Archive for April 2007
Ultraviolet
“The true life of a believer,” Bono says, “is one of a longer, more hazardous uphill pilgrimage where you uncover slowly the illumination for your next step.” Somewhere between running the New Jersey Half Marathon, watching the documentary, “So Goes The Nation,” shopping for furniture and doing two loads of laundry, I finished “Bono: In…
Read More(I Won’t Let You) Get Away From Me – MP3
ProTools has finally made it out of its box in the closet of my new apartment to the floor of the closet of my new apartment. Just in time to capture this new idea (which is sorely in need of a Chris Abad solo) that hit me Saturday morning. The form and structure is super-familiar…
Read MoreOf Gold Watches & Tortoise Shell Combs
Listen, I know my life isn’t all sturm und drang. I had lunch with a longtime colleague of mine today. Now, I rarely do lunch. I usually eat a salad at my desk. But lately, that I can combine a work conversation with a change of scenery (that is, something other than my computer monitor)…
Read MoreHow Not To Disappear
I feel like I’m fading away. There’s only one section of my interview with “Generation X” Douglas Coupland that didn’t make the MTV News article or even my complete transcript. Towards the end of our conversation, he told me (as he did The UK Register a few weeks prior) that “For about four months back…
Read MoreThat God Shaped Hole
I am staring out the window, watching the city pass me by, when I tell her that I feel old and irrelevant. Abbi and I are in the back of a yellow cab. The clock is creeping towards one o’clock. We’re on our way back uptown from Jeff Jacobson’s CD release show at Rockwood. We…
Read MoreDouglas Coupland On ‘Everything’s Gone Green,’ Beaver Dams, Siberia
Making a great playlist is hard to do. First, you need to nail the music. Pissed off? Try a little Rage Against the Machine. Confounded? Death Cab for Cutie. Crestfallen? Sprinkle in some Laura Veirs. Next you need to find the perfect lyric. Intense love might call for Dashboard Confessional’s “Hands Down,” as sung by…
Read MoreUnder The Red, White & Blue
In my younger and more vulnerable years, I often walked home along Ninth Avenue. I lived just east of Tenth then. The extra few steps mattered. Though real estate agents will tell you otherwise, the neighborhood between 34th and 57th Streets west of Eight Avenue has long been referred to as Hell’s Kitchen. This, it…
Read MoreThree Simple Ideas
I was discussing the installation of lipstick, keyhole, and robotic cameras at yet another entertainment awards show when a colleague looked down at his Blackberry and said, “I think the fact that the number of dead just rose from two to twenty-two warrants our coverage.” Barely twenty-four hours later, we have a crew of ten…
Read MoreBetter Best To Rearrange
“Cartagena? Angel, you are hell and gone from Cartagena!” Michael Douglas issued that reality check to Kathleen Turner from the side of a muddy, Columbian hillside in the 1984 20th Century Fox film, “Romancing The Stone,” which I’m watching on WE as I type. My best friend, Sibby, and I used to recite portions of…
Read MoreThe Way We’re Made
Making a great playlist is hard to do. First, you need to nail the music. Pissed off? Try a little Rage Against The Machine. Confounded? Death Cab For Cutie. Crestfallen? Sprinkle in some Laura Veirs. Next you need to find the perfect lyric. Intense love might call for Chris Carrabba’s “Hands Down” (“Your kiss might…
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