personal history
Hard To Swallow
Emergency colon surgery, complications from that surgery that ruined my legs, and a couple of life-threatening infections had quickly transformed extremely independent me into someone not very independent at all. I’d been in a hospital bed for five weeks, just the start of three and a half months in medical facilities. Early on, a tube […]
Hallucination #2: Improv
A series of recollected hallucinations from my early weeks of hospitalization, 2016. A nursing assistant — who I believe was an actual fellow at Hoboken University Medical Center — was placing me in some odd situations. The clearest one was an after-hours party, which seemed to be held at a motel, yet it was still […]
The Wit and Wisdom of Lee Israel, Vol. 7 (May 2012)
I try to post these more often than, you know, every 11 months, but medical and then technological difficulties kept me away from my stash of electronic correspondence with Lee Israel. Since we were last here, Melissa McCarthy was spotted in New York, dressed as Lee, as filming finally began on Can You Ever Forgive […]
Hallucination #1: Harry Connick Jr.
Memories of the first seven weeks of my lengthy hospitalization range from spotty to non-existent. However, a series of vivid hallucinations during this period — end of August to mid-October, 2016 — are crystal clear in my mind. It’s likely I was suffering from a condition known as “ICU psychosis,” though other factors are certainly […]
Goodnight P.T. Barnum
This weekend, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus announced that after 146 years, they’d be folding up the tents and coming to town no more. It was pretty shocking news to see. The circus just seemed like one of those forever things. But I guess forever ain’t what it used to be. When I […]
The Wit and Wisdom of Lee Israel, Vol. 6 (Apr. 2012)
Last week we learned that the movie based on Lee’s memoir is, in fact, still very much alive! (Unlike Lee herself.) Nicole Holofcener’s script will still be used, but she is no longer directing — the reins have been turned over to Marielle Heller, whose debut effort, 2015’s Diary of a Teenage Girl, impressed me. […]
Album Review: ‘Now’ by Speed The Plough
4 stars out of 5 Click to purchase on 180-gram vinyl (with download code) A silhouette of a baying coyote in a bathtub. I first saw that compelling logo during my junior year in high school, on the Full Time Men record sleeve. I bought that EP at the Princeton Record Exchange because Peter Buck […]
Movie Review: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
4 stars out of 5 I was 8 years old when the original Star Wars came out and like everybody else I knew, I was all in. Poster on my bedroom wall, action figures, comic books. I loved trying to draw R2-D2. My dad took me into San Francisco one day to meet Darth Vader, […]
The Wit and Wisdom of Lee Israel, Vol. 5 (Mar. 2011 – Mar. 2012)
Today would’ve been Lee Israel’s birthday, and we are soon approaching the anniversary of her death. Like Elvis, Michael Jackson, Andy Kaufman, Tupac, etc., Lee’s had quite the posthumous year. To recap: Times obituary, announcement of a movie based on her book starring reigning Oscar-winner Julianne Moore to be written and directed by Nicole Holofcener, […]
Bye Bye Benny
In March of 1994, my buddy Joe and I signed a lease on a Hoboken apartment. We went to a pizza place called Benny Tudino’s to celebrate, sitting at a booth in the back room. That became our regular table, and every Sunday night that both of us were in town, we’d be there splitting […]
Jack Silbert, curator