Moments later, as if by magic, it's back in service... Can't wait to find out what happened; this one was a doozy.

For my penultimate pointer, I've chosen a book that I read because I met the author herself, in the ophthalmologist's waiting room. She was a handsome matron in tweeds who asked me if I knew what the music playing on the radio was. (They play WQXR at Dr Odell's.) I did: it was Telemann's delightful concerto for three oboes and three violins. We fell into a conversation of sorts, with her doing most of the talking. I don't know how I captured the name of her book, because the doctor's office knew her under her married name, but after my exam I walked round the corner to Lenox Hill books, which was still going, and found a copy of The All of It. The clerk told me that it is a "favorite in the neighborhood" - the neighborhood being 10021, the city's ritziest ZIP code. (It's still going, too, but in much reduced form.)

¶ The All of It.

¶ Kathleen Brady's Indian Melon Salad.

¶ Strong Motion.

What do you think?

¶ Business and Sports.

What's your favorite comedy? What a question! The Palm Beach Story, though, stands firmly within the clutch of ten or so films that answer that question at any given time. Preston Sturges does things that nobody else ever thought of trying. Surely there has never been anything as grossly transgressive as the behavior of the Ale & Quail Club members in their bar car. And the way Geraldine keeps stepping on Hackensacker's spectacles! Lots of "ouch" factor there. Just the same, there has never been a more seductive surrender scene than the one that Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrae deliver at the end.

Our favorite line:

"Don't you think garnets are a little lifeless?"

Our second favorite line:

"You're thinking of an adventurer, dear. An adventuress never goes on anything under three hundred feet - with a crew of eighty." 

¶ The Palm Beach Story.

¶ Up in the Air.

¶ Death at a Funeral.

One of Campbell’s foci is ‘TB’s terrible sense of style, e.g. the awful pullover he wore on his walk with Bush and the dreadful creation he wore on the plane’. This becomes a running gag. ‘TB was wearing Nicole Farhi shoes, ludicrous-looking lilac-coloured pyjama-style trousers and a blue smock. After GB left, I said he looked like Austin Powers. He said you are the second person today who’s said that.’ The next day: ‘Up to see TB in the flat. Another Austin Powers moment. Yellow/green underpants and that was it. I said what a prat he looked. He said I was just jealous – how many prime ministers have got a body like this?’ There is a flirtatious edge to this. Martin Amis, in a piece reporting on Blair’s last weeks in office, also described himself flirting with Blair. So men have that effect on other men; it’s not a gay thing exactly, but it’s not the opposite of a gay thing, and there is something faintly homoerotic about the governmental milieu described here, full of dark-haired men shouting at each other, TB and AC and PM and GB all coming to blows (Mandelson v. Campbell in the course of an argument about whether Blair should wear a tie), bursting into tears, having make-up heart-to-hearts, saying bitchy things about each other behind each others’ backs, and ruthlessly doing each other down while secretly knowing that they are mutually dependent. Anyone being sent to a girls’ boarding school would do well to prepare by reading The Blair Years. The cover photo is part of this, Blair looking up at Campbell with an expression of submissive yearning that verges on the pornographic.

The idea of a parent giving a thirteen year-old girl a copy of The Blair Years is asphyxiatingly funny.

It's in the names. The half-brother is Adam. The step-mother is Abigail. The uncle is Max/Mac. These are the people that Dick, a/k/a "Don Draper," walked away from over ten years ago, when Adam was an eight year-old boy. Adam and Abigail are popular names today, and they were popular with English (but only English) protestants into the beginning of the Nineteenth Century. In Mid-Century USA, however, they were common only to -

Jews.

Don Draper is Jewish. That's why nothing about his past is on display. That's why he can't have Seth as a half-brother. Is Matthew Wiener going to take the Sopranos formula and use it to etch the far subtler drama of bourgeois American anti-Semitism?

Jon Hamm's most amazing face - and he turned in many during this episode - is in response to Adam's pathetic question, "Did you ever miss me?" Don is paralyzed by the horror of having driven such "missing" from his mind with an iron discipline, until the Hallmark answer, "Of course I did," presents itself to his adman's brain. Don usually knows what he's supposed to say right away. The surprise of Adam, a brother whom one ends up (after the second episode, anyway) thinking that he loved, slows him down.

I may, of course, be wrong as Worcester about all of this. But when I shared my theory with Kathleen, she jumped on it. I'm suddenly wishing that I knew a few chat rooms.

The whole thrust of this old-DB entry is to urge my regular readers (you know who you are) to start posting comments, in barrages if you wouldn't mind, at the new site, www.dailyblague.com/blog. Don't worry about being witty or clever; the idea is public service, and and your shopping list will do. Just post!

Seriously, guys, we're on our way to a new transport. Pack your bottles!

This jolly book got a so-so review in the Book Review, and I duly took note in these pages. Mr Lutz got hold of me to tell me that, in his opinion, the review was completely wrong. How could I doubt him?

¶ Big Idea>Books>Tom Lutz on Doing Nothing.