Hawaii

At Clinton's Morning-After Rally: Defiance

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After suffering her ninth and tenth consecutive losses in a row last night, it’s understandable that Hillary Clinton this morning called for an alternate reality.

“Let’s get real,” she said in a Hunter College auditorium that seemed to be packed mostly with the middle-aged women who make up her base. “Let’s get real about this election. Let’s get real about our future.”

With the must-win contests in Texas and Ohio looming, Clinton’s task of exorcising Democratic voters of their enchantment with Barack Obama seems more difficult by the day. This morning, she continued to try to turn Obama’s eloquence against him by suggesting, once again, that he is all fancy talk and no action.  read more »

Parties

Okay -- get your business cards ready. Here's a list of some of the political holiday parties taking place around town.

I've noted the who and the when, but to keep the party crashers at bay, I'm withholding the time and location. Because honestly, there's only so much booze an open bar can serve to you all.  read more »

The Less Discovered Cook Islands

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AMANDA: "Are there any cannibals there?" asked my culturally sensitive fiance, Dan, referring to the Cook Islands, the current focus of our honeymoon saga. We both have demanding jobs where the honeymoon is the one acceptable time to go away for a long while. So we're trying to make the most of it and pick an exotic place that's far away - where we couldn't go with kids. (We have no immediate plans to have kids, but it's out there somewhere.)

When we were in Spain earlier this year, we decided that we wanted to honeymoon in an English-speaking country so as to avoid communication anxieties. We want to go somewhere neither of us has ever been, so Hawaii and Australia are both out. Tahiti's great but it's a French-speaking country. We finally decided to split our time between Fiji and New Zealand. But one peak at hotel prices in Fiji and holy cow! Those little beach bungalows do not come cheap. My friend and bridesmaid, Danielle, suggested the Cook Islands, halfway between Tahiti and Fiji, English speaking, and far less "discovered." Off the beaten path (slightly), difficult to get to, and not likely a place where we'd ever bring the kids. Beachfront bungalow, here we come.  read more »

Making Sweet Music On a Sunday Night

Rich Conaty.
Hai Knafo
Rich Conaty.

It might seem fair to say that Rich Conaty slips into a time warp every Sunday night from 8 p.m.  read more »

Promising, Flawed Novel Yo-Yos From L.A. to S.F.

The Ruins of California is a great title, even if it’s hard to know where a name like “Ruin” c  read more »

Promising, Flawed Novel Yo-Yos From L.A. to S.F.

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Anne Ghory Goodman
There

The Ruins of California is a great title, even if it’s hard to know where a name like “R  read more »

George, Sweet Hilly Claim They're Broke, Threaten to Terminate

It was our first couples-therapy session of 2006.

GEORGE: You want to start?  read more »

George, Sweet Hilly Claim They’re Broke, Threaten to Terminate

Keeping up with the Joneses  Sarah Jones as Lorraine Levine, one of 14 characters she plays in her one-woman show, <i>Bridge and Tunnel</i>, produced by Meryl Streep and others, at the Helen Hayes Theater.
James Hamilton
Keeping up with the Joneses Sarah Jones as Lorraine Levine, one of 14 characters she plays in her one-woman show, Bridge and Tunnel, produced by Meryl Streep and others, at the Helen Hayes Theater.

It was our first couples-therapy session of 2006.   GEORGE: You want to start?    read more »

TNR (Over) Indicts

The New Republic takes obvious, patronizing relish in demolishing Freddy this week, in a piece that is available online only to subscribers.

The view from Washington, apparently, is that Freddy is an almost 19th-century creature of an exotic, nearly extinct breed: the local Democratic Party machine hack. There's something to that view, though we're unsure how a magazine whose central political identity is a fond glance back to the great old Clinton years can be quite so snide about politicians playing politics.

Anyway, here are some choice excerpts:

"All his adult life, Ferrer has been playing by the same set of rules -- that the way to succeed in politics is to behave like an unapologetic hack. Now that he's on the verge of his greatest success, voters and the press have decided unapologetic hackery isn't good enough. Suddenly they want 'consistency.' And 'principle.' And 'character.' Well, I say it's not fair. You don't cut Social Security benefits for people who are about to retire. You don't change frequent-flier incentives for people who've already earned their free trip to Hawaii. And you don't go revising the criteria for political leadership when a longtime pol like Ferrer is about to grab the brass ring....  read more »

"To suddenly deny Ferrer his due would be a crime against ambitious ward heelers everywhere, a crime against mixed metaphors, a crime against a lovable sitcom type. Then again, who am I to over-indict?"

Basquiat on the Beach

Recently, I found myself sitting at a small, child-size table at a hotel in Istanbul with a short bu  read more »

Hollywood Holidays: Box-Office Blues, Paunchy Celebs

And so it's Christmas in Los Angeles, 2004.The gifts have been sent, the tips have been disbursed, a  read more »

Brilliant Stutter-Step Novel Cuts Smoothly Through History

Cloud Atlas , by David Mitchell. Random House, 509 pages, $14.95.  read more »

As Women Rise and Men Sink, Marriage Breaks Down Entirely

Mismatch: The Growing Gulf Between Women and Men , by Andrew Hacker. Scribner, 199 pages, $25.  read more »

I Ignored the Pain and Sprinted

"Is that what you eatbefore an Ironman?" I asked, taking a seat next to a tall, 40-ish Texan digging  read more »

Diagnosing Demi Disease

I didn't go to the Jane Fonda tribute at Lincoln Center backin May.  read more »

Like Cast Away , Minus the No-Frills Part

I don't want to give the wrong impression: My husband workshard.  read more »

Daring to Date on an Island of Survivors

"I think you should write about your dating life," my father told me the other night over dinner wit  read more »

My Idea of Summer Fun: Wet BBQ and Daiquiris

The heady joie de vivre that emanates from my neighborhood Dallas BBQ restaurant has always been a t  read more »

Demarchelier Père et Fils Go Downtown With Bistro Classics

It was still snowing lightly as I tramped along Houston Street, and it felt right to be going to a b  read more »

Puerto Rico Won't Say No Más to Status Quo

Puerto Rican independence has gotten a new convert.  read more »