Posts by admin
You, Me & Us
Packed into a particularly uncomfortably subway on my way home from a particularly uncomfortable week at work, I couldn’t help but notice that I was surrounded by nothing but the first person singular. All around, my fellow passengers clutched their iPods and stared vacantly into space. On the stainless steel, graffiti-proof walls, signage for News…
Read MoreOut Here In The Fields
I was delivered with The Post this morning, arriving on my doorstep just as the familiar, yellow newspaper truck dropped a bundle of tabloids in front of the Andy’s Deli. The time was 5:48. I woke up this morning at 3:31, precisely four hours and thirty-two minutes after laying my exhaustion down for the night.…
Read MoreStill Always Almost There
I just got a call from Syracuse, New York, circa 1993 via Des Moines, Iowa, circa now. I’m at 29 stories above Times Square at The MTV working the Grammys. This is typically our second busiest night of the year (second to our own Video Music Awards). Jon Locker is in his basement in East…
Read More(Un)comfortably Numb
My clothes were in a pile at the foot of the bed. My wrist hurt, my stomach burned, and my head ached. And as I began to piece together the night before, I thought to myself, ‘I’ve got to fight back.’ I woke up on the couch. The room was dark. The clock read 5:19.…
Read MoreMaking Love Understandable
The subway platform is crowded three deep. ‘This,’ I think, ‘is gonna’ be good.’ I lean on an iron support beam deep in the 79th Street station below Broadway. All around me, straphangers crane their necks uptown to catch a glimpse of the oncoming train. My gaze is locked on an article on Tibet in…
Read MoreDead In The Water
This morning’s wake up call, effectively rendering two thirds of my life’s pursuits (rock ‘n roll, and MTV) over the hill and obsolete, came courtesy of New York Magazine. “Consider big media,” columnist Kurt Anderson wrote. “CDs seem so antique,” my 17-year-old daughter remarked the other day. Again and again these days, the record-setting CD…
Read MoreWordplay
I wondered this morning, with all of the news, blogs, books, and magazines I read every day, just how many words pass through my eyes and into my brain? And what happens to them when they get there? I hit at least ten news sites a day, everything from The Times to CNN to The…
Read MoreBeer Pong
I grew up in Chicago. I remember rooting for Walter Payton, Will “The Refrigerator” Perry, Jim McMahon, and the rest of the 1986 Bears. And I lived in Indianapolis, Indiana, for a year (my father still does). Still, once the beer pong competition turned heated, even Super Bowl XLI couldn’t command my attention. Sure, I…
Read MoreBesides, Vol. 2
It’s barely February, and it’s was barely ten o’clock in the morning, but already my head was spinning with the question, “How am I going to get it all done?” Abbi and I were discussing it all over coffee: the live album, the “from the vaults” album, the documentary. It was beginning to feel like…
Read MoreThe Optimism Of The Will
“My name is Benjamin Wagner,” I said, firmly shaking Bill Moyers’ hand. “I am the young man with the fire in his belly who has been doggedly pursuing you for my deep and simple documentary about my relationship with Mister Rogers.” “Oh yes,” he said, looking up from under his glasses. “Oh yes.” * *…
Read More