Maxed Out

Some say it was Woody Allen, others attribute it to Mark Twain, but I suspect it was William Shakespeare who said the basic formula for comedy is Tragedy plus Time.

"You like po-tay-toes and I like po-tah-toes." – George & Ira Gershwin "I'm okay; you're okay." – Thomas Harris "You say tomato, I say shut-up.

Easter Island is, perhaps obviously, an island.

"Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough." –Groucho Marx "The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom." – H. L.

Who let the dogs out? Well, that'd be everyone. Or so it seems sometimes. Assuming I can shake this dizzying feeling of my head being in perpetual spin cycle, I will have argued Wednesday evening that dogs are, indeed, most iconically Whistler.

I tried. Lord — figuratively speaking — knows I tried. After two weeks of, let's be generous here and call them downbeat, yes, downbeat columns, I really wanted to simply entertain this week. Maybe a cute dog and cat story.

Zippy the Dog isn't the dog he used to be.

When it's my time to go, I want to die like my grandfather, peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like the other passengers in his car. Or so the old joke goes. Dying in my sleep would be good.

It will probably come as a surprise, shock even, to those of you who regularly read this column — thank you both — to discover I sometimes say things I perhaps don't exactly mean.

Sometimes I wonder whether people who have never been here believe me when I tell them what this place is like.