My first solo road trip was impulsive: On an October Monday three years ago, while exorcising heartbreak in Los Angeles and anxiously awaiting news on a script I’d written, I decided to visit a music industry friend 2,000 miles away in Nashville, Tennessee. As I drove into Nevada, I saw one rainbow after another, six […]
My sister and I have always loved the Jews. That’s why when she got sick, I knew I had to steal Allen Ginsberg’s soup for her. I wouldn’t have had to steal anything if Isaac had stuck around. My sister met him on J Date last year, and he more than lived up to his […]
I have been writing and dating for roughly the same amount of time now: 21 years. Both pursuits involve sharing your most hidden self with another person who, in the beginning at least, is a complete unknown. It’s terrifying, embarrassing and pure, gilded magic, which is why we continue to bare ourselves, even in the […]
I’ve never been one for “friends with benefits.” I know the concept works for a lot of women, but to me it suggests resignation: getting it on with a dude who’s only around because you both lack better alternatives. I don’t envy the girlfriend whose neighbor coaxes her over for a lackluster couch fumble with […]
The kids are not alright. The short film IRL makes this clear in just 17 minutes. DirectorGrant Singer, an up-and-coming music video director (Sky Ferreira, The Soft Moon), and writer Patrik Sandberg, who moonlights as an editor at V magazine, have created a stark-but-stylized portrait of their life in NYC, starring indie ingénue Sky Ferreira as a lost girl […]
Dear Santa, I know I haven’t written to you in a few years (okay, so like thirty), and it probably seems a little fair weather of me to turn up now, but I only want two things this holiday season, both kind of hard to ask for, so there’s nowhere else to go. May I […]
WHAT TO DO It’s impossible to keep a city like New Orleans down. Long known for its raucous, free-spirited mélange of cultures, cuisines and musical genres, as well as half a dozen truly inspired annual excuses to party, including of course, Mardi Gras (February) and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, or Jazz Fest […]
WHAT TO DO Shanghai is a city of contrasts, which makes it a particularly tantalizing locale to explore. In recent years, an explosion of luxury hotels, upscale shops, and vibrant nightlife has given the city an international glamor that is quickly making it one of the premier destinations in Asia. At the same time, pockets […]
Angel kisses. That’s what my Grammy called my freckles when I was a little girl. And what my great-grandmother called my mom’s freckles when she was a little girl. Unfortunately, our Grammys can’t be with us all of the time, and much of the universe lacks their confectioners’-sugar-dusted worldview. Where I grew up, in mid-coast […]
For twenty years, we were mostly silent. Hardly even speaking with each other about “the shooting” this black hole, which we moved away from in time, and yet, which we never really seemed to get further away from. Still shadowing our lives as it did with the fact that one of our own had hated […]