When we were in Los Angeles, we went to the taping of the television show The Price is Right.

Dear old Squiffy was always rather a lad for the wassail-bowl. When I met him in Paris, I remember, he was quite tolerably blotto.

Only in 2007 they are less about pure socialism than a kind of suburbanized version of it.

Mr. Ray’s sculpture is a big-budget production that may become rare in the years ahead, but looking at it and gradually realizing that none of its delicate, desiccated textures are natural is a semihallucinatory experience.