See Michael Wolff fired from that eating guide, New York; he should be happy to flee. Can you believe he earns half a million a year...he played the game correctly with just enough renegade-itude to be interesting to the half educated. The requisite trendy book or two, the right lunch dates, the usual.

Went to the Frick for the first time since childhood when worship of the Polish Solider on Horseback was de rigueur.

The delusions of self importance of old man Frick, a mini-Hearst; claustrophobic, one fifth scale Italianate urban villa, pompous, really absurd. Compare to Monticello, same size but such intelligence and light.

Small show of Parmigianino (The Daily News copy editor --where do they get these kids?--wrote in bold headline of Parmagianino thinking of cheese no doubt). Sweet small jewel like paintings very 3-D in effect but the drawings--such an obscurantist delectation. The Leonardo show at the Met last year was even tres difficile to comprehend.

Disturbing Thought of the Day: New York is the center of the media universe; worldwide opinions are created right on the next block (I'm on 38th and 6th) by these tired looking 41 year olds schlepping in from Hoboken or Brooklyn.

A little snow and New Yorkers go to pieces.Try 50 below in Chicago for real weather; why do people continue to live in the North?

When I lived there the Observer seemed to open a window to a larger more exciting world. Now in NYC it seems precious to a fault, insider obsessed, somehwat like a high school newsletter for those in the same home room.

Time was in Katharine Hepburn's generation that well-bred girls (Cecil Beaton will forever color our view of this egotist) did not go into movies. Now that's all they want to do leaving little room for those not born into a dynasty. A few driven working class girls make it but Hollywood is sewn up now, like so much of the free world. The Myth of Success and innane striving that we still teach the American untermenschen is cruel.

I had not leafed through VOGUE in decades until today and now understand why it is still so popular: it never strays from fashion (as good as it can be in this era of slips as haute couture) and clothing and good photography. Guess we won't be seeing anymore of those distasteful Helmut Newton black and whites....though I did love that one a thousand years ago of Claus von Bulow with an inverted sugar bowl and antimacassar on his head.

You have to love Bloomberg, his confidence, his candor, his no-nonsense approach. What a relief from the big personality and emotionalism of his predecessor. He has to keep that Cheshire cat of a girlfriend in the background....three and a half minutes of fame and these broads start posing for fashion magazines a la Diane Sawyer who lost almost all her credibility with that Vogue spread several years ago.

Liz Smith hopes her friend Martha is exonerated; well if she is innocent so do we all. But, Liz, insider trading is against the law; it is wrong and though omnipresent is a betrayal of the American people.

I know why Martha became a (excuse the expression--it is meant in the vernacular meaning of the phrase) fag hag; for most of my post-divorce life so was I, tired of trad relationships and all the wasted time, suspicious of the verbose, competitive vagaries of female "friends", and preferring food, wine, light hearted laughs and sheer male intelligence to the...alternatives. I have male gay friends who are not of the "making-it" walker-ilk or for whom the "wacky chics", silver frames on the piano fantasy does not exist.

After work one has just enough energy to tune into the Food TV network, such a curious phenomenon, cooks as celebrities. All the mystique about frying something in a pan. All hooey. Tyler and Sara and Bobby et.al. rushed and breathless and soooooooo eager to please. Give me a drunken chef anyday, the kind that Manuel in Fawlty Towers had to elude.

Playboy's 50th. Hugh's stern daughter Christie started a foundation many years ago to sanitize the soft porn magazine; now she is married to "Senator" Billy Marovitz a real estate developer and nephew of the late Judge Abraham Lincoln Marovitz one of the many Damon Runyonesque characters in the Land of the Daley Dynasty.

In the early 90s we visited the Mansion in Holmby Hills for a party and the old place was dank and in need of refurbishing; the same underground pool as in the house on North State where the fantasy began.

Wine journalism is deadly; years ago we kept a journal of just about everything wine consumed but basically from observing fellow workers at Sherry-Lehmann we drew the conclusion that so called oenophiles just liked to drink--alot.

Just read The Accidental (CLICHE WATCH!!!!!) Connoisseur by a Lawrence Osborne and did not retain a single word or thought from his "irreverent journey through the wine world" (no thanks!). Almost makes you hate France which wine writers drag out for credence.

Speaking of dragging out we see Hilton Kramer using apercus of and illlusions to Roger Fry-- again-- in his review of Rembrandt in the Observer. In the 70s we wrote a thesis under Quentin Bell on Fry's brown Bloomsbury paintings.

