January 2025 - “Jim Fragale’s Newsletter,” Number 31, on SUBSTACK. A hoot!

Shockproof Jim Fragale holds the smut for later in these pages.

RELIGION VS. SPIRITUALITY – Christian vs. Jew (and vice versa)

1) my favorite writer on the planet, David Brooks, wrote a profound, courageous, lengthy Opinion piece, (two full pages) in the New York Times, on December 22, 2024.

2) I’ve been grappling with the same subject since my teen years back in the hills of West Virginia when I read a book (even old then) way above my head, called, The Return to Religion, “Developing Personality and Finding Happiness in Life,” by Henry C. Link. (How in the Sam Hill did I get my hands of that book?)

3) I savored the David Brooks’ Opinion piece as well as the Letters to the Editor and wanted to share it with the world. Failing that, here are some excerpts:

There are 200 religions in the world, so there must be something to all this believing business. Thank you, David Brooks, for your common-sense approach to a subject even astrophysicists can’t agree on.

David Brooks looked for books and arguments that would convince him that God was either real or not. When faith finally tiptoed into his life, it came through numinous experiences, scattered unexpected moments of awe and wonder from time to time that washed over him.

Brooks quotes historian Kenneth Clark, though not religious, Clark had this spiritual experience in an Italian church, Clark’s own words, “I can only say that for few minutes my whole being was irradiated by a kind of heavenly joy, far more intense than anything I had known before.”

Brooks then weighed in with, “Wonder and awe are the emotions we feel when we are in the presence of a vast something just beyond the rim of our understanding.”

Next, Brooks evoked Christian Wiman’s book, My Bright Abyss, Meditation of a Modern Believer,“Religion is not made of these moments; religion is the means of making these moments part of your life rather than merely radical intrusions so foreign and perhaps even fearsome that you can’t even acknowledge their existence afterward.”

He followed up closely with a telling C. S. Lewis observation: “…an atheist can’t guard his faith in nothing too closely; a mere glimmer of the spirit can bring that faith crashing down.”

While hiking in the Colorado mountains, author Brooks shared he took a book of Puritan prayers out of his backpack and opened it to this sentence: “Hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold the glory.” Then added these feelings, “Psychologists have a name for my state on that mountaintop: moral elevation. I wanted to laugh, run about, hug somebody. I was too inhibited to do any of that, of course, but I did find some happy music to listen to during my smiling walk down that mountain.”

Now, some of his thought-provoking thoughts that forced me to stop, take a breath, and twice re-read them: “We are embraced by a moral order,” Brooks writes. “What we call good and evil are not just preferences that this or that set of individuals invent according to their tastes. Rather, slavery, cruelty and rape are wrong at all times and in all places, because they are an assault on something that is sacred in all times and places, human dignity. Contrariwise, self-sacrificial love, generosity, mercy and justice are not just pleasant to see. They are fixed spots on an eternal compass, things you can orient your life toward.”

Right on, Brooks then ideally shared what historian George Marsden wrote about Martin Luther King, Jr: “What gave such widely compelling force to King’s leadership and oratory,” Marsden wrote, “was his bedrock conviction that moral law was built into the universe.”

…These days, Brooks then admitted he is “enchanted” by both Judaism and Christianity...

Paul Tillich put that similar sentiment this way: “Man is driven toward faith by his awareness of the infinite to which he belongs.”

More of David Brooks’ personal philosophy: “It turns out the experience of desire is shaped by the object of your desire. If you desire money, your desire will always seem pinched, and if you desire fame, your desire will always be desperate. But if the object of your desire is generosity itself, then your desire for it will open up new dimensions of existence you had never perceived before, for example, the presence in our world of an energy force called grace.”

Brooks’ mild-mannered Christianity-Judaism debate

“…faith is more like falling in love than it is like finding the answer to a complicated question. Given my [Brooks’] overly intellectual nature, I’ve had to get my brain to take a step back. I’ve had to accept the fact that when you assent to faith, you’re assenting to putting your heart at the center of your life. The best moments are giddily romantic — when you are astounded at the great blessing of God’s love and overcome the desire to do the things that will delight him. It’s a reminder that we’re rarely changed by learning information but are acquiring new loves.”

