Carmelo Anthony, and other artifacts

The full-page ad in the New York Times this morning, presenting Giacometti's portrait of his biographer James Lord to be auctioned by Christie's, "The Art People," for $22,000,000-30,000,000, caused at least one reader to spill his coffee.

The news that The Mexican Supreme Court opened the door yesterday to legalizing marijuana is interesting to the millions of people who read Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" in the mid-1960's.

For a basketball fan watching his first NBA game of the season, the much ballyhooed parity is transparently thin. 82 games in a season--and then the playoffs--with only three or possibly four teams with a chance to win the championship! From a consumer standpoint the greatness the NBA promotes is at best a mixed message: it's a re-creation of the corporate funded consumer stimulated culture that passes for capitalism--whatever that means--where wants so overreach needs that eventually too much stuff that doesn't mean much at all gets produced.