Patient
In some strange way, I felt relieved as I strode towards Lenox Hill Hospital's Emergency Room with my plastic bag full of still-wet CAT scans; at least I knew what was wrong, and what had to be done.
It was a strange day from the start.
I'd slept scarcely a wink the night before, dragging myself pathetically from the bathroom floor to the couch to the bedroom, hunchbacked and mute from nausea, vomiting, and flashes of fever and chill, fever and chill. As the sun rose over a new week, it all felt too
familiar.
I called in sick, ...
EST
"When are you going to get back to our time zone?" Abbi asked.
The days following a long, cross-country business trip are always a bit hazy. Factor in the single-biggest, mission-critical, make-or-break event of the year, and a week of twelve-hour days culminating in an all-nighter and transcontinental flight and, well, you get the idea.
Hence, my wife's inquiry Tuesday night as she drifted down the hallway to bed, while I sat on the couch channel surfing and flipping through magazines until well after three o'clock in the ...
Back In Your Hollywood Arms
I'm gonna argue that Hollywood itself is the biggest brand in the world.
In stark contrast to the lush, Technicolor fantasies in which the place trades, though, the town itself is a dirty mess of bleached concrete, dusty stucco, and drought-ridden patches of weeds. Which is a far cry from the Hollywood director D.W. Griffith founded in 1910.
Griffith and his acting troop (including Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore, amongst others) came West to avoid fees imposed by Thomas Edison, owner of patents on the movie-making ...
37
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 ...
