Writing blog
Look for my essay in this Sunday New York Times Review section! There will be an excerpt in print and the full essay online in the Opinionator’s Townies column. This is very nice news. Wooooot.
Mexico City from New York City for multi-day Mexican celebration similar to Halloween in U.S. Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). Also Xochimilco, Zócalo, Diego Rivera and Frieda Kahlo art, Dolores Olmedo Museum, Museo de Arte Popular and more!
Dorri Olds interviewed Steven Spielberg at the New York City premiere of The Adventures of Tintin. Others in attendance at the Ziegfeld Theatre red carpet were George Lucas, Jamie Bell (Tintin), Enn Reitel (Nestor, Mr. Crabtree), Joe Starr (Barnaby) and Nick Frost (Thomson). Also there were Producer Kathleen Kennedy, SNL actor Bill Hader and Breaking Bad’s Giancarlo Esposito.
Charlize Theron’s New Movie, Young Adult, is a great date movie or with pals but if you’re feeling low about life and pining a long lost love, go with somebody, don’t go alone—not now, around the holidays. The ending isn’t tied up with a bow, but you want to kill yourself either.
When chain-smoking Manhattanite Susan Shapiro went to Dr. Frederick Woolverton, a Greenwich Village addiction specialist in 2001, she had little hope she’d be able to quit her 27-year two-pack-a-day smoking habit. But Woolverton, a psychologist and founder of the Village Institute in New York and Arkansas, and a former smoker himself, immediately helped her nix her nicotine addiction. Within nine months, he helped her quit alcohol, pot, gum and bread.
Todd Hill spent 20 years as a New York City journalist and movie critic. He has interviewed almost every A-List star you can think of including Robert De Niro, Clint Eastwood and Angelina Jolie. He recently took a 360-degree detour and wrote his first novel, Dutchess County. It’s about courtship, marriage and a slew of mistakes.
A DANGEROUS METHOD was directed by David Cronenberg (Eastern Promises, A History of Violence, Crash) from a screenplay by Academy Award winning writer Christopher Hampton (Atonement, Dangerous Liaisons) and stars Viggo Mortensen, Keira Knightley, Michael Fassbender and Vincent Cassel.
The waterways along with chinampas—squares of land for growing crops—are a vestige of pre-Columbian times. Colorfully painted gondola-like wooden boats called Trajineras are available for rent. The Mexican government is doing much to preserve this area. The water in the lagoons is clear and the wildlife is protected. Birds are not allowed to be shot.
Chicken Soup for the Chocolate Lover’s Soul. An essay about Skinny Dotty and Her Chocolates in a Chelsea, NYC co-op apartment building.
My romantic daydreams of the Grand Canyon never included sleeping in a tent with my 72-year-old mother. I looked at Mom and the hard bodies of our fellow hikers and wondered if I’d call attention to myself when I collapsed on jagged rocks and moaned for a deli and a Diet Coke.