Nostalgia
8.7.23 Telling past and present with my new ‘Jewish Futures’ story
Writers are magpies. Writers are miners. Writers are fabulists. It’s what we do, it’s how we get stories told: A little from Column A, a little from Column B, often a lot from Column X. The events I wrote about in my story, “Matzah Ball Soup for the Vershluggin Soul,” featured in the brand-new Jewish…
Read More1.21.22 Farewell by the dashboard light
Aww, Meat Loaf! Marvin Aday, aka Meat Loaf, the actor and singer who paired for years with Jim Steinman to create operatic pop hits like “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” and “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” has died at 74. I can’t say I was his biggest fan either way…
Read More3.08.21 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.
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