The Daily Show, Jennifer Aniston, and Bird Poop

Last year, Ian and I managed to snag tickets to the Daily Show using their online reservation calendar. (I say “managed to snag” because it isn’t easy. You have to be lucky to catch an open date.) We had just returned to Connecticut after living in Tennessee for a year when one of our friends said she ‘d secured tickets online to the Daily Show, but had spent too long at a bar down the street before returning to the line. By the time she got there, it was long, and she wasn’t let in.

Ian and I, the first time we got a hold of some tickets, had left the house early and were determined to stay in line once we got there; what happened to our friend would certainly not happen to us.  Alas, we were foiled by traffic on the Merritt Parkway. People seven heads in front of us got in; we did not.

A few months ago, I – naturally a loyal Facebook friend of the Daily Show – saw their status update saying they had seats available for the next several months. I clicked the link to their reservation calendar, saw the available dates, and called Ian. “What do you think?” I said. “Get them!” he said. By the time I returned to the calendar less than two minutes later, Continue reading →

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TIME Magazine PoY effort gets its own site.

If you’re looking for more information on the “Like it for TIME” campaign, thank you for stopping by. All posts, interviews, and stories related to that effort can now be found at its own site, aptly called Like it for TIME. Hope to see you over there. – Kris

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TIME’S next person of the year (hear me out).

I want to nominate TIME’s next person of the year, but are regular, everyday people who read the magazine afforded that opportunity? My nomination would be the American Military, but TIME has already recognized The American Fighting-Man (1950) and The American Soldier (2003), and they’re not likely to do it again. So, I choose the […]

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ACTION! Author Ian T. Healy shows us how it’s done.

Ian T. Healy, the most prolific writer I