Whimsy

A friend of mine since high school, Steve Schweitzer, recently pointed out the biggest trend on Broadway was the morphing of successful movies into plays and musicals.

I was chastened to read that Home Depot’s revenues have suffered because we simply aren’t doing enough home improvements and when we do, without the same fervor we brought to the table-saw throughout the pandemic.

One recent warm afternoon I sliced a very plump, very red tomato in half, sprinkled a little dried oregano on it and traveled to the Catskills Mountains, circa 1953.

Watching Bill Maher and David Sedaris express their mutual disdain for children on an episode of Maher’s HBO show “Real Time” earlier this Spring, I began to wonder about those misanthropes who don’t go as public with their feelings about kids as these two did.

While it’s generally a good idea to go through life with moderate-to-low expectations, certain phrases and titles we encounter tend to bolster us up when we’d be better off just lounging.

CBS News reports that lab-grown chicken “has taken a step closer to hitting American grocery stores”—that the FDA has cleared “cultured chicken cell material” as “safe for use as human food.”

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a number of tech companies that gave lavish workplace perks to their employees are now scaling back—or as the Journal reporter wittily puts it, “The ping-pong tables have turned.”

Will TV viewers ever tire of sagas depicting the eternal battle of the haves and have-nots? This sneaky preview of shows streaming your way any second now should help.

I first published Rules of Ed-iquette in 2015 as an installment of a daily online column I wrote in the Sacramento Business Journal for eight years.

I’ve begun to realize how many little tasks I do in the course of a day to keep me on an even emotional keel, to slow down the runaway train of thought that too often becomes uncoupled coal cars hurling down a mountainside. You could also characterize this exercise as how I take or waste my time, if you were either mean-spirited or wholly accurate.