I went into the Observer offices yesterday to see my editor. We’re old friends. (Yes, Virginia, it is about who you know). I complimented him for the Sopranos cover of the Observer then I asked him what he was doing…
Dan Barry’s story in the Times today about writings by a victim of 9/11 that her North Dakota family only discovered in the last two months, having put off looking in her laptop as long as they could, was a…
This is the most expensive piece of furniture I’ve ever gotten. It’s a recamier couch that’s covered in blue mattress ticking. It cost $2400. My wife saw it upstate and then I had to go get it. I’ve never felt…
Oy. Did I really write that The Times’ Dan Barry was blaming David Blaine for murders in the outer boroughs? Unh, yes. Barry responded to that and my criticism of the Times coverage of David Blaine: first, the times wrote…
I’m told this is an artichoke; we shall seeA close friend has told me that I am watering down my brand (such as it is), and neurotically Borscht-belting attention from my core concerns—of our country’s international crisis and journalistic cowardliness…
I heard the Yankee fans booing Randy Johnson yesterday, something The Times today did not mention. It makes you wonder whether the combination of New York’s unique fanbase (a lot of jerks), the in-your-face media, and Johnson’s own doubts about…
My most successful item on this blog, to judge from comments, was called Harvard’s Plagiarism Scandal, and was successful for two reasons, because I brought up issues of racism in the Kaavya Visnawathan case, and because Roger Ailes, the political…
Last night’s Sopranos offered some indication of how things will be resolved in this, the last season: mercilessly. A lot of us discovered hope in the gay captain Vito’s exile to New Hampshire. He was being redeemed by his homosexuality…
I met the late Abe Rosenthal once and spent a couple of hours with him, long enough to experience his famous temper. He had alot of rage inside him, which the fly-by psych in me would pinpoint to a tortuous…