One of the many destructive realities of working in a corporate-dominated economy, besides the political graft that’s dismantling democracy, is that corporations have no interest in memory. The one that originally published this interview I did with Anthony Bourdain in February 2011 has already purged it from its archives in pursuit of other failed projects… Read more »
As they have done for 89 years since, Rudolph Valentino’s fans gathered at 12:10 pm in the mausoleum at Hollywood Forever Cemetery to pay tribute—songs, praise, sermons about the eternal life of fame.
Dreams do come true, and sometimes wilder than anyone could have imagined them, but sometimes they have to lay dormant—or get left behind, or rot, or even be given to someone else—for a long time before they can.
You may think the musical Oklahoma! is a sweet little show about friendly farmers and cowmen, but I’ve got an arousing awakening for you. Oklahoma! is drenched in sexual innuendo, rape metaphor, and bestiality references. After all, the whole plot revolves around who gets to take Laurey to the “box social” — a coded consummation… Read more »
My recent silence has everything to do with travel. I was on The Golden Trudge. I took a trip to Peru, where I visited Cusco and did the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. When I tell people what I’ve been up to, many of them coo and instantly ask to hear all about it. So… Read more »
At least, it was when it began. It was in the Depression of 1873. A few years before, a bunch of greedy New York bankers artificially jacked up the price of gold, causing a financial panic and sending America into a slump that lasted for years. (Sounding familiar yet?) Anyway, at the time, France was… Read more »
Long before you lived here, America was a land of many towns. Our expansive “agrarian society” was barely a society at all, really, save for a loosely connected sense of similar place and purpose. And each place had its own time on the clock. When it was 9:00 am in your town, it could be… Read more »
On Tuesday, the Disney Store makes a triumphant official grand opening in Times Square, shutting down the so-called “Crossroads of the World” with an appearance by a rodent that’s huge even by Manhattan standards. The store has been open to customers for the past few days. I went, and although I’m pleased to see that… Read more »
Today was the only time I have ever had to cross a protest line to see a musical. As I approached the Lyceum Theatre on 45th Street for today’s matinée of The Scottsboro Boys, I could see the shapes of banners, and I could hear a chant emerge from the noise around Times Square: Scottsboro… Read more »
My mother and I have an ongoing argument. “Life was simpler in the ’50s, Jay. It really was,” she says. I call baloney on that. Just think about what the ’50s offered Western culture: atomic bomb terrors, the HUAC, segregation, women who lived in fear of unwanted pregnancies and could only choose from a few… Read more »