If I can get myself to do it, and the book will cooperate by being good, reading will stop me cold. So far this trip, I’ve blazed through Steve Martin’s outstanding Born Standing Up, hit half each of John Jantsch’s Duct Tape Marketing and Beth Lisick’s Helping Me Help Myself (both pretty good, in their [...]
April 2008
I’m no garden-variety L.A. idjit. Born and raised in Chicago, she of the fickle weather, I learned the value of layers early on. And, when traveling between October and July, of bringing an umbrella. But a hat? Who the hell brings a hat four days before May? Even to Chicago? Especially when one has an [...]
I feel like I’ve come back to life in the past 48 hours, and not just because I’m finally well-rested for the first time in four days. There is something about removing myself from the confines of my usual life, and the particularly tiny, triangulated footprint of computer/refrigerator/bathroom, that gets my juices flowing. I need [...]
As sort of an other-shoe-dropping, sister-post kind of thing, I’m using my space and time today to point out some people doing some significant things. Because (hangs head, kicks dirt with shoe) I’m ashamed to say that I’ve been thinking a wee bit too much about ME and how I can take ME to the [...]
You know I get panicky, PANICKY, I tell you, at the thought of going back on a promise to you. A promise like “I’m going to write 21 posts in a row, and put one up every day, and ain’t nothin’…nothin’ gonna stop me.” Well, fine. But something actually did. A trip I’d had planned [...]
I like to do things up right. And by right, I mean “meticulously.” There are times when meticulous is good: brain surgery leaps to mind, along with piloting aircraft, dentistry, riding a bicycle in L.A. and certain kinds of baking. Careful readers will note that none of these, or anything much like them, are among [...]
I’ve saved all my old journals. I’ve also saved my old emails, versions of résumés (both “regular” and acting-flavored), college papers, old-skool correspondence and of course, every post on this blog. My cocktail-party-joke reason is that I want to make life easier for my biographers. Similarly, I have been known to tell people to “save [...]
We are an always-on, go-get-’em kind of people these days. Most of us, anyway. Especially those of us stateside, who lack the perspective that thousands of years of history gives one. We’re a restless bunch, we Yanks: kind of sharklike in that always-moving-forward kinda way. Sometimes, it’s good to move forward. As the panel of [...]
There are strange gaps on my indulg-o-meter. I will think nothing of dropping 30 bucks on a subscription to Salon, a publication I can read at no cost to me whatsoever, save the annoyance of a little progressive-cause ad clutter, yet I doubt I have paid full price for a book since 1995. I squeeze [...]
Most times, I don’t really want to do x, where “x” = shower, work, walk, f*ck, sleep, cook and yes, write. Really. Relentlessly optimistic, workaholic, always-on me: most of the time, I’d just rather. . .not. Because. . . ? Because I don’t like feeling like I’m obligated. I don’t like feeling like anyone is [...]
