Celebrating at Jimmy’s joint

It didn’t take my smart daughter Elisabeth long to pick the place for her post-graduation lunch celebration. Jimmy Buffett’s Margarittaville was the restaurant to follow the Saturday morning ceremony at Onondaga Community College. One, said Elisabeth, the Destiny USA location probably would not be overrun with graduates and family from the campus on the other…

Now you see Tom Hanks, now you don’t in A Hologram for the King

A Hologram for the King begins with the nightmare of businessman Alan Clay singing Talking Heads’ classic Once in a Lifetime to a chilling effect as he jets to Saudi Arabia to escape and — possibly, hopefully — eradicate the noted pain of said subject matter. Wife, lost in divorce. Life, in turmoil. After he…

I love some more Richard Linklater coming-of-age brilliance!!

The buzzed kids in Dazed in Confused did end up going to college. Metaphorically, in the mind of terrific writer and director Richard Linklater, it turns out. And so a quick 23 years after that breakthrough coming-of-age film that drew up the extremely realistic final May 1976 high school days of a group of Texas…

A together drive is always a bargain

With our first shared day off in a couple of weeks, my dear wife Karen and I jumped into her pretty red Mazda Friday afternoon and headed west on the New York State Thruway. We rekindled a tradition that had sat idle for a year or so, thanks to … Oh, the combination of a…

Sally Field hits the young crowd as Doris

Sally Field is so good as Doris Miller that you don’t know whether to love, hate or feel sorry for the sixtysomething running from her home on Staten Island to the office in Brooklyn. And what makes Hello, My Name Is Doris Miller so darn interesting is that it seems perfectly natural to do all…

A new wild ride every month

In October 2010, my dear wife Karen and I took our dream vacation. To celebrate our anniversary, we hopped on a plane to her hometown of Los Angeles and stayed a night so we could poke around her old haunts some. The next morning went to the LA airport to meet Syracuse friends Julie and…

The big wind or a bad driver?

Spotted on the stroll from the parking lot to Destiny USA with my dear wife Karen recently was a flattened road sign. My mind started wondering about the Do Not Enter post and how it got this way immediately. Was it the big wind we’d experienced that sent this message prone? Was it a driver…