Nice to see that Howard Dean was defeated in Iowa; one just knew he had questionable personality issues. Kerry rather charming; when all is said and done it is personality that counts. The Lincoln Principle. Nothing is uglier than a hothead: LBJ and Clinton were irasible and rude to their staffs, subject to explosions. We all know bosses like that.

Writers love great phrases, thus Gavin Lambert on Natalie Wood--she had " a Praetorian guard of gay men" surrounding her. Like society types--eunuchs in harems so the Big Dominant White Male is not threatened.

Don't you just deplore those mealy mouthed critics like Peter Biskind who just wrote a book about the likes of movie people like the very talented Robert Redford. Sure his movies are slow and ponderous but there is nothing vulgar or uncouth about Out of Africa, Gatsby, Horse Whisperer, drames bourgeoises to be sure but infinitely better than a pathetic "critic's" contribution to humanity.

Years ago the Winter Antiques Show at the Armory was such an exciting event; now it is a tired assemblage of old furniture that only the "making-it" Kozlowski's and Black's of the world, totally devoid of culture or taste, desire to possess.

Yesterday I read This Side of Paradise, F.Scott's first novel (1920). From the first pages it was awash in alcohol and impotence and deep disturbance. This was of course the War's impact but even more so a reflection of the mental disposition of the writer. Not nearly as profound a statement of the lost generation as Sun Also Rises.

His picture of Lake Geneva fascinating: I spent many a summer there in the 90s and always wondered what sorts built those mansions. Today the "resort" is hobbled and shabby like so many of the dreams of the early 20th century. The Revenge of Democracy.

Thank God FS stopped playing with an experimental form of the novel after this rather clumsy first attempt, but what a literary feast. It reads like a history of the great novels and ideas that influenced him, and through my father, me. (I had read all Walter Pater and Huysman before I set off to college). Today I would have gone intellectually armed with Maid in Manhattan so profound is the peer group influence.

See that some society "writer" in Quest uses the name Tanaduke Wylie.....ou sont les neiges again!

Awaken at 5 a.m. by a fat blond in the floor below blasting a music - alarm. I love quiet and anyone who loves quiet (Prince Albert of Monaco) and agree with Freud about the disturbing, excessively emotional nature of music. It was only meant for movement and dancing not listening -- all the years in Chicago could never even finish a Solti concert; after a couple selections was out da door!

I want to tell everyone who is "interested" in politics to, as the saying goes, GET A LIFE. I mean who cares.You have no power! Your opinion is worthless except numerically--maybe--and even then who's to say. At least celeb gossip and snooping is cosmically absurd without the patina of respectability that political awareness has. Maybe that's why O'Reilly's simple mindedness so refreshing.

You want ideas? Read Hegel!

A colleague at work gave me a volume by Bill O' Reilly. His brand of small town conservatism (God-Levittown!) rather under doggish for my taste but much rings true especially his moral or aesthetic contempt for the Clintons, presented as such mongrels to the world at large.

Talkingpointsmemo.com won The Week's Blogger of the Year Award; it is rather unreadable and ultimately who cares about the minutiae of opinions that this Marshall fellow has. Alas he must be one of those beloved insiders like Krugman and Friedman, ex-Ivy Leaguers who went to New York or DC after college and did the right thing. And most importantly took themselves very very seriously like the nerdy little boys they probably were.

Reality Check: you are writers. This is not the era of Tom Paine! Words are impotent and are not mightier than the sword.

It seems inconceivable that I was so left-wing, so angry during Vietnam. It was all words as I summed up in my essay "My War of Words",another article waiting to see the light of day. David Remnick liked it which is nice.

I see Uta Hagen has passed away....I studied with her and Herbert Berghoff on Bank Street when I was a teenager and believed at the time that acting was meant for idiots an opinion I have not changed.

I lived across the street from Jamie Dimon of Bank One on Astor St., Chicago. He was renovating a multi multi million dollar dwelling and we watched the elaborate dix neufieme trappings emerge..so absurd for yet another CEO. Well apparently the Mrs. did not like Chicago so back to New York they come.( Really must stop this Chicago focus but after 20 years there it is hard.)


The New Yorker publishes an absurd piece about a woman who webstalks a boyfriend; they reject an important article I wrote 10 years about federal and municipal spending. "Nine to Four Thirty" chronicles my 12 patronage years in Cook County government--12 years in which I did nothing but get out the Democratic vote.

The most blatant example of Nothing but a Name is Richard Oldenburg masquerading with his wife Mary at the Frick as one of the old Knickerbocher elite. His only claim to fame is his big brother Claes who made preposterous sculptures of baseall bats and erasers and lipsticks. At least he was who he was--his brother is all Midwestern pose.

