Viva La Scene
This is a photo I snapped on a recent trip to New York. I was staying a few blocks away from the venerable Chelsea Hotel. At the time it seemed too cliché to photograph the Dylan Thomas plaque, but now I wish I had. Coincidentally, I was also reading Just Kids by Patti Smith, which […]
Virginia Center for the Creative Arts fellowship
Recently I learned that I’d been selected for a fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. I’m thrilled but still in disbelief. But ever since I heard that I would have two weeks this summer to do nothing but write, I’ve been on a writing roll. Amazing what a little encouragement does for […]
Tales of Marriage and Baggage
Last week I was lucky enough to tell a story at The Moth “Marriage” show in Santa Monica. I’m not someone who moved to Los Angeles to be an actor, although I love my actor and comedian friends and go to as many of their shows as I can. I don’t really want to be […]
The dreaded list
Lists of new year’s resolutions are the devil. The act of writing them down practically dooms the endeavor to failure. Keep it vague, and it’s just magical thinking, an amorphous wish to wake up with a new personality. Get too specific, and it becomes the incredibly detailed list of things you won’t do. At least […]
Wading
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy New Year to you. This season has plenty of conflicting religious and secular messages, so I thought it would be an appropriate time to post this piece. Published in 2005 in the journal Dovetail, it’s one aspect of how I handled religious ambiguity when my first child was learning […]
Of all the dim sum joints in all the world
This weekend we’re taking my mom out for dumplings at a wonderful Taiwanese restaurant in the San Gabriel Valley. It’s quite a schlep out there from West Los Angeles, so we don’t go as often as we would like to. But it’s my mom’s birthday, and she loves Chinese food, so that’s our destination. My […]
Christmas carol
Warning: mournful post ahead. Tonight after dinner, my mom played some Christmas carols on the piano as my kids read the new books I bought them at their school book fair. My husband read too, flipping through the picture books when the kids were finished. It was pretty idyllic, just what you might hope for […]
Cockroaches, Truth Telling, and Spalding Gray
Recently I went to a reading of the diaries of Spalding Gray put on by Writers Bloc LA . I became a fan of Spalding Gray over 20 years ago, when I discovered his book Sex and Death to the Age 14. I recently re-read it, and missed his voice all over again. Here’s why […]
