By Ron Rosenbaum Vanity Fair December 1991 One of the first stories I heard about Danny Casolaro’s funeral was the five blondes at the grave site. Five stunners ranging in age from twenty to forty, all dressed in black, all weeping copiously. I was feeling pretty bad...
By Stephen Fried Philadelphia Magazine June, 1983 The Sound: A tight, simple rhythm, pulsing, throbbing. A smooth, cool guitar lightly plays a handful of notes, but just the right notes. The feel is subtle, complex; a combination of what is right about jazz, what is...
By Fred Schruers Premiere May 1993 “I have to straighten out my karma,” says Sharon Stone. “I’ve become a sex symbol, which is an absurd thing for me. Particularly since I symbolize a kind of sex I don’t believe in.” That swirling girl-on-top, biting, moaning,...
By Marilyn Johnson AARP July 28, 2006 If a mother or a teacher wrote a book about American history and everything you could learn driving around the country, it would bomb. Packed with goody-goody facts, it could never convey the right tone, never be cool. Did you...
By Stephen Fried Philadelphia Magazine January, 1994 When she decided to tell her parents that they couldn’t come to her home for Christmas, Jennifer Freyd hoped she was just having a nervous breakdown. It was the 18th of December, 1990, and the 33-year-old psychology...
By Helen Dudar Esquire January, 1976 Before she became Pauline Kael, before she was much more than a wonderful surprise occasionally encountered in obscure journals, before she was canonized as America’s best critic of film, Pauline Kael took an ax to the work of...
By Willie Morris Inside Sports May, 1980 I finally came home. It was not too late. I always had home in my blood—Mississippi—but with this final homecoming the love I had for home stunned me. Much of it has to do with the land, its sensual textures—one’s memory...
By Fred Schruers Rolling Stone February 5, 1981 Bruce Springsteen, in the abstract, is just the kind of guy my little New Jersey hometown schooled me to despise. Born seventy-seven days apart, raised maybe fifty miles apart, this beatified greaser and I grew up...
By Pete Dexter Playboy November 2003 Dent Island lies in northern Puget Sound—36 miles long and half that wide, shaped about like a stomach except at Fort Beaver, the belt line, where it cinches in almost to nothing, and at the ends, where it tapers. It’s a $7,...
By Ron Rosenbaum Manhattan Inc. September, 1985 Who is that tall, spectral figure haunting the gloomy halls of the state capitol building today? Who is that silver-haired, patrician wraith with the lines of a shattered past engraved on his face? Could it be—yes—it’s...
By Alex Belth Bronx Banter October 14, 2014 Donald E. Westlake (1933-2008) was one of our most prolific and entertaining writers. Now, we’ve got this posthumous treat: The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany, published by the University of Chicago...
By Gary Smith Life September 1990 “There are significant moments in the life of a human,” a significant man in Charleston, S.C., once told me. “Moments in our lives when we need to act right. It’s crucial that we recognize them when they come, that we gather the...
