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Hurt
I woke up this morning with crushing pain just above my heart. My first thought was heart attack. My second thought was pulled muscle. My third thought was pleurisy. I’ve been checking out quite a few podcasts of late, primarily because MTV News is charging into new platforms, but secondarily because I’ve always been a…
Read MoreRoatan, Honduras
After The Fall
There’s something about a fresh blanket of snow that turns even the most jaded New Yorker into a kid again. It stands to reason, then, that 26.9 inches of powder turns us all into toddlers. Abbi and I loafed around all afternoon, reading the Sunday Times, watching bad wedding shows on Oxygen, and eating waffles.…
Read MoreThe Heart Is
Philosophically, I’m a strong advocate of the red eye. Practically, I’m losing faith. I was in Santa Monica for sunset last night. And I was in Queens for sunrise this morning. I love that that’s even possible. Growing up, my family took its fair share of road trips. No matter where we were — The…
Read MoreCalling All Angels
Another year, another award show… another award show I missed almost entirely. I was fifteen feet from the Grammy red carpet (Heineken green, technically), but I didn’t see one celebrity. I was one hundred feet from the big show, but I didn’t see U2, Kanye, Kelly Clarkson — nobody. But I did work alongside some…
Read MoreTouch The Sky
Downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica in nine minutes, all for Kanye West. 8:13 – Six blocks from the hotel, my cell phone rings. It’s Angela in New York. “We need you to feed the Kanye video again. The audio was messed up.” This is a big deal. We’re premiering a snippet Kanye West’s video,…
Read MorePermanent Vacation
There’s something about the desert… There’s something about the desert that keeps me coming back. I first visited Palm Springs in 1997, just a few weeks after moving to New York City. I was dating a woman who worked in Joshua Tree National Park, and spent a few days camping there. (I ended up turning…
Read MoreInto The Sun
A few hundred feet above Palm Canyon, the silence begins to sink in. I first noticed the stillness as I woke from a night of deep, dreamless sleep. There were songs in my head, and songs in the trees. Just outside my window, chirps and warbles of every aviary denomination sang praise to the early…
Read MoreHelter Skelter
Three friends meet for dinner. They converge well after sundown at El Coyote, a kitschy Mexican joint smack in the middle of Hollywood, California. In the dusty haze of 1969, Sharon Tate ate her last meal there. They are three men, all in their early thirties, with less hair, perhaps, and more girth, for certain,…
Read MoreWelcome To The Jungle
When I saw Godsmack front man Sully Erna walking out of The Rainbow, I knew I had arrived. I am comfortably ensconced in room 322 of La Montrose Hotel in West Hollywood. The Roxy is just two blocks north. The Viper Room is not much further. It’s all very L.A., in an Axl Rose sort…
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