"I wanted to write songs before I wanted to be in a band, and first started when I was 14 with my friend Andrew. We were both into Fleetwood Mac at a time when they were the most unfashionable band around. This Peter Green song is great. It’s got an amazing riff and the lyrics are: “I can’t help about the shape I’m in/ I can’t sing/, I ain’t pretty and my legs are thin’ – I thought, ‘Wow that’s me! If he can do that, I can do that!"

"I had the legendary film critic Andrew Sarris as a professor during his later years. At the time, he’d gab about the auteur theory (it was his theory, you know?) and talk about Hitchcock, Wilder, and Ford. But when pressed by his sycophantic students (myself included), he’d actually declare a 1955 Max Ophuls movie “the greatest movie ever made.” It was the first time I had ever heard of Lola Montès, so I immediately blind-bought the Criterion laser disc. I eventually graduated to the Blu-ray, which I’ve now seen countless times. Lola Montès is a beautiful, virtuoso piece of cinema. It’s an old-fashioned woman’s picture. It’s a study of loneliness. It’s structurally daring and technically masterful. It’s also really fun. It’ll make you want to devour every Ophuls movie you can get your hands on. The Criterion disc also features a really lovely documentary on Ophuls, made by his filmmaker son Marcel (I find this extra touching as my father is a filmmaker too.) After watching Lola Montès, New Yorkers can check out the grave of the real-life Lola Montès in Green-Wood Cemetery, an unlikely burial place for this nineteenth-century globetrotter."

"Andrew Smith (Winger; Grasshopper Jungle) pens a phenomenal novel about life's many detours, told in the unforgettable voice of an epileptic teenager with heterochromatic eyes (one blue, one green) and a strange history. When 16-year-old Finn Easton was seven years old, a dead horse that was being transported to a rendering plant fell "one hundred sideways miles" off a bridge and landed on Finn and his mother. The impact broke Finn's back and killed his mother. His epilepsy, which he may grow out of, is a "souvenir" of the accident, and if he does grow out of it, he suspects he may miss the way the seizures empty the words out of his head. Finn measures the world in miles instead of minutes, because he believes "distance is more important than time." His crush, Julia Bishop, a Chicago transplant living with her aunt and uncle because of a devastating secret, admires Finn's perspective on life. The moment he meets Julia, Finn wonders "how many atoms from the same calamities out there in the universe our body shared.... Maybe my right hand and her left hand both came from the same supernova." Julia, ever astute, gets why Finn named his dog Laika, is patient with him during his wild mood swings when he's returning from a "blank out" (seizure) and, most importantly, she loves Finn back. Which makes it crushing for both Finn (and readers) when Julia must return to Chicago--the very place where she was victim of a tragedy that makes Finn wish he "could push the world back all those miles with my bare hands and make it change direction," even if it means they'd never have met. Throughout the novel, Finn suffers from an identity crisis as he questions whether or not he's the product of his father's bestselling cult-classic novel, The Lazarus Door, starring a protagonist with the teen's name, heterochromatic eyes, seizures, and scars identical to the ones he has on his back from his post-accident surgery. So Finn sets out on a road trip with his best friend, the memorable Cade Hernandez, to figure out the ending to his story, when an unexpected accident rewrites their future. Smith's sly commentary on today's school system ("designed to make us all the same," in Cade's words) intertwines with the story of Finn's desperation to break out and be different--not a reproduction of anyone's expectations. The well-rounded supporting characters and the Southern California setting make for a welcome departure from the usual glitz of Los Angeles life. Hilarious and wise, 100 Sideways Miles is an addictive and panoramic read about the intersecting--and divergent--paths that lie ahead. Breathtakingly good."