Twisted tales of surviving the holiday season from Michael Musto, Ann Powers, Lynn Yaeger, Elizabeth Zimmer, and a half dozen other Voice contributors

“Just as Miami remade itself to better resemble its image in Miami Vice, L.A. may rise eventually to Heat's desolate, sand­blasted impersonality.”

“Improbable as it may seem, Michael Douglas currently commands a per-picture salary of some $15 million just to play That Evil White Guy You’re Always Com­plaining About.”

“White men are no longer the whole against which we measure all the parts, but one more angry special interest group. Once they were 'mankind,' now they're just another niche in the endless segmentation markers and identities.”

“Put him in a raincoat and trademark fedora and have him walk the streets of metro­politan America, and he comes alive on screen. His cockiness and swag­ger make sense on a street”

As Raymond Chandler once wrote, “All us tough guys are hopeless sentimentalists at heart.”

“Nobody who played jazz was considered able to walk in and do a studio call. They were convinced you couldn't read, or you wouldn't show up, or you'd fall down drunk”

“Many jazz musicians don’t like singers, and some will go to great lengths to avoid play­ing for them. Not without rea­son. Frank Sinatra is a rare excep­tion.”

“Like Garbo or Chaplin, he looms over the cultural life of the century, defying analysis, because every generation has to figure him out from scratch.”