Blog Posts

A few months after September 11th, the Department of Homeland Security launched a website called ready.gov. The site’s initial incarnation was ostensibly a series of updated ’50s brochures: what to do in the event of nuclear blast (duck and run), what to do in the event of building collapse (duck), etc. (It’s since been significantly…

I left the office at 7:15 last night. The sun was still casting its golden light across the Hudson. After five days of Michael Jackson coverage, it felt like a half day. I stopped at the grocery store on my way home and, inspired by the sight of fresh limes (on sale, natch), resolved to…

From the moment the Michael Jackson story broke Thursday night, just one song has been on my mind. I appreciate that most would cite “Beat It,” “Billie Jean,” or “Thriller” as Michael’s finest pop song, and they may well be right; they’re great songs with great hooks. But it’s Jackson’s 1991 “Dangerous” single, “Black or…

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…

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.…

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,…