I just saw the new movie “Star Trek Into Darkness” and now I’ve got celluloid agita. Please indulge me whilst I try to articulate my discomfort (oh yeah, requisite spoiler alert: blah blah blah). I’ve gotta admit, I went into the theater a little defensive; after all I remembered what happened to Vulcan in the first movie back […]
As a kid, I liked football. I had no idea that baseball could be equally (or even more) exciting. In LA, we had the Rams, who had just been to the Super Bowl. Then there was the Lakers, with Magic Johnson and Kareem (though I preferred Michael Cooper and his majestic 3-pointers). Baseball…. the Dodgers, […]
By the late ‘90’s I had realized things were not what they seemed. There needed to be a change, things had gotten stagnant. Not being very good at self-delusion, I knew there had to be an alternative. Historically, I had been an imperfect student to an imperfect teacher. My mom was like the mom in […]
Some people are born and grow up in one place, sometimes even one house. Then there are others who move a couple of times, maybe even to different cities. Then there’s my family. We moved around like neurotic nomads from place to place within cities; and then from coast to coast, ricocheting back and forth […]
I’ve been watching a great series on Netflix recently, “The Story of Film,” a multipart look at everything having to do with movies from the 1890’s to the present. Some of the history I knew (remembering local lore as an old Hollywood resident) but some things I didn’t (like that the great director Jean Renoir […]
Like a fledgling sea turtle released too soon into the wild, at age nineteen I inserted myself into the swift moving currents of diverse humanity in 1980’s New York. Of course at the time I didn’t know this one critical fact – I had been the recipient of inadequate preparation. Existing in a world quite […]
My Uncle Larry came to stay with us for a while in Hollywood. I was happy because I would finally have a straight-shooting male role model that I could look up to. I didn’t even mind giving up my bed (with its cool Superman bedspread) to him while I took a spot on the floor […]
I’ve been in and out of health food stores for almost twenty years and seen so many people come and go they’d probably fill Key Arena. I could look around this arena and easily not remember more than half of them. Of the ones I do remember, there was Kitty, and Squanch, and a self-described […]
I really liked those early shifts at Perelandra Natural Foods; especially the ones in the summer when the Yanks had a home afternoon game. I’d get up early, still dark out; and wait on the Avenue J platform for the D train, making its way from a deserted Coney Island (it being only 5am). Depending […]
Mary had been with me everywhere. The ups, the downs, the countless moves to different cities and states. I couldn’t shake her. My sibling barnacle knew all my moves and how to push all my buttons. She was my rival, always nearby, a sentient shadow. And one day when we were coming back from Baskin-Robbins 31 Flavors I just, well, snapped. A moment later when I realized where I was, all I saw was my little sister (not even one whole year younger than me – clinging stubbornly close even in age) lying there