You bought so many boxes of her Perfetto Pencils that Amazon was out of stock for weeks. You went on to binge on her “Quattro Parole Italiane” note cards and envelopes. Now the indefatigable Louise Fili is back with “Tutti Fruiti” — Perfetto pencils in 6 delicious colors. [To buy Tutti Fruiti pencils from Amazon, click here]. And she’s served up another idiosyncratic guidebook: “The Cognoscenti’s Guide to Florence: Shop and Eat like a Florentine.” [To buy the book from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]

Performed by Marcus Mumford. At the end, is that sweat in his eye — or tears? (Yes, that’s Johnny Depp on guitar.)

Maca is a Peruvian turnip-like vegetable, processed into capsules. It’s said to increase stamina and energy and delivers what is euphemistically described as “an increase in libido.” From the New York Times article: ‘Some scientific studies claim to show a link between consuming maca and an increase in libido. One historical account says that the Inca emperor fed maca to his troops to give them energy but removed it from their diet after victorious campaigns to tame their sexual desire.’ To buy the capsules from Amazon, click here.

It feels as if I’ve known Louisa Oreskes more years than she’s been on the planet. And I can’t believe she’s now 18 and a senior at the Bronx High School of Science. Her babysitting history: “I love kids and have a lot of experience with kids of all ages. I’m available weekdays 4-7 PM, flexible on weekends. I live on the Upper West Side and mainly work in that neighborhood, but weekend nights I’ll go anywhere in Manhattan. I have references.” If our small person hadn’t outgrown the need for babysitters — and, some days, her need for parents — Louisa would be my 1st, 2nd and 3rd choices. Contact her at oreskesl@bxscience.edu

You were lyin’ there with nothing on
But a goofy little grin and a platinum blonde
I can’t believe you’d do that on our bed
I got a pistol and I got a bullet
And a pissed off finger just’a itchin’ to pull it
The only thing keepin’ me from losin’ my head is…

I hate stripes and orange ain’t my color
And if I squeeze that trigger tonight
I’ll be wearin’ one or the other
There’s no crime of passion worth a crime of fashion
The only thing savin’ your life
Is that I don’t look good in orange and I hate stripes

If you watch it, you will download it.

From Paul Zengilowski

My children will turn 19 and 21 in a few weeks and the birthday gift choice falls to me. My wife and I bought them books by the bushel when they were young — some they chose, more often though, we exercised our parental prerogative. That stopped as they entered their mid-teens and felt more confident in their choices than in ours.

I’ve not bought them books in years — with two exceptions. The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need, by Andrew Tobias, was a high school graduation gift. Knowing that having the money talk with them would be fruitless, I passed on to them my financial bible. I’d read it when it was first issued and it has served to keep me mostly on the financial straight and narrow over the last 30 years.

The second exception is their birthday present for this year: The 100 Essentials. Should they read only those two books, I’m confident they’ll enter adulthood with important and foundational knowledge that will serve them well.

from Marcie

You recommended Queen’s Gambit to me when I asked for the most grabable book you could think of. I loved it. It’s difficult to articulate precisely what the dark magic of that book is, but I found it fascinating — the characters, all of them, were like no others I’ve encountered. The relationship between Beth and her adopted mother was so subtle. I love that Tevis never capitulates to cliché or sentimentality. Elegant. Thank you for urging me to read it.

The band is Future Islands. Mesmerizing at the start, eye-popping at the end — watching Sam Herring is like watching the young Brando. So… full screen. Maximum volume.

I interviewed Maria Bello a few years ago. My male friends drooled — she’s even more beautiful than most Hollywood actresses. I found her smart and quick. Now I find her wise. Here’s how her piece in the Times starts:
When my 12-year-old son, Jackson, asked me if there was something I wasn’t telling him, I replied, “There are a lot of things I don’t tell you.”
“Like what?”
“Adult stuff.”
He persisted: “What kind of adult stuff?”
This was the moment I had been anticipating and dreading for months. “Like romantic stuff,” I said, fumbling for words.
“What kind of romantic stuff?”
“Well,” I said. “Like how sometimes you can be friends with someone, and then it turns romantic, and then you’re friends again. Like with Dad and me. Or romantic like Bryn and me were, and then he and I became friends.”
“So are you romantic with anyone right now?” he asked.
No way would a reasonable person stop here. Click for the rest.

“Philomena” is tied with “Dallas Buyers Club” as the best movie I’ve seen this year. Another beyond amazing performance from Judi Dench. What’s it about? The less you know the better (whatever you do, do not read the Times review, which is an encyclopedia of spoilers.) Okay, this: In the 1950s, when she was 16 and unmarried and an Irish Catholic living in Ireland, Philomena had a baby. The nuns took him away from her. Half a century later, she meets a journalist who helps her search for her son. Many laughs await you, and many tears (seriously: I was a wreck for much of the movie), and just possibly a renewed sense of the magnificence of people. Well, some people.

from The New York Times:

As a result of cuts to SNAP, the federal food stamp program, which went into effect on Nov. 1 (and precede further potential reductions of $4 billion to $40 billion), food pantries are already experiencing mounting burdens. One of the city’s largest, the Bed-Stuy Campaign Against Hunger in Brooklyn, has seen more than a one-third increase this month in the number of people coming in, compared with November of last year. Another, the New York Common Pantry in East Harlem, was seeing a 25 percent rise during the five months before the cuts.

