Twenty-five years ago this month, I began working at a large national newspaper — you know the one, perhaps it came free with your hotel room or you saw it in Back to the Future Part II.
This week I returned to D.C. for a reunion with my former USA Today co-workers, many of whom I hadn’t seen in more than a decade.
Here I am with Keith Carter, an artist I collaborated with on a ton of projects, from Pop Candy meetup posters to comics to that weird Whitney action figure we made once:
Here are former Life section badasses Alison Maxwell and Korina Lopez, who look just the same as they did in 2005! We wrote about heaps of dead celebrities and tedious awards shows over the years.
Rob Berthold is an IT wizard — but more importantly, he’s a kind, patient soul who is the biggest Pavement/Silver Jews fan I’ve ever met:
It was such a blast and quite moving to see so many folks I treasure in one spot again. Many of us don’t work in journalism anymore, either because we’ve found other passions and/or because the jobs just aren’t there. (In related news, the few who do still work at the publication’s headquarters in McLean, Virginia, will be relocating soon. If mass layoffs and never-ending “reorgs” don’t collapse a newsroom, a pandemic is sure to deliver the final blow.)
When I finally returned to New York at 2:30 a.m., I burst into tears. Perhaps it was because the evening reminded me of how many things I took for granted when I was younger, and how time passes so, so fast.
Four hours later, I woke up to pack my kid’s lunch.
the power broker
Back when I was teaching journalism, a 19-year-old student once told me his favorite book was David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.
“You really read that?” I asked. “That book is 1,000 pages!” I had a hard enough time getting kids to read something one-hundredth as long.
The student told me that, in high school, he and his English teacher would meet after school to discuss the book together, a few pages at a time. He said the experience was life-changing.
I suppose my own version of this will be when I finally get through The Power Broker, Robert Caro’s 1,300-page Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Robert Moses. A new podcast hosted by 99% Invisible’s Roman Mars and writer Elliott Kalan breaks down the epic a chunk at a time. The first couple episodes feature Conan O’Brien and Robert Caro, who is still hammering away at age 88.
You can purchase this brick of a book or do what I did and grab the audiobook, which is 66 HOURS LONG. See you on the other side.
postcard art
Last week I joined hundreds of artists (including my talented 11-year-old!) for “Postcards from the Edge,” an exhibition and sale which benefit Visual AIDS, an organization devoted to preserving the work of artists living with HIV and the many we have lost to AIDS.
Thank you to the anonymous person who purchased my postcard. Titled Fast-forward, it features a piece of my original writing along with my rudimentary watercolor skills:
pete yorn
I’ve been hearing Pete Yorn’s name a lot lately. Apparently, the musician pops up in Killers of the Flower Moon (still haven’t seen it) and just released a new song. I haven’t kept up with ol’ Pete since he made a record with Scarlett Johansson about 15 years ago, but the other day I was eating alone in a Pret A Manger (it happens) when 2001’s “Strange Condition” came on, and it did help me overcome some high anxiety and mediocre egg salad.
diary comics
I’m inking a bunch of comics today. This one is for my neighborhood bodega, which is always there for me when I need it:
Other than that, I guess I’ve just been buying jeans and eating jams. Thanks for reading, and I hope you’ll return next week.
with eyes screwed to the floor,
hardy jenns
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Pret A Manger (it happens. More often than I care to admit)
loved all of this -- and the writing on your postcard art is CHEF'S KISS!
(side note: i only just the other day started making digital play lists of the mix tapes gathering dust in the garage; it's been such a trip listening to them again.) xo