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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 ...
At Least We’ll Leave Before We Have To Go
"New York is all about what could be," says David Cloyd, a 34-year-old musician who moved to the city from Austin ten years ago. "You know: The potential. The possibilities."
New York Magazine is the source of Mr. Cloyd's quote, at least partially responsible for my sense of urban, upwardly-mobile aspiration. The Intelligencer's cocktail party talking points, "Party Lines'" glossy pics of soirees I'll never attend, and the pages-upon-pages of million-dollar, high-rise, smoked-glass condos I'll never be able to afford.
It's the degrees ...
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
Comic-Con Reconsidered (Or, The Triumph Of The Nerds)
Prevailing wisdom about San Diego's Comic-Con is that it's an assembly of misfits, nerds, freaks and geeks salivating over B-listers, back issues, and collectibles.
In fact, I traded in that very same simplistic, diminishing description as recently as just last night.
Tonight, though, I counter with a new thesis.
Comic-Con is an inspirational gathering of apparently disparate peoples: young and old, physically capable and challenged, thin and not-so. It is a safe space for difference, where the one's unique offering is rewarded and ...
Wasting Away Again At Comic-Con
This isn't the first time I've put in an 18-hour day in a generic conference room in a beautiful city. Last week I put in a few days in San Francisco, and I've suffered through Las Vegas and Los Angeles numerous times.
But this one takes the cake.
Inside, it's Comic-Con, the annual confab of superheros, superstars, and supernerds.
Outside, it's San Diego: blue skies, sparkling waters, and billowing spinnakers.
Today is day one of my five-day journey into uber-fandom: San Diego Comic-Con (comic book geeks) Thursday and Friday, ...
The Morning Fog May Chill The Air, I Don’t Care
As I've said before, my favorite part about travel is running in a new town. This morning, that town was San Francisco. In fact, a good run had more than a little bit to do with my being here.
My primary raison d'etre for this sojourn was the Y-Pulse Mash Up, a conference for teen/tween-centric media and marketing types. It was great (as conferences go) if you're into things like, say, incentivizing user generated content (which I am). And the oatmeal raisin cookies were top notch.
But I won't front: I wanted to spend a few days in ...
Daylight Is Coming (And No One Is Watching But Me)
In 1910, director D.W. Griffith and his acting troop (Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore, amongst others) were sent west by the Biograph Company. There, in a small village named after landowner Harvey Wilcox's summer home, Griffith filmed the first movie ever shot in Hollywood, "In Old California."
Movie-makers began heading west in droves, largely to avoid fees imposed by Thomas Edison, who owned patents on the movie-making process, but moreover by the the mild climate, varied scenery, and reliable sunlight.
Though Warner ...
The Screening Of Your Lifelong Dream
The first time I visited Los Angeles, my friend Matt Kinney drove me up high above the Hollywood to Griffith Observatory. There, I sat in on a bench eating an In-N-Out burger as Matt gave me the lay of the land.
"There's Downtown. That's Century City. Santa Monica is over there..."
I remember feeling awed and excited, look I was looking out at my future. Here was everything that was possible: a city, a sea, a back lot, rock club, and home in the hills.
Years later, in the JFK-LAX (aka "Almost Home") Era, I often woke before my ...
MTV Movie Awards Go On As Universal Studios Fire Burns
"That chemical smell," the security guard said, "Is our archives burning."
We assembled in the lobby, then began down the hill. Not surprisingly, Lankershim Boulevard was strewn with orange cones and Los Angeles' finest. Most of the Universal Studios gates were barricaded. After a short detour (and a few wrong turns) we made to Gate 3.
Smoke was still pouring out of the back lot, just a few thousand feet from our offices, as we gathered ourselves and tried to address remaining coverage issues. We called a final production meeting ...
