I’m trying my hand at directing a play this month, a short play, which is an interesting experience. I haven’t directed since college, and I didn’t do it particularly well then.

Well, well is a strange word to use if I’m going to acknowledge that my value judgments kind of necessarily change as I get older. Ubu Roi wasn’t exactly successful in ( Read more... )

When you have a dog (and I am talking about my roommate’s dog, who was something of a common responsibility) you have an animal with a heightened sense of dependence. It is not really worth exploring this statement too deeply, because everyone knows this and it is discussed about as frequently as dogs themselves. It is the crux of the dog/cat ( Read more... )

It’s weird to think of what to call this place. I’ve never liked LA, even before my family moved here, and when they did move here I was living on my own 3000 miles away, so I have no connection to it. But then I don’t feel enough attachment to New York to know what to call it, either. Here, my dad is reading The Five Big Lies About American ( Read more... )

I didn’t have my camera on me at the time, but yesterday I went to visit my friend Sam, who lives a stone’s throw from the Park Place S stop in Brooklyn, and from the street there you can see a spray-painted slogan on the train’s bridge that reads:

SOUP T.V.I will provide pictorial representation soon. Incidentally, did you know there is no such ( Read more... )

In November, as I have brought to the attention of everyone I have talked to in the past month, I adopted a toad. I am just pleased as punch about this. She is a lovely toad, though understandably a little skittish. I think she needs a little more living space, and maybe a rock to burrow under and a bit of hollow log to hide in. I am doing my ( Read more... )

A couple of stickers from the F train that tickled my fancy:


( Read more... )

I knew voting was a mistake when I did it, and now (as Malcolm X might say) my chickens have come home to roost. Now Mike Bloomberg thinks I am the kind of person who really likes to vote, and he has fallen head-over-heels in love with me. He sends me full-color love notes printed on good paper almost every day. Every other website I visit has ( Read more... )

Recently at my old college, a young woman was singled out by a psychopath, shot and killed quite deliberately in a public place. This was a horrible bit of news to hear, mitigated only slightly by the update that the school had canceled its scheduled Spring Fling concert slated for later that day. I learned of the whole saga by email: I was ( Read more... )

I saw a movie I really liked recently, called Let The Right One In. It’s really a phenomenal bit of storytelling, but I think what I like best about it (and this is saying something, because as I said, I really liked it) is the experience of talking about it with other people. It’s gotten to the point where I get really anxious to tell people I’ ( Read more... )

My friend Katey recently asked me to explain the phenomenon of House, or more specifically what there is in the show to get hooked on, and more specifically still how and why I have become so smitten. It’s a loaded question ripe-to-bursting with condescension, since it implies (though she also explicitly stated) that she knows quite a few people ( Read more... )