Nostalgia
7.3.16 ‘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.
Read More3.28.16 20 Years in NYC, Pt. 4: ‘They’re touching you!’
Having stakes in the city — that is, a mortgage — and being here during a national tragedy seemed to forge a whole new sense of belonging for me. By 2002, I’d been in New York City for over five years and it was the place I never knew I wanted to be but couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.
Read More3.13.16 20 Years in NYC, Part 2: Be the shark, never stop moving
If life isn’t giving you what you want, find a new path. Be the shark, never stop moving. That path may not take you where you want to go, but on the road you may — if you’re lucky — run into a fork that actually leads you forward.
Read More3.7.16 20 Years in NYC, Part 1: ‘I may get a little worked up’
I wasn’t planning to be a New Yorker. New York just kind of happened to me.
Read More1.12.16 ‘Keep me in your heart for awhile’
We put a lot on to our heroes, our entertainers, the people who make us feel all the feels. We want to thank them and don’t have the language to do so, so we buy and watch and record and ask for autographs if we happen to cross paths but it is a vocabulary of gibberish. They are creating from a well from which we can only bathe, not drink and so we can never fully know what is going on as they weave mystic dreams out of sound and vision.
Read MoreDavid Letterman’s caution in the name of comedy: My visit to the first ‘Late Show’ in 1993
So I guess this is how it happens: You do something long enough and you start being able to flash back on your own work. In 1993 I wrote to Late Night With David Letterman in the hopes of being able to get a ticket to one of his last NBC shows before he jumped…
Read MoreLet’s get retro: My 2007 ‘Mad Men’ review for The Hollywood Reporter
Back in July of 2007, I was about a year and four months from getting laid off from The Hollywood Reporter after a pretty good run at the troubled trade publication (which has very much bounced back in the years since after going through a visionary rethink). But they were at loose ends in a…
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