Regina Spektor Heads Back to the Beach

I got my first Boston Globe story! It's a profile of the musician Regina Spektor. 

Back when I lived in Manhattan's East Village, I heard her name quite a bit. A piano-playing rocker, she was playing out in the bars and establishing herself. 

I saw she was playing the Capitol Theatre outside NYC earlier this year, and got tickets. 

Spektor, who emigrated to the Bronx from the Soviet Union as a kid, was all alone onstage. She played piano on most songs, and picked up a guitar for a few. She delivers offbeat rock. She spoke of the war in Ukraine with a heartfelt address.  

I saw her tour brings her to Martha's Vineyard in late August, so I pitched the Boston Globe a story. I had no contact there, but an editor surprised me by saying yes to my pitch. 

Spektor told me her thoughts on the war. 

“The idea that so much beauty and so much history has just been turned to rubble, it’s just very painful,” she says. “And they’re sending young people who don’t know better from one country to the other, to die and to perpetrate atrocities. Everybody suffers except for the people who are actually perpetrating these crimes.”

The rest of the profile is a bit happier, with her memories of playing Boston, and visiting the Vineyard as a kid, and her thoughts on getting back to the island many years later.  

[photo credit Shervin Lainez]

Basketball Season is Over, But Sport Remains All Over TV

Have you noticed all the TV shows and movies that have basketball as a main theme these days? 

There's Swagger on Apple TV Plus, and The Crossover on Disney Plus, and Winning Time on HBO, and the movie Air on Prime Video, and several others.  

I did a story on all the hoops shows for Broadcasting + Cable Mag. 

Reggie Rock Bythewood, creator, director and executive producer of Swagger, said that when he was approached about taking Kevin Durant's story to TV four or five years ago, a few other basketball-show pitches hit him as well.  

“I don’t know what was in the air,” he told me. 

The trend began with the Michael Jordan docuseries The Last Dance, which arrived on ESPN and ABC as Covid forced people inside. It continues today. 

Why does basketball work in the scripted world? It's just five players, per team, on the court at one time, so fans get to know them better. They don't wear facemasks. The premise of the game -- get the ball in the hoop — is simple, but the skills needed to execute the premise are unique.