Category: glamorous

My Glamorous Life

  • My First Job

    My First Job

    I was a teenage telemarketer. Reading from a script, I attempted to raise money for St. Jude’s Hospital for Leukemia-Stricken Children. I was fired after three days for departing from the script.  We were supposed…

  • My Night With Essl

    My Night With Essl

    Herewith, a scene from last night’s interview with legendary web & book designer (and Dean of The Cooper Union School of Art) Mike Essl, who shared his portfolio, career highlights, early web design history, and…

  • A little vitreous humor

    A little vitreous humor

    Vitreous humor lines the backs of our eyeballs. We are born with a full supply of the stuff, but as we age, it begins to dry out or evaporate or some damn thing—the ophthalmologist shining…

  • The ship and the city

    The ship and the city

    I DREAMED I’d boarded a ship that was slowly making its way to an exotic vacation locale, somewhere on the other side of the world. I’d bought a giant new steamer trunk for the voyage.…

  • A thousand tiny pieces

    A thousand tiny pieces

    Snow White pushed a stack of ceramic espresso dishes off of the kitchen counter this morning, to see how many of them would smash into a thousand tiny pieces. The answer was most of them.

  • What’s your favorite season?

    What’s your favorite season?

    As a child, I loved summer—no school! I could stay indoors all day and read! But summer camp, which I dreaded, ended my romance with that season. Even as an adult, no longer forced “for…

  • My Life is a New Yorker Cartoon

    My Life is a New Yorker Cartoon

    “Why are you uncomfortable having a nonbinary cat?” …my teenage daughter demanded as we sat together on the couch.

  • In which I am vaccinated

    In which I am vaccinated

    Got vaccinated against COVID-19 today. Stood in line for just over 90 minutes outside a Lower East Side high school that was being used as an immunization pod. There was an old couple in front…

  • My Glamorous Life: Sunday Repairs

    My Glamorous Life: Sunday Repairs

    For about a week, now, my bedroom floor has been torn up due to under-floor flooding created by a malfunctioning window air conditioning unit. The A/C unit began leaking during the summer months when I…

  • Fear and loathing on 9/11

    Fear and loathing on 9/11

    A cheesily animated digital American flag was flying on the Jumbotron overlooking the Bellagio fountains.

  • Covid-19 Progress Report

    Covid-19 Progress Report

    I’m what they call a long-hauler.

  • Never give up

    Never give up

    The really good designers stand up to the misfortune of a killed idea.

  • Smash, Drag, Bang

    Smash, Drag, Bang

    The upstairs neighbors in my apartment building are having their flat renovated. Cue the daily floor sander (right over my head) and sledgehammer (apparently they have many walls to knock down). It’s loud enough to…

  • Day in the Life

    Day in the Life

    The chiming of my iPhone woke me from an afternoon of profound sleep marked by a long, unsettling dream involving basements. I’d taken to bed out of equal parts respect for my own exhaustion and…

  • It’s a good day.

    It’s a good day.

    I WHEEZED like a busted accordion after carrying a bag of empty bottles down the hall to the recycling room in my apartment building—a journey of no more than 20 paces in each direction. I…