I had a lot of fun yesterday at the annual Marymount Manhattan Writers’ Conference. First, I participated in a panel on Humor Writing hosted by my friend and benefactor Lewis Burke Frumkes, on which I was honored (a much-abused word, but in this case, totally appropriate) to join my friend Ben Cheever; Tony Hendra, whom …
Ladies and gentlemen, your brand new traffic-less Times Square. Much less life-threatening now. One of very favorite sites from an ever-rapidly disappearing Times Square: The old I. Miller Shoe Company on the northeast corner of West 46th Street and Times Square, a great shoe-supplier to the stage during the theatrical heyday of the 1920s, when …
Visiting London last January, I met a woman named Diane Wei Liang. A former management professor, a writer of detective novels, a mother of two, Liang was someone I had seen serving as a commentator of the BBC. I thought she might add an interesting perspective to an article I was writing about the rise …
“It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day. . . ‘’ 1967 will always be remembered for Sgt. Pepper and the Summer of Love, but I can never come across this day on the calendar without thinking of another song from that summer, the Raymond Carver-like short story that the beautiful Bobbie …
Sonda Andersson, an art director at SPY, posted on Facebook these photos taken sometime in the summer of 1989 at Kurt Anderson and Anne Kreamer‘s second home up near Carmel in Putnam County. Good to see all these shiny happy faces.
With the final class of my course in Magazine Writing at Marymount Manhattan College last night, I concluded my debut effort as a teacher. It was an enjoyable experience–certainly enjoyable enough that I’ll do it again next year. Thanks to the students who showed up and participated most enthusiastically for the last two months, including …
Yesterday I ran into my friend Larry Doyle on the corner of 42nd and Sixth. Larry said he had came to New York because he “just had to get out of Baltimore for a day.” Of course, I did that 36 years ago and never really returned, so perhaps someone should check to see if …
What should we make of Losing Mum and Pup, Christopher Buckley’s memoir of the that brief, less than a year-long period when both of his brilliant, charismatic parents fell ill and died? It is warm, affectionate, respectful, appropriately laudatory, and often quite moving. But it is also frank to point of indiscretion (some say past …
As Clive Owen put it in the brilliant last line of Children of Men, “What a day!” It started (late) with a very fine lunch at Bar American (the old Judson Grill at Seventh and 52nd) with my old and dear friend from Spy days, John Connolly, now a contributor to Vanity Fair, and his …
I met my pal Duane Swierczynski at a pub on East 36th Street yesterday (he picked the place, called The Ginger Man, because it was a.) good and b.) the unofficial hangout of his pals at Marvel Comics, which are two fine reasons, although it meant passing up the chance to visit the bar’s compellingly …