AMERICA| Celebrating 233 years of the United States
GIs raise Old Glory above Atsugi Air Base in Japan at the start of occupation, September 1945. Happy Independence Day to one and all! Mrs. F. and I are in Lake Placid, where my very best friends from St. Lawrence have joined us for the weekend. She spent the better part of the last six months organizing a surprise birthday weekend for me. I was truly shocked yesterday afternoon to walk into the Cottage and, after greeting Reynolds, I encountered a slew of my closest friends from Larryland. Thanks to Mrs. F. for organizing a wonderful weekend. And here's to America!
LIVES| Sir Noël Coward, 1899-1973
Members of the cast of Sir Noël Coward's "Blithe Spirit," perform in York in 1941. Your writer enjoyed a swell 29th birthday Wednesday. Not only did ejforbes.com enjoy its heaviest day of traffic in the blog's 11-month history with visits from nearly 100 unique users, but I also had a terrific night on the town. Mrs. F. treated me to a performance of "Blithe Spirit," the hilarious and classic comedic play by Sir Noël Coward. The play, which debuted in London and New York in 1941, revolves around the haunting of a novelist who's something of a rascal by his first and ...
FIND| Reportage on Lake Placid’s 1909 summer season
The Ruisseaumont, a grand hotel on the East Lake, was destroyed by fire one hundred years ago today. Steve Reynolds, Adirondack real estate wizard and ejforbes.com fanatic, passed along a terrific article from the Times' morgue last week on the start of Lake Placid's 1909 summer season. On June 20, the Grey Lady reported: LAKE PLACID, June 19 -- Camps and cottages have been opening rapidly this week. Major Everett I. Warren is here again at Calumet Lodge and has brought with him a handsome new launch. Mr. and Mrs. E.C. Jamieson of New York are occupying their camp on the west ...
SEATS| ‘Motel chairs’ are midcentury icons
All across this great land of ours, little mom-and-pop motels like offered simple and clean accommodations to American travelers. They also, more likely than not, offered their guests these clamshell steel chairs, originally designed in the 1940s. I came across the set above, offered by Crate and Barrel on its outlet site, at retrorenovation.com, a terrific blog that focuses on all the glorious kitsch of midcentury interior design. The site was featured in last week's Times Home and Garden section story on people who live in houses with vintage decor. You can spend hours browsing page after page about turquoise-tiled bathrooms ...
COCKTAILS| The Buckingham packs a royal punch
The Buckingham, a cocktail of yore. After a long night at the paper earlier this week, I jumped into a Buckingham, a delicious combination of two of my favorite vices: Scotch and Gin. It never occurred to me to bring these titans of tippling together in a single, knockout cocktail. It had occurred, however, to Salvatore Bertocci, head barman at the old Savoy Plaza in the 1950s. (The Savoy Plaza, you'll remember, figured in an episode of Mad Men last season.) I came across Bertocci's recipe for a Buckingham, which is basically a martini with a splash of Scotch, in the ...
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ARCHIVE| Tennis in Camelot
From the bottomless pit that is the LIFE archive, come these images of tennis in the Kennedy White House. I first came across these over at Ask Andy and...
BULLELTIN| Milfoil found in Placid Lake, SOA reports
The Lake Placid Shore Owners Assocation, commonly known as the SOA, announced yesterday that Placid Lake had been compromised by milfoil growth, the Enterprise...
BRIEFING| The demise of Jacko
The news since last night, of course, has been that Michael Jackson, the troubled but iconic performer, has died at 50. While details continue to emerge...
BULLETIN| Winnings in hand, jackals descend on Big Easy
A member of the NOPD’s finest patrols Bourbon Street earlier this morning. Word on the street is that Leifer and Carl are in the Crescent City tonight,...
More Clips
- MUSIC| The Fleet Foxes’ ‘Ragged Wood’
- TRAILER| ‘Ski School,’ 1991
- CLIP| Hunter S. Thompson, 1977
- CLIP| Schlitz commercial, 1960s
- CLIP| ‘Barcelona,’ 1994
- CLIP| ‘You send me,’ 1971
- CLIP| JFK calls RMN a ‘circus elephant’
- CLIP| Pennsylvania Turnpike Tunnels, 1953
- CLIP| ‘Train in Vain,’ Paris, 1980
- CLIP| ‘Bright Lights, Big City,’ 1988