively features his wife Wendy. Hank and Wendy are bird watchers, we are told. Raptors like bird watching too. Now Hank is back, in…
NICOSay, Alec, you know we’re really not supposed to be here in this playground. ALECOh, yeah? Why not? NICOWell, we’ve been coming here for sixty years, and just because our appearance hasn’t changed doesn’t mean we have to come here all the time. Somebody’s gonna figure it out one of these days. We oughta be…
Howard, Of course, I feel like a jackass now. I must have been feeling neglected and sorry for myself that particular day. Please don’t take it amiss. I apologize for being a grinch. As I recall, I was curious about Saint Ignatius High School after, lo, these many years, having realized that the fiftieth anniversary…
Previously, when asked “Is the Pope Catholic?”, we erroneously replied “No, he is a Jesuit.” The correct answer should have been “No, he is Argentinian.” We stand in shame of our ignorance.
On most days the sun burns off the fog covering Land’s End by mid-morning. But on that day in 1961, it lingered and thinned, diffusing the sun’s light to a dazzling thick haze. Even the normally gloomy woods of brooding Monterey cypresses that cover the land on the Point were surprisingly bright. The light appeared…
While watching the recent D-Day festivities on French television, we noted the arrival of our President in a caravan of black Chevy Suburbans, right there on the beach in Normandy. And as the camera panned past the rear end of his SUV, we saw not a French license plate, but one that read: Washington D.C.! …
September 26, 2013 Dear Members of the SI Community, On behalf of the St. Ignatius College Preparatory’s Board of Trustees, I am writing to tell you about some immediate changes to the membership of the Board. On Wednesday, September 25, 2013, with focus on the mission of SI as a Jesuit school, the Board of…
We received the following item not long ago, and present it herewith without comment, except for the snide headline above. Well, maybe just one question. Is this board-packing? Read on…
We just reviewed our website’s Google Ænalytics report, hoping to find evidence of NSA sphincter snooping. Alas, nothing. Nobody ever visits, only the gastroenterologist. There were a few feeble “hits” from France (go figure) and Durham (New Hampshire?). The French ones came from some downmarket Paris suburb and others from Marseille, indicating some posssible French…
We ran across this item recently in the Class Notes of our alumni magazine: Reed Hundt from his Blackberry: “I just invested in an off-Broadway play, Old Jews Telling Jokes. Betsy and I attended the opening in mid-May. Please go often so we can have a hit. We still live in Chevy Chase and I…
We were thrilled to see some of our heroes be honored by the Nobel for economics (let’s not call it economic science, not yet): Robert Schiller of Yale and Eugene Fama of the University of Chicago . Later, we watched the press conferences that each man gave at his respective university. Our respect and admiration…
Edward entered the crowded Art Deco lobby of the landmark New York City building, pushed along by the rush, through the revolving doors. Once inside, he weaved back and forth, in a kind of embarassed paranoia, avoiding the people that raced past him in all directions. He was an old-fashioned-looking man, short, stocky, wearing a…
Worry no more for Timmy Geithner. Our prior speculation about where he would end up after leaving office was erroneous. No, it’s not Goldman Sachs, alas. It’s Warburg Pincus, a house of private equity where, fear not, Timmy will be able to work on many deals with Goldman.
Howard, I started getting these calls last week… “Abdul? Abdul?, it’s Mohamid.” “Who? I think you’ve got the wrong number, sorry.” Click. An hour later, the same thing. “Abdul?” “No, sorry, man.” Click. The next morning, “Abdul?” “Mohamid, listen, you got the wrong…” Click. This went on for the last ten days, some even in…
It’s just no fun to be an investment banker anymore.
The new airline philosophy of everything-has-its-price became terrifyingly clear to me on a recent flight from Paris to New York. I flew into a panic even before take-off when I couldn’t find the little vomit bag “in the seat-back pocket in front of you.” And it was nowhere to be found; I looked everywhere. Anxious…
The shopworn airplane was packed, every seat was occupied. While the Delta flight from Paris went smoothly enough, everything else about it was a disaster: cheap cramped seats, non-working entertainment system, smelly bathrooms, and food that no one should eat. On arrival in New York, we barged our way off the plane, and raced through…
“It’s red!” I shouted in the delivery room, startling everyone in the place. Dr. Goldstein, looking down and then up at me, surprised, then glancing over to my wife Manya, who mumbled curses at us in her delirium, joked lamely about a milkman. We both looked down again at the round wet dome between her…
We can’t help but wonder indelicately what Pope Francis was doing during the time of the desaparecidos in Argentina. Perhaps he was just lying low, like the thuggish Pius XII during World War II.
It is not true that Manya and I never connected. We did, many years later. We made children, and created a family and a home. Wow! My first encounter with Manya represented some form of recognition. No, alas, not a hunger, really, but something more inevitable, something that could be satisfied, that harmoniously fell into…
Aye, she’s a bloodthirsty wench, isn’t she? Ms. Power’s hyperactive conscience would have her do some bloody cleansing of her own. Send in America’s military might once again to right all the wrongs that this messy world perpetrates. Let’s bomb the Syrians, who are committing such atrocities. But which Syrians? And whose side are they…
So, duh, is the Pope Catholic? No, he’s a Jesuit.
We would love to have the metadata on Goldman Sachs et. al. Anybody selling?
