PicoBlog

Share Famed infomercial hosts Billy Mays and Ron Popeil have nothing on Donald Trump. Even they didn’t hawk three new products in a month. Add to that, none of them-- like Trump is now—were out on bail while selling their wares! We all recall last month when Trump rolled out his new sneaker line featuring the golden colored, “Never Surrender High-top sneaker” that bore a large “T” and the number “45.

“There’s a small hotel With a wishing well I wish that we were there together” Those lines are from the 1936 show tune “There’s a Small Hotel,” included in the Broadway musical On Your Toes. The song been recorded by dozens of artists and is considered part of the Great American Songbook. Here’s the hotel, in Stockton, New Jersey, that inspired it. And the wishing well? If that isn’t the coolest thing.

Yordan Álvarez and Kyle Tucker are teammates on the Houston Astros. Both are stars. A question I’ve been asking people lately is: Which is more likely to make the Hall of Fame? For the question to be fun, you have to appreciate how similar their (still-young) careers have been so far. Each just finished his age-26 season. One has 18.2 career WAR, one has 18.3. Both have one top-5 MVP finish and neither has won the award.

Bonsai pals: I am back. Thank you for bearing with me during a rough few weeks; Fire Escape Bonsai resumes now in earnest, with more to come on where I’ve been and what’s been going on with the trees. But first we have to talk about Dune. “The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.” That’s one of the stupefying, life-recontextualizing toss-off lines in Frank Herbert’s Dune, published in 1965.

Bonjour! Hello! and UGH! By the time I discovered that my pumpkin pie recipe (page 272) in BAKING WITH DORIE had serious problems, the book was out in the world and Thanksgiving— yeah, the time when everyone wants perfect pumpkin pie — had come and gone. It was terrible and I was a wreck. And helpless. There was nothing I could do but send the correction to my editor and hope that the book would go into a second printing soon.

On a trip to London last year, I bought tickets to see the Tony Award-winning musical SIX in the West End. A few of you recommended it as a perfect way to fight jet lag on my first night — and you were right! For 80 minutes, the six wives of Henry VIII staged a rollicking pop concert, singing their camped-up, trimmed-down biographies in a Hamilton-esque re-imagining of royal life five centuries ago.

Good morning. Let’s basketball. The Merry Jesters; Henri Rousseau; 1906 NBA teams have about a dozen games remaining in the regular season. Let’s look at the most important races remaining. The Celtics are the guaranteed No. 1 seed. It’ll be interesting to see how the team plays out the string while riding a 9-game win streak. The Bucks are pretty comfortable in No. 2 with a 3-game lead on the Cavaliers right now.

Friends, you heard it here first: I am officially in my dress and skirts era. And it’s all Princess Polly x Pacsun’s fault. And to think, it all started with a skort. If you’ve been keeping up with my “Dressing Up” series, you might remember the first time I collaborated with the Pacsun x Princess Polly collection. The first drop involved a black skort that was so comfortable and wearable, that it made me want to experiment with other skorts and skirts.

Installment 5: Every time Johnnie LeMaster played on a team last season, it ended up in last place. His teams wound up losing 306 games, which is either a record of some sort or ought to be. –The New York Times, April 7, 1986 1. It’s the afternoon of September 2, 1979, at an antiques show in San Mateo, California, and Debbie LeMaster has just stopped to consider two beds. The beds are brass and iron with gallery footboards.