Yesterday I googled an old friend to see what she has been up to.Lucia Woods Lindley is doing what wealthy people always do--sit on boards and go to benefits with other wealthy people and worry about prison conditions and poverty law from perches at the Four Seasons around the globe.

Reviewed Rosenquist at the Guggenheim. Pop has lost its resonance and the paintings, however mammoth, are dull.

Barbara Amiel exposes the soles of her feet in that ghastly Vanity Fair photo of her and her 4th husband- "Lord" Black. She has also removed a quarter mill from the Sun Times in fees--and never even visited the funny building on the Chicago River that Trump is going to tear down.
Just another replay of Maxwell's Bob Page and Trophy Wife Numero? of decades ago at the Sun Times who "lorded" it over the Chicago rubes .....

Martha Stewart -- her nasty nasty personal reputation has perhaps done her in. What freak of genetic nature creates an uber-woman? What surfeit of synapses in the brain? What extra chemical in the bloodstream? These bizarre people end up creating havoc in the world and in the hearts of countless. I caught a TV moment of her sister in tears regretting she had never really had a sister.

New York Perspective: when not in the city, say when visiting any other part of the country, or the world for that matter, the New York Times is like a beacon lighting another planet of ideas and sophistication. When in the city on the other hand it is not so interesting and even rather banal in its passion to be trendy.

American Sucker: one enjoys reading David Denby's melancholy movie reviews in the New Yorker. The quintessential insider who must have lunched with legions of editors and "in" people at Michael's he has published a dull book that had he not had all those lunches with all those editors would never have seen the light of day.

We all lost scads of money in the year 2000, I means scads; we have all been divorced. And so forth

Yet another biography of Jung. Who cares what a writer does in his life. Bair does not disentangle the only interesting possible meaning: to what extent did his life influence his ideas? Being president of a medical society or womanizing or even dealing with Nazi fiends--what does that all mean to ideas that are, to my mind, the most profound in the 20th century.

These ideas put Freud's myopic obsessing about his mother and father in the intellectual shade. He was too much of his bourgeois time; Jung was of all civilization.

Taki the Greek and his abominable right-wingness is like Peter Pan who must have been told very often as a child that he was absolutely adorable. Even worse -- he still believes it.

"He doth protest too much" about the non wealthy and famous which makes one think that his origins simply had to be very humble.

An article I wrote on Prince Charles' justifiable skepticism about nanotechnology was unpublishable because, alas, it was unfashionable. Well, word comes today from top scientists in the world that "Nanotech Particles Threaten Brain". These slippery little microscopic fellows penetrate membranes and well, we'll see.

For some reason society scribes support the allegations of the Downstairs Help like Secretary Jephson and Butler Burrell who think Charles is evil. My dear friend Marcella attributes it all to what she calls The Velvet Mafia.

One sees there was a store opening in Aspen (Prada) where everyone was extremely rich and famous. The only Chicago name is Kent Crown, the son of Lester and Renee, whom we met many times over the years covering the black tie circuit in Chiago, Illinois. Renee especially very gracious though one didn't dare mention the "other" Crowns, viz., Gary, Indiana body builder Beverly and Besotted Barry who were ubiquitous and deliciously outre.

I once interiewed Thomas Klutznick about the Aspen Ski Company his family then owned and he was, for some reason, absolutely furious at the implication it wasn't a smashing immediate success; his daughter called several times to "warn me" about ever writing about them again. So there! For ten years I have not.

Word spinners prefers words to action and are superior name callers right out of the undergraduate Oxford debating societies. Thus Christopher Hitchens calls Bloomberg a "picknose control freak" with some "tiny, constipated chambers of his mind". Jeeez, Fat Boy you are sitting on your posterior doing nothing but.........

One deplores the smoking ban in this city of Past Effervescence but his silly article in Vanity Fair (cutely titled "I Fought the Law") trots out pseudo-academic references in order to show off.

Right after Diana was killed in the crash I wrote an article for a Chicago newspaper about her Gorey-like looniness and inbred madness. She was probably clinically psychotic and continues to haunt the Royals from the grave, the ultimate nemesis for an institution that should have evolved 50 years ago. Her absurd posturing anti- landmines and whatever. I once asked William Kennedy Smith (a spokesman for PALM) what war the mines were from. "I dunno." At this same party I also met young handsome just-married JFK, Jr. and sensed his vulnerability, his desire to please. If Jackie had lived so would he have.

