Back in the bygone days of 2018-2019 I had the chance to smith some words, in the “social studies” genre, for one of the ultimate prestige vendors: the National Geographic Society. Their editorial standards were the most exacting under which I’ve ever worked, but it was quite clear the final product would in all cases …
On the video podcast I co-host, When Humanists Attack!!, I recently had the pleasure of interviewing one of the greatest performance artists working today, Bill Talen, AKA Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping. Billy’s message has been resounding in my head ever since—it was echoing when I learned about the latest pronouncement from …
Jan. 20, 2021 – Stirred by today’s inauguration of the second Catholic POTUS and first female VPOTUS, I suddenly remembered this unpublished op-ed I wrote in the middle of 2018. I thought I’d take the opportunity to place it on the record today, just as a testament to what we may, if we’re lucky, be …
What insights can we gain by looking at philosophy from a comic point of view, or at comedy from a philosophical point of view? Few are better equipped to tackle such portentous questions than my lifelong friend Eric Kaplan, Ph.D., the Emmy-winning TV comedy writer, executive producer on The Big Bang Theory, and author of …
According to an article on Forbes.com, the Hollywood family comedy The War With Grandpa—adapted from the 1980s children’s book by my father, Robert Kimmel Smith, and starring Robert De Niro—earned just over a million bucks box office on its first day of release, October 9, making it the number-one movie in the Coming-Apart-at-the-Seams States of …
To commemorate the 75th anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (as well as the Russian invasion of Manchuria that started in between), I produced a special documentary episode of my weekly radio program, “Crazy Words, Crazy Tune,” that aired from noon to 2pm on August 7, 2020. Blending popular recordings from 1945 …
The Syncopated Times has published this article detailing how syncopation conquered the Broadway stage in and around 1920, giving birth to what’s now called the “American popular songbook” of show tunes, and describing the early careers of Irving Berlin (look at that boychik!), Jerome Kern, and George Gershwin. This is the longest piece I’ve ever …
My sister, Heidi Pie Aronson, and I co-wrote this remembrance of our father, who passed away on April 18. *** Robert Kimmel Smith, novelist and author of the children’s books Chocolate Fever and The War With Grandpa, died Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 89. He passed peacefully from natural causes, said Margery …
Since 2020 began I’ve been thinking about some of the year’s significant anniversaries, especially it being the 75th anniversary of everything that happened in 1945. I was expecting that we’d have heard a lot about 1945 by this point in the year, with world leaders gathering and doing whatever they do at commemorations: pompous speeches, …
The March 2020 issue of The Syncopated Times newspaper will run my article on the historic 1920 recording of “Crazy Blues,” by Mamie Smith and her Jazz Hounds, the disc that opened the way for African American artists in the record business. The article explores the circumstances of the recording and the career of Perry …