The last time I read a lot of 1930s Golden Age English mysteries, I ended up writing one in my sleep. I'm awake now, so there’s no excuse for this one. Still, let’s press on. Our story begins outside a village church, after Sunday service, as Hector Spector (the...
"Do not go in fear, Grasshopper." -- Kung Fu You've heard of Aseop, right? Greek dude? Lived around 600 BC? Wrote fables, like the one about the Ant and the Grasshopper? Okay, I'll remind you. The Ants spend all summer trundling food to their storehouse, using...
I'm just back from Opera at the Park, San Francisco’s annual “watch opera in a baseball park while eating popcorn” event. This year’s opera was Turandot (final "t" sounded) by Giacomo Puccini. I know it’s easy to mock the plots of operas, which is good because it’s...
There were three magazines my dentist's waiting room: the current issue of Showplaces; a dog-eared copy of People (“Robert Pattison Bares All!”); and a new publication, Consumer’s Guide to Sex (“CGS Rates the Vibrators”). So I picked up Showplaces. “For his Telegraph...
In my last post I described some of the scary things you might encounter while walking in the California countryside: rattlesnakes, poison oak, mountain lions, etc. In Britain, by contrast, you'll encounter nothing that's poisonous or person-eating. There’s one...
Walking for exercise? Sure, it sounds easy: just put one foot in front of the other and repeat. Yet for the unwary walker, complications lurk, like ... um ... well ... like lurky complicated things. (Note to self: work on similes.) My neighborhood is...