I just finished swallowing my daily dose of doom from CNN (a morning ritual, like brushing my teeth, only nastier), and I have to tell you, things are not lookin’ good. From the war in Iraq to poor Brit, world affairs suck like an Electrolux. The works have gotten so gummy we can’t even bury […]

Here’s a fairy tale for you. It’s a good one; everybody knows it and loves it. It’s from the Book of American Fame and Celebrity. Ready, kids? Once upon a time, in a dusty little Texas town called Mexia, there lived a poor (but pretty) little girl named Anna Nicole Smith. She worked at Jim’s […]

Good things are sometimes found by coincidence. I believe that. I also believe that when great things are found, it’s part of the Big Plan, and if you don’t pass on your discovery, you go to Columnist Hell when you die. I think of Columnist Hell as either an eternity of Larry King interviews or […]

In 1954, my mom finally gave in to her children’s demands for a TV. Our first idiot box was a used Zenith table model that weighed approximately 6,000 pounds. It dominated the living room of our Stratford, Conn., apartment for four years, until we moved back to Maine. At first we got only one channel […]

When the movie studios think about selling their product, do baby boomers still play a part in their calculations? Sure. Am I a good representative of that particular target audience? I think so. Still violently in love with motion pictures? Check. Got some extra time each week to go catch one? Check. And while I […]

Have I told you about the Columnist’s Credo I had to sign – in blood, at midnight – in the offices of ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY when I started writing these columns? Well, Uncle Stevie had to make lots of promises, and one was that I would never, ever promote my own stuff. So I’m forbidden to […]

In 1957, I was 10 years old and my mother worked at a laundry in Stratford, Connecticut. She came in one afternoon while I was watching American Bandstand. The kids were dancing to something by Chuck Berry – maybe ”Roll Over Beethoven.” She watched in silence for a while, then said: ”The man singing that […]

Some critics – the always tiresome Harold Bloom among them – claim that listening to audiobooks isn’t reading. I couldn’t disagree more. In some ways, audio perfects reading. One friend of mine likes to tell the story of how she got so involved in Blair Brown’s reading of Sue Miller’s Lost in the Forest that […]

I’m sure Ron Williamson, of Ada, Okla., would have been Nancy Grace’s dream case if she’d been on TV at the time of his arrest and subsequent trial for the murder of Debra Sue Carter; I mean, we’re talking years of prime-time steak and chops, all culminating with Williamson being sentenced to death by lethal […]

In David Simon’s version of Dante’s Inferno, Hell is played by Baltimore and all seven of the deadly sins are doing just fine, thanks. Midlevel drug dealers welcome fall by giving their corner boys money for new clothes – a little perk to keep them happy and moving those spider-bags and red-tops. The bigger crooks […]