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Holding the Line

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A year ago today, the phone stopped ringing. This is the one year anniversary of my brother Peter’s death, and like so many other events in my life, I can’t believe how fast the time has flown by. It seems like it was just last week that I was sitting on my couch when I got a phone call from my niece that began with the words, “I have terrible news.” I couldn’t begin to imagine what the problem was, and then she said, “My father passed.” “Peter?” I shouted, jumping off the couch, as if I were hoping it would be somebody else. But it wasn’t. My brother was gone. My God, what a terrible day that was. I started making phone calls, and then my sister and I went to Manhattan to tell our aunt what had happened, because there was no way we were going to tell her that terrible news over the phone. I still miss his daily calls. I keep hoping I’ll see his name flash across my iPhone, even though I know that’s never going to happen. I later learned that Peter had b...
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Speak On It

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Okay, I’m going to watch this video just one more time — I promise. Last month, Saturday Night Live ran a sketch called “ Fashion District Robbery ,” and I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard at an SNL bit. I’ve been watching the late night comedy show since those early days in 1975 with the likes of John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, Gilda Radner, and Chevy Chase — although I never thought that guy was funny. There were great sketches like the Killer Bees, the Coneheads, and the Jaws parody about the landshark. There have been ten presidential administrations since SNL debuted on Oct. 11, 1975, and that first episode is now the subject of a Netflix film I’m planning to watch. The show has also spawned a British adaptation, SNL UK, which premiered on March 21. Interestingly enough, Curtin said in a 2023 interview with People that she had watched an early show and “not one thing was funny.” “I think it was just one of those, you had to be there ...
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Exit, Stage Crazy

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At some point this morning, I decided to give myself a break. “You know,” I told myself, “it doesn’t have to be so awful.” Yes, how about that? I really could stop tearing into myself. After all those hours of abuse, it would be so nice to ease up on the misery, wouldn’t it? Now all I had to do was believe it. The cause behind this latest emotional assault began Saturday night when I attended BKOne’s production of John Patrick Shanley’s 1984 play Savage in Limbo at Industry City, a massive warehousing and manufacturing complex in Sunset Park that dates back to 1918. The property was pretty much deserted for the longest time, but now it’s home to restaurants, bars, and all kinds of businesses — including the theater. The play focuses on a group of former parochial-school classmates who get together at a rundown neighborhood bar in the Bronx. They’re all 32 years old, they have empty lives, they rip into themselves and each other, and they talk about changing fo...
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Baggage Claim

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I thought my dreams were weird. Over the weekend, I watched Dream Scenario , Nicolas Cage’s 2023 movie about an ordinary schlub whose life becomes a nightmare after strangers suddenly start seeing him in their dreams. The hero, Paul Matthews, is a college professor who initially enjoys his strange celebrity and sees an opportunity to publish his long‑delayed book. But things go horribly wrong when people start dreaming that Paul is attacking — and even murdering — them. He quickly becomes a pariah to his neighbors, students, and even his family. It’s a strange and, at times, disturbing film, but I enjoyed it. It reminded me of Charlie Kaufman, the writer of Adaptation , Being John Malkovich , and Synecdoche, New York. The plot resembles a supposedly real event compiled on the website “Ever Dream This Man?”, created by Italian advertiser Andrea Natella. He claimed that more than 3,000 people had dreamed of the same man repeatedly for years, with the first case registered in Ne...
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Boarding Pass

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I wish I could remember that young man’s name. I was just thinking of this fellow I met at the end of my vacation to Denver and Nebraska last October. It was quite a trip. I had finally kept a promise to myself by going out to the Cornhusker State, and I got to meet up with my family in the Mile High City. Not bad, I thought, reaching around to give myself an imaginary pat on the back. And now it was time to go home, which meant getting on an airplane, of course, which, in turn, meant I was a nervous wreck. Things had gotten off to a rickety start when the airport’s automated train system got stuck in the tunnel as I was heading to the JetBlue terminal. Being a New Yorker, I immediately had a flashback to far too many subway shutdowns I’d experienced over the years. Now that I work from home, those incidents are much less frequent, but the anger remains in the wings just waiting to take center stage. So, the one time I come to Denver, the goddamn train system goes down, ...
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The Old Ball Game

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On June 21, 1968, Chief Justice Earl Warren submitted his resignation to President Lyndon Johnson after 15 years as the nation’s highest‑ranking judicial officer. On the same day, the St. Lawrence Seaway was closed after operating and maintenance workers went on strike. Hugo Vihlen, an airline pilot from Florida, ended his 4,100‑mile solo trans‑Atlantic voyage 25 miles from shore on this day and came home aboard a fishing yacht to a hero's reception. He had been within 6 miles of Miami the night before, when his six‑foot sailboat, April Fool , was pushed back to sea by offshore winds and the currents of the Gulf Stream. The single‑handed sailor had started his 84‑day voyage from Casablanca, Morocco, on March 29 of that year. Mort Sahl was appearing nightly—except Mondays—at the Village Gate through June 30, and My Fair Lady , starring Fritz Weaver and Inga Swenson, was showing at N.Y. City Center. In the world of fashion, Satori’s in Mamaroneck, NY, was selling Nehru ...
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Eighth Wonder

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“Hey, do you remember Intercrime Island?” I ran the question by my brother Peter to see if he could recall a key element from 8th Man , one of our favorite cartoons when we were growing up. It was just another one of these strange memory flashes I have when something from my past pops into my head for no apparent reason and I can’t shake it out. Of course, I didn’t get an answer since Peter died nearly a year ago, but I was feeling pretty low and a bit isolated, so I addressed my question to an empty chair on the other side of my kitchen table. This is the first Easter without him, as the Curse of the First rolls along. I’ve written before about chair work, a method of processing trauma, grief or personal tensions where you speak to an empty chair and imagine it’s someone from your life who is no longer here. I’ve done this with my mother, and though I did a lot of sobbing, I found it to be quite helpful. Usually, I make my chair work practice a solemn occasion and do...
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