The Pink Elephant in the Schoolroom

I thought I was inured to the unspeakable stupidity oozing out of Sacramento’s State Capitol, but I am still after half a century sometimes shocked to see what emerges from the ...

Tobey Maguire and Leonardo DiCaprio

Yet Another Unglamorous Hollywood Scandal

Hard to believe though it may be, another scandal involving A-list actors is rocking Hollywood. There are all the usual hallmarks of moral decay—big-name stars (Matt Damon, Ben ...

Mount Shasta

The Ascended Masters of Mt. Shasta

Living in a state where the elected leadership tends to fall somewhere between the criminal and the brain-dead, it is always a relief to turn from the political to the real. The ...

Head Trips and Foreskin Snips: California’s Anti-Circumcision Jihad

If Oxford is the home of lost causes, California appears to be the Quonset hut of stupid ones. The latest to excite municipal legislators’ brains (in San Francisco and Santa ...

An Impermanent Paradise Called California (Part Two)

The California that gave us the film industry was far from a blank slate. In addition to the land barons, Midwesterners, and gurus whom I mentioned last time, there had also been ...

Santa Monica, CA

An Impermanent Paradise Called California

In February, fresh from the great victory at Oxford, I went to a dinner party in London. At one point my historian friend asked: "€œDon"€™t you miss Europe?"€ My response ...


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