Posts by admin
That 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 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…
Read MoreA Load For Free
It was my third to last load: a sixty-seven pound air conditioner. I had stripped to jeans and a t-shirt, was breathing heavily and sweating vigorously as my right foot touched down on the last step. “You’re not going to throw that out, are you?” I had called Chris Sunday night. “Man, I hate to…
Read MoreDouglas Coupland: Everything’s Gone Green
I’ve read all of Douglas Coupland’s books. I love his seemless marriage of pop culture currency and left-of-center magical realism. He looks just beneath the curated lawns of suburbia to expose everything from Yuppies adrift (“Generation X”) to Boomer grow ops (“Jpod”) with a dash of wit, whimsy, and a light sprinkling of symbolic absurdity…
Read MoreJust A Stranger On The Bus
I was at wits end by the time I hailed a cab at the corner of 80th & Columbus. Moving has been death by a million paper cuts. Merging thirty plus years of material acquisition and two diverse aesthetics into one 750 square foot apartment requires some sacrifice. Whole bunches of stuff’s been left behind:…
Read MoreEaster Sunday
I’m sitting on the couch idly watching “CBS Sunday Morning” and talking quietly with Abbigail with whom I’m trying in vain to shake a well-earned hangover. Despite my current preference for the sedentary, there’s still lots of moving to be done. The apartment is still stacked with boxes. My bike remains in the center of…
Read MoreRun For Your Life
I ran into the Executive Vice President of News & Production in the elevator banks this morning. “How are you?” he asked. “Harried,” I replied. The truth is, the sweat on my brow and bounce in my step had more to do with too much coffee and a really long run. Somehow, though, that came…
Read More