Blame George Harrison. This is all his fault.

In 1971, the Concert for Bangladesh was a happening unlike the world had ever seen. George organized the shows at the request of his friend Ravi Shankar to help provide relief to refugees of the Bangladesh Liberation War--many of whom were… Read full post »

Here in Indianapolis, we're in the middle of our annual Spirit & Place Festival. It started fourteen years ago with a Public Conversation among Kurt Vonnegut, John Updike, Dan Wakefield, and more than 2,000 people who overflowed Butler University's Clowes Hall.

Coincidentally, some friends a… Read full post »

It's been a crazy week around Open Salon. John Blumenthal and Will Someone Feed The Cat? hosted a couple of crazy parties. (And, as if Friday's all-nighter weren't enough, an afterparty.) There were threats to quit, calls for ethnic solidarity, capitulations, recapitulat… Read full post »

This was inspired by a Robert Frank photograph for a reading at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, in conjunction with an exhibition of the original manuscript of On The Road.

I Used To Love The USA

I used to love the USA—

land of the brave, home of… Read full post »

"I think we need to get Jay Bennett to play a show here," said my friend Duncan on Tuesday afternoon.

His idea was an odd one, but not a bad one. Jay Bennett, the supremely talented multi-instrumentalist and producer, had been gone from Wilco for about a year. Meanwhile, Wilco had… Read full post »

Somehow, Frank Rich's column in today's New York Times and Heather Havrilesky's column today's Salon resonated with me in weird harmony. Rich's column was about Richard Heene, to be known henceforth and forevermore as "the Balloon Boy's terrible dad," and the gullible, culpab… Read full post »

Welcome to Punchout: an occasional feature in which four popular music junkies with too much time on their hands--mookie Need, Ken Honeywell, Scott Woolgar, and Matt Mays--debate the relative merits of a recent release. First up: The Avett Brothers' I and Love and You. Can the Brothers take a punch?&… Read full post »

Maybe it's because I'm still kind of new here, but it seems to me that everyone on OS is writing a blog. It probably has something to do with the success of Julie and Julie that everyone is now thinking to him- or herself, gosh, maybe I, too, have what it… Read full post »

About three years ago--for reasons too complicated to detail here--some friends and I decided we needed a writing program for kids in Indianapolis like Dave Eggers' amazing 826 National. In fact, we decided we need to be part of 826 National. So we took a trip out to San Francisco to visit… Read full post »

Once when I was 12 and my brother Tom was seven, we were spinning a globe and deciding where we were going to live when we grew up. We both gravitated to Australia. All we knew was that it was far away from New Jersey and they spoke English there and… Read full post »

When I was a youngster, I worked for the largest ad agency in Indiana. (About $30 million in annual billing at the time. We were no Sterling Cooper. Still...) It occurred to me the other day that I am exactly one generation removed from Mad Men. The younger guys on the show--the… Read full post »

The most thoughtful,  interesting, interested, engaged, fun, smartest people I know are writers.

You may think I don't get out much.

But I do. I get out constantly. For the past 30 years, I've dealt with people at all virtually every level of business and sports and entertainment and politics. I… Read full post »

My neighbor Skip is painting the house, slapping slate gray over white primer over weathered brick. He doesn't live there anymore. He let the place fall apart for years. Can't say I'd have done much better.

Skip's selling the place. He's married now. Remarried. With a new baby. New life in… Read full post »

Dear Rush,

You've been pretty clear about your disdain for President Obama's ideas about reforming health care in America. Over the course of the debate about health care, you've compared Democrats to Nazis; heck, you've even compared the President's healthcare logo to a Nazi swastika.

First: en… Read full post »

Dear Rush, 

You've gone too far.

Yesterday (Friday, September 11, 2009) on your daily radio talk show, you said, "Community service is a baby step toward fascism."

That's the direct quote. I am not taking this out of context. I am not misunderstanding or misinterpreting what you meant. You… Read full post »

Every so often, some radio commentator within my earshot will start railing against Indiana Black Expo, one of the oldest and largest events of its kind in America. “Black Expo? How come there’s no White Expo? Huh?” is usually about the depth and sophistication of the argument.

The… Read full post »

All my adult life, I’ve been a professional writer. I’m no grammarian, and I’m no English snob. My writing would make Miss Blanche, my sixth-grade English teacher, turn red with fury. Sometimes, I write “like” when “such as” is correct. I write sentence fragm… Read full post »