I Dream of Rehab

Promises! Promises! Or Crossroads, or even Passages! I don’t care which one it is, I am just desperate to get into a rehab facility. I want my turn. As the endless stream of “troubled” glitterati continues to pour in and out of rehab, I’m starting to feel a tad excluded—resentful, even. I want to eat Read More

Stagecoach: Is There Such A Thing as an Anti-Western?

Stagecoach is to American movies what The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is to American literature. It’s a work deep in the national character, and, like Huck Finn, its meaning is often taken to be its exact opposite. John Ford’s 1939 western, the story of a thrown-together band of travelers braving an Arizona stage ride through Read More

Lone Star Fund-Raiser

Tonight, Rudy Giuliani continues his national tour with a visit to Bush country for a $1,000-a-head fund-raiser for the Dallas GOP. The Dallas party organization is billing Giuliani as someone who is “widely considered one of the Republican Party’s top potential candidates for President in 2008.”

- Jason Horowitz

Even Roger Staubach

Is there any New York State contractor who doesn’t make political contributions?

Roger Staubach, the Hall of Fame quarterback and rising GOP star, now runs a Dallas company that manages property. According to figures we were shown from the State Comptroller’s office, his company has a $731,000 contract with the New York State Office Read More

Bloomberg Blinks

Few Mayors have been confronted with the kinds of challenges that faced the newly elected Michael Bloomberg in January 2002. The city still was in shock after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. The economy already was sagging before 9/11; fiscal affairs would only worsen in the months that followed.

It was time for bold Read More

Letter To A Young Director

Dear Erica Schmidt,

You don’t know me, but I wanted to tell you how very gifted you are and, if I may, offer a little advice. Let me say, firstly, that any young director at the start of their career who can stage As You Like It as wittily as you and the recent Debbie Read More

Of Sluts, Cuddles And Elusive Art

It was James Agate who reminded us that a dirty mind is a perpetual feast, and that’s certainly true of this confident, carefree stage version of the 1978 porn movie Debbie Does Dallas at the Jane Street Theatre. The fun adaptation is by Erica Schmidt, who also directs expertly. But the big surprise is that Read More

Sushisay’s Last Day: A Petulant Sayonara To Lacquered Sanctum

It was Oct. 25, 2002, the last day of Sushisay. The Japanese restaurant on East 51st Street, the place I had counted on for so long, was closing.

How many times had I gone there anxiety-ridden, looking weird and unbalanced and emerged all healthy, renewed and triumphant? How many lousy days and hangovers were cured Read More