Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Join me for a live podcast
My partner David Isaacs and I will be Stu Shostak's radio show live from 4-6 pm PST (7-9 EST). You can listen here. We'll be discussing CHEERS, our career, writing, and anything else Stu throws at us. We'll also be taking your questions via email. If you can't hear it live it will be available for instant downloading tomorrow. But personally, I plan to listen live.
What day?
ReplyDeleteOh no - not only did the notice arrive without enough advanced notice for Wednesday night, the archives look very interesting. The episodes are over two hours long - just what I needed, another time sink.
ReplyDeleteI call BS on this story. I'm sure parts of it are true, but I don't understand what fool couldn't grasp the precarious nature of a writer's life...and as someone who has long worked on various trade publications, what moron would POSSIBLY think this was something one could return to and expect a mega salary/job security? Also, given that the author mentions he tended bar in his youth AND can play the piano, surely there were other jobs open to him.
ReplyDeleteI would say yes, the author failed... TO PLAN. Which is kind of important when you have eight kids and work in the entertainment or publishing business.
http://priceonomics.com/what-its-like-to-fail/
On Christmas Day, 2001, I sat down at my Yamaha G2 grand piano, set up my metronome, and opened up a book of Shostakovich’s “Preludes.” It was late afternoon, and the warm, orange light of the fading day poured into my five-bedroom house — paid for by my $300,000 a year income as a Hollywood comedy writer — in San Marino, California, a wealthy suburb of Los Angeles. My wife, Marina, was cooking dinner for me and our eight children, and it was as happy a Christmas afternoon as I would ever have.
****
On Christmas morning, 2008, I woke up on the floor of the 1997 Chrysler minivan I lived in, parked behind the Kinko’s just two miles from my old house in San Marino. It was raining, and I was cold, even though I had slept in three layers of clothes. It was one of those blustery storms that regularly whoosh down from the Gulf of Alaska and pummel Los Angeles during the winter. I climbed out of the van and walked to a Starbucks five blocks away. Although I didn’t have any money, I had scavenged the Sunday Los Angeles Times crossword puzzle from another coffeehouse a couple days before. The baristas didn’t mind me sitting quietly for several hours every day to warm up and kill time.
I was neither a drug addict nor an alcoholic, nor was I a criminal. But I had committed one of the more basic of American sins: I had failed. In eight years, my career had vanished, then my savings, and then our home. My family broke apart. I was alone, hungry, and defeated.
I've been listening since 8pm EST and you are not on, unfortunately. Stu is asking about warm ups on "Different Strokes" Did I miss it?
ReplyDelete@Anu - yes, sadly you did miss the show because it was live on WEDNESDAY, not Thursday. But...happily, you can download the show as an mp3 file by going to the web site's archives area - www.stusshow.com/archives.html.
ReplyDeleteBoth Ken and Dave were fantastic guests, and it was an honor and pleasure to have them on again!