With the Academy Awards this Sunday what better time to take a look back, via the newly released Kino Classics Blu-Ray, at one of the most seminal Hollywood movies ever made about Hollywood, the 1937 Oscar-winning William A. Wellman A Star Is Born? Nomin

The sun’s gone dim, and The moon’s turned black; For I loved him, and He didn’t love back. My daughter came home from school the other day with this Dorothy Parker poem scribbled in 11-year-old penmanship down her palm and onto her wrist. “I got in troub

Let’s put it like this. Suppose you claim that 60% of Americans support policy X. The truth is that only 40% of Americans do. If you’re a Democrat, you’re a filthy liar. But if you’re a Republican, you were two-thirds correct. Hence, “mostly true.” Repub

As England’s national spirit, gin has typically generated every bit as much excitement in these parts as British cuisine. Which is to say, no excitement at all. But gin’s dowdy image has been getting a makeover. It started with the surging interest in re

NEW YORK, Feb. 13, 2012 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- Celebrity super-couples, such as TomKat (Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes) or Brangelina (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie), seem like a modern-day fad. But the popular media had its own super-couple back in the 1920

A good Cole Porter song — is there another kind? Just when you think it can't get better, it reveals new complexities. "Let's Misbehave," the new show that opened Friday night at the Oregon Cabaret Theatre in Ashland, testifies to

They were defending muffs: big, bouffant ones.

Like the others, Shian Salabie shed her shyness, read a poem and returned to her seat. But the Lindenwold sophomore then took on a role that makes others tense. At Thursdays regional round of Poetry Out Loud, she was to recite Robert Frosts The Road Not

If you've been to a drugstore, chances are you are rudely reminded that Valentine's Day is almost here. Your eyes are assaulted by the color red, which just makes the brokenhearted, the lonely, and the unsatisfied want to attack the displays of frilly he

No said it yesterday, but the culprit in the death of the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel is Marriott. The hotel chain took over the legendary New York hotel a few months ago and imnmediately announced a six month shut down for renovations. Their first a

A supernatural series set in Manhattan during the 1920s that follows a teen heroine reminiscent of two of the era’s most famous literary women—Zelda Fitzgerald and Dorothy Parker. The story will be a wild new ride full of dames and dapper dons, jazz babi

The Algonquin Hotel’s famed Oak Room is closing its doors — and New York’s biggest names in cabaret and jazz yesterday sang sad songs of farewell. “My New York career started at the Oak Room, and I can’t imagine the city without it,” singer/pianist Micha

Toronto in winter is a battleship grey. Or is it donkey grey or gunmetal or murk? This morning when I looked in the mirror I had skin the colour of. I’m trudging through Toronto’s mouse-coloured subway stations past people with faces like t

The Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel is no more. I once wrote a tribute to that legendary night spot in which I tried to sum up how I felt about one of the places that used to make New York New York. Here's part of it. Eighty well-dressed people sit silen

What’s so beautiful about cellar door? These two little words have gotten a lot of attention from Donnie Darko, Dorothy Parker, and beyond. “If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the nativ

My Mercury is in Pisces, ruled by Neptune. Mercury is the mind, the communication, the metaphorical Voice. Neptune obscures, some say it lies, but they’re pretty lies, lies the teller believes even if only for the moment. When I talk, I must not know wha

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. In this regard, Shannon X. Caine was probably one of the best interviewers tha

Ah, The Fugs. After all, this magnificent NYC bohemian ensemble of the 1960s & beyond took their name from Norman Mailer’s coinage “fug”.

A lot of people know that Dorothy Parker was a famous wit. A lot of people don’t know that in her youth, at 4’11, she was also considered a snappy style icon. Another thing a lot of people don’t know? That she and Robert Benchley subscribed to undertaker