Taken from “Inside the Actors’ Studio”, this is the 10-question quiz that closes every interview on the show. Anyone who has watched the show finds him or herself answering these questions anyway, so here’s my response. I originally posted this on Facebook in 2009 when I was 57 years old, still living in Southern California …
When historians look back on the damage Donald Trump did to America and the world, much of the blame should go to a name few people even consider now. A man named Mark Burnett. Burnett is essentially the Godfather of Reality Television, starting with “Survivor” in the summer of 2000. “Survivor” was a true phenomenon …
Short takes from a journey through a disorganized mind: During the five years I was a full-time newspaper columnist in Southern California, there were occasionally times I felt like commenting on subjects that weren’t worth a whole column. So I threw several different subjects into one piece under the “short takes” heading. That’s how I …
A short post that seems more than a little bit strange to me: I have been having a great deal of trouble sleeping at night lately, mostly for stress reasons. The one time I consistently manage to get some sleep is after breakfast until about noon. Of course, that’s after not sleeping all from about …
There are all sorts of things I used to do, things I really enjoyed doing, that I never do anymore. Yes, that too, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. I used to love playing baseball. I never played on an organized team, but I was pretty good at bat and in the field. …
Never a great athlete, but I was a pretty good one Read More »
As a student of American history — particularly political history — it’s fascinating to see how people saw things at different times. The chart above appeared in the November 1st, 1948, edition of Life magazine, just before the 1948 presidential election. It didn’t include Harry Truman, who was president at the time, or the two …
Whether or not it was a blessing, for most of my life I looked younger than I was. I had friends who were growing beards by their early 20s. Not only couldn’t I do that, I was in my early 30s before I had to shave more than two or three times a week. I …
Her name was Chrissie and she was the first girl I ever really loved. The time we had together was wonderful — I was 20, she was 18 — and did so much for me, although the way it ended might have been the one thing that knocked my life off track for good. Before …
Picking the worst time possible to be a tough guy Read More »
There aren’t many major American cities I haven’t at least passed through in 76 years. In fact, when I look at the list of the 50 largest cities by population as of 2024, there are only five I haven’t at least seen and two of them are in Arizona. The only one of the top …
It was April 19, 1975, and I was at a wedding reception. A friend had put together what we now call a mix tape, and the song playing at that moment was Jackson Browne’s “Ready or Not.” The song is about a young man learning that his live-in girlfriend is pregnant, and it was a …
