Watched the first part of the George Carlin documentary last night, which was as good and ultimately as sad as advertised. My one disappointment came from the use of snippets from his routine on the differences between football and baseball as an example of the start of his decline, when his examination of language became too forced. That routine took his comedy to a new level.
Jerry Seinfeld once said that the Mount Rushmore of standup would feature the faces of Carlin, Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, and Don Rickles. I think the last two are debatable, but not the first two.
Friday evening Hania and I drove down to Coral Gables for a new exhibition at the Coral Gables Museum. Titled “Capture Coral Gables,” it was a contest open to the public from which a couple dozen photographs were chosen, including one of mine.
In fact, my photo – of two little girls standing by flowers on Giralda Avenue – was the first one we saw as we entered the exhibition room. And it was a humbling experience to see a photograph I had taken with my smartphone in a frame, with a label, and larger than I had ever seen any photo of mine.
At The Bakery Bar, getting some quiche and tomato soup to go, I heard the couple in front of me speaking what sounded like Italian.
“Are you from Italy?” I asked them.
The woman turned and said, “I am. I’m from Sardinia.” Then she said: “I remember you from the Sun-Sentinel.”
It had been a long time since I’d heard those words. And I was delighted, of course, not just that someone still remembered me but that I hadn’t aged unrecognizably since my sig photo was taken in the early aughts. Then it occurred to me that nobody else in Broward County wears these glasses.
There's an article in today's Miami Herald about Sloppy Joe's, which is celebrating its 85th birthday this year. I knew that the original bar was where today's Captain Tony's sits, but I didn't know that it never closed from one location to the next. Apparently after the owner bought the building on Duval, patrons grabbed their drinks and moved the furniture up to the new site.
We're off to Philadelphia for a week - first time in the air since 2019 - and will be back here blogging on the 5th.
There are people who, during a long conversation, will not ask a single question. As a travel writer, and a former journalist, I find this astonishing. Is it because they don't want to appear nosy or because they have absolutely no curiosity?