Even before the cuts went into effect, matching supply with demand presented wounding challenges. According to a study of emergency food program participation released by the Food Bank last month, there are 100,000 more New Yorkers relying on these services today than six years ago, while there are fewer pantries to serve them. In another sign of distress, the term “emergency” now seems misapplied.

You may not remember her name, but you know her story: On Christmas Eve, her house burned, and her three daughters and her parents died in the fire. Now Madonna Badger has written a piece for Vogue. It’s a tough read; prepare to weep. Prepare also to be surprised by what she has learned — and by what you can learn from her. Like this, about her trip to an orphanage in Thailand:

The garage behind the house in Stamford hadn’t caught fire, and I had stored old boxes of toys there that my girls had outgrown and a bunch of things I had saved for them for when they grew up. I took a bag of it all to Thailand, and on Christmas morning I gave the girls presents, and they were so excited. Thirty or so of them came and stood in front of me and prayed for me in Thai. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them we were all crying. When I looked into the girls’ faces, I saw my children. It broke me open in a way I still can’t fully explain. But if these little girls were living their lives with joy and happiness, I realized — and if they could give their love to me after all they had been through — how could I possibly feel sorry for myself? What they showed me was that what had happened to them had just happened. It wasn’t “done” to them, just as none of this had been “done” to me. I wasn’t being punished; I had not been singled out.

One reason our daughter writes ‘I am awesome" on snow-covered cars in winter is because Opal Campbell was her caregiver for her first five years. Opal is loving but firm, full of plans and adventures that kids love, steady, honest — we have nothing but praise for her. She’s now looking for full or part-time work, ideally in Manhattan. Write me or call her at 917-533-3487.

Did you seriously think I wouldn’t slip Josh Ritter into my novel? If so, silly you. Here’s what I wrote:

I set my iPhone for random music, inserted my ear buds, and listened as I walked. There was even some striding — give me a crisp drummer and a bass player with wit, and I have to resist the urge to dance.

Then I was served a song I knew well: “Joy to You Baby,” by Josh Ritter.

The song came with a story, and because it was one of Blair’s favorites, I knew it. Fourteen months after he married another musician, Ritter was on tour, in some godforsaken hotel in some second-tier city, when his wife called and ended the marriage. He was crushed. All he could do was write, and that he did: bitter, angry verses, boxes of them.

I don’t know how he fought his way out of that gloom, but he did, and in this song, his only wish is joy — joy to the city, joy to the streets, the freeway, the cars, and “joy to you baby, wherever you are tonight.” Joy to his ex-wife? Yes. Even her.

I thought: We can set the rope down. It has been done. It can be done. Even by me. Certainly by me.

Josh will surely sing this on his Acoustic Tour. Info here.

And here’s ‘Joy to You Baby’ more as less as you’ll hear it in concert.

Paul Simon just turned 72, and he has a new release. Actually, a new/old one: the first single disc compilation of the best of Simon & Garfunkel and Simon’s solo career. If you collect Simon’s CDs, you probably have all these songs. If not, "Over the Bridge of Time" isn’t a bad place to start. Or you could get it simply because, once again, I wrote the introductory notes.

How much do I admire Paul Simon? Like this: "In ‘Hearts and Bones,’ he wrote of ‘the arc of a love affair.’ The songs on this record trace a larger, longer arc — the arc of a life. Professionally, it is the stuff of legend: 12 Grammys, early induction in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the first recipient of the Library of Congress’s Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. The artist who has described himself in a song as ‘an ordinary player in the key of C’ is clearly joking; Paul Simon is the master of the popular masterpiece." [To buy the CD — and get the MP3 download free — from Amazon, click here. For the MP3 download, click here.]

“Who’s your decorator?” friends ask when they visit us in our new digs. The answer surprises them: King’s Lane and eBay. Too bad we finished the apartment before our good friend Holly Palance and Dawn Moore launched MixxCentury.com. They really do the mix: antiques and collectibles from their homes, antiques shops and more. Prices range from the no-brainer to the better-think-twice — but because MixxCentury has no physical presence, most treasures are as much as 60% off. And Holly’s blog is sharp and surprising — like her account of the old Spanish wood-carved Retablo that Jack Palance (yes, her father) acquired from a Spanish church when he was on location in a spaghetti western.

The song that ended the last show. Back in the day, I taught Vince Gilligan in a screenwriting class at NYU. When he was reading from his script, no one missed class — there was nothing I could teach him. Yeah, that good.