I’m not one of those literary types with a “Kill Your Television” bumper sticker on my Volvo station wagon. I don’t own a Volvo, I’ve never quite identified as a literary type, and I happen to like TV. There are juicy dramas like Mad Men whose writing is better than most current movie screenplays. There…
“Hey, you know that piece,”—[singing]—“what is it?” my friend asked. “Hmm. Schubert, I think.” She sang some more, and I knew I was toast. The melody would haunt me until I found out for sure what it was and who wrote it. So much of the information we want is available online and from books: …
A funny thing happened recently while I was giving my dog a haircut. I had planted myself next to him, trimming as much as possible before he could object. Suddenly I realized I was getting overly zealous on his left hind leg. Mind you, his hair wasn’t extra-long there. It was simply that the left…
How is it that it took me the better part of a week to enter an online novel writing contest? You have to understand that the manuscript is ready to go; I didn’t have to complete, revise or polish it in order to submit it. I’d already honed my synopsis, pitch and bio. And I…
You start poking around to make dinner. You go to the fridge and pull out some fresh produce. At the sound of the vegetable drawer opening, your dog trots over and starts barking, reasoning that if it’s late afternoon and stuff is being taken out, a raw carrot, his favorite treat, cannot be far behind.…
Start with a father whose retail LP record shop sits at the corner of Bancroft and Telegraph in Berkeley, just opposite the Cal campus, during what’s generally called “the turbulent 1960s.” This father of yours has a violent temper and an abiding skepticism of institutions of higher learning. Mostly, though, he’s known as that short,…
how do I use a payphone – can I just put a quarter in and achieve a dialtone Such was the Instant Message I got from my college junior one recent evening on my laptop. I won’t dwell on how close I was to typing back, all in caps, “What!? You don’t know how to…
It all started when my sister Deborah gave me a birthday card of four older women in swimsuits holding hands with each other and wading out into the ocean, their backs to the camera. “Like the four of us!” she pointed out, as if an explanation were necessary. “Yeah, let’s hope when the Braver sisters…
“I have never believed that everything happens for a reason. But I do feel very strongly that everything happens so that it can be turned into a column.”—Gail Collins, “The Breast Brouhaha,” November 18, 2009, New York Times Am I a worrier? It hardly seems worth asking; my pedigree is impeccable. My forebears worried about…
A recent front-page article in the S.F. Chronicle explained a crucial connection between inadequate sleep and depression among teens. Rather than merely being a hallmark of depression, as was previously thought, sleep deprivation may actually be one cause of the condition. I must have needed some comic relief after taking in the body of this…