Baby Brain

I’m 38,000 feet over Albuquerque, New Mexico, when the newborn in 8B begins crying. I can hear it all — including the woman behind me whining and sighing to her husband — despite my noise canceling headphones. A baby’s shriek is a difficult sound, to be sure. Still, all I can think is, ‘Lighten up…

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For Maggie, In Her Sixth Month

Dear Maggie, You were born six months ago today. It was a humid June afternoon when your mother and I walked from our East 71st Street apartment to New York Presbyterian Hospital. You were breach and — despite our best efforts in those final weeks — refused to turn. You were delivered via c-section June…

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Top Seven “Forever Young” Benefit Show Moments

This weekend’s two “Forever Young” Benefit CD Release Shows were something special. We performed two: one for kids, and one for folks who like booze. Both were outstanding, and filled with inspiring, outrageous, and silly moments. Here are my top seven: 7 – Fundraising Is Fun We raised nearly $1000 for children’s media research and…

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Rock ‘N Roll Coochie Coo

Thank goodness, my week of rock ‘n roll bachelorhood finally came to an end. Abbi, Maggie and I were in Wilmington, DE, last weekend for The Keller’s 40th anniversary. I had to get back to NYC for MTV’s TJ Search Finale on Sunday. So it seemed like a perfect, logical solution. Abbi could relax with…

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The Velvet Hammer

Finally, I get to be the hero for once. For two weeks running, Maggie and I had it made. I’d wake her softly at the crack of dawn, bottle feed her, then take a long, slow stroll around the neighborhood until she slipped off to sleep. Everybody won: Abbi slept, Maggie ate, and I gained…

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Maggie At Ten (Days)

Maggie slept through her one week birthday (the nerve!), so I decided to celebrate ten days; seemed like a good round number. Anyway, these first few days of Maggie’s life have disabused me of measurements; seconds, minutes, hours all seem to stretch and bend in this haze of feed, burp, change, repeat. And so tonight,…

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Meeting Maggie

The East River isn’t really a river at all, but a tidal strait between Manhattan and Long Island that, because of tides, appears to flow like one. New York Presbyterian Hospital soars like a great, white sail over the East River. This great, granite sheet spans several blocks of Midtown East, swallowing the FDR highway…

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How To Change The World

If, as my former bandmate, once sang “World’s change in the belly of an insect,” then universes transform in a matter of years. Little wonder, then, that I should comment to Abbi this weekend that I can’t remember a period of transformation as radical as the last five years. Five years ago, I was an…

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Building A Mystery

For a second there, the juxtaposition of my ragged, fourteen-foot UHaul barrelling up the well-coiffed upper reaches of Park Avenue was kind of awesome. Traffic was light. The gas pedal was heavy. Midtown was in the rear-view. And there was funk on the radio. What’s more, my heart was full of freshly-minted confidence. Overnight, I’d…

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To Do (Or, The New Normal)

Suffice to say that the twelve miles I ran from the base of the Manhattan Bridge to and twice-around Prospect Park was the easy part. It dawned on me deep within the fluorescent-lit walls of Ikea just a few hours later to Tweet, “I am in hell.” But I thought better of it on account…

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