Back at NYU, I worked briefly for a former New Yorker editor named Gardner Botsford. His mind was clearly still razor sharp, but his eyesight had begun to dull, and he needed someone to read The New York Times (and, of course, The New Yorker). I didn’t get to know him well, but I did […]

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I’m not big on rising early on Sunday mornings, so it’s only recently, thanks to Comcast’s On Demand, that I’ve started watching Meet the Press. U.S. Senate candidates Ken Salazar and Pete Coors from Colorado were on today, and the boldness with which both of them simply refuse to answer even circuitously the questions they’re […]

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I’ll talk about the debates on RightTalk Internet radio around 2:30 or so today. Update: That was fun. The show’s archived on the site for the moment; I come in about halfway through.

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So, the other day I posted a link to Harry Shearer’s “Hard Work” remix of GWB during the first debate. Last night I went out to dinner at a little Italian place down the street and who should come in but a group comprising (among others I didn’t recognize) David Corn, E.J. Dionne, and, yep, […]

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Just heard Wolf Blitzer talking to an expert who relates that to the end, Saddam Hussein had reportedly believed that his regime might enjoy good relations with the U.S. eventually. “Truly,” Wolf opines, he was “living in a dreamworld.” Yeah, that sure is a wacky notion… Saddam and the U.S. on good terms, unheard of. […]

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Ok, whose idea were these creepy “We Know Why You Fly” ads for American Airlines? In this post-CAPPS era, does anyone find these scenes of airline personnel rattling off details of your motives for travelling particularly appealing?

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It’s hard work being Dubya, as we learned in the first presidential debate. Harry Shearer (of Simpsons/Chris Guest mockumentary fame) has a song up composed of clips from the debate reminding us how hard it is.

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As long as I’m getting all comic geeky on this page: I have a longstanding desire to acquire the original art of Transmetropolitan, issue 18, page 4 (the one with “Initiate Discovery!” in the upper-left corner). Darick Robertson, the artist, sells his originals, and this one was presumably sold off long ago. If anyone out […]

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P.J. Doland passes along this hilarious instructional video. Once you’re properly emofied, channel your bubbling inner turmoil into one of these games.

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Flipping through a New York Times style piece on the proliferation of satirical news sources (The Onion, The Daily Show) this weekend, I found myself thinking about a mid-’90s trend my friend and erstwhile prof Doug Rushkoff wrote about extensively at the time. “Wink Marketing,” which seems to have faded somewhat, though not entirely, was […]

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