The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.

I saw a man standing at the corner of Madison Avenue and 57th Street - perhaps the most fashionable intersection since Anna Wintour met clothes - and he was wearing a sleeveless mink coat! A full-length, sleeveless mink coat. He looked like Conan the Vulgarian.

                     *              *               *           
Robert Bork, whose 1987 nomination to the Supreme Court was rejected by the Senate, is dead at 85. Reacting to the nomination, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) said, "Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could not be censored at the whim of government and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is - and is often the only - protector of the individual rights that are at the heart of our democracy."

To which Mr. Bork's many, ardent supporters replied, "Sure, when you put it that way!"

               *                   *                    *
Did your mother collect guns? Mine didn't.It's just as well, too. If my mother had a weapon besides guilt, the world would be empty. Still, she did pretty well with guilt.

             *                    *                     *
Ha ha happy holidays sounds cynical. Happy ho ho holidays sounds lewd. How about,"Eat, drink and be merry?" Yeah, that's the spirit.