I had a lovely lunch yesterday with my former editor from the Voice, Doug Simmons, who hired me and edited me for seven heady years. Each of us had some anecdotes from those years we’d never told the other before. The guy who’d recommended me for the job (who might want to remain nameless in this instance) once called Doug up, furious about some new infraction I’d committed in the paper. “You’re the guy who recommended him to me,” Doug expostulated, “I’d never heard of him before.” “I think I’ve created a monster!,” the guy exclaimed, and hung up.
As big a thorn in the side I am to the classical composing world, there was a time when the Downtown scene hated me even more. Why Bill O’Reilly and I still have public careers, I have no idea.