Meanwhile, on Pennsylvania Avenue

Just so you don't think I've gone too soft-hearted about this whole Holiday season...

(Courtesy of the ever-startling Deven Green; if you've not yet been Welcomed to Her Home, well.. you're in for an experience.)

I'm a Travelin' Man

Life certainly is full of its little surprises, isn't it?

The End of a Love Affair

Ah, woe is us! Parting is such sweet sorrow... and other ululations of despair. In a real blow to hopeless romantics everywhere, from Wasilla comes word that BristoLevi is no more, and that we won't have that particular fairytale wedding to look forward to. First Harry and Chelsy, now this. All I can do is join in the chorus now emanating from a shaken blogosphere: I'm shocked, shocked.

If Youse Ain't Got Elegance...

Doncha just love them designer duds?

The overall effect here, albeit captured on the streets of Moscow, is almost horrendous enough to be Dubai...

(Another shameless theft from the ever-entertaining English Russia.)

A Word to the Wise

If your name is Speer, it might be wise to avoid all allusions to things architectural. Unless you're trying to scare people.

Which seems a distinct possibility. Although then I suppose they would bill themselves as Der Speers.

Reality TV, 1956 Edition: When Giants Roamed the Earth

The next time you find yourself, dazed and appalled, sitting in front of this week's edition of America's Extreme Next Top Dancing Fat Wedding Survivor, cast your mind back a few decades and weep.

Seen here are the 1956 season regulars on television's Omnibus: Leonard Bernstein (a year before West Side Story); Agnes de Mille (a year after the Oklahoma film); host Alistair Cooke (a decade-plus before Masterpiece Theatre, but 20 years into his BBC "Letters from America"); Bert Lahr (The year of Waiting for Godot), McCarthy foe Joseph "Have You No Decency?" Welch (just because the rest of the lineup didn't have enough gravitas?); and boyish actor Christopher Plummer (for height, apparently).

Let's think. Today, we could bring together, um... dashing musical sensation Davd Hasselhoff, distinguished choreographer Paula Abdul, thoughtful host Ty Pennington, polymath comic Howie Mandel, crusading lawyer Star Jones, and versatile stage heartthrob Clay Aiken.

Same diff, no?

Plus ça change...

Even in this far-off Sultanate-on-Sea, rumblings from the media jungle ring through loud and clear - rogue pastors, desperate comeback attempts, Austrian basement horrors, you name it - but this week's tweens-gone-wild madness regarding someone I've never, until now, even heard of, one Miley Cyrus, set me thinking.

First, of the unlikeliness of the daughter of the wearer of the Worst Haircut in History AND singer of possibly the worst pop song this side of "Oh My Papa" becoming a sensation in her own right.

But second, and mostly, of how incredibly little historical perspective or cultural savvy most people (well, people who are public commentators these days) seem to have even in this information-saturated time. I thought this, because I've been trying to think of what, exactly, Ms. Liebovitz's now infamous image of young Miss Cyrus reminded me, and it finally came to me:

Isn't she lovely?

Evelyn Nesbit.

She was 16 when she was New York's leading "art model" (with all that entails), and only a few years older when she became the Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, a central player in the century's first great murder press frenzy. She's not exactly forgotten - she was played by Joan Collins in one of her better (for her) pictures, and she turns up in E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime and the film thereof.

As far back as 1901 - and far, far beyond - there have been sexualized teens. They've had vaguely naughty pictures taken of them, odalisques painted of them, nudes carved of them. They've turned into media sensations. And we've all survived, as have, frequently, the subjects of all the nonsense. Evelyn had some bad times - the usual showgirl/bad marriage/addiction sort of thing. But she ended up an old lady teaching ceramics in Santa Monica.

We'll survive.