Hello. I’m Gavin Edwards, the public speaker and the New York Times-bestselling author of The Tao of Bill Murray, the ’Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy series, and Kindness and Wonder: Why Mister Rogers Matters Now More Than Ever. If you’re interested in hiring me, click here for more information.
What, you say that’s six weeks from now? Well, my article on the Halloween parties thrown by Neil Patrick Harris and his fiancé David Burtka is out now in Food & Wine, and since I wrote it almost a year ago, I’m not inclined to wait any longer to let you know about it. You can read “A Delicious & Demonic Halloween” online–but I recommend the lavish eight-page layout on glossy paper, if you’re near a copy anytime soon. Also: it’s never too early to stock up on Halloween candy.
There’s an area in Runyon Canyon (a mostly vertical park in Los Angeles) where somebody has arranged stones into a large spiral; it takes a few minutes to walk to the center. There’s also some loose stones nearby, which have usually been arranged to spell a word or two, anything from “ROCK” to “LUST.” Recently, there was an arrangement I found moving but unlikely to affect life in Moscow:
1. The Clash, “London Calling”
2. Randy Newman, “Lousiana 1927”
3. Led Zeppelin, “When the Levee Breaks”
4. Johnny Cash, “Five Feet High and Rising”
5. Bob Dylan, “Down in the Flood”
A quick byline update on two articles I wrote that were published in Rolling Stone in recent weeks: pieces on the Killers and Ke$ha. Both acts have new albums coming out this fall. Only one of the interviews took place in bed.
Monday night I checked out the XX (or, if you prefer, the xx), who kicked off their U.S. tour at the storied Henry Fonda Theater in Hollywood. I then stayed up late to write about the show–but you can see the fruits of my labor right now on the Rolling Stone website.
Christina Aguilera: Jerry Lee Lewis
Max Martin: Lennon / McCartney
Ke$ha: The Rolling Stones
Pink: The Kinks
Katy Perry: The Beach Boys
Dr. Luke: Phil Spector
Robyn: Love
Avril Lavigne: The Doors
Miley Cyrus: The Dave Clark Five
Rebecca Black: Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs
Madonna: Chuck Berry
Howdy, New York Times readers. If you came here looking for mondegreens, I suggest you try clickinghere. And if not, then this is a moment for me to say how cool it was to do a sidebar in the Times Magazine this past Sunday with five of my favorite misheard lyrics: it’s always weird and wonderful when different aspects of life (my professional life, in this case) crash into each other.
A couple of years ago, I started writing the alphabet just about every day. Specifically, whenever my kids were drawing with chalk on the sidewalk outside our house, I would write the twenty-six letters of the alphabet in one of the pavement squares. It was two minutes of lexical graphic-design jazz–or it was me goofing around. I photographed some of them; here are three examples.
What, you say that’s six weeks from now? Well, my article on the Halloween parties thrown by Neil Patrick Harris and his fiancé David Burtka is out now in Food & Wine, and since I wrote it almost a year ago, I’m not inclined to wait any longer to let you know about it. You can read “A Delicious & Demonic Halloween” online–but I recommend the lavish eight-page layout on glossy paper, if you’re near a copy anytime soon. Also: it’s never too early to stock up on Halloween candy.
