It’s a longstanding cliché we parents repeat that our kids can have more fun with a box than with the toy that comes in the box. It’s still true, and we still don’t trust our own wisdom in this regard because presenting a kid with an empty box for his birthday or some other occasion is a risky bet that ...
On Friday last week, a Q&A appeared on The New York Times website between journalist James Estrin and photographer Ami Vitale. The story pertains to the now widely recognized hashtag campaign #BringBackOurGirls, meant to raise awareness and perhaps pressure officials in our own countries to do everything possible to rescue nearly 300 schoolgirls kidnapped by Islamic terrorists in Nigeria. At ...
More than a decade ago, a book editor managing her own imprint at one of the big publishing houses gave me some insight into her world that I’ll never forget. “I have to publish about five diet books,” she told me, “in order to invest in one new novelist.” It’s important to understand that this is not a comment on ...
Since 1996, Gene Grillo has been a staff writer and series editor for a variety of hit, animated TV series, including Johnny Bravo, Jimmy Neutron, and Back at the Barnyard, and Kung Fu Panda. Like many comedy writers, Grillo began as an actor working with Second City in Chicago — a sketch comedy/improv group where performers are also writers. Presently, ...
Shakespeare, a poet, wrote the line “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,” for the character Jack Cade in the Henry VI cycle, and it refers to Cade’s vision of a utopian, social revolution in which he would be dictator. Of course, the irony is that when it comes to establishing or maintaining autocratic rule, one must ...
