In the winter of 1976-77, my brother and I were obsessed with a dictionary-sized book published by the Reader’s Digest Association. (At that time, at age 9, I thought the magazine was pronounced “Reader’s Diggest,” meaning it was packed with articles that readers really dug, man. What can I say? The seventies were hard on […]
You don’t make jokes about a civil war, but I couldn’t read the papers this week without seeing some very dark humor at work in headlines like “Bombs, shootings fuel Iraq civil war fears.” As if what was going on in Iraq before Wednesday’s bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra was anything other than […]
An hour or so into Jonathan Demme’s Neil Young: Heart of Gold, the curtains close on last August’s live premiere of songs from Young’s latest album, Prairie Wind. They reopen on an encore set made up of a handful of hits and some less predictable album cuts, spanning most of his career, and running roughly […]
Thanks to a good friend, I’ve enjoyed about $120 worth of free lattes and sandwiches from Starbucks. His left over Christmas gift cards have found a much more needed home with me – a poor college student – than with his wealthy clients. But as much as I like walking into Starbucks and seeing Lane’s […]
A few years ago, as a fourth-year medical student, I did something naughty. Something you’re not supposed to do. I took something out of a patient’s chart. I only removed it for a few hours, but I left the hospital premises with it and made a color photocopy. No one knew that it ever was […]