If you have ever come rolling off the West Side Highway at around 56th Street, and had the bad luck to get stopped by a red light, then you are familiar with what we are about to tell you. You’ve already guessed from the title. [more]
He stayed behind in the garage/basement of that grim, brightly painted San Francisco box house, rooted in place, trembling and terrified by her anger, until she had climbed the inside stairs, and closed the door of her mother’s apartment, turning off the lights as she went. In the darkness, he could hear her angry steps…
Right in the middle of this whole NSA snooping scandal, our government has issued an urgent terrorist threat based on what it calls “unusual chatter.” What an amazing coincidence; surely it must be some sort of a prank. It has become axiomatic that we no longer believe anything that our government tells us, especially when…
Dear Mr. President, On the question of who is to replace Ben Bernanke as chair of the Federal Reserve, can you seriously be thinking of appointing the fox to run the henhouse? The New York Times wrote this morning (7/26/13) that the choice is between Lawrence Summers (the fox) and Janet Yellen (the hen?). Summers…
Dear Whom: My alumni magazine recently published the following note from one of our more distinguished graduates: (Note follows) After brief consideration, I could not contain myself: herewith is an update of my own. (Reply follows)
Brasil, early to midfifties, on the sixth floor of a newish apartment building in São Paulo. Lilo brings a boy my age, same complexion, into the apartment. He was probably some Hungarian kid, the son of one of their numerous fellow Hungarian refugees. She was probably just taking care of it, as a favor to…
my Papa From: Rachel To: The King of Jesters Hey my Papa, I know what a tough time you’re going through right now, and I wish I could be there to give you love and cheer and distract you by asking you political questions that get you all riled up. I can’t give you hugs…
Draft Back to Land’s End Stories: Contents Page Saint Ignatius High School Stories: Charles Henry, S.J. To this day, nearly fifty years after the event, Father Henry’s gratuitous act of spiritual violence still astonishes me. Out of nowhere, he served up one fantastic moment of revelation: that a priest could be so casually…
He lingered, motionless, for a while longer, watching Gary disappear into his house, not knowing what he would do next, just staring, but once again feeling the pull of the amniotic sea beyond the edge of the land. The result of the game they had played had startled him. While he felt good about his…
March 2013 I went to my GI doctor today to see about my third colonoscopy. Pretty routine stuff by now: I’ve survived two already. I’ve been going to his practice since forever. Once he fixed my H. Pilori and twice got rid of polyps on my colon. I’m sixty-six now. We joke around a…
–Two bits says he ends up at Goldman, Sachs. –Naah, he wouldn’t dare. –So, bet me.
We still talk occasionally, though it is now several decades later. Our children know each other, having attended some of the same schools over the years, and the same social gatherings of various acquaintances. Yet, to this day, I’ve never mentioned it; neither has she. I’m not really sure it ever happened. It still saddens…
Dateline: Jerusalem Sunday, July 29, 2012 AMERICAN REPUBLICAN MORMON PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE MAKES PILGRIMAGE TO JERUSALEM’S WESTERN WALL Willard Mitt Romney and his enormous entourage of American Secret Service and Israeli Mossad agents, along with dozens of news-media reporters, were observed today at Jerusalem’s Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall….
I used to drive a Ford Pinto. I even boasted about its road-handling abilities. And about how its two-liter engine block had a high nickel content, though I wasn’t sure what that meant. And how I was going to bore it out, and put a four-barrel Weber carburetor on it. And torsion bars on the…
I live just a couple of blocks away from Manya now, in a two-bedroom apartment above the Riviera Cafe. Each bedroom is barely larger the bed in it, so there is no need to buy any other furnishings. At night, the rattle of the train underneath Seventh Avenue is muffled by the noise of the…
It was on one of those fall men’s college weekends that I first met her. I did not know then that the course of a life could change forever, in the briefest of instants, though the change didn’t become fact until many years later. The light from the sun came at sharp angles, making long…
Katya was born in Prague in 1916 to Hans E. and Daniela M. The family lived with Katya’s maternal grandmother, the imperious Teresa. Teresa, who had worked for Katya’s grandfather as housekeeper, married the old widower when his own wife died. (People are always fucking the help, for crissakes! Or is it the help fucking…
Chapter Seven I had by now come to dread every occasion when Manya’s work required me to appear at some function, a cocktail party or a dinner, as the trailing spouse. Dread, as in full-blown, dry mouth, gut-churning panic, like getting on an airplane, when flying is not your favorite thing, or like pushing long…
Johnny raced out of the boy’s locker room, still wet under his clothes and smelling of chlorine. He actually liked the smell because it made people ask about it. That way he could talk about his swimming, otherwise there was never much to talk about with anybody. It was something he was good at; besides,…
Jamie. Such a frivolous nickname for America’s Banker. He once laundered the name to hide its ethnic origins. Haven’t we all tried to hide our ethnic origins at one time or another? But he is present at every financial crash. There are many ways to achieve stardom in America. XXX
Jon Corzine: Exercises in Magical Realism
Hey, Howard…where d’ja eat? I was in town, too, but left early. Ran out of stuff to do, and got bored and fuckin’ cold. Shoulda called you. Maybe we coulda had a few laffs. Can you tell I took a writing course at SLC? So I saw the NYC Grid exhibit at the Museum of…
Hey, Ho… How delightful to hear from you, after our college trustee spouse reunion and graduation ceremony. I had a great time. Sorry to run off like that, but I couldn’t take the heat. Not to mention the glandular moisture that Julianne Margulies was giving me. I heard that she was totally naked under that…
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