Good grades in everything but math and hair
Right on schedule, I’ve become one of those tedious people who measures the passage of time in varying degrees of disbelief and iPod playlists. According to reunion literature that came in the mail and which I tossed in the trash, it’s been 20 years since I graduated from Loyola. (Bachelor of Arts — major in…
Read MoreThe truth
This brief screed about “overwriting” was posted by Michael Brick near the end of a very long comments thread over on Gangrey that discusses writing, outlining, frustrations, listening to music while you write (do you or don’t you?) and so much else. I’m reposting it here because it’s just so damn true. “That word though,…
Read MoreBoard
“Resentment is like drinking poison, and then waiting for the other person to die.” — Carrie Fisher Since I clipped it out years ago (I think from the New York Times Magazine sometime in the late ’90s), I’ve had this picture either on a refrigerator or a bulletin board or somewhere at the ready. As…
Read MoreSNL Homowatch: 5/8 (Betty White!)
[Author’s Note: This is my “SNL Homowatch,” where I count and try to make sense of Saturday Night Live‘s endless obsession with making jokes about gay people and gay sex, without letting gay writers or gay performers have a go at the joke themselves. It’s a cycle I call enlightened homophobia — jokes about gays,…
Read More“It isn’t fashion until somebody wears it…”
When casting about helplessly on my own articles (or just putting off the inevitable), I like to randomly, briefly cruise through The Post archives and see what was up 10, 20, 45 years ago in the paper. Just now I came across this appreciation that Jura Koncius and Martha Sherrill wrote when Nina Hyde, the…
Read MoreQuirky is not what you think it is
People who know me best know about my New Mexico thing, which, unlike those people who occasionally go woo-woo and come back from vacation with a newfound Santa Fe jones, is legit and deep. My parents moved to New Mexico in the 1950s (Cold War, dad was an engineer) and stayed for a decade before…
Read MoreSNL Homowatch continues (4/17: Ryan Phillippe AND 4/24: Gabourey Sidibe)
This little effort has been instructive. After years of feeling like Saturday Night Live had “issues” (which were consequently resulting in gay-themed sketches and characters that weren’t as sharp or funny as the could be, needed to be), I started SNL Homowatch in March. Almost immediately, I noticed a decline in the very sort of…
Read MoreSpoon Fed WINNERS!
Raving about Kim Severson’s delish new memoir, Spoon Fed, last week, I offered a free copy to a lucky person who would write me an e-mail and explain why they wanted to read it. I got a lot of responses but had to pick one. Couldn’t pick just one, so I’m picking two: • Alan…
Read MoreI like Kim Severson’s SPOON FED so much I bought an extra copy and will give it to you, FREE, if you read this blog item
Kim Severson, one of the New York Times’ best feature writers (I hope you’ve been reading all her great stuff, not only in the Dining In/Dining Out section but also on the front page once in a while), has a new food memoir out, called Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life. I got…
Read MoreSNL Homowatch: 4/10 (Tina Fey) … PLUS a very quick look back at some March reruns
Welcome back for another review of Saturday Night Live‘s propensity to make jokes about homos. Click here for my reason for doing this and also, please think twice about telling me to lighten up, because I already have. Anyway, this feature might soon have to snuff itself out. The Tina Fey episode was almost entirely…
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