Good Things Come to Those Who Watch

Jan Yan clucks his tongue and a gray squirrel lands on the stone wall inches from his face in Central Park. They are pals and frequently meet at Mr. Yan's concession booth filled with photos of the Chrysler building and the John Lennon...

Continued from Part 2

"When I moved to Venice, I realized my address was my dream." -- Marcel Proust

Six weeks into Joseph Heller's playwriting class, the student editor of an excellent Yale magazine the New Journal recruited my professor husband. I interrupted and boldly...

Continued from Part 1

When I knew him at Yale, Joseph Heller was 44 and a bit too fleshy. His graying curly hair was
tamped down, and he had long sideburns. He looked like he'd just indulged his appetite for food at the expense of other...

Zabar's deli in Manhattan sells the best fresh orange juice in the world. -- Joe Heller

In autumn 1967, my life turned a sharp corner. I impulsively decided to audit Joe Heller's playwriting seminar at Yale Drama School. His mordant new novel, Catch-22, was suddenly as relevant as Bob Dylan,...

(1) I had fun. First of all, the tv camera was an exquisitely unreliable even confused narrator.
It kept flashing reaction shots of contenders who didn't wind up winning -- Martin Scorsese and George Clooney for starters.

The camera was sneaky in other ways -- we saw...

Manhattan street fashion has come to mean to me flashing glimpses of body parts. Not so much what people are wearing, but what they're not wearing. Last season it was about the Achilles tendon and other vulnerable parts of the young female foot-- such as toenails groomed...

Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World, by Lisa Bloom

Lisa Bloom is smart. Lisa Bloom is gorgeous.

A Phi Beta Kappa from UCLA who went on to Yale Law school, and then became an award-winning legal analyst for CBS, she's somebody who...

I'll stop cracking my knuckles, gentle reader, to tell you how powerful I feel after reading the inspirational page-turner Fight Back and Win by Gloria Allred, the famous world-changing women's rights lawyer from California.

Okay, I'm no slouch, I've corrected history about the notorious and violent Kathy...

Bigtime TV writer/producer Tom Fontana is a mensch -- he does well by doing good! All the time.

If he's not making hundreds of Xmas wish-lists for kids come true, he's hosting benefits and contributing big bucks to rebuild houses for Hurricane Katrina victims. His incredible new...

I recently traded a sunny day in Central Park to witness David Hyde Pierce's tour de force performance in the Manhattan theater club revival Accent On Youth.

The only downside -- this dazzling old gem whizzed by too fast in the dark theater.

Accent On Youth's the story of successful,sophisticated...

I'm stunned to discover that one dusty philosophy problem I pored over-- from Pre-Socratic fragments all the way to Albert Camus-- is totally happening.

Until recently, I believed the most pertinent thing I'd picked up from half a decade of study was the fact that Schopenhauer pushed his mother down...

I flip past Jimmy Fallon--really fast.

Not an unpleasant person, you say.

But here's my issue: I'm a Craig Ferguson junkie--and Ferguson and Fallon are now late-night talk show rivals at 12:30.

Craig is very different from-- I swear--you, me, or anybody.

But,...

I first saw Renee Zellweger pushing a rack of luggage uphill on a West Side sidewalk--no entourage, no aides. Like most stars, she instinctively stops traffic. We ogled (discretely) as she strained against stacks and stacks of suitcases, her skinny body forming a wide triangle with her luggage and the...

Six weeks ago, I wrote a column for the West Side Spirit, a Manhattan community newspaper, describing my years of sharing cabs--saving myself and strangers time, money, and even emotional distress.

Then about five weeks later, Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed official rules for splitting rides. Coincidence?

In my view, our...

Yesterday Manhattan federal judge Jed Rakoff ruled that prosecutors who investigated Emperors Club VIP -- Eliot Spitzer's source for prostitutes -- must make public all wiretap data.

Except the names of the club's other 66 rich male patrons.

Will I live to see the...

A NIGHT IN TINSELTOWN DELIVERS BIGTIME

I am on a mission. A ballsy mission, if I say so myself. I've written a funny script with roles for three members of Jerry Stiller's acting family, and I plan to accost him about it.
I'm limping to 42nd Street...

MUGGING, THRIFT, AND URBAN ATRUISM

Here's a riddle: how did I get mugged, overhear a tv executive get fired by cell-phone, and get called the best person in all Manhattan by a holocaust survivor?
Answer: By making split-second decisions to share taxis.
The following is a...

Bill Ayers is a has-been terrorist, but in his confused life, he's associated with many do-gooders like Senator Barack Obama.
For my book, Family Circle, the Boudins and the Aristocracy of the Left, I pored for years over FBI documents, and Ayers' press releases taking credit for...

Bill Ayers is a show-off and a publicity hound -- and yes a criminal, but while living his complicated sociopath life, he's associated with many do-gooders like Senator Barack Obama.

For my book, Family Circle, the Boudins and the Aristocracy of the Left, I pored over...

I used to love Bill Clinton. I am in his thrall when he talks issues. But by so clumsily not supporting Obama he makes Hillary look bad over and over.

I believe Bill's not in his right mind. He needs a muzzle and a therapist. When he was campaigning...