Given To Fly

There are three major flight paths outside my window: Newark, LaGuardia, and JFK. With the frequent buzz of tourist helicopters and Hudson River air traffic, the skies above me are constantly crowded with jet engines, propellers, and blinking red lights. It’s an apt metaphor for New York City, really. Or, for that matter, my brain.…

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Sundance 2008: Get Yourself Together

I finally had my Sundance Moment. The long threatened “severe winter event” for which I adjusted my travel plans finally materialized overnight. I woke to the sound of snowplows in reverse, and walked to the window. Everything was brushed white. Six inches of it, and still falling. I went for what may constitute the shortest,…

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Sundance 2008: The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh

On Line: I am surrounded by dudes with beards typing into their iPhones and Blackberries. I am one of them. As a huge Michael Chabon fan, my hopes are high. As a huge Michael Chabon fan who hasn’t cracked the novel since its 1989 release, though, I have no idea what I’m in for. I’m…

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Sundance 2008: What Just Happened?

On Line: I’m surrounded by olds. This fact — coupled with one-two punch from the dude who whispered under his breath, “I heard it’s not that good,” and my esteemed colleague Larry Carroll’s minimalist review (“It starts like ‘The Player’ but ends like ‘Simone’”) — does not bode well for the film. Sometimes, though, one’s…

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Sundance 2008: Slammed

I made any important discovery about myself walking into town just now. I want to be on the guest list, I just don’t want to have to ask to be on the guest list. * * * I’m standing on the patio of Treasure Mountain Inn, home base of the anti-Sundance, Slamdance. The steps of…

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Bono & The Edge: U2 3D

Benjamin Wagner: What do you notice in yourselves and each other in 3D that you didn’t before? The Edge: I was struck by the separateness really yunno we’re up there quite individual and quite separate something about the 3D the depth of field you really feel that Bono: Are you saying you felt lonely up…

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Sundance 2008: Faraway (So Close)

There was nothing between The Edge, Bono and me except Jerry Penacoli. Incidentally, the Xtra correspondent is not a small man. I’m gonna’ wager 6′ 4″, 225. Nor was he very happy with me at the moment. The “U23D” red carpet was the single most crowded press line I’ve seen in the last four years…

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Sundance 2008: Bullet The Blue Sky

Park City sprawls out below The Lodge At Mountain Village at the base of Park City Mountain Resort. Looking east from Room 270, the sun is crowns the Wasatch in cool pink. Below, steady streams of red brake lights flow towards the highway. Following a largely uneventful (though painfully early) flight, and an equally chill…

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