Before The Cheering Started with Budd Mishkin

Send us Fan Mail It was the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald who famously wrote “there are no second acts in America.” Scott, meet Steve Hindy.  He’s had an amazing second act, made that much more compelling by his first act, covering wars and revolutions in the Middle East, the taking of the American hostages in Iran in 1979 and surviving the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981.  Less than a decade la...

Send us Fan Mail If we’re lucky, we find work that is our passion. In a sense, it doesn’t even feel like work. Long ago, Bill Raftery found that passion analyzing basketball games on TV. And we are the lucky ones. What we don’t see is the immense amount of preparation he puts into every game. What millions of us do see and hear and experience is the joy, the excitement and the great sense of humor...

Send us Fan Mail Growing up on Long Island, Bob Gruen’s parents wanted him to work 9-5. And for much of his life, he did. 9PM-5AM. He’s spent 60 years documenting rock ‘n roll through photographs. Bob wasn’t photographing the scene. He was part of the scene, earning the trust of musicians, hanging out with them, touring with them, befriending them and photographing them in human, unscripted moment...

Send us Fan Mail Former athletes have all kinds of second careers once their playing days are over. There are lawyers and doctors, business people and broadcasters, lots and lots of broadcasters. But I know of no other former great athlete who has pursued the world of green technology. Mike Richter was always one of my favorite interviews during my sports reporting days, so I really enjoyed catchi...

Send us Fan Mail In the world of downtown cabaret and theater, Justin Vivian Bond is nothing less than an icon.  For more than 30 years, their performances have compelled audiences, initially in small performance spaces and eventually at Carnegie Hall and beyond.  They created their most memorable character while still in their 20’s: a boozy, opinionated, aging lounge singer named Kiki Durane, one...

Send us Fan Mail Lea Carpenter has had an unlikely and compelling path to becoming a writer of novels about espionage: Princeton and Harvard, working for both Senator Biden and Beau Biden and a 10 year magazine publishing career working for the likes of Francis Ford Coppola and John F. Kennedy Jr.  There is a powerful connection in her writing to a subject that was not discussed as she was growing...

Send us Fan Mail I first met Kenny Vance at one of the hardest times in his life.  It was a few months after Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and his house on the beach in the Rockaways of New York had been completely destroyed.  And yet even that couldn’t dampen his sweet spirit, his good humor and the joy he has gotten out of a life in music. Kenny grew up in Brooklyn hearing music in the neighborhood, i...

Send us Fan Mail There’s no need to categorize the music of Sarah Jarosz.  OK, you can put it in one category: good.  She has a contemporary sound and a sensibility that pays homage to the musical shoulders on which she stands.  She is thoughtful in music and conversation, about the musically vibrant Texas small town of her youth, her time at the New England Conservatory (where she had the rare fr...

Send us Fan Mail Talent will always win out.  At least, I hope so.  Talent and creativity and humor and perseverance.  But all of us need a moment that opens the window to the rest of our lives.  That window opened for Nick Hornby during a conversation with an agent that was not going particularly well.  Nick decided “what the hell” at the end of the conversation and pitched a book idea that he kn...

Send us Fan Mail Nick Hornby has never written the phone book, to use an old expression.  But if he did, I’d read it.  Hornby is one of those writers who elicits unbridled enthusiasm from his unabashed admirers.  Count me in, thanks to books like High Fidelity, Fever Pitch and About A Boy.  He always had a love of reading and writing and music and sports.  But turning it into a lifetime of books a...

Send us Fan Mail You don’t need to be a great musician like Steven Van Zandt, Bruce Springsteen or Paul Shaffer to understand the greatness of Darlene Love.  Perhaps they understand it on a more musical level, but anyone who has ever heard that amazing voice gets it.  Her songs radiate joy, none more so than the classic of this season, “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).”  Darlene’s musical journe...

Send us Fan Mail Mike Massimino is smart.  No surprise there.  He’s a graduate of Columbia, MIT and the NASA space program.  But he’s also incredibly thoughtful about the lessons while preparing for his two space shuttle flights, the time he spent in space and the clarity it gave him about life back on earth.  And he’s downright funny when talking about one of the perks of the job, specifically th...

