Blog Posts

I caught a story on the local news as I pulled on my running shoes this morning about a mother of two from Staten Island who died when her minivan rolled off a cliff at a state park. That story was followed by one about a Brooklyn livery cab driver was killed in when his…

Ask me how I’m doing and I’ll tell you, “Fine.” Ask me again (“No, really, how are you doing?”) and I’ll tell you the truth. I’m feeling kinda lost. My life of late has felt like sound and fury, signifying nothing. My goal was to take this year easy, to stay off the road, play…

It was Family Weekend at Chez Wagner. My cousin Luke arrived from Bangkok Saturday morning. He’d been volunteering in a Bhutanese monestary for the last eighteen months. So his parents flew in from Colorado to greet him. His brother flew in from Chicago, two of his best friends from Los Angeles and Seattle, and with…

I have the best ringtone ever. I was a senior in high school when R.E.M. released its first Warner Bros. record, “Green,” on November 8, 1988. The band had (of course) crawled from The South, releasing five sonically and lyrically unique pop albums on IRS Records and setting the bar for what would become “alternative…

I’m out to dinner with my mom. She’s been a Istanbul for the last three weeks, so there’s a fair amount of catching up to do. A lot has happened, but mostly, I wanted to tell her about progress on my Mr. Rogers documentary. Mrs. Rogers gave me her blessing for the project two years…

I woke up slowly this morning. The windows were thrown wide. The screen door was open. A breeze blew through my bedroom. And then I heard the rain. The sky was growing light. The air was cool. The patter was soothing. The clock read 5:31. My alarm was set for 6:30. I decided to forgo…