Bought my annual copy of Vanity Fair with the actress Gwyneth Paltrow looking like apiece of Velveeta cheese on the cover. Where do they get these art directors?

The issue is lite as a feather dwelling in the cultural interstices somewhere without a distinct identity--a little politics, a little celebrity material, some Palm Beach (yawn), a little literary, a little Gauguin. All words, familiar, easily identifiable proper nouns for the semi-educated.

Just when I am about to give up on trite observations in The New Yorker a great article appears: The Kingdom of Silence by Lawrence Wright.

Liz Smith loooooves Liz Taylor.....and that grotesque Jackson..........and any big name. Typical journalist with her nose pressed to the window panes of wealth. New York's society clique is just like Chicago's -- a harem with eunuchs.

Speaking of Hollinger, I moved from Chicago to New York about a year ago and recall the important presence of David Radler in the City of Two Newspapers. (Wolff refers to the Chicago Sun Times and the #2 paper in the city-- it is a local staid sort of gossip rag with comfortable columnists whom everyone knows like brethren. No surprises here!)

Radler as I observed became cozy with City Hall in that Municipal Monarchy and one frequently saw his name in the political appointment books of aldermen and other operatives; he was a sort of roving ambassador for Black just stopping short of kissing babies. Small Town USA.

Tsk Tsk Tsk to "Baron" Black of Crossharbour (wherezat?). What Peasant Greed would make him stoop to common Downstairs Pilfering? The Hollinger Board, hardly short of vainglory in the personages of Kissinger, Taubman, Kravis and Governor James Thompson ("I will be President") of Illinois must have known what was transpiring in the rubber stamping process.

Michael Wolff, the antithesis of moral uncouthness, as usual has the last word to say on this scandal in This Media Life.

When I was a graduate student at Rutgers eons ago I had an ephiphany about academia that can be readily and accurately applied to journalism: living so much after the fact.

It was during a class on Milton given by the affable John Shawcross that he revealed he had counted every word in Paradise Lost and discovered the middle word was ascension. Mon Dieu!

Journalists and writers also life the life of others....no use thinking of a maligning simile...... columnists in New York think they are in the "in" crowd because they can write well known names. Well guys you are not! The cesium second you no longer have the column or wordspace you are niente!

For a decade or two I did not miss a black tie in Chicago and was lauded and welcomed everywhere --in the great houses in Kenilworth and on Astor and North State and 1500 LSD--until the day the words were no more--and VOILA!--neither was I.

I see that Candidate Howard Dean has discovered Campbell's Power of Myth and has decided to start throwing in "God Whenever Possible" into addresses. He lost me the day he declared his candidacy.... on the same day his brothers remains were returned from Vietnam. Oh Heaven knows--maybe I just don't like his smug face.

We received a sarcastic email from Gawker thanking us for our "hate mail"....these echorche (thin-skinned) "writers" cannot take criticism but love to dole it out....

Tried to delete the experimental entries below and to change the name of this "blog" (what an ugly word) to LuciaFiles but this site will not permit.........let's just say for the record that tout commence ici. Of course EF Benson's Lucia would say this all in pidgin Italian but alas we are just endeavoring to learn that language. For many years I carried Make Way for Lucia in all my travels then the oeuvre ruined by Masterpiece Theater--though not for me!

Checked out Outlook in the Times this morning-- about mutual fund thievery in 2003. You just know that no one ever makes any money in any financial market if you are not an insider. Investors are suckers and this scandal will soon be forgotten along with other depradations of the rich.

Just read online bla bla in Gawker and sent an anonymous email......about the mean and miniscule slice of life the uncouth writer portrays......outside of a few blocks in central Manhattan no one cares about the media types the "editors" think are soooooooooo important!

It is a beautiful day in New York and will spend it writing two book reviews, both cookbooks for the culinary magazine I edit. Jacques Pepin's The Apprentice and Egi Maccioni's family cookbook. Food, its preparation and delectation is the ultimate hobby. This is my second New Year's Day in New York.

To all my faithful readers from years past and to new readers in 2004:

Lucia's Symposium is revived again for the fifth time in 20 years; it has appeared internationally online and offline in newspapers in Chicago. Three years ago I moved back to my home town of New York City happy to leave the provinces and wondering why I stayed so long in the Land of Daley. When I see Chicagoans from a true cosmopolitan perspective they appear like true denizens of a Metropolis in the Cornfields. On the other hand I have a great Negative Capacity and see the contrary side of every experience like those Indians who rode backwards on their horses. Someone has to be different in this Toquevillian/ Huxlian/ Orwellian .... you get the picture.