About Me
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I was born in 1963––a second generation Ashkenazi-American––and raised in Chicago's West Rogers Park neighborhood. I attended DeWitt Clinton Elementary School and Stephen Tyng Mather High. I earned a Bachelor's Degree in Playwriting from The Theatre School of DePaul University (1992) and a Master's Degree in Interdisciplinary Studies (English & History) also from DePaul (1994).
After graduating from high school in 1981, I headed west. With my final destination being Los Angeles, I took a detour spending nine months in Phoenix where I started my first band, a power punk trio that would morph into the more popular, emerging new wave movement establishing itself in the early 80s. In L.A., Café Society became one of the local music scene's most beloved opening acts and was once introduced by Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers as "the greatest opening band in L.A."
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During graduate school I published my first collection of poetry and began what would become a 26-year teaching career that took me to Europe, where I have lived since 1996, first in Spain, then England and then to my current home in the Netherlands, where I have lived since 2010.
In 2018, I decided to throw caution to the wind and start two very different small business. The first, Usatinsky Bow Ties, dedicated to my lifelong adoration of the bow tie and that fact that I could no longer find bow ties that I liked (or that fit into my modest accessory budget!). Then, after a chance meeting with a master barber who convinced me I missed my calling after a brief stint working in a hair salon in L.A. in the 1980s, I did a six-month internship with said master barber and in June of 2018 launched The Hague's first and only after-hours barbershop, The Night Barber, a concept I still run to this day working part-time from the charming Zeeheldenkwartier neighborhood in The Hague.
Today, having recently celebrated my 60th birthday, I am preparing a creative renaissance (of sorts), publishing my first two novels, a collection of short stories and one-act plays and releasing a 40-year retrospective of original poetry. Oh, and I'll be starring in a one-man musical that I began writing more than 35 years ago.
Having lived abroad for nearly 30 years, raising five children and experimenting with just about every artistic genre, I am looking forward to returning to my creative roots and creating the project of lifetime, a novel––and its companion––a one-man musical titled, "Adam Driver and the Million Dollar Haircut." I'll be chronicling the progress of these two exciting projects in a BLOG, sharing every aspect of the process and my progress along the way.
As always, you're invited to come along for the ride!
