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Hollywood feeds on its young. To celebrate the thirty-seventh anniversary of my birth here, then, is not without irony. To be away from home and enduring what is typically the most challenging week of the year only added insult to injury.
I woke, fittingly, to AT&T's oft-heard ringtone, a sound that prompts dozens of my colleagues to reach for their hips simultaneously. It was the first of what would tally to well over one hundred hugely-appreciated email, Facebook and cell phone birthday wishes.
I was groggy and tense from another ...
Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel #1023
My hotel room is bigger than my apartment.
Downtown Los Angeles sparkles outside my east-facing windows. The Hollywood sign is out the north.
Last night after work, I pulled my Hyundai into valet as Kate Walsh and the cast of "Private Practice" walked a red carpet across the parking lot.
Upstairs, I watched "Wanted" on-demand as Judas Priest played Jimmy Kimmel's "Pontiac Garage" just below my room (and directly adjacent to Hollywood High School).
The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel was founded in 1927 by a group of Hollywood ...
In The Shadow of Seattle
Abbi and I were in Seattle for a pal's wedding this weekend.
We were full-on tourists. We had a great time riding the ferry to and from Bainbridge, jogging along Peugeot Sound, rambling through Pike's Place Market, and staring out from the Space Needle.
We ate fresh seafood and drank local beer at every meal.
Skies were blue, and vistas were immense (in fact, check out my photos of Seattle).
Still, it could have been my hangover Saturday morning, or it could just be my generation, but it was difficult for me to walk the ...
Seattle, Washington (Fall 2008)
September 2nd, 2008
Nantucket, Massachusetts (Summer 2008)
August 16th, 2008
The Miracle Of Showing Up
We rarely do much of anything in Nantucket, and I like it that way.
A typical day might involve a good run, a real breakfast (eggs, pancakes, etc), a trip to the beach, magazines, books, puzzles, and the ever-essential mid-day nap.
We rarely leave our little corner of the island save for trip to Cisco Brewers (for pints of Whale's Tale Pale Ale), Bartlett Farms (for fresh corn, tomatoes, and blueberry pie), and 167 (aka East Coast Seafood, for whatever Bill's caught that day).
Whatever we do, and wherever we go, the one constant is ...
Lightning In A Bottle
If life is a collection of moments, all strung together and played back in contrast and context to one another, then the defining moment from last summer's trip to Nantucket was that of a lone cottage against a wide, evening sky.
The photo was taken from a narrow, wooden bridge on the western edge of Madaket's Hither Creek. The shutter of my Canon Rebel XT's lens was flung wide to capture dusk's fleeting light. The sky was clear. The water was still. And while the clapboard house, framed by open water and empty sky, was splendid in its ...
ACK ‘08
Over the years, I've invested a lot in the restorative powers of Nantucket.
For me, for better or worse, true or false, the island has provided significant counterpoint to this island.
Still, the place was something of an acquired taste.
I first visited Nantucket just a few months after moving to Manhattan. I was living with my brother, surviving on hot dogs and generic Tang paid for by the $5/hour I was earning keeping the Men's Journal equipment closet.
My mother, perhaps sensing a post-collegiate slump, invited me to crash on ...
The Brickyard 400 (Or, My Days Of Thunder)
This is it: The Fall of Rome.
And this is how it goes: blue sky, 85 degrees, 300,000 people, 42 modified stock cars hurtling around a two and a half mile track at 170 mile per hour, and lots and lots of beer.
This is the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard, aka The Brickyard 400.
It's Death Race, Gladiator, and The Running Man. The MPHs and RPMs are impressive, but we're here for the five-car pile up: crushed steel, shattered plastic, frayed rubber.
We hatched the plan at my bachelor party. Ten months later, here we care: high school ...
Cool It Off Before You Burn It Out
In the summer between my sophomore and junior years at Syracuse University, I drove from Philadelphia to San Diego and back, camping and crashing at friend's and family's homes in Chicago, Iowa City, Minneapolis, Denver, and points in-between (including an ill-fated layover in Darwin, Minnesota where
