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Jane Austen was a topic we explored on the February 3 Salon Saturday radio show. Many romantic movies were based on the novels of Jane Austen and many of our notions about romantic movies began with her. What was it like for a woman writer back in the late 18th and...

This topic aired on Salon Saturday on January 27. While the inspiration was Valentine’s Day, these movies are popular year round. Being a sommelier I love pairing movies with wine and spirits and the choices here are available most places and I recommend all of them....

This topic aired on the Salon Saturday radio show on January 27. I chose the topic partly because Valentine’s Day was coming, but a good romance novel works any time of year. Romance novels have evolved over time and many readers enjoy the classics as well as...

Typically tequila is used in cocktails, but smoother versions are also fine for just sipping and you don’t need cocktail shakers and lots of other ingredients. Every make a Bloody Mary from scratch? I rest my case. We did a tasting on air of two tequilas so I wanted...

This segment aired on the January 13 Salon Saturday show. Obviously a dramedy is a concatenation of drama and comedy, but in what combination? If you find yourself whipping out a hanky for much of a movie’s run time, it’s not a comedy. However, when the comedic...

This Salon Saturday radio show aired on January 6, 2024. Italy has more than 500 native grape varieties and at least 175 of those ends up in everyday wines, making Italy one of the most challenging countries to explore and describe in toto.  Even Wine Folly agrees...

We didn’t do a show in early December because I was still on the island of Kauai, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t writing and the Garden Isle always provides inspiration. Kauai has also inspired many movies that were filmed here so if you have never visited it and were...

This portion of Salon Saturday aired on November 4 and I later took a couple of Cromwell’s books with me to Hawaii. Patricia Cornwell is an author I’ve been hooked on for decades, and her medical examiner persona, Kay Scarpetta. If you read a fair amount you’ve...

Even though we’ve all had plenty of sparkling wines over the November/December holiday season, that doesn’t mean finding a new one to try has to wait until Valentine’s Day. This show, which aired before my long hiatus until mid-December, included an eye-opening...

This was the middle segment of the Salon Saturday radio show that aired on October 28. Even though I’d seen countless movies inspired by Shelley’s novel I had not read the original work. My source is a Penguin Classics novel with a forward by Shelley scholar,...