Breaking The News: Michael Jackson
Sadly, breaking news doesn't surprises me much anymore. It is immediately what it is.
I was in a seventeenth floor corner office overlooking Times Square on a conference call with a blogger from VH1's Best Week Ever (of all media entities) when I heard the news.
"Michael Jackson had a heart attack."
Now, I was never a huge fan, but I remember the first time I heard "Thriller." I was sitting on my cousin Jimmy's bed in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, wearing big, puffy headphones when I first heard Vincent Price's sinister cackle. A few months ...
In A Sea Black With Ink
I tell this story a lot.
Way back in 1996, just a few weeks into my Wenner Media tenure, the then-managing editor of Rolling Stone Magazine led an intern Q&A thusly: "I'm 37-years-old, I don't live in New York, and I don't go to rock shows or movies. Any questions?"
I was floored. Flabbergasted. Agog.
Fast forward thirteen years. I'm the 37-year-old on my way home from my difficult (if not soul-crushing then soul-trying) twelve-hour day tonight when Bruce Springsteen sings to me:
You're smiling now but you'll find out
They'll ...
The Hagley Fireworks (Or, In Consideration Of Teflon, Kevlar & The Apollo Space Program)
All I knew was that Abbi signed us up for "The Fireworks" back home in Wilmington, Delaware, and that the tailgating started early so I had to catch an early train out of the city and wear nice pants.
"The Fireworks," it ends up, are an annual tradition at The Hagley Museum in Greenville, Delaware, birthplace of the now-behemoth chemical corporation, DuPont.
Growing up in nearby Valley Forge, Pennsylvania (just thirty miles north on Route 202), the Brandywine was a placid, almost mythic place reserved for revolutionary history ...
Surrender
By the time I finally powered up my PC precisely 267 hours after logging off for vacation, I'd accrued 1887 emails, 19 voice mails, and 12 Facebook requests.
Four hours later, I'd whittled down those various missives to a crucial total of thirty-two.
Yesterday morning, less than twelve hours after my eight hour GCM-MIA-LGA commute, I strapped on my Asics to shake off the stiffness (and post-vaca blues) with a quick pre-brunch 10k. From Riverside Park to The Ramble, everywhere I ran, everyone was looking at their hands. Blackberries, ...
One Grand
Last October, Abbi and I planned to spend our one-year anniversary in Nevis.
Then, within a span twenty-four hours, I was informed that I'd be inheriting leadership of the news department, but not before I had my appendix removed. Suffice to say, we reluctantly canceled the trip.
Fast forward eight months.
It's been a doozie of a time (as you know, Dear Reader), one punctuated by great challenges, frustrations and rewards at work. Last week's Movie Awards were the first of two uber-events (the Video Music Awards are in three ...
Living In The Fish-Eyed Lens
Forget the speech I gave when I ran for student council president, that night I performed in front of five thousand Iowa State Fairgoers, or even my wedding day; I hadn't experienced pressure until I've been locked into a 6 x 12 foot trailer with ten colleagues, 66 monitors, and two and a half hours of live television.
Our fifty-three foot Sweetwater Double-Expando, Multi-Format, High Definition/Standard Definition Truck was the nerve center of the entire MTV News Movie Awards Pre-Show operation. Everything was wired into it: dozens of ...
Across The Universe
I've collected four NBC Universal Visitor Passes (white, blue, yellow and purple, if you're playing along at home) in my 96 hours on the back lot.
They've been long hours, some chained to my computer here in the Abbott & Costello Building (a parking lot with one floor of offices, really; also, home to CSI), others racing up and down the hill in a golf cart to rehearsals, read throughs, and look sees.
Truth is, I've been looking at computer screen and television monitors most of the time. In between, though, I've seen a few noteworthy ...
Sway & Samberg Talk Popcorn, Pimp Cups & Penises
Yup, that's what two degrees and fourteen years in the workforce'll get a guy: oversight of riveting headlines like "popcorn, pimp cups and penises."
It's late (12:59 am PT), I put in a fifteen hour day and concluded it with two beers, so lemme' explain quickly.
Our job here is to cover all of the build up to the 2009 MTV Movie Awards: behind-the-scenes stuff, rehearsals, the red carpet, etc. And then, of course, we'll be all over the big show itself.
There wasn't a ton of action in the Gibson today; the set's still being built, the ...
Life In Technicolor
The Sheraton Universal City Hotel sits astride a great, cement-covered slab of dirt just over the hill from the Hollywood sign. My tenth-floor, corner room overlooks the San Fernando Valley: Van Nuys, Reseda, Northridge. The 101 is a stream of red and white light winding northward towards the Ventura Highway.
Universal Studios -- home of The Invisible Man, Jaws, Flash Gordon, Conan The Barbarian (and O'Brien, for that matter), Fletch, The Breakfast Club, and The 40-Year-Old Virgin (among others) -- sits just below my tenth floor ...
Run, Part II (Or, Know Your Enemy)
Who needs the self help section at Barnes & Noble? I have an iPod.
I don't need to tell you that last week was a motherf*cker. I'm sure I'm not alone in that. Ask John Edwards, Manny Ramirez, or Allison Iraheta. They all had tough weeks. Heck, ask anyone on Earth these days: economic meltdown, unemployment, foreclosure, global warming, war, famine -- I could go on.
For me, it was the constant (not for attribution, repetition or attribution) barrage of workplace b.s.: knuckleheaded oversight, missed opportunities, fiscal ...