JUDAISM FIRST: Rabbi David Wolpe once wrote, “Spirituality is an emotion. Religion is an obligation. Spirituality soothes. Religion mobilizes. Spirituality is satisfied with itself. Religion is dissatisfied with the world.”

CHRISTIANITY NEXT: Brooks than evokes John Calvin, a French theologian, pastor and reformer in Geneva during the Protestant Reformation, and a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology (later called Calvinism), including its doctrines of predestination and of God's absolute sovereignty in the salvation of the human soul from death and eternal damnation. Brooks added this quote, “John Calvin put it this way, ‘The only haven of safety is to have no other will, no other wisdom than to follow the Lord wherever he leads.’ I find the Jewish concept of ‘co-creation’ is stubbornly baked into my [Brooks’] mind. It is our human will, energy and creativity working with in God’s that matter…

BROOKS QUOTE FROM A MAN OF THE CLOTH… “As Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchic put it, a Jew ‘received the Torah from Sinai not as a simple recipient but as a creator of worlds, as a partner with the Almighty in the act of creation.’ In Jewish tradition, this world is more important than the next because in this world we can create, pursue justice and accomplish things, while in the next world there’s nothing left to do.”

Three profound interrelated movements:

1. First, sanctification, the desire to become a better version of yourself.

2. The second is the movement to heal the world. (Dorothy Day, who dedicated her life to living in community with the poor, once said the Christians should live in a way that doesn’t make sense unless God exists.)

3. Thirdly: experience greater and greater intimacy with God. There’s a big difference between knowing about God and knowing God, and to really know him, you have to talk with him, through prayers, and the spiritual disciplines. Gregory of Nyssa argued that heaven itself is endless longing.”

David Brook wraps with this, “You can’t earn God’s love with good behavior and lofty thoughts, because he’s already given it to you as the lavish gift that you don’t deserve.” Abraham Joshua Heschel phrased it even better, “I prayed for wonders instead of happiness, Lord, and you gave them to me.”

Ahhhmen.

Columnist David Brooks Opinion Piece, “My Decade-Long Journey to Belief,” appeared Sunday, December 22, 2024, in the New York Times.

GATOR RAID

New Yorkers are bolting New York, now the third most abandoned state in the country. 99% of New Yorkers’ movers headed for greener – or sunnier – pastures in 2024 – continuing a five-year trend. New Jersey ranked Tops as the outbound state for 2024 for the seventh consecutive year with 67% out bound migration. Florida, remains a top escape route, luring nearly 1 in 5 former New Yorkers. Ho, 20% those moving from N. J. to Florida was due to, retirement, and the desire to be closer to family. Au contrare, across the country, Americans are ditching high-cost cities for cheaper, less crowded places: sunbelt states like South Carolina and Alabama. Their reason? Affordability and …a fresh start. Mazel tov. Most surprising stats: California longtime decline: in 2022, 343,000 left the Golden State, the highest net loss of any state. In 2023, the net loss was 268,100.

HAVING SAID ALL THAT: While Chicago and San Francisco are suffering, poor things, New York scored record tourists – despite the fear of crime. 64.3 million visitors (tourists and business) / travelers in 2024, a hair below 2019 record of 66.2 million, 3.5% more than 2023. Not bad and a little surprising. Now if we could just keep the punk gangbangers at bay (another of my pet peeves). How do we stop them from coming here; and to disband each and every gang that exists in the U.S.A.?

THE 1964-1965 NEW YORK WORLD’S FAIR – 60^th ANNIVERSARY

I hesitate to share, but most of you know my age already. I came to New York to work at the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair and stayed. I was thrilled and grew up fast.

HERE GOES: 1964 New York World's Fair (known as the 1964–1965 New York World's Fair) was an international exposition at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, Queens, New York City. The fair included exhibitions, activities, performances, films, art, and food presented by 80 nations, 24 U.S. States—nearly 350 American companies. The five sections of the 646-acre fairground were the Federal and State, International, Transportation, Lake Amusement, and Industrial areas. The fair's theme was "Peace through Understanding." Its symbol, the Unisphere, a stainless-steel model of Earth. Initially, the fair had 139 pavilions, and 34 concessions and shows.

