Six years ago today my father dropped dead of a heart attack while running on the treadmill at the gym. He was 59. He had run his whole life, or at least from the time, at age 7, he ran away from the Catholic orphanage in which he’d been deposited by his widowed mother who […]
"Well she didn't lick it off a brick!"
Apparently this is what one of my white-trashier relatives proclaimed during my Broadway debut. I was 9 years old. She was using her outdoor voice. No one had any idea what she meant.
Turns out, I'm of minstrel descent. My great-grandfather was in vaudeville. Although the penurious disposition managed to skip two generations, I came out of the womb with jazz hands and a tuft of orange hair. My family could no longer ignore the two shameful twists in our DNA they'd spent eras trying to straighten out. They'd spawned a redheaded actress.
As if that wasn't enough I've never been able to keep my clothes on.
This is my blog. You should read it every day.
My mother’s grandfather was in vaudeville. Every Christmas her Pappy perpetuated the Santa ruse with aplomb. My mom was a champion of truth and justice from a young age. Each year she intuited that something was afoot, that Santa’s lap was very reminiscent of another she was used to bounce upon, and inquired after the […]
Unbelievably the London sun was shining again. It was late morning, GMT, and light filtered through my windows, strong enough to penetrate the drapery but not so strong as to penetrate the diaphanous folds of my sleep. I dreamed, brow furrowed into a point above my nose, lips pursed not for a kiss but for […]
For years I was a coffee virgin. Unlike those Gilmore girls and their fashionably profuse coffee intake, I’d not so much as enjoyed mocha ice cream I was so java-free. My mother was a tea drinker exclusively and Dad’s liquid diet consisted only of Pepsi and Heineken. I was ignorant of any other universe of […]
When I was little I called Debbie Reynolds “Mom.” I was in a show with Harve Presnell, an actor my generation would probably most recognize as Mr. Springbrook from “Old School” or as Wade Gustafson from “Fargo.”
Long before those films he was my Daddy Warbucks. 8 times a week he rescued me from an orphanage. […]
I take out a pristine page of original crown mill, finest quality, cream laid, Loire pink writing paper and a fountain pen with gray ink. My letter is entitled “In the Event of My Death.”
Having few assets, and less concern for finances, my will (already unique in its penmanship) consists mostly of funereal requests. My […]
He was a pile of sand. I held it in my hands (as carefully as it is possible to hold something that is not really something but millions of little things that don’t stick together). It kept slipping through my fingers.
Eventually my palms were empty. But there was always persistent and residual grit in socks, […]
My feet and I go climbing ev’ry night
Up rocks that reach too high for dreams to go
Eyelids flutter and the breath comes in deep
Callus on marley, rosin under toe
Palms that ache only to part soft water
Blankets rise and fall to the resting heart
Racing my foes, racing the fish, running
Given away by a tic of a […]
In one year I flew between New York City and London 16 times. I could afford it because everyone in the autumn of 2001 was afraid to fly. I mostly flew Kuwait Air. They had brocade seats and served lamb korma and I never once had less than three seats in a row […]
I first decided to attend the British American Drama Academy at Oxford as an excuse to inspect a country that had inscrutably made its way into my psyche. Post-punk music, Merchant Ivory films and Evelyn Waugh novels had given up whispering and begun to scream at me. So had Gus Hardy, a still obscure English […]
