Tag: Amazon

February 21, 2015

State and Main

Question: “What’s an associate producer credit?” – Answer: “It’s what you give to your secretary instead of a raise.”

SandM

This is one of the many hilarious lines in one of my favorite movies: “State and Main“ written and directed by David Mamet in 2000. The title is as baffling to non-Americans as it is crystal clear to Americans: in most American towns there is a “Main Street” and somewhere it will be crossed by “State”, short for the State Highway.  And this movie is all about a little sleepy town in Vermont where a Hollywood film is being shot, with all the uproar that creates…

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February 6, 2015

Feline Elegance

The Lady & her Cat…

“The term “Cat Lady” can evoke the image of an unfashionable, unkempt, and slightly unhinged spinster hoarding multiple cats. The book “Cat Lady Chic” by Diane Lovejoy serves as the antidote to this unflattering point of view, celebrating the Cat Lady with a compilation of artful, playful, and sophisticated images of some of the most renowned, beautiful, and accomplished women in modern history with the cats they love”.

BlackCatModel Mary Jane Russel with black cat – photograph by Louise Dahl-Wolf

This is the amusing description of the book “Cat Lady Chic“. Much is written about the attraction between women and cats, a subject often looked upon with great suspicion by those who do not understand it.

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January 29, 2015

Tulip Mania

Economic speculation, the birth of futures & options contracts and a market crash in Holland’s Golden Age

There is something so deliciously mad about the phenomenon of Tulip Mania in 17th century Holland where “protestant restraint” was “de rigeur”. This was the “Golden Age” of the Netherlands, when sophisticated modern economic systems were invented: the first-ever multinational corporation (the Dutch East India Company founded in 1602), financed by shares that established the first modern stock exchange and the Bank of Amsterdam (established in 1609), the precursor to, if not the first true central bank.

Tulip Anonymous 17th-century watercolor of the Semper Augustus, famous for being the most expensive tulip sold during tulip mania.

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