Spin

There’s a crazy homeless lady yelling obscenities outside my window. I hate callously tossing around words like “crazy” and “homeless”– that could be someone’s grandmother outside – but she’s got a schizophrenic gait to her speech, see-sawing from sing-song to Banshee. That’s the “crazy.” And she parked her shopping cart of worldly possessions next to [...]

Tipping (Isn’t a City in China)

Allan soured his face as I explained his duties as the bus driver for today: keep your phone on. Answer the calls. Make sure you’re constantly looping back here from LAX — don’t just stay at the airport. He had this “I-can’t-believe-my-lot-in-life-is-driving-a-bus” expression on his face. The sentiment seeped into his posture, and into his [...]

Stories You Were Born to Tell

“MODERN FAMILY: there’s a show I feel like I was born to write,” my friend said to me. “It’s like, I can anticipate every. Single. Joke. Before they get to the punch line, I already see the set-up and I know the payoff.” Makes me think of watching cage fights, with George St. Pierre or [...]

Advice

“My catchall, general advice to everyone who moves out to Los Angeles is this: if there’s anything else you can do, anything else that’s your calling, go do that instead. It’s a pat answer,” he admitted, “but this is just too hard…” Which immediately raises the question: why is it hard? Because people will be [...]