Send us Fan Mail Lisa Lucas has many of the wonderful qualities that a compelling character in one of the books she publishes might have.  She’s smart.  She’s thoughtful.  And she’s really funny.  Have you ever known anyone who breezily refers to the classic The Brothers Karamazov as “ The Brothers K?”  She’s the Senior Vice President and Publisher of Pantheon Books and Schocken Books, taking an u...

Send us Fan Mail Chandrika Tandon has a head for business and a soul for music.  She’s reached incredible heights in both fields.  It’s a remarkable story.  Where others see obstacles she sees opportunities, from growing up in India to coming to the United States and then realizing her dream of making music while raising a family and wielding influence in the business world.  Her latest album, “Am...

Send us Fan Mail At this profoundly dark time, a show of hope and wonder is taking place at a small and intimate theater in Greenwich Village.  The show is called “Asi Wind’s Inner Circle.”  If you love magic, you’ll love it.  If you hate magic, you’ll love it.  It is unlike any show I’ve ever seen, where the audience plays an integral role in the entire evening.  It is a must see if you are in Ne...

Send us Fan Mail Nick Lowe has been writing and singing his songs for some 50 years. Some songs, like the exquisite “Stoplight Roses” are known by his ardent fans.  Others, like “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding” are known around the world.  More than a few iconic musicians have covered his songs, including Elvis Costello and Johnny Cash.  He’s a marvelous and thoughtful story...

Send us Fan Mail There’s something beautiful about a musician who has been writing and performing for decades and is still out there, finding inspiration to write and create special moments for the audience.  And yes, there is something beautiful about Nick Lowe.  There are the catchy songs that we first loved when we were younger and the poignant songs at every stage of his life and our lives eve...

Send us Fan Mail From the outside, it seems that it’s been a brilliant trajectory for Rob Simmelkjaer, from Ivy League college and law school to prestigious legal and media positions. But to steal a piece of wisdom from Rob himself, no one’s trajectory is a straight line. The path has now led him to his “dream job” as the CEO of New York Road Runners, a position that synthesizes many of his passio...

Send us Fan Mail Spend 12 seconds talking to Gabi Conti and you get it, that California blast of energy born out of growing up in the Northeast.  She’s written, directed and hosted new media and old.  She jokes that she peaked at Emerson College, where the window to the rest of her life opened.  In those early years in the business, when obstacles had the audacity to get in her way, she managed to...

Send us Fan Mail We all have books, music, movies, pieces of art that elate us in good times and sustain us in hard times.  The 1975 book "The Doonesbury Chronicles" is at the top of the list for me.  I frequently go back to it, rereading strips that I've read a hundred times.  Garry Trudeau created Doonesbury, initially called Bull Tales, at Yale in the late 60's.  Trudeau and...

Send us Fan Mail It’s one thing to have a successful book, and Freaknomics, the 2005 book Stephen Dubner co-authored with economist Steven Levitt, is very successful, with million of copies sold and translated all over the world. But it’s rare that a successful book becomes a radio show, a podcast and a small cottage industry. And it’s even rarer that it becomes part of our vocabulary. Stephen Dub...

Send us Fan Mail It’s not every standup comedian who has the London School of Economics on the resume.  In fact, Hari Kondabolu may be the only standup who has the London School of Economics on his resume.  It may not reflect how funny he is, but it shines a bit of a light on how thoughtful his work is.  He is perhaps best known for creating the documentary “The Problem With Apu” about the charact...

Send us Fan Mail A poster changed Dr. Irwin Redlener’s life.  Sure, he likely would have been a doctor that put good into the world.  But in the early 1970’s, a poster he saw asking young doctors to go to a poor, rural county in Arkansas lit a fire inside him and set him on a path with no looking back, working as a team with his wife Karen, a health professional with an expertise in child health a...

Send us Fan Mail Sports fans know Ian Eagle. They know him from announcing NFL football, NBA and college basketball, the Brooklyn Nets and so many other gigs. He adds to every broadcast with his great preparation, excitement and sharp sense of humor. But his fans might not know that Ian comes to the performance aspect of his work honestly. He grew up watching his parents perform on stage at what w...

Send us Fan Mail I had the pleasure and privilege of interviewing Clarence Jones for a NY1 profile in 2008. In 2013, it was an honor to share the stage at the 92nd St. Y and moderate a conversation with Clarence, Harry Belafonte and Julian Bond to commemorate 50 years since the 1963 March on Washington. And it was fascinating to speak with him this week, 60 years since the March and Dr. King’s “I...