Nostalgia
3.08.21 Drawn that way: Four times I got musicians to create self-portraits in my notebook
I don’t think I do that many “fun” posts here, so I’m going to change that at least once. In the 1990s I did a lot of music journalism; it was my “in” to getting bylines. I long ago segued into TV and film articles, but for a brief period I had this idea that…
Read More4.2.20 Christopher Meloni talks ‘Law & Order: SVU’, Part 1: Auditions and 22-hour workdays
The big news for Law & Order: SVU fans hit on the last day of March: Det. Elliot Stabler is coming back! OK, not to SVU, but to his own series! It’s been a long, dry spell for Stabler fans. Christopher Meloni originated the role of Stabler in 1999, when SVU became the first spin-off…
Read More3.06.19 Too Many Sympathy Cards: On Losing Two Inspirational Friends
Too many sympathy cards. One is too many. Two to honor departed friends, in the space of just a few weeks, is completely horrid. But I want people to know about two people who, while I wasn’t in regular touch with them for some years, were still important to me – and who have now…
Read More04.03.18 Farewell Steven Bochco, who knew TV audiences wanted to be ‘transported’
He was the man behind Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, L.A. Law and Cop Rock. OK, nobody’s perfect. But Steven Bochco, who died of a rare form of leukemia on April 1 at age 74, bridged classic old TV procedurals with a new, edgy way of storytelling that was also hugely commercial. As I grew…
Read More3.07.18 My grandmother was the president of my fan club
I always knew my grandmother loved me. We called her Buddie, because I wouldn’t or couldn’t say “Bubbie” and it just stuck. But there was never a question that she was on my side and would have thrown herself in front of an oncoming train if it meant saving my life. Turns out she was…
Read More6.18.17 On poker, ghost dads and fashioning your own father figures
Here is possibly my most enduring memory of my father: We are sitting around the kitchen table in the house I lived in from around age 8 until age 11 – the one that’s fixed in my long-term memory as The House. Everyone has a Memory House; it’s the one our imagination goes to when…
Read More1.3.17 ‘I would like to be who my mom has been – not afraid to be a little weird’
I never did get to speak with the late Carrie Fisher or Debbie Reynolds (more’s the pity) but I hear they were cracking gals. The pair died within a day of one another last week, which sent a lot of us into a tailspin, once again shaking our fists at the craptacular way 2016 presented.…
Read More7.3.16 ‘Some stories are true that never happened’: Notes on my teacher, Elie Wiesel
We try to remember the good things, yet those slip from us. We try to forget the bad things, yet often they become sticky. But to make the choice to stand as a living memory is a bold, courageous decision – and few can be said to have shouldered that burden better than Elie Wiesel.
Read More4.24.16 ‘Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life’
The ability to disappear into the moment of creation with a writer is fairly dull to watch; that same blending/vanishing act, when performed on stage to a thumping beat and a heart-soaring melody, can be breathtaking.
Read More4.08.16 20 Years in NYC, Pt. 5: ‘Keep your eyes on the spinning top’
What I think I’ve discovered in the last 20-odd years (some rather odd years, at that) is that planning is a good thing, but not the only thing. Sometimes you just have to get the top spinning — and watch where it goes all on its own.
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