Miller Time

UNITED STATES—In “The Summing Up” W. Somerset Maugham rawly states, “I have never kept a diary. I wish now that during the year that followed my first success as a dramatist I had done so, for I met many persons of consequence, and it might have proved an interesting document.”  For me having a journal covering the dates in...

UNITED STATES—The landowners in Bananaland, who had sold out and then made a bonanza, they too would be on a train, not immune to the allure and magnet of the camps. The American scribbler and embezzler (alias) O. Henry slapped the name Banana Republic. No wonder he was an embezzler when you are in the United States of Dollars...

UNITED STATES—This is a story about dogs. I was walking my two dogs on a Saturday evening in Hollywood. I was on my way to Yucca Supermarket and I remembered the teaching of one holy man--such as occasionally inhabit these streets--imparted when I was very new to having a dog. Seeing the tension produced when my chihuahua terrier tugged abruptly...

UNITED STATES—Wednesday turned out to be a day of surprises. The focus was for Colombian filmmaker, Juan David, to submit his recently completed movie to film festivals. It took us to an unlikely, un-Spanish setting: the Grove of Madrid. It is a huge hit with the busloads of Asian tourists. They love shopping at the homogenized same classy stores...

UNITED STATES—It was a Monday of the New Year, the same foggy day that the sheriffs and also Jim Wylie’s muscle came (in case of trouble) to evict the diminutive postal carrier at Manhattan Place who had fallen under the spell of crack. Having the muscle there was overkill. The man, his eyes now dulled, still not without a...

UNITED STATES—They had it all wrong. They had it backwards. Suicide is considered a weakness, and even a cowardly act. Balderdash, if I may step in. The fact is: a healthy person may entertain the idea of self-slaughter: a world without me at least once a day. It is humble preparation us for what things may be. Sooner or...

UNITED STATES—“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” said the wholesome apple-cheeked man in whose meteoric ascent to power Sam the Man Delaney had been murmured to have had a hand. Once upon a time in Louisiana there was a man named Willy Long, and he was a man for the times. It was a Depression, harsh times, and people were...

UNITED STATES—Since writing my own diet book, chronicling my hilarious fat-to-fit journey and culling my diet secrets, to join the towering heap of diets all vying for your undivided, I realize there’s a million diets out there. All YOU have to do it pick out two or three of the million to integrate a plan that works for you....

UNITED STATES—It all seemed like a bad dream. Then his eyes blinked open and his phone was ringing. There was the voice of rather like Peter Lorre saying when will you be coming. Dallas girded his response with preternatural wakefulness and hearty cheer. “Oh, I’m on my way.” He had already been stolen from that pleasant cliff at the end of...

UNITED STATES—It is ironic. “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World,” the epic comedy often dismissed as juvenile or lowbrow by folks who consider themselves aficionados of British comedy. It was a Missouri-born American who joined a Canadian regiment three years before America got into World War II. After the war, Bill Rose stayed on in England and penned...