Longreads

At the time I wrote Nickel and Dimed, I wasn’t sure how many people it directly applied to—only that the official definition of poverty was way off the mark, since it defined an individual earning $7 an hour, as I did on average, as well out of poverty. But three months after the book was published, the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., issued a report entitled “Hardships in America: The Real Story of Working Families,” which found an astounding 29% of American families living in what could be more reasonably defined as poverty, meaning that they earned less than a barebones budget covering housing, child care, health care, food, transportation, and taxes—though not, it should be noted, any entertainment, meals out, cable TV, Internet service, vacations, or holiday gifts. Twenty-nine percent is a minority, but not a reassuringly small one, and other studies in the early 2000s came up with similar figures.

For Bill Simmons, the walk on Laker game days from his office at ESPN to the Staples Center or the Silicon Center,

It was visiting hour at Broadmoor psychiatric hospital and patients began drifting in to sit withtheir loved ones at tables and chairs that hadbeen fixed to the ground. They were mostly…

On the 25th anniversary of "Licensed to Ill," an oral history of the birth of the Beastie Boys. "Then we were like, 'Oh, shit, we should get a D.J.! Like rap groups. They have a D.J.!' Nick Cooper knew about this guy Rick Rubin who went to NYU and would throw parties and had turntables. And a bubble machine. We were like, 'If we had a fucking D.J. and a fucking bubble machine, we’d be fucking killing it.'"

While in his senior year at NYU, Glover got an e-mail from David Miner with the message "I heard you write." Miner had gotten his name from Tina Fey, who got it from Amy Poehler, who got it from his teacher at Upright Citizens Brigade. They asked him for some writing samples. He sent the spec script he wrote for The Simpsons, along with one for Everybody Hates Chris, along with some sketches he had written. Miner and 30 Rock co-creator Fey liked them. Not yet having graduated from NYU, he was now a writer on 30 Rock.