Since Kansas isn’t exactly a beehive of playwriting activity, beginning playwrights in this neck of the woods are almost always told that, if they write about what they know, and if they choose to chronicle their small-town roots, they could be “the next William Inge,” the playwright from Independence, KS who couldn’t leave his birthplace fast enough but…
Sarah Palin is going to get $1 million for every episode of her proposed travelogue about the State of Alaska. The series will air, not on the Fox Channel, not on the Sci-Fi Channel, not even on the Cartoon Network, but on…THE LEARNING CHANNEL! Wanna go for a drive on the Bridge to Nowhere with…
The April issue of Esquire magazine reports that a study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior indicates “women often do not know when they are sexually aroused, as opposed to men, who have a pretty good idea.” There is no mention as to whether or not the women in the study were aware that…
Today is the Feast of St. Joseph, the wood-working spouse of the Virgin Mary, who gave birth to You-Know-Who, who in His lifetime provided health care benefits to all the sick and uninsured who needed it. Two thousand and ten years later, it’s clear where standard-bearers like Joe Biden stand on the issue of Health Care Reform, but we…
Legend has it that St. Patrick banished all the snakes from Ireland. If we pray hard enough, maybe the good saint will come back and rid us of all the snakes in Congress, the red ones as well as the blue ones. And then, if there’s time, because “sex addiction” seems to be rearing its head ever more frequently…
Former Representative Eric J. Massa of New York admits that he groped several male aides inappropriately in his office, grabbed another male staff member’s member at a wedding party, and tickled yet another male underling “until he couldn’t breathe,” but that there was “nothing sexual” about these close encounters of the gay kind. What surprises me is that Massa has not quoted Psalm 23…
Like many of my peers, when I was in college forty years ago, one of the writers whom we all admired was Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007). I never thought I would actually meet the man but, during one of my trips to New York, meet him I did, sort of, and this is what happened. It was a Saturday afternoon, sometime…
Robert Anderson died of pneumonia at his home in Manhattan on February 9, 2009. Because the 91-year-old playwright had also been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for seven years prior to his death, I feel compelled, now more than ever, to share a personal anecdote about him before it too slips from my memory. Years ago, when…
First, New Orleans. Then Haiti. And now Chile. How much more can a modern-day Job take? How much more can a modern-day Job give? The spirit is willing, but our own economy is weak. It’s hard to turn off the news about disasters abroad, but what about ongoing daily disasters at home, if you’ve still…