A Young Ebert
Roger Ebert (of Siskel and Ebert fame) on his life as a young writer…
But Borman entered my story in the Illinois Associated Press writing competition, and it won first place in the sportswriting category. That happened in summer of the next year. My dad, Walter, had been diagnosed with lung cancer the previous spring, and was now hospitalized in the last weeks of his life. I took the framed Associated Press certificate to him, and he was proud of me, and that was a reward greater than any prize.
His is a blog well worth following.
Reflections on Smoking
Great read in The New Yorker
Letting Go
When I was in fourth grade, my class took a field trip to the American Tobacco plant in nearby Durham, North Carolina. There we witnessed the making of cigarettes and were given free packs to take home to our parents. I tell people this and they ask me how old I am, thinking, I guess, that I went to the world’s first elementary school, one where we wrote on cave walls and hunted our lunch with clubs.
…
When New York banned smoking in the workplace, I quit working. When it was banned in restaurants, I stopped eating out and when the price of cigarettes hit seven dollars a pack I gathered all my stuff together and went to France.
…
Just after my mom started chemotherapy, she sent me three cartons of Kool Milds. “They were on sale,” she croaked. Dying or not, she should have known that I smoked full-strength Filter Kings, but then I looked at them and thought, Well, they are free. It took some getting used to, but by the time my mother was cremated I’d switched over.
The Last Supper
In Balloon
Previous Stories
- March 12th, 2008 | Video: Apnee
- March 9th, 2008 | Doll Face
- March 5th, 2008 | Animation: One Man Band
- March 4th, 2008 | Art Bar
- February 28th, 2008 | I cannot live without you
- February 28th, 2008 | Against Entropy
- February 25th, 2008 | Quote: Stewart on the Oscars
- February 18th, 2008 | True Porn Clerk Stories
- August 22nd, 2007 | Theo Jansen’s Kinetic Art
- October 17th, 2006 | Must See Free Documentaries
- October 16th, 2006 | Video: Milton Friedman Choir
- August 17th, 2006 | Google Music Search
- May 10th, 2006 | Lasse Gjertsen: Creative
- January 13th, 2006 | Lan Shui and Me
- January 12th, 2006 | Found Photos
- January 12th, 2006 | A Million Little Corrections
- November 6th, 2005 | Lost: Tampopo Wagamama Video!
- September 20th, 2005 | Rehearsing with John Nelson
- August 24th, 2005 | Sex & Music
- June 15th, 2005 | Blue Eyes : Brown Eyes
- June 5th, 2005 | Performance Anxiety
- June 4th, 2005 | Elijah Part 1: Demiurge 1 – Baal 0
- May 8th, 2005 | Ode Post Mortem
- May 3rd, 2005 | The Mechanics of Making Music
- April 25th, 2005 | Don’t Blink
- March 24th, 2005 | For Kate: On Children
- February 19th, 2005 | On the Inside of an Icon
- November 28th, 2004 | Prodigy, 12, Compared To Mozart
- November 22nd, 2004 | Glag Post Mortem
- November 17th, 2004 | The Eternal Feminine
