PicoBlog

A couple of wild 1960s-era Rock God stories, plus Mr. Cool, Leonard Cohen, on Miami Vice, plus the usual political cartoons. What more could you want? So subscribe, if you have not, it’s still free. Tim Page, a Brit, was one of the most gonzo, and greatest, photographers of the Vietnam War. I met him a few years later when he wrote a piece for us at Crawdaddy along with taking the pictures.

Exactly one hundred years ago today, newspapers were full of the usual cheerful exhortations from local businessmen and other civic worthies. (“NEW YEAR GREETING to our FRIENDS and CLIENTS,” reads one in Sioux City, Iowa. “We advise you to start the New Year right and give us your application for a farm loan, early,” it helpfully suggests.) More serious efforts to take stock of the past year and look ahead to what was coming made for less pleasant reading.

My review mentioned Ripley's Game. And the Damon version more frequently comes up because 1)It's an adaptation of the same story as the Netflix show, whereas Ripley's Game was based on a different book, 2)Talented Mr. Ripley was a big awards player, critical darling, still talked about today, whereas Ripley's Game came and went without much attention, and everyone I know who saw it said they thought Malkovich was great, and the movie around him was so-so.

The so called Magnificent 7 stocks in the S&P have dominated returns this year, contributing 95% of the returns in the S&P500 year to date, while the equal weighted S&P 500 is actually down. Interestingly this years’ positive contribution is almost exactly equal and opposite to the negative contribution a year ago. The question then for 2024 has to be, will this mean reversion, now turned into momentum, extend into 2024?

Greetings! It feels like summer is officially here. Two of my great-nieces graduated from high school this past weekend and my daughter’s AA degree graduation is this week. We’ve been shopping for supplies so Max and Jasper can go RVing with us this summer and fall. By the time we place the litterbox, cat tree (that leads to an overhead bunk), and the food and water bowls, I’m not sure if there will be room for us.

Hello! If you subscribed after last Thursday, welcome! Let me get you up to speed. The Drip drops like this: each month, I’ll choose a concept and break it down through weekly essays that bridge artists and ideas in hip hop and art history. For more complex themes and connections, sometimes I’ll break down the track into two posts—an A side and a B side—so that we have more time to marinate.

Greed and exuberance returned to Wall Street as we ended 2023 and welcomed the start of 2024. Markets are trading near all-time highs, the Fed has switched to singing a more dovish tune, and confidence in a soft landing -- or no landing -- for the economy is high. Did we manage to emerge from all the chaos and distortion of the past few years without a major reckoning? Have we dodged the bullet of recession?

Share On Episode 152 of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, we explored a topic many gardeners in USDA Zones 9, and a few in USDA Zone 8, are wondering about this time of year. Will those green tomatoes on my backyard plants mature if I clip them off and bring them indoors? College Horticulture professor (retired) Debbie Flower replied with our favorite answer: “It Depends.” For more tomato ripening wisdom, listen to the rest of Episode 152, where we also have a conversation about the white, stringy stuff in a mulch pile (it’s good!

The most famous moment of Willie Mays’ career came relatively early on. In Game 1 of the 1954 World Series, the then-23-year-old New York Giant was patrolling the cavernous center field of the Polo Grounds, where the outfield wall was 483 feet from home plate. When Cleveland Indians first baseman Vic Wertz smashed a fly ball over the head of a shallow-playing Mays with two on and none out in the eighth inning of a tie ballgame, it seemed like a bases-clearing triple or even an inside-the-park home run was about to happen.