The Best Laughter

John Huston, Orson Welles, Peter Bogdanovich

"There is a laughter that goes so far as to lose touch with its motive and to exist only, grossly, in itself. This is laughter at its best."  

~Max Beerbohm 

Shangri La?

Having recently written a novel about the longing for utopia (The Assassin Lotus), it was wonderful to take a trip with my wife to a real-world paradise--the "Garden Isle" of Kauai. Oldest of the Hawaiian Islands, it remains as lush and wild as when I traveled there as a teenager some 40 years ago. A veritable Garden of Eden--without a single snake!  Click the pics to enlarge:

The Storm Before the Calm

"Christ Before Pilate" - Andrea Mantegna, 1500

"Religion is not, at the outset, a refuge of grace and mercy for the despondent and desperate, an enchanted stream for crushed spirits, but a raging, clamorous torrent of man's consciousness, with all its crises, pangs, and torments." 

~Rabbi Dr. Joseph B. Soloveitchik