A photo of the showstopper outside my apartment. Staring at her blossoms this morning I couldn’t help but think…”This beauty could win Top Chef, America’s Next Top Model, American Idol, Miss America,

and Dancing with the Stars

, without even blinking. She’d be the last tree standing on Survivor and could bring The Bachelor

to his knees.”  Score: Beauty of Nature 1, Beauty of Pop Culture 0……….I guess this makes me…the paparazzi?

The other day, on my way into the city from Brooklyn I noticed a kid on the street wearing a t-shirt that read: “Life is short.” It seemed a big realization for someone who looked no more than thirteen.

The same tongue-in-cheek self-awareness colors Laurie Rosenwald’s inspired book, “All the Wrong People Have Self Esteem.” This loud, brash, whimsical analysis of the most exhilarating and confusing time of life is a refreshing counterpoint to the so-serious Teen Vogues and Gossip Girls of the world.

Both of these examples point to one positive side effect of pop culture’s youth culture mania of the 90’s and aughts (a pointless obsession we’re only just emerging from now): self-consciousness giving way to self-awareness.

Kids today are growing up fast, but they know it. And while they might not be able to slow things down, they can certainly dredge things up. Bringing honesty to light in the form of bold t-shirt slogans and funny books eliminates mystery and confusion and allows for dialogue with peers and parents who can compress the natural uncertainties of this stage into a more manageable format.

I worried privately about my first kiss for years. Kids today twitter about it, Facebook it, text it…CONNECT about it…and move on.

Strategy is a thinking business and is essential to setting a course, but real change requires doing.

In a recent New Yorker article, James Wood profiles George Orwell, one of the most stirring political writers of the last century. Clearly an expert on the man and his work, Mr. Wood makes an important distinction that seems instructive beyond the world of letters.

The distinction is between being revolutionary and being a revolutionary. Continue Reading »

Home is the latest site-specific performance from Brooklyn-based choreographer, Noemi La France. My friend, Irma, and I saw it…or, rather…we were in it last night.

The work is staged in the artist’s home–a typically quirky and wonderfully romantic Williamsburg loft–but the “home” of the title is the actually the body. Several bodies, in fact: Noemi’s eight-months pregnant body, the beautiful body of the dancer, Mare Hieronimus, and unsettinglingly…your own. Continue Reading »