The Tickle Bed

This bit of art is guaranteed to raise a giggle at a Mayfair gallery exhibition.

German artist Sandro Porcu, 40, has installed the tickling bed, complete with revolving ostrich feathers, for members of the public to try out.

Featherbed artist

The work, called Bed, was an instant hit when it went on display at the Alexia Goethe gallery in Dover Street last night. It is part of the Story exhibition, which also features sculptures, film and photography on the theme of telling stories.

A gallery spokesman said: “Every work in this show inspires a multitude of stories involving the personalties and memories of both viewers and artists.”

The Human Clock

See the Clock HERE.

Art Buchwalds Final Column

GOODBYE, MY FRIENDS
By Art Buchwald

Several of my friends have persuaded me to write this final column, which is something they claim I shouldn’t leave without doing.

There comes a time when you start adding up all the pluses and minuses of your life. In my case I’d like to add up all the great tennis games I played and all of the great players I overcame with my now famous “lob.” I will always believe that my tennis game was one of the greatest of all time. Even Kay Graham, who couldn’t stand being on the other side of the net from me, in the end forgave me.

I can’t cover all the subjects I want to in one final column, but I would just like to say what a great pleasure it has been knowing all of you and being a part of your lives. Each of you has, in your own way, contributed to my life.

Now, to get down to the business at hand, I have had many choices concerning how I wanted to go. Most of them are very civilized, particularly hospice care. A hospice makes it very easy for you when you decide to go.

What’s interesting is that everybody has his or her own opinion as to how you should go out. All my loved ones became very upset because they thought I should brave it out — which meant more dialysis.

But here is the most important thing: This has been my decision. And it’s a healthy one.

The person who was the most supportive at the end was my doctor, Mike Newman. Members of my family, while they didn’t want me to go, were supportive, too. But I’m putting it down on paper, so there should be no question the decision was mine.

I chose to spend my final days in a hospice because it sounded like the most painless way to go, and you don’t have to take a lot of stuff with you.

For some reason my mind keeps turning to food. I know I have not eaten all the eclairs I always wanted. In recent months, I have found it hard to go past the Cheesecake Factory without at least having one profiterole and a banana split.

I know it’s a rather silly thing at this stage of the game to spend so much time on food. But then again, as life went on and there were fewer and fewer things I could eat, I am now punishing myself for having passed up so many good things earlier in the trip.

I think of a song lyric, “What’s it all about, Alfie?” I don’t know how well I’ve done while I was here, but I’d like to think some of my printed works will persevere — at least for three years.

I know it’s very egocentric to believe that someone is put on earth for a reason. In my case, I like to think I was. And after this column appears in the paper following my passing, I would like to think it will either wind up on a cereal box top or be repeated every Thanksgiving Day.

So, “What’s it all about, Alfie?” is my way of saying goodbye.

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Columnist Art Buchwald Dies at Age 81

Columnist and author Art Buchwald, who for over four decades chronicled the life and times of Washington with an infectious wit and endeared himself to many with his never-say-die battle with failing kidneys, is dead at 81.

Buchwald’s son, Joel, who was with his father, disclosed the satirist’s death, saying he had passed away quietly at his home late Wednesday with his family.

Buchwald had refused dialysis treatments for his failing kidneys last year and was expected to die within weeks of moving to a hospice on Feb. 7. But he lived to return home and even write a book about his experiences.

“The last year he had the opportunity for a victory lap and I think he was really grateful for it,” Joel Buchwald said. “He had an opportunity to write his book about his experience and he went out the way he wanted to go, on his own terms.”

Neither Buchwald nor his doctors could explain how he survived in such grave condition, and he didn’t seem to mind.

The unexpected lease on life gave Buchwald, a Pulitzer Prize winner, time for an extended and extraordinarily public goodbye, as he held court daily in a hospice salon with a procession of family, friends and acquaintances.

“I’m going out the way very few people do,” he told The Associated Press in April.

Buchwald said in numerous interviews after his decision became public that he was not afraid to die, that he was not depressed about his fate and that he was, in fact, having the time of his life.

Often called “The Wit of Washington” during his years here, Buchwald’s name became synonymous with political satire. He was well known, too, for his wide smile and affinity for cigars.

Among his more famous witticisms: “If you attack the establishment long enough and hard enough, they will make you a member of it.”

Naturally, he found the humor in his choice to renounce dialysis, and he wrote about it in some final columns.

“I am known in the hospice as The Man Who Wouldn’t Die,” Buchwald wrote in March. “How long they allow me to stay here is another problem. I don’t know where I’d go now, or if people would still want to see me if I wasn’t in a hospice.

“But in case you’re wondering, I’m having a swell time _ the best time of my life.”

Last January, doctors amputated Buchwald’s right leg below the knee because of circulation problems. Losing it was “very traumatic” and he said it probably influenced his decision to reject the three-times-a- week, five-hours-a-day dialysis treatments. In 2000, he suffered a major stroke.

His syndicated column at one point appeared in more than 500 newspapers worldwide. It appeared twice a week in publications including The Washington Post and was distributed by Tribune Media Services.

In a 1995 memoir on his early years, “Leaving Home,” Buchwald wrote that humor was his “salvation.” In all, he wrote more than 30 books.

“People ask what I am really trying to do with humor,” he wrote. “The answer is, ‘I’m getting even.’ … For me, being funny is the best revenge.”

In 1982, he won the Pulitzer, journalism’s top honor, for outstanding commentary, and in 1986 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

He also was at the center of a landmark battle with Hollywood over the question of who originated the idea for Eddie Murphy’s 1988 hit film “Coming to America.”

