The remains of veteran reporter John Higgins were finally laid to rest last weekend at Hillside Cemetery in Lyndhurst, NJ. Higgins died suddenly last November of a heart attack at age 45. His gravesite sits on a hill, with an excellent view. Straight ahead of you, in the distance, sits the Empire State Building, symbol [...]
Another Higgins Tribute
You may recall the flood of material back in November and December of last year related to the death of John M. Higgins. Now, Aaron Barnhart, TV critic at the K.C. Star and curator of TV Barn, offered his tribute to Higgins this week, in the course of reporting on the CBS upfront presentation. It [...]
The power of words
Hank Stuever writes a weekly column for WaPo called “Question Celebrity.” I gather it’s a pun: you write in with questions about celebrities and celebritydom and the column takes a skeptical view of the whole notion of the celebration of celebrities. I feel ambiguous about the column. It’s not bad, but not great. I suppose [...]
The Higgins Farewell Tour Continues…
On Tuesday, the memorial service for John M. Higgins was held up in New York City. I’m pleased I could participate. The event was held in the Viacom building, home to MTV, VH1 and Comedy Central, among other networks. John’s iPod was hooked up to the stereo system, which would have pleased him. I also [...]
The kids are alright
There was a fascinating article in the Washington Post magazine about “toxic parents,” although the actual subject was a little broader: how parents view their relationship with their children. I have written in the past about how we view young people (this post references “Youth Gone Wild” scares and this one focuses on the evil [...]
Year One: The Media Dissed and More
Today marks the first anniversary of this blog and here are more of my fave posts. Nothing sells independence and rebellion than a plucky lil’ blogger attacking media giants, right? Sure, you could pick on someone your own size, but what’s the fun in that? I took a few shots of my own. I was [...]
H-A, double R, I, D-A-N spells Flanagan.
A couple months ago, I carried on (at length) about Caitlin Flanagan, of The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker. There is a new profile by Ella Taylor in the current LA Weekly. Here are some of the points that struck me as interesting: What understandably drives a lot of feminists right up the wall [...]
“Ain’t nothing like the real thing…”
Yesterday, I took a stab at imaging what today’s Alessandra Stanley review of the new television program The Unit would look like. You can compare my version to the real thing, as it appears today in the New York Times. I think I was a little kinder than she was. What do you think? Tags: [...]
Tomorrow’s errors committed today.
This is so inside baseball, I’m almost embarrassed. But not embarrassed enough to stop me from doing it anyway. Once before, I caught Alessandra Stanley cleaning up some dialogue. And others have made a sport of watching her in action. I thought to myself, is she so predictable? Could you write a prototypical Alessandra piece [...]
“If there’s a mental health organization that raises money for people like you, be sure to let me know. “
You know what’s great about those people who write for The New York Times? They are prone to blithely confessing things that if heard from someone sitting next to you on a cross-country flight would make you wish you could change your seat. The kinds of things that make you think: freak. In today’s Online [...]