Finding the Fun in the Setting Sun

“One morning you wake up in Yuma, Arizona in this thing called a motorhome. The phone rings it’s a receptionist, she’s calling to confirm your appointment with the plastic surgeon.” While on stage the topic of the golden years of our lives needs to be approached carefully. Cliché is an epidemic hazard. As we approach […]

The Well Paid Truth Tellers…

They are paid to this work and now the peasants are in revolt.

Writing Comedy…

It is all in the words… After working on three novels, some 340,000 words, work that spans seven years, I’m trying to distill the essence into one hour. Someone has to do it. I spend seven years working on three novels and a reader will be done with all three in 30 hours, more or […]

Let that Sink In

Two Times as Much Fun We do not come into this world. We come out of the world like a leaf from a tree. I like that. We are not part of the world we are of this world. We belong. Writing long fiction is based upon everything that might be part of what […]

Princeton’s Epitaph to Democracy

“Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business
interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens
and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.”

Pull the Curtain Back and Take a Good Look

“Of course the irremediable bitterness in Picasso’s soul, the power of the inner sanction he felt later in life to wound and humiliate others, had to come in part out of the paradox that the paintings that brought him the greatest sums were precisely the works which had cost him the most miserable days of […]

Sunday aboard our Sailboat

What about a gentle breeze, warm sun and our dear friends Lori and RJ aboard our yacht Sweet Seas for an afternoon of conversation? While basking in the light, dining on guacamole, eating enlightened chips… toss in a beer, a glass of wine, steady beats from our favorite jazz station…. We do a […]

Yes, I’m the Great Pretender

Who are you kidding? Delusion abounds in this the age of information. We are deluded and misdirected in this ever increasingly complex civilization we have been born into. I try to understand economics. I read about the nuclear disaster at Fukushima. I listen to commentary on the radio. One friend is angry at labor unions. […]

I Feel like a Natural Woman

Do you listen to your body? Do you overrule yourself and go against instinct? If you are in an odd situation how do you feel your way through things? Moving from performing to writing and then back again I am reminded of this physical guidance system built into our nervous system. I put a scene […]

To Hell in a Handbasket By Do-Gooders

How mean and nasty are you? I’m well shy of criminal mean and nasty but then I’m not talking about crime, I mean more generally about disposition, the essential direction of your personality. I’ve seen perfectly rational individuals once they are inside the construct of a relationship find that they have a pretty short fuse. […]