Category Archives: Beauty

Sammie Was Black

February 2, 2024 – 7:04 pm

Only one black man earned a spot with Sinatra’s Rat Pack in Las Vegas. Sammy Davis Junior. Mister Show Business might have been the token black for the Silent Majority, but Mr. Show Business was well aware of his place in the white world after a stint in the Army. “Overnight the world looked different. […]

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HISTOIRE DE MELODIE NELSON by Serge Gainsbourg

January 23, 2024 – 4:50 am

Music sucked in Pattaya. Old farangs sing HOTEL CALIFORNIA and bar girls dance to boy band love ballads, while Thai bands play dinosaur rock for drunken tourists. Nothing was wrong with a bad reprise of SMOKE ON THE WATER, except I once hung out in nightclubs and bars in which music meant more than a […]

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Jane Birkin on Proust

January 23, 2024 – 4:19 am

My mother was right. When you’ve got nothing left, all you can do is get into silk underwear and start reading Proust. – Jane Birkin Personally I wasn’t able to read past the opening line of A LA RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU. “For a long time I used to go to bed early.” I never […]

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The Touch of Hands

December 27, 2023 – 1:32 pm

A hand Five fingers The veined back and fleshy palm. Two hands Ten fingers A woman’s hand Mine are scarred Accidents and fights Only on my right hand. A woman’s hands Palms On my cheeks Soft and warm. It’s been years. Since a woman’s touched Me. Eyes shut Soul open Bewitched by the palms Of […]

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THE BIRTH OF THE BOUFFANT by Peter Nolan Smith

November 22, 2023 – 10:59 am

In the late-18th Century Marie Antoinette’ coiffeur sought to camouflage the queen’s baldness by upsweeping her thinning tresses to cascade over her ears. The femme fatales of the ancien regime imitated ‘le bouffant, until the royal coif lost its popularity with the Marie’s final haircut by the guillotine. Two centuries later Jackie Kennedy, JFK’s wife, […]

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