A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis at the New York Times recently made a list of The Best 25 Films of the 21st Century It’s a list that’s eclectic, a little pretentious, heavy on obscure Japanese cinema, and “horseshit,” according to a family friend who watches movies and writes about them for a living. I largely… Continue reading Favorite Movies Of The 21st Century

My family and I moved from Ithaca, New York to Lexington, Massachusetts on July 1st, 1997 when I was six. On approximately July 15th, 1997, my dad and I walked down Meriam Street and stopped at one of the two barbershops in Lexington Center to get our hairs cut —stopping where we did for no obvious… Continue reading Rock and Roll, Sweetie

I don’t believe in guilty pleasures. If you f&cking like something, like it.—Dave Grohl When I was coaching high school cross country three years ago, our team would play the same two songs on the bus-ride back from each race: Sweet Escape by Gwen Stefani and What Makes You Beautiful by One Direction. The former somehow—slowly—grew… Continue reading A Sign Of The Times

Two Fridays ago, I had the fun privilege of giving a talk on the creative process, storytelling, and my work in general at a 9th grade creative writing class taught by my good pal, Jeff. Jeff teaches at St. Sebastian’s School—or Seb’s as the cool kids call it—an all-dudes Catholic school very similar to where… Continue reading Johnny Peacock

Two Saturdays ago, at around 2pm, I was getting ready to go to the Red Sox-Cubs game. When I say getting ready, I mean checking and re-checking my pockets to make sure I had the tickets, performing a few standard, superstitious pre-game rituals (touching the same Big Papi newspaper clip from 2004 while listening to… Continue reading Lights. Camera. MACtion.

The importance of the writer is continuous; I think it’s socially not terribly rewarding, but that’s not the point; his importance, I think, is that he has to describe things which other people are too busy to describe. — James Baldwin (from Nobody Knows My Name. I’ve been on a real Baldwin kick recently after… Continue reading All a-Bored!

My only real New Year’s goal this year was to read more books. I wanted to do less screen-reading and more paperback perusing. I wanted to lower my Netflix-To-Book Ratio. And I wasn’t willing to watch less Netflix, so I decided to get a library card (The Office, Parks and Rec, and Better Call Saul… Continue reading Having Fun Isn’t Hard

This video came out five years ago this coming Wednesday. I know this because 1) I’m a weirdo who remembers specific dates to insignificant events and 2) the video came out right when I was catching the video bug. I watched the video a few dozen times when it came out and felt intoxicated—with its energy,… Continue reading Permission

I found an altitude I was comfortable with. I found a way to do what I like to do and avoid some of the parts of it that I was uncomfortable with. – Dave Chappelle, hero to wanderers and stubborn artists who would rather have dinner with Kellyanne Conway than sacrifice creative control My mom recently told me… Continue reading A Comfortable Altitude

On Sunday night, I was at a car towing lot near Inman Square when I found out Moonlight won best picture. It was actually Monday morning at that point. The texts started flooding in: ARE YOU WATCHING THIS???? First Hillary. Then the Falcons. Then La La Land. Unbelievable. What the HELL just happened?!! MOONLIGHT MOONLIGHT… Continue reading It’s Not About You