Buchwald first attracted notice in the late 1940s in Paris, where he became a correspondent for Variety after dropping out of college.

A year later, he took a trial column called “Paris After Dark” to the New York Herald Tribune. He filled it with scraps of offbeat information about Paris nightlife.

In 1951, he started another column, “Mostly About People,” featuring interviews with celebrities in Paris. The next year, the Herald Tribune introduced Buchwald to U.S. readers through yet another column, “Europe’s Lighter Side.”

“I’ll Always Have Paris!” is the title of a 1996 book. He celebrated his 80th birthday at a party at the French Embassy in Washington.

Among the many who visited Buchwald at the hospice was French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte, who brought a medal honoring the 14 years Buchwald spent as a journalist in Paris.

Buchwald returned to the United States in 1962, at the height of the glamour of the Kennedy administration, and set himself up in an office just two blocks from the White House. From there, he began a long career lampooning the Washington power establishment.

Over the years, he discovered the allure of show business and in 1970 he wrote the Broadway play “Sheep on the Runway.”

But he was best known in that realm for the court battle over “Coming to America.” A judge ruled that Paramount Pictures had stolen Buchwald’s idea and in 1992 awarded $900,000 to him and a partner.

The case dated to a 1983 Paramount contract for rights to Buchwald’s story “King for a Day.” The studio had dropped its option to make such a movie in 1985, three years before releasing “Coming to America” without credit to Buchwald.

Both stories involved an African prince who comes to America in search of a bride.

Paramount argued that the two stories were not that similar. After the judge ruled in Buchwald’s favor, Paramount lawyers insisted in the trial’s next phase that the film failed to produce any net profits. The case became a celebrated example of “Hollywood accounting.”

The judge wound up awarding Buchwald and his partner far less than the millions they had sought, but the columnist said he was satisfied.

Born in Mount Vernon, N.Y., on Oct. 25, 1925, Buchwald had a difficult childhood. He and his three sisters were sent to foster homes when their mother was institutionalized for mental illness. Their father, a drapery salesman, suffered Depression-era financial troubles and couldn’t afford them.

At 17, Buchwald ran away to join the Marines and spent 3 1/2 years in the Pacific during World War II, attaining the rank of sergeant and spending much of his time editing a Corps newspaper.

After the war, he enrolled at the University of Southern California, where he became managing editor of the campus humor magazine and a columnist for the student paper. But he dropped out in 1948 and headed for Paris on a one-way ticket.

He married Ann McGarry, of Warren, Pa., in London on Oct. 12, 1952. The writer and one-time fashion coordinator for Neiman-Marcus later wrote a book with her husband. They adopted three children.

She died in 1994. In 2000, Buchwald published his first novel, “Stella In Heaven: Almost a Novel,” about a widower who can communicate with his deceased wife.

Despite his successes, the perennial funny man said he battled depression in 1963 and 1987. He once joked about deciding not to commit suicide out of fear that The New York Times miss the story.

“You do get over it, and you get over it a better person,” he once said of the illness.

Buchwald is survived by son Joel Buchwald, of Washington; daughters Jennifer Buchwald, of Roxbury, Mass.; and Connie Buchwald Marks, of Culpeper, Va.; sisters Edith Jaffe, of Bellevue, Wash., and Doris Kahme, of Delray Beach, Fla., and Monroe Township, N.J.; and five grandchildren.

A family spokeswoman said Buchwald would be interred at the Vineyard Haven Cemetery in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., where his wife Ann is buried.

___

Philosophy of Sex

“I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy.”
–Tom Clancy

“You know “that look” women get when they want sex? Me neither.”
–Steve Martin

“Having sex is like playing bridge. If you don’t have a good partner, you’d better have a good hand.”
–Woody Allen

“Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night.”
–Rodney Dangerfield

“There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL.”
–Lynn Lavner

“Leaving sex to the feminists is like letting your dog vacation at the taxidermist.”
–Matt Barry

“Sex at age 90 is like trying to shoot pool with a rope.”
–George Burns

“Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. The other eight are unimportant.”
–George Burns

“Women might be able to fake orgasms. But men can fake whole relationships.”
–Sharon Stone

“My girlfriend always laughs during sex —no matter what she’s reading.”
–Steve Jobs (Founder, Apple Computers)

“My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch.”
–Jack Nicholson

” Clinton lied. A man might forget where he parks or where he lives, but he never forgets oral sex, no matter how bad it is.”
–Barbara Bush

“Ah, yes, divorce, from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man’s genitals through his wallet.”
–Robin Williams

“Women complain about premenstrual syndrome, but I think of it as the only time of the month that I can be myself.”
–Roseanne

“Women need a reason to have sex. Men just need a place.”
–Billy Crystal

“According to a new survey, women say they feel more comfortable undressing in front of men than they do undressing in front of other women. They say that women are too judgmental, where, of course, men are just grateful.”
–Robert De Niro

“There’s a new medical crisis. Doctors are reporting that many men are having allergic reactions to latex condoms. They say they cause severe swelling. So what’s the problem?”
–Dustin Hoffman

“There’s very little advice in men’s magazines, because men think, I know what I’m doing. Just show me somebody naked.”
–Jerry Seinfeld

“Instead of getting married again, I’m going to find a woman I don’t like and just give her a house.”
–Rod Stewart

“See, the problem is that God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time.”
–Robin Williams

Photo-op- Hooters Bikini Contest

Beck Anyone?

See and hear him HERE.