Mob Rule: Part 20
What makes a Kennedy
Revisiting the landscapes of his boyhood back in Boston, Jack wades through a flood of memories that take us back to the beginning
By John Armstrong
After our swim I was at a loss for what to do with myself. Bobby was organizing the kids for a touch football game on the front lawn but I’d already had enough exercise for one day. More evidence that I’m not a true Kennedy, I suppose. The genuine article can spend all day waterskiing, riding horses and playing tennis and then climb a mountain just for the hell of it after dinner. I can think of much better ways to get tired and in most cases I prefer to conserve my strength in case I might need it for something important. (I did play hockey and lacrosse at college, because there was no way to get out if it, and both those sports are really just street fights with complicated rules. The brothers thought it developed character. I thought it created practice cases for the interns at the medical college. ...
Viggo meets psycho villain?
Welcome to my lair...
This guy from the new Chevrolet commercials — the one who likes to play funny little tricks like pretending to put your phone in a wood chipper, and stopping the elevator, and forcing kids to watch someone else play a videogame: He’s creepy. And not just because he’s looking at every one of those “real people not actors” like they’re a guinea pig in his latest subterranean torture experiment, but because he's a weird pastiche of traits selected at some over-caffeinated marketing meeting where at least one person present had a beard. He’s got the hipster beard that gives him a Viggo Mortensen meets bartender cool, the ironed retro Western shirt (also hipster) and the deadpan self-righteousness of Denis Leary. And what's with the clipboard prop? That's for doctors. You can see why they wanted to get away from the clean-shaven white guy in a suit to reach the target market, but this Frankenstumper gives us the willies — and every time that giant ...
The Wolf in Hiding
The Sick Days: Part 14
"I was sick of feeling like a stupid girl who didn’t know enough to manage her own illness."
By Shelley Page When the pain came, I carried it on my shoulders as I waded through the polluted, dirty water of Lake Ontario. When I made it to my desk in the Toronto Star newsroom, I wrote the final words on Vicki Keith conquest. “Five down. None to go.” I followed her in a boat across Erie, Huron and Superior, Ontario (twice), and almost Michigan, and that’s the best lede I could come up with. But at least it was brief. My knuckles were swollen, my fingers bunched into fists. They looked like boxer’s hands. I punched gingerly at the keys, wincing. It was like repeatedly hitting a block of cement. I did not go to emergency, as I had when I was in third-year university. I calmly called my rheumatologist at Mount Sinai and asked for an appointment. His office manager did not see the same urgency that I did, and so she booked me the ...
Mob Rule: Part 19
Route 1 to the heart of darkness
Jack settles back into the Kennedy cottage where he gets a warm welcome from Bobby and gets a good look at The Grandfather: Joseph P. Sr.
By John Armstrong
It was as quiet as New York ever gets on the way out of the city and traffic was light when we got onto US 1 headed south. The freeway runs over top of what was the original Boston Post Road, three hundred years old under its modern surface and ironically, that cement and tarmac was poured and paid for by the Kennedys at their end and the New York Families at ours, our respective crews meeting in the middle somewhere. I remember that because it was one of the illustrations of how a closed economic system works, back in college. We collect our tribute from the people and in return, we have to keep things working, such as roads. Plus, it’s a basic cost of business. Where would we be without transportation? Or sewers, or whatever. Say we have a contract to let for 100 miles of freeway ...
Miss You Already drives on soft shoulder
Director Catherine Hardwicke takes us back to Beaches
Toni Collette and Drew Barrymore make sand angels together as best friends Milly and Jess, two women who were slowly drifting apart until a life crisis forces them to reconnect
Mob Rule: Part 18
A spy heads into Hyannis Port
Jack packs his apartment and bids adieu to Vanessa as the plot thickens with a ruse that takes us inside the gates of the Kennedy compound
By John Armstrong
In the 15 hours since we’d left Vegas I hadn’t eaten anything but pastry and coffee on the plane; now that the adrenaline of the fighting had worn off it was a toss-up whether I could stay awake long enough to eat. I had a flash and popped into Frank’s office and there it was in the little office fridge, wrapped in foil, the remains of the ossobuco from Rao’s. How old was it? Two days? I peeled back the foil and pried the lid up – it smelled fine. Problem solved. “Tell Ricco bring a car around, and call this number, ask Vanessa does she want to come for dinner at my place, right now.” I scratched the number on Abby’s pad. “Tell her call my place with the answer, Ricco will come get her. Tell Frank and Meyer I went home to catch some sleep. And please call me there as soon ...
