I did an entirely fun gig last June--a live taping of the Snap Judgment radio show, this one in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I got to tell the story of one of the most uncanny things to ever happen to me ("Rives battles karma and the supernatural") and--although I am clearly comfortable with exaggerating or lying onstage--I told it just like I remember it happening. I can say here what I couldn't say at the taping: the "upscale bistro" was California Pizza Kitchen #3 in Beverly Hills, back when there were only a handful of CPKs, all of them cool.

My brother T.M. Rives is a New York City expert and he's working on his next book about the Big Apple. One of his specialties is remote places in the five boroughs, which is how we wound up kayaking out to some of the uninhabited islands in Jamaica Bay. How did we wind up with poison oak, even though we both know very well how to identify it? By doing stupid sh*t, just like our Mom always warned us not to...