The site had previously hosted the 1939 New York World's Fair. In the 1950s, several businessmen devised plans for a similar event in 1964, and the New York World's Fair 1964 Corporation formed in 1959. Although U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower approved the celebration, the Bureau International des Expositions refused to grant it formal recognition. Construction began late 1960 anyway. More than 100 exhibitors signed up for the fair over the next three years. The fair was to run for two six-month seasons from April 22 to October 18, 1964, and from April 21 to October 17, 1965. Despite initial projections of 70 million visitors, 51.6 million attended. After the fair closed, some pavilions were preserved or relocated, but most were demolished.

The fair showcased mid-20th-century American culture and technology. The sections were designed in various architectural styles. Anyone could host an exhibit if they could afford to rent the land and pay for a pavilion. There were several amusement and transport rides, various plazas and fountains, and at its peak, 198 restaurants that served dishes such as Belgian waffles, some of which were popularized by the fair. There were more than 30 entertainment events, 40 theaters, and various music performances. Exhibitors displayed sculptures, visual art and artifacts, and consumer products such as electronics and cars. The contemporaneous press criticized the event as a financial failure, although it influenced 21st-century technologies, and popularized consumer products such as the Ford Mustang. I’m here to report, the enterprise was not a failure to me, I was in awe for two consecutive years.

The fair showcased mid-20th-century American culture and technology:

• General Electric's Progressland: Included the Carousel of Progress

• Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln: Presented by the State of Illinois

• "It's a small world": Presented by Pepsi

• Ford's Magic Skyway: An attraction at the fair

• General Motors' “Futurama II”: Portrayed the world of 2064

• American Telephone and Telegraph's models of the Picturephone: An attraction

• Sinclair Oil's “Dinoland”: Featured large dinosaur sculptures

The centerpiece — The Unisphere — is one of the most recognizable remnants of the event and still stands in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park. Other relics include towers with flying-saucer-like platforms; a pavilion of pillars known as "Tent of Tomorrow."

A little boy, (young man), newly graduated from college, barely away from West Virginia much by then, well, all I can say is, my eyes were wide open for two full years. The changes in me was astounding. For one, working shifts, I became addicted to coffee, and still am.

THE FLU BOMB CURE

An Australian alternative heath care advocate, Barbara O’Neill, has what she calls a flu bomb that went viral. It’s an easy to make mixture of seven ingredients, by drinking it/them daily you may shorten illnesses, she swears, like the flu, a cold, a sinus infection, or any respiratory illness. The first ingredient is garlic, as much as you can bear; it’s a natural antibiotic. Next eucalyptus oil, “nice for clearing airways,” she adds. Then: ginger, honey, cayenne pepper. Hi Ho, drink the concoction three times a day when symptoms set in and after that for two or three days. Our grandmaws would have endorsed it.

A BREAKDOWN OF THE INGREDIENTS: 1 clove Garlic, crushed • ¼ teaspoon Ginger, grated • 1 drop Eucalyptus oil or Tea Tree oil • Cayenne pepper • Lemon juice • 1 teaspoon Honey • ½ cup hot Water

WRITE FOR FREE

I’m not a rich guy and that doesn’t bother me much. Sure, I’d like to have more money in the bank, but don’t fret it. The genius musician Quincy Jones, who recently passed, said these word that ring true for me, in perfect pitch, “I’ve never in my life, ever done music for money or fame. Never. And never will, because God walks out of the room then.” Friends, I don’t know about that, but I do know I’ve never done any writing or music (in my early years) for money. Then later, I never wrote anything thinking of payment, ever. A curse or a blessing? Unsure. I also DO know that I receive an immeasurable… unlimited amount of satisfaction when I’m applying/plying my trade, writing. There’s something comforting, gratifying, worthy to be said about that. (Too much, I ask you? But, ‘tis true, ‘tis true.)

Yes, I’m a contradiction: I’m fascinated by stocks, bonds and big bank accounts. I was taken aback by the recent publication of the Magnificent Seven Stocks. Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla. Nvidia grew the most, with shares soaring more than 800 percent. I wish I owned some, but then there would be a whole other set of concerns to worry about. Alas, I admit, I did take a wrong turn somewhere, several. HOLD THE PHONE. At press time, this came over the transom, Nvidia shares slid 6% after CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote speech at a tech trade show left investors wanting more. ‘course, what else is new? Nvidia’s all-time high of $153.09 tumbled to $140.14. Awwww.

