Merry Christmas

The thrill of victory

. . . and the agony of defeat.

For many years, those words were part of Jim McKay's opening for ABC's Wide World of Sports.

This picture captures both at the same moment as Vincent Trocheck of the New York Rangers scores an overtime goal to defeat the Boston Bruins on their home ice. The fans' faces say it all. Pure schadenfreude for New York Rangers fans.

Union Square Christmas Market

There's something for everyone!

New York Thanksgiving

Chris Ware's Harvest.

Reusable Newspaper

Cartoonist Scott Adams penned this Dilbert cartoon on July 13, 1989.

Sad but true. 

Clocks fall back?

Hackney Diamonds and Now and Then!

Batman and the Boy Wonder

Truck Heist!

No, it's not an armored Brink's truck, but its cargo is precious!

Hot Dogs

This Land Is Mine

Knothole

Surveillance

Not much happens in New York City or other U.S. cities that escape surveillance cameras.

Is it a deterrent?

Sphere

Being a New Yorker and a New York Rangers and/or New York Knicks fan comes with antipathy for James Dolan, the CEO of Madison Square Garden Sports and Madison Square Garden Entertainment. Dolan's combination of boorish behavior and years of business, financial, and team mismanagement is a frustrating test of loyalty.

Dolan's personal encounters with Knicks and Rangers fans are often petty and he's known to employ facial recognition software to deny entry to certain fans, including pre-paid season ticket holders, who work for law firms engaged in litigation with his myriad businesses.

This makes the concept and promise of Sphere, Dolan's bold, unique, and precedent-setting entertainment venue in Las Vegas, such a surprise and marvel. Dolan sketched Sphere with a stick figure inside seven years ago and $2.3 billion later it opened last week with a two-month stand of the band U2 reprising Achtung Baby. Early notices for Sphere are very positive. More here.

Dolan plans to export Sphere to London and several other cities around the world.

Maturity in Politics

With yesterday's death of California Senator Dianne Feinstein at 90, oddsmakers and pundits are busy handicapping our sclerotic gerontocracy of politicians.

Editorial cartoonist Barry Blitt must be kicking himself for not putting Senator Feinstein in front in her wheelchair in his cover for this week's issue of The New Yorker.

Rain, Rain and More Rain

Tropical Storm Ophelia is walloping New York City, the tri-state area, and New England. 

9.11 from the International Space Station

On September 11, 2001, medical officer Frank Culbertson was orbiting in the International Space Station when he and two Russian crewmates learned about the Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center in New York City.

Culbertson grabbed a video camera and recorded the smoke plume from the Twin Towers before they collapsed, killing nearly 3,000 people that afternoon.

As reported on nasa.gov:

"For the Expedition 3 crew aboard the space station, like millions of Americans back on Earth, September 11 began as an ordinary day, their 33rd in space. Following a morning of physical exams, Culbertson, who served as the crew's medical officer, began a private medical conference with NASA Flight Surgeon Stephen F. Hart to relay to him the results of the tests. 'Frank, we're not having a very good day down here on Earth.' Dr. Hart went on to explain how two commercial airliners had crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, and a third into the Pentagon outside Washington, DC. As they were tallking, they received word that a fourth airliner had crashed somewhere in Pennsylvania. At first stunned into disbelief by the news, Culbertson quickly realized that the space station, then over central Canada, was about to make a southeasterly pass over Maine, within viewing distance of New York. Culbertson grabbed a video camera and headed for the window facing in the proper direction. A few minutes later, he saw and videotaped a large plume of smoke stretching for dozens of miles from the lower Manhattan site of the World Trade Center. After a few minutes, the space station moved out of range of New York, and the three crewmembers had 90 minutes before its orbit brought it back again over the area. They set up several still and video cameras to record the events as they were still unfolding, unknowingly witnessing the collapse of the second tower as a bloom of smoke."

Jaws Jumps the Shark

It's been nearly 50 years since Steven Speilberg filmed Jaws on Martha's Vineyard in 1974 followed by the release of the blockbuster movie the next summer.

Three sequels followed, many books, and warehouses of merchandise emblazoned with gnashing shark teeth and "You're going to need a bigger boat" warnings.

Now the movie about a great white shark has made it to the Great White Way – where it's billed as a comedy. The Shark Is Broken opened at the Golden Theater in August and plays through November.

Captain Quint, actor Robert Shaw's character in the movie, is performed by Ian Shaw, Robert Shaw's son and the play's author.

Jesse Green, theater critic at The New York Times, writes:

"In the end, 'The Shark Is Broken" isn't interested in argument and interpretation any more than 'Jaws' was. When Dreyfuss says the movie they're making is about the subconcious, and Scheider posits that it's about responsibility, Shaw, as always, wins by proclamation. 'It's about a shark!' he brays."

Orca-stra seats start at $99.

Easy September Day

The north shore of Martha's Vineyard – Lambert's Cove Beach and Upper Makonikey – as painted by local artist Kenneth Vincent.

Labor Day Parade

Mug Shots

Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoon editorialist Barry Blitt hits the nail on the head . . . again.

Chip Chop on the Block

Chip Chop, the storied Martha's Vineyard home of the late stage actress Katherine Cornell, and most recently of Diane Sawyer and her late husband Mike Nichols, has been listed for sale for $24 million by Wallace & Company Sotheby's International Realty in Edgartown.

Originally known as The Barn, Chip Chop is nestled on 20 acres along Chappaquonsett Road between Vineyard Sound and Lake Tashmoo, and its several white and black-capped chimneys have long been visible to boaters.

As reported in the Vineyard Gazette:

"I'd always hoped I'd find the summer place I wanted, a place where I coould lead a blue jean kind of life. This is it," Ms. Cornell told the Boston Sunday Globe in 1954. The famed actress who had been dubbed the First Lady of the Theatre tended gardens and flocks of chickens on her Vineyard property.

Pee-wee Herman RIP

One of a kind.

"Today, it seems to me, it's a lot more difficult to stand out," Paul Reubens said. "You know, if you want to be weird, good luck."

"I'm trying to talk on the phone!" "Scream real loud!" ~ Pee-wee Herman

"Are we there yet?"

Stirs memories of the long family drives to Maine in the 1960s.

Pretty in Pink

Pink is back! 

Barbie, the movie, is expected to rake in more than $155 million in its opening weekend. 

Here on Martha's Vineyard, pink means something altogether different.

"The Pink House" in the Oak Bluff's Campground has gone on the market for $860,000, Ken not included.

Homelessness in America

Mental illness, addiction, homelessness, and feckless leadership have created 21st-century tent ghettoes in America.

Hydra's Slaughterhouse

Hydra's Slaughterhouse art installations, run by the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, include Jeff Koon's kinetic Apollo Wind Spinner, "a 30-foot wide reflective wind spinner that greets people entering the port of Hydra on one side and, on the other, welcomes people walking to the building housing the installation. The face of the wind spinner is that of Apollo."

Hydra

Acropolis

Whataboutism

Flag Day in the United States of America

The View from Inside Beatlemania

The New Yorker's Jill Lepore takes us back to 1964 in England, Germany, and especially America when The Beatles had their first hit, I Want to Hold Your Hand.

"The Beatles had released three singles in the United States; none had broken out. But, on December 26th, their fourth, 'I Want to Hold Your Hand,' blasted off like an Apollo rocket. Bob Dylan heard the song on the radio while driving in California. 'Fuck!' he said. 'Man, that was fuckin' great. Oh, man –– fuck!' "

A trip down memory lane.