Posts Tagged ‘Travel’
Andover, Vermont (Winter 2009)
The Magic Mountain
What’s the best part about riding an innertube down a mountain with a bunch of giggling eight-year-olds? Feeling twenty-nine years younger. Better yet? Momentarily forgetting those twenty-nine years altogether. Truth is, I didn’t have much business even considering spending the weekend in Vermont. My colleagues were crashing a half-hour Chris Brown and Rihanna special at…
Read MoreWhen I Look At The Stars
The trick to growing up, I think, is retaining enthusiasm. I’m not talking about relinquishing one’s critical faculties, I’m talking about retaining an appreciation of all things. We live in a soundbite-fueled, 24-hour, wide-screen, Technicolor Gotcha! Culture. Mean girls, hipsters, red carpet takedowns, partisan bickering, magazine snarking — it all adds up to something awful.…
Read MoreI Am A Leaver
I’m a knucklehead. I flew to Los Angeles Monday morning for a series of movie studio meetings. No, I’m not going to be in a major motion picture, or contribute a song to a soundtrack. And no, I haven’t found financial backing for “Mister Rogers & Me.” Nah, it’s a work thing. As in, The…
Read MoreHer Eyes All Swimming Pool Blue
The second Corona is better than the first, even if it is from a can; it’s colder, sweeter, and flush with lime. The Florida sun is playing hide-and-seek with the billowing cumulonimbus clouds. When it breaks through, the air grows hot and thick like steam. I watch the great, white clouds race across the piercing…
Read MoreMiami, Florida (Winter 2009)
2009 Miami Marathon (Or, Pull The Sunlight Through Me)
The last time I was on Miami’s Brickell Avenue Bridge, it was midnight. Hurricane Katrina was lashing the city with crushing wind and stinging rain. Nonetheless, my Video Music Award colleagues and I thought it a lark to stand defiantly mid-span, leaning into the gale drunk like teenagers. Some five years later, I was mid-span…
Read MoreInaugural Snapshot, Part II
Union Station, Washington, DC. Amtrak Gate K. Passengers on Northeast Regional 178 are packed together struggling to board. Everyone is exhausted, weary of long lines, hung over, and eager to get home from the Inauguration. A quiet voice squeaks above the fray. “Ellen McQuarry? Ellen McQuarry?” Seconds later, further down the queue, another rings out,…
Read MoreInaugural Snapshot, Part I
I am wedged between a mass of angry, frustrated and anxious Presidential Youth Ball attendees and a phalanx of Police and Secret Service in the Washington, DC, Hilton. With the ballroom at capacity, and POTUS on his way, the men in black are immovable. I reluctantly pull out every item I possess in my defense,…
Read MoreOur Better History
Let other people write about yesterday’s other big first; without diminishing the historical significance of Barack Obama’s inauguration as the first-ever African-American president, race wasn’t what reduced me to a sobbing mess. President Barack Obama’s inaugural address was the first time in my life I felt like a politician was speaking to me. It was…
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