(ARGUABLY) BEST CITIES IN THE WORLD

Resonance Consultancy’s Annual World’s Best Cities Report, 2025 edition. Criteria: Livability, Lovability, Prosperity. Contradiction? 2024 Rankings, not 2025:

1. LONDON, UK

2. NEW YORK, USA

3. PARIS, FRANCE

4. TOKYO, JAPAN

5. SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE

6. ROME, ITALY

7. MADRID, SPAIN

8. BARCELONA, SPAIN

9. BERLIN, GERMANY

10. SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

Footnote: San Francisco came in at No. 12, Los Angeles at No. 14, Chicago No. 17, Seattle No. 19, and Boston at 21. Ya’ know, you don’t have to agree with any of that.

BABY NAMES – 2023

What about 2024, as of December 2024, no list. Surprise for you gents.

BOYS: Liam, Noah, David, Lucas, Jacob, Ethan, Joseph, Dylan, TIE for Number 9: Michael and, ta da, Muhammad.

GIRLS: Emma, Mia, Sofia, Olivia, Isabella, Amelia, Leah, Chloe, Luna, Sophia.

Retaining their top spots, most popular names throughout the five boroughs, 382 baby girls, and 743 baby boys: Emma and Liam. NOT cracking the Top Ten: Ares, Maximus, Bernard and Harriet. (There’s always next year.)

BE HAPPIER IN 2025 – FROM THE DANISH EXPERTS

The Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen — via science, jobs, money, and relationships influence happiness, ours and yours — makes suggestions. Their goal: to help people across the globe do as the Danish do — and to have a life happier, more fulfilling life in 2025.

A news book on the subject: THE ART OF DANISH LIVING – HOW THE WORLD’S HAPPIEST PEOPLE FIND JOY AT WORK, by Meik Wiking - Harry N. Abrams.

SOME SUGGESTIONS: Escaping the Hedonic Treadmill. Designing Happiness at Home. And noting: Danish tradition called “Hygge,” the art of creating a nice atmosphere. Check out Hygge. Webster’s definition: The feeling of coziness and contentment evoked by simple comforts, as being wrapped in a blanket, having good conversations, enjoying food, etc.:

For a happier 2025, Danish author Meik Wiking¹ suggests the key is to focus on what you can control …While we may live in a turbulent world, we may still make our lives a happy place. In our own little worlds that we call home; we are master of the universe. And maybe finding happiness at home this year will make us better equipped to help the world and even make our offices a better place.

If you have any confusion or argument with any of the above, contact him. Happiness is something I’ve grappled with…questioned all my life. You, too? And I’ve never been able to grasp or understand it except for small pockets here and there. Maybe that’s enough, huh? Is anyone happy all the time?

GREENWICH VILLAGE, USA

Pop Song Before Your Time, “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter,” a 1965 Number One Hit by Brits Herman’s Hermits, fun lead vocal, Peter Noone. Well, I’m singing it today as Mrs. Brown you’ve got a lovely son because … Decades later, Mr. David Browne², author and Rolling Stone staffer, my next-door neighbor, published a new book, Talkin’ Green Village: The Heady Rise and Slow Fall of Ameria’s Bohemian Music Capital, (Hachette). I got it; read it; loved it.

When I first arrived in New York, ions ago, the first place I headed for was downtown: Greenwich Village. “The Village” was the place I’d heard and read about more than any other part of N.Y. C., except perhaps Broadway, in books, movies, and magazines.

I discovered how to take a quick trip by train from any part of The City to fourteenth street and was glad to do it. Back then, the subway train was something I said nice things about. I’d brag, “Why, I can get to Greenwich Village in ten minutes on the Broadway line.” (Seventh Avenue Line.)

The Village was a different place back then, fun, funkier, messier, less clean with dozens of inexpensive charming restaurants around every corner…and little bars that sold beer for fifty cents…oldies played on the jukebox. And multiple used bookstores down the block. Later, I was to discover the jazz clubs…much later. (For music, I favored Basin Street East uptown where you could get a drink at the bar and freeload the music on stage. Off the top of my head: I enjoyed Peggy Lee, Johnny Mathis, Nancy Wilson for the price of a cocktail or two there.)

