As the final film (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2) unspools in Muggle theaters, there will be no real surprises for the fans, who know full well how the saga ends from having read the books (to pieces, in many cases). But even… Read full post »

I spent the summer I turned 21 working as a hotel maid, cleaning up other people’s messes. Having started my work life at age 14 in a frozen banana factory before progressing up the chain of summer jobs to bus girl, waitress and fast food shift supervisor, I was… Read full post »

The color nature gave me (at age 20, in the French Alps) 

How I look today, unplugged (early AM, no make up), 30+ years later 

In Nicole Holofcener’s recent film, Please Give, a middle-aged woman acidly characterizes her grandmother’s… Read full post »

One of the great pleasures of the Harry Potter movies has been watching the extraordinarily deep bench of British acting talent fill literally mesmerizing roles. At this point, so many of the country’s best-known actors and actresses have appeared in both recurring and one… Read full post »

If you watched the World Series, you no doubt saw a commercial from Microsoft touting their soon-to-be-released Windows smart phone. In it, a slick flurry of scenes depict people so engrossed in their smart phones that they spill drinks, trip over or trip up other people, neglect their cl… Read full post »

Will you at least put me out of my misery before you go? ~ Don to Faye

That’s two. ~ Topaz client

It’s good to be a gangsta, and it’s great to be Don Draper. Your company may be… Read full post »

 The Return of Persephone by Frederic Leighton

In Greek mythology, Demeter is the goddess of the harvest, who controls the seasons and the fertility of the plants. She has a daughter, Persephone (fathered by Zeus) who as a young woman is abducted by Hades, the god of the underworl… Read full post »

Don: We can’t start over; we just started.

Peggy: You always say if you don’t like what they’re saying about you, change the conversation.

Don:  To what? What they’re saying about us is true.

Of course, truth is just a starting… Read full post »

They’re about the meaningful life a woman leads when work is done. ~ Peggy

Ah, but a woman’s work is never done, as the old saying tells us. Sometimes just getting through her life is work. And sometimes work is… Read full post »

Stop it, kill it, at least find out how far it’s gone. ~ Don to Pete

“Cheer up. When God closes a door, he opens a dress,” goes a classic Rogerism from an earlier season of Mad Men.  In the episode “Hands and/… Read full post »

It’s like men are this vegetable soup and you can’t put them on a plate or put them on a counter. Women are the pot. They hold them. They contain them. Who wants to be a pot? Who says we’re not soup?

~ Joyce on gender relations… Read full post »

Is this the way you want to spend this time? Crying? ~ Greg

I wouldn't tolerate that if I were you. ~ Don 

In the very first episode of the series, “the boys” (aka the junior male staff of Sterling Cooper) asserted… Read full post »

When the phone rang at 7:30 AM, waking me from a deep sleep, I knew instantly something must be wrong. I headed slowly, sleepily and with dread to its insistent sound only to miss the call before it rolled to voicemail. Looking at the Caller ID, I saw my… Read full post »

Let’s go some place darker. ~ Don 

And so they do.  In “The Suitcase,” Don and Peggy go into a little heart of darkness together, have several heart-to-heart talks, and come out as…what?  Closer colleagues, real friends… Read full post »

That’s not how it goes. ~ Don

There are several ways to succeed in life:  You can know the right people, you can know the right things, or you can know the right things… Read full post »

So much conflicting information. ~ Pete

What are we to others but what we appear to be? 

And yet our own appearance eludes us – we can see ourselves only in a mirror and always in reverse. “O wad some… Read full post »

An article in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine addresses a question much on the minds of the middle-aged these days: “What Is It About 20-Somethings?”

Drawing on the work of psychologists, sociologists and neuroscientists, writer Robin Marantz Henig explores poss… Read full post »

Imagine…your financial future is in the hands of a roomful of 22 year old girls. ~ Freddy

Not mine. ~ Don

What do women want? On being asked Freud’s famous question a few seasons ago, Roger Sterling replied, “Who cares?”  In “The Rejected,&rd/… Read full post »

I started thinking of everything I was sure I knew was true -- and how flimsy it all might be. ~ Anna Draper

The good news this week is that Mad Men returns to form with a rich and entertaining episode… Read full post »

Good time? Bad time? ~ Don’s secretary, Allison

Yes. ~ Don

It’s the best of times and the worst of times in our tale of two revolutions:  the macro one in 1960’s America and the micro in advertising, as personified by our feisty young agency, SCDP./… Read full post »

You’ll be very happy. ~ Peggy to Don

I’m not happy. ~ Don

Who is Don Draper? ~ Reporter

The opening line of Season 4 of Mad Men is almost too pat – baldly asking what is ostensibly the central question of the… Read full post »

"Pay no attention to that blogger behind the curtain!"

When I started here, it was freeing to blog under a pseudonym, but it's time to come out and blog under my real name, so here I am.  Call me Nelle, or call me TBFKAS (if you can pronounce it better than… Read full post »

This month marks 30 years that I have been a resident of Oakland. I came to the Bay Area right after college to make a new and independent life, away from everything I’d known (and disliked) in Southern California. I knew little of the area and so originally planned to… Read full post »

^{A portrait of female desire (statue in Brussels) ~ photo by me} 

In a development that I suspect will come as no surprise to most women, the latest attempt to develop a “female Viagra” to increase sexual desire has met with “lackluster results.&rdq/… Read full post »

I’m putting a little twist on Fay Paxton’s Open Call of 12 movies we watch over and over again, because I’d have several dozen dozens if I were to answer that call.  Nor is this a list of my favorite films, or the ones that have meant the most to me,… Read full post »