Monday, July 25, 2011
It’s not all about glitz and glamor at the annual Community Services auction.
So you think it’s all Carly Simon whispering who was the vain dude in your ear, and serving you PJ&B sandwiches? Or Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen inviting you for Scrabble with their good buddies, Bill and Hillary? Well, I’m here to tell you that some of the auction items at the annual Possible Dreams auction can be pretty darn funky. There was one year back in the early ‘80s when my then-future-ex-husband-but-now-best-friend-who-I-see-all-the-time-but-we’re-not-dating, Marty and I took home from the auction a sack of s-#*-t! I kid you not. It was billed as a bag of Bronx zoo doo, culled from the cages of lions, tigers and bears, and guaranteed, because it derived from ferocious animals, to make your roses, peonies and hydrangeas, stand …
Monday, July 11, 2011
Discover what happened behind the blinds of Gloria Swanson's house.
Thank God there’s nothing so tacky as a Map To The Stars' Homes for Martha’s Vineyard, but every old Island hand has famous sites to point out to first-time visitors: The Jaws house, the cemetery where John Belushi is buried, the Camp Ground cottage where President Ulysses S. Grant was booted out for boozing it up and, my favorite, the beach house that Joe Kennedy built for silent screen star, Gloria Swanson, back in the 1920s. It’s three houses in on Eastville Beach just as the road swings left from the incline down to East Chop: A pretty late-Edwardian manor-house with eyebrow windows peeking out in each direction from the third story, turquoise shutters adorning first floor windows, and with sweeping views over formal gardens to sand …
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
The year was 1940; the scene was ugly, the pursuit of justice went awry.
It was a crime straight out of an Agatha Christie novel. A dark and stormy night. Waves smashing against the cliffs below. Off the East Chop lighthouse, the fog horn tolled. There was a scream in the night sloughed off as somebody’s nightmare. And in the morning, a woman was found dead in her room at the Rice Theatre dormitory, choked and struck three times with a blunt instrument. The only part missing from an Agatha Christie mystery was the recap in the drawing room where Miss Marple reveals the murderer. In those days the villain never drawled, “Guess I’d better lawyer up,” but instead bolted for the door, or drew out a revolver, or shouted, “The bastard had it coming!”, all of which made it easy to tie up loose ends in a couple more …
Kris Hrycun
7:24 pm on Monday, September 19, 2011
Yeah, I bet he does, Holly. Jan. is a good time for a p.j. party, you can have hot cocoa and hunker down, in the cold weather. Sounds great. You'll do just fine! more ›