Well, as you may have heard, there’s a pandemic going on. One sad side effect of that is that it didn’t seem like a good idea to do in-person bookstore readings in recent months: I love meeting readers and signing books, but I’m not such a big fan of hosting superspreader events. The unexpected silver […]
posted 20 January 2022 in Buy My Stuff, Outside. no comments yet
Three decades ago, my first job in publishing was as a proofreader at the (big, glossy, squarebound, massively profitable) PC Magazine. I shared a cubicle with Eric Berlin, a young playwright and theater critic, and we killed time when we were waiting for page proofs (exciting stuff like laboratory tests of hundreds of almost-identical printers) […]
posted 18 January 2022 in Outside. no comments yet
Falling behind on your holiday shopping? There is a one-stop solution: copies of Bad Motherfucker for every man, woman, and child you know. My biography of Samuel L. Jackson is available everywhere books are sold, including your local bookstore. Or if you’d like to buy it from my local bookstore, Park Road Books in Charlotte, […]
posted 9 December 2021 in Buy My Stuff. no comments yet
I am motherfucking delighted to let you know that my book about Samuel L. Jackson, Bad Motherfucker, is on sale now. It’s a deep dive into his fascinating life, into his filmography of 140-plus movies, and into the meaning of cool in the 21st century. (It also has dozens of amazing artists reimagining the posters […]
posted 27 October 2021 in Buy My Stuff, Links. 1 comment
Gladys Knight & the Pips, “Midnight Train to Georgia” Albert Hammond, “It Never Rains in Southern California” Bob Seger, “Hollywood Nights” Guns N’ Roses, “Welcome to the Jungle” Dionne Warwick, “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” By my count, that’s two songs where the singer got chewed up by L.A., one where it […]
posted 16 September 2021 in Tasty Bits. no comments yet
The first obituary I ever wrote for The New York Times was back in 2017: the subject was Charlie Watts, the quietly indispensable drummer for the Rolling Stones. (To the best of my knowledge, he never missed a gig in over 50 years, although there are [bizarrely] a few Stones tracks he doesn’t drum on, […]
posted 13 September 2021 in Articles. no comments yet
On September 11, 2001, I lived in lower Manhattan, one block away from the World Trade Center. I wrote a long letter to friends about what had happened to me that day: if you’re interested in my experiences very close to the center of the tragedy, you can read that letter here. Twenty years later, […]
posted 11 September 2021 in Archives. no comments yet
I recently wrote two obituaries in The New York Times on two amazing musicians with very different sensibilities: Johnny Ventura and Nanci Griffith. Johnny Ventura was a mainstay of modern merengue, while Nanci Griffith was one of the great folk-music voices of recent decades. They were both grounded by their homes–the Dominican Republic and Texas, […]
posted 16 August 2021 in Articles, Outside. no comments yet
Back in 1995 (or thereabouts), I made something—a mixtape? an audio art project? an interstitial supercut? banter-o-rama? Well, I cut together an hour-long cassette tape that was sufficiently its own thing that a quarter-century later, I’m still not sure what to call it. It did have a name, which was Having Fun On Stage With […]
posted 23 July 2021 in Unpublished. 3 comments
I have a new book coming out, called Bad Motherfucker: The Life and Movies of Samuel L. Jackson, the Coolest Man in Hollywood. It’ll be published by Hachette Books on October 19, but until then, I invite you to judge the book by its cover. You say you want to preorder now? Well, I can’t […]
posted 17 June 2021 in Buy My Stuff. no comments yet
