Enotes

The first thing I saw was a jug of wine on the kitchen table the size of the Detroit Zoo water tower in Royal Oak. And there was barely any wine left in it. That's when I knew it would be a fun night spent with family. We're Italian---my wife more than I---and we spent a glorious Saturday evening last weekend visiting with aunts, uncles and cousins that we haven't seen in years. Probably not since the last family funeral; that's typically how it goes. It used to be that we saw each other at weddings and baby showers. We approached the condo of our cousin and I saw the huge jug of wine on the table. More than a dozen heads, some bald and those that weren't, were mostly gray, bobbed in the front room at the dining table. The food was going, the wine was going and the conversations were loud---mainly because half the folks could no longer hear. Our family is getting older, and it's somehow up to people our age (my wife is 51 and I'm 50; our daughter is ...

Maybe Howard Schultz figures that the only thing worse than a person with a gun in his stores is a person with a gun who is heavily caffeinated. Schultz is the founder and CEO of Starbucks, birthplace of the $5 cup of coffee. And he's making a polite request. Please, no guns in Starbucks. Whatever happened to "No shoes, no shirt, no service"? I long for those days. Now we have CEOs of national chains asking their customers to check the firearms at the door. Or, preferably, much further away than that. It could be that Schultz thinks that someone might finally be driven over the edge for paying $5 for a cup of coffee, and that person is best when he/she is unarmed. But seriously, folks... Schultz made what I thought was an impassioned yet reasonable plea to his customers via open letter to very kindly leave their legal, registered weapons out of his Starbucks stores, in states that have "open carry" laws. "Few topics in America generate a mo...

It would be about this time of the year when there was great anticipation. No, I'm not talking about the start of another school year. I'm talking about the start of a new television season. It was an annual wave of excitement. All the new shows would debut in September, and the carryovers from past seasons would be back for another go round. The networks---and by networks I mean ABC, CBS and NBC---got in on the act, producing prime time specials previewing their respective lineups. The shows' stars would make appearances in these preview shows, dressed in character, speaking of what viewers were to expect. This is circa the mid-to-late 1970s. The absolute best, though, was the preview of all the new Saturday morning cartoons. YAHTZEE! That was a prime time special, too. As an adolescent who still enjoyed the animated shows, I marveled at all the new cartoons and what they intended to be and how they intended to entertain us. The TV seasons back in those d...

Everyday, it seems, we are reminded that just because one holds a position of respect and dignity, doesn't mean said person is respectful and dignified. Take Boston Mayor Thomas Menino. Please. In a New York Times   Magazine interview , the conversation turned to the city of Detroit. That's when Menino checked respect and dignity at the door before opening his mouth. "I'd blow the place up and start all over," Menino said. Now, Detroit has its problems, that's for sure---bankruptcy not withstanding. The city is hemorrhaging population, tax base and credibility. Its schools don't perform. There's a lot of waiting that goes on---to get a streetlight fixed, to get an ambulance, sometimes to even get a police officer to stop by while a crime is being committed. But Menino not only used a poor choice of words, he did so with terrible irony. Boston, as you know, was indeed bombed, at the Boston Marathon in April. Someone really did try to blow ...

This may be shocking to read, but it's not over the top to say that Valerie Harper was supposed to be six feet under now. Instead, she's going to be dancing up a storm. Harper, beloved to this day for having played the sassy, tough Rhoda Morgenstern on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "Rhoda," was diagnosed with brain cancer earlier this year. Her doctors gave her three months to live. Maybe she couldn't pay her bill, and the docs are giving her six more months. With apologies to Henny Youngman, whose joke I just bastardized, have you noticed what's been going on with Harper? The most recent news is that she's going to be one of the celebrity contestants on "Dancing With the Stars" this fall. Before that, Harper appeared on an "MTM Show" reunion on Nick at Nite, and filmed a movie role. Not bad for someone who was supposed to be gone by now. Cancer is a funny thing, and never before has the word "funny" b...

I think that if we wanted to wrap the world with receipt tape, we'd only need to buy a couple of loaves of bread and a gallon of milk for maybe a week. That ought to do it. If we ever run out of firewood in this country, I am blaming America's retailers. Their receipts surely must be killing trees by the truckload. Have you looked at receipts lately? I could decorate our Christmas tree with one trip to Target. Receipts are getting longer by the day. In fact, receipts are about as long as the day is long. At my local CVS, the spitting out of the receipt by the register is tantamount to a winner at a slot machine. It keeps going and going, to the point where I am expecting to hear sirens and bells go off, and a spotlight shine on me from the ceiling. You think you're the store's lucky customer of the week, as the receipt flows out of the register and spills onto the floor until the clerk is covered in white paper from head to toe. But alas, 95% of what is on t...

Maybe behind the scenes, Miley Cyrus is getting a talking to. Maybe when nobody is looking, she is being sent to her room. Maybe her Internet use is being revoked. She has no more access to the family car, until further notice. If only. No one said that the transformation from bubble gum pop to grown up music is an easy one. It's like child actors who struggle in becoming mature adults. But music means live performances. Not every song is recorded in a sterile studio. And there isn't a director, yelling "CUT!" There's no Take Two. Too bad. But there ARE parents. Theoretically, anyway. Miley Cyrus seemed to have a built in defense system against the pitfalls of growing up in the music industry as a performer. Her father, Billy Ray, is in the business himself. He's seen some things. Certainly things that he'd want to keep his little girl from getting mixed up in. But the parenting has been of the hands off variety in Miley's case, and the...