Early on, I might go into a downtown Village pub and see Edward Albee chatting with the hoi polloi, American figure skater Dick Button (now 95), having a hamburger at Julius’ Bar, actor-composer Harry Fierstein…composer Jerry Herman (“Hello Dolly!”), chatting up friends in a neighborhood Village dive, or witness imposing actor Tom Tryon that I’d remembered from feature film, The Cardinal, casually bending his elbow at the bar like regular folks, thee and thou.

There was a dive there on Waverly Place that was held up by a wide and strong wooden plank. Who would OK such a plank, even if they even requested permission.

Greenwich Village encompasses less than a square mile in downtown New York, yet rarely has such a concise area nurtured so many innovative artists and genres: Bob Dylan, Ornette Coleman, Billie Holiday, Phil Ochs, Sonny Rollins, Dave Van Ronk, Nina Simone, Suzane Vega, the Weavers…visionaries, non-conformists, those looking to reinvent themselves. Performing in the Village dives, coffeehouses, and clubs, that “chronicled the tumultuous Sixties, rewrote jazz history and took rock and rock into places, they hadn’t been before.”

Journalist, Author, Neighbor: David Browne

Well, don’t ya’ know, my neighbor-author David Browne’s seventh book, Talkin’ Greenwich Village is a winner! Don’t take my word for it. The New Times said, impeccably researched, elegantly written, and consistently fascinating.” More details…

Paraphrased and appropriated: “Greenwich Village symbolized the convergence of music, politics, reinvention, and bohemian culture—a safe space that, for decades, attracted misfits and outsiders, iconoclastic folk singers and rockers, jazz musicians, and poets before forces beyond its control crushed the scene by the dawn of the ’90s --a now-mythical music community that welcomed everyone from Billie Holiday to Bob Dylan to Jimi Hendrix to Dave Van Ronk. During his four years reporting the book, David Browne – whose personal connection to the scene dates back to his days as a college student at NYU when he embedded himself in the scene for a journalism class. He interviewed more than 150 people associated with the scene, including legendary musicians from its earliest days (Judy Collins, Herbie Hancock, Tom Paxton, Sonny Rollins, John Sebastian, and members of the classic band the Blues Project) to those who emerged during its last great era (Suzanne Vega, Shawn Colvin, Terre, and Suzzy Roche, Steve Forbert, actor/musician Christopher Guest). Browne also uncovered previously unseen documents and recordings, including efforts to curtail folk singing in Washington Square Park in the ’60s that led to the ‘beatnik riot’ and how the FBI and city government tracked Dylan, Van Ronk, and others.

I (Jim Fragale) responded to a paragraph in Browne’s book on page 116 (and was curious to know what Bob Dylan thought of it). “Although Dylan’s version of ‘Blowin’ in the Wind,’ was already in stores, it would be Peter, Paul, and Mary’s harmonies—which both caressed the melody and lent it a pained, long-suffering quality—that took the song to another level. ‘How do you translate a Dylan tune that doesn’t have much of a melody?’ Travers said, ‘You make a very moving first harmony part. You construct the harmony part that becomes, then, the melody. Then a melody becomes sort of a solid base. And then you construct the second harmony off of the first harmony. So that all of a sudden, you’ve got movement. You have a part on top, and a part on the bottom, and the melody serving as the bottom.’” To this reader, that sounds like a complete re-write to me. I’m going to speculate—and I have no way of knowing — from what I’ve read about him—the above paragraph did not please Bob Dylan. I’m guessing, of course. “Rolled out in June ‘63, ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ became the fastest moving single in Warner Bros. history,” wrote Browne. I say, Dylan’s lucky to have it.

“In recounting the racial tensions, crackdowns, and changes in New York City and the music that infiltrated the neighborhood, [Browne’s] Talkin’ Greenwich Village is more than just vivid cultural history. It also speaks to the rise and waning of bohemian culture itself around the country. Today in the Village, many of those once-iconic venues are occupied by banks or chain drugstores. What happened? Why had such a vibrant scene been reduced to this? Browne’s book answers those questions while also reminding us of the powerful impact of the Village on music and culture.” And he didn’t ignore The Beat Generation.

