The first Kiss

Hipper and more self-important music critics probably would claim to have grown up on the Velvet Underground or Can or arty crap like that. I'm proud to admit that Kiss was the be-all and end-all of my youth. And I mean way back in my youth.

My dad gave in and took me to see the band's 1979 tour stop at the Met Center when I was 6, by which time our old dog, Sohi, had seen me lip-sync their entire "Alive II" album 100 different ways. Seeing them live, I was euphoric -- although Dad tells me now that there was so much pot-smoking at the show that some of that high might've been secondhand.

Kiss was the perfect band for a future critic, though. I watched the infamous TV special "Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park" that same year and learned at an early age how to apply words like "dismal," "idiotic" and "homoerotic" (OK, I only picked up that last word when I watched it again for a laugh last year). By the second time I saw Kiss perform in 1984, the makeup was off, Ace was out of the picture, and I knew I wasn't getting my money's worth.

Thank you, Kiss, for sucking so greatly at times. It made me who I am today.

One balmy spring day, a rough-hewn monster of a sculpture -- a bristling cross between an armadillo and a gargantuan pine cone hacked from raw timber -- materialized on a greening lawn at the University of Chicago, where I was working as a copywriter.

Made by Texas sculptor James Surls, it was the public enticement to a show of contemporary art from the Lone Star state. At lunch, I popped into the galleries and fell in love with the paintings of Vernon Fisher, a literary sort who had stenciled droll Texas tales into mural-sized paintings of desert mirages shimmering in 110-degree heat.

I knew the show would go unmentioned in the Chicago newspapers, which then had no regular art writers. So I wrote a review, my first, and submitted it to the Chicago Reader, which published it. Fisher went on to do other sorts of painting, but I'll always have a soft spot for the lyric poetry of his heat-addled landscapes that launched me on a new career.

No escape thrilled me more than my weekly visit to the Hill Street station. I was only 13 when "Hill Street Blues" debuted. Much of the sexual, racial and violent overtones breezed over my head. But I was old enough to cheer for Capt. Frank Furillo every time he stood up for justice. I was old enough to shed tears of shock when Detective Neal Washington got shot in a sting set up by an evil cop, played by a character actor named Dennis Franz. I was old enough to want to buy sad sack Mick Belker a milkshake and be his bestest pal. I was old enough to think "Judas H. Priest!" was the coolest obscenity on the planet.

I was old enough to recognize that the small screen, for all its mind-numbing reality shows, silly sitcoms and sappy soaps, was capable of presenting great characters and great dramas that can stand beside the best in literature, music and film. The search continues.

Theater criticism didn't pop up for me until I'd done a hitch in nearly every outpost at this newspaper -- sports, news and city desks, commentary and features pages.

But performance -- that exhilarating jolt of adrenaline and fantasy -- first captivated me during the spring talent show at Hilltop Elementary School in 1966. A bunch of us did a spoof of pro wrestling. I portrayed The Crusher, Mad Dog Vachon and Wally Karbo -- the latter two in a pitched argument. I can still see my schoolmates howling and cheering, and later, as I walked out to the bus, Mr. Weaver telling me, "You were fantastic." Ai yi yi, what a rush! I experienced the same feeling in high school with "Guys and Dolls" and then as Snoopy in "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown."

I had a blast my first year out of high school, acting in community theaters. But then I let my dad talk me into trying something that might lead to a paying job. My heart broke when I left my theater bride at the altar and ran off to join the journalistic circus. Which is why the world seemed so right when in 1999 I was asked to write about and review my first love. And someday, just watch. I'm the wrong type for Mad Dog Vachon, but if you need a lead for "Crusher: the Musical!" I can bulk up.

Long before becoming books editor, I was at risk for developing a problem with books. There was my Welsh name, and the fact that some of my people can be said to have an actual problem with books. My parents kept them coming. And so did my Uncle Alan D. Williams, a New York publisher with a dizzying supply at his disposal. Padded envelopes bearing Stephen King, Frederick Forsyth and Gail Godwin arrived in his mail with thrilling regularity. These filled the giant bookcases passed down by my grandmother Marjorie B. Williams, and then the nooks and crannies of my little St. Paul condo.

After I married, I was cured of this "problem" by a story my writer husband told me: One year, while he was away in England, his treasure trove of signed, first-edition poetry books was stolen. It changed his thinking entirely: "Books are not for hoarding," he decided. Indeed, he thumbs them, marks them in the margins, stains them with his coffee mug and, most important, passes them on to people he loves.

I still wince at broken spines. But with this new imperative -- to pass it on! -- what greater place to be than as a books editor, with the entire publishing world as supplier?

Leonard Bernstein was the first person I heard talk contagiously about music (which is what the critic's job amounts to). Just the right age for his New York Philharmonic Young People's Concerts (now, happily, on DVD), I was taken to a few of them at Carnegie Hall and saw the rest on our fuzzy TV.

They awakened a curiosity about the art -- I didn't think of it as "classical," just as music -- that hasn't ebbed. Though I soured a bit on Lenny as I (and he) got older, I've never forgotten what I owe him.

I remember the exact moment that movies electrified me with their primal power. I was a wee thing at home watching a TV broadcast of some B horror film starring Lon Chaney Jr. as a convict who was sent to the chair, survived the zapping and returned to wreak revenge on his executioners. The idea and the image of his jowly face lit from below so freaked me out that I spent the afternoon cowering in a corner, with a chair dragged against the walls for protection. No amount of adult intervention could coax me out. But that experience inspired respect, not love. My passion for movies began to flower in 1958. I was 5, traveling to Mount Rushmore with my parents, and in the parking lot were a thicket of industrial-looking equipment, a roly-poly bald man and a tall slim gent, both dressed in suits, and a cool blonde. One year later my parents took me to see a thrilling movie called "North by Northwest" and explained who Alfred Hitchcock, Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint were. I was hooked for life.

As an earnest young critic on the job for only 13 months, I panned Elvis Presley's performance at Met Center in 1976. I was aware of what an icon he was to the generation older than me, but on that October night in Bloomington, he was merely a bloated shadow of his former self.

What I didn't realize was how deep the passion for Presley ran. At home, I received a barrage of phone calls complaining about my sacrilegious review. One caller threatened to slash my tires. When I arrived at the office that afternoon, a woman was waiting to see me. She had driven from Iowa, and had been sitting in the lobby since lunchtime.

She just wanted to look me in the eye and deliver a simple message: "You don't understand about Elvis. You're not a woman."

The deeper message? Popular music, like pro sports, mattered deeply to fans. It made me realize I wanted to continue writing for these intensely passionate readers -- whether they agreed with my reviews or not. My next move, though, was to call the phone company and get an unlisted number.

One day, our instructor had us travel in pairs across the room, and add a leap. My partner was -- thank you, God -- the curly-haired blond guy on whom I had a crush.