BEAT, BEATNIK, BEAT THE BUSHES

Browne doesn’t stop there. Some bloke asked: Where do The Beat fit in the ever-changing sequence of performers and audiences? Browne mentions Ginsberg and Corso, LeRoi Jones and Kerouac, reading at the Gaslight—and from the very opening line of this “grippingly tangled tale, Jack’s great music friend David Amram wanders on to an eclectic stage and reappears several times time as the decades roll by. Browne unwraps something of a boom-and-bust history, squeezed by racial tensions, fired by artistic invention, bolstered by entrepreneurial intent: ‘beatnik,’ more the more regular visitor to the narrative…”.

Wow. What a next-door neighbor! Someone and something to write home about. My siblings would be impressed.

Shocking, or just plain fascinating?

HINT: Useful for advertising people? Maybe so. This ran on-line way back in 2007. Does it make it obsolete, less shocking? It was posted March 14, 2007, by award-winning blogger Jason Kottke.³

Here’s the gist: Men look at crotches… Among the many interesting things in Online “Journalism Review’s” article about using eye tracking to increase the effectiveness of news article design — is this odd result:

Men look at crotches — it’s science

Although both men and women look at the image of George Brett when directed to find information about his sport and position, men tend to focus on private anatomy as well as the face. For women, the face is the only place they viewed. This difference does not merely occur with images of people. When users were directed to browse the American Kennel Club site, men fixated more on areas of private anatomy on animals as well.

Absolutely fascinating, yes, no? Wouldn’t we like to have an evolutionary biologist’s – or some other great mind — do a number on who, what, when, where, and why.

P.S. TO ALL THAT: I’m always taken aback when other folks want to know what people do with their genitals and said so fifteen years ago in my first novel, The Answer to Life. Continually, there are tales: Was James Dean gay? Was Chet Baker homosexual? Did Dave Kerouac swing? Was Montgomery Clift AC-DC? How about Marlon Brando… New stories surface about Brando every day (with Wally Cox?). Most surprising to me, according to Richard Pryor’s wife, Jennifer Lee Pryor, you can add Richard Pryor to the list of Marlon Brando’s conquests. Don’t fault me, it’s online along with some others.

NEW WORD! I rarely run into a term I’d never heard before. Well, I just did: fricative

[ frik-uh-tiv ] - Phonetic (Standard) PA –

Adjective - (of a speech sound) characterized by audible friction produced by forcing the breath through a constricted or partially obstructed passage in the vocal tract; (sic) spirantal; spirant. And—when you learn a new word, you’re supposed to use it in a sentence. I pass.

Perfection — not here, honey

Remember what the Navajo Indians believed as they weave a mistake in their blankets, there must be one mistake in the garment, only God’s perfect. If that’s not enough for you, when Rosemary Clooney completed a take in a duet with the great Bing Crosby, and fretted, Crosby interrupted Clooney with this: “I like for there to be one mistake in my work, Rosemary, only God is perfect.”

May I go out with a song?

Someone once said to me at the gym, you’re always humming. (Trust it’s not gas.) Here’s a tune I love that’s not well-known today, yet was recorded by the best of them: Sinatra, Streisand, Ella, Tony Bennett, Blossom Dearie.

Wait Till You See Her / Him

Wait 'til you see him
See how he looks
Wait 'til you hear him laugh.

Painters of paintings
Writers of books
Never could tell the half.

Wait 'til you feel
The warmth of his glance,
Pensive and sweet and wise.

All of it lovely
All of it thrilling
I`ll never be willing to free him.

When you see him
You won`t believe your eyes
You won`t believe your eyes.

Grazie, pisanos, Grazie.

---

1. Meik Wiking is CEO of the Happiness Research Institute; author of The Art of Danish Living – How the World’s Happiest People Find Joy at Work. Publisher, Harry N. Abrams.

2. David Browne is a senior writer at Rolling Stone and the author of Fire and Rain and biographies of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young; the Grateful Dead; Sonic Youth; and Jeff and Tim Buckley. A former reporter at the New York Daily News, he was also the music critic at “Entertainment Weekly” for more than 15 years. He lives in Manhattan, next door to me, with beautiful wife Maggie.

3. Jason Kottke is an American blogger, graphic designer, and web designer, now 51, whose work has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Wired. His labor of love, Kottke.org, won him a Lifetime Achievement Award. As of July 2013, his blog ranked #66 overall; #20 in Science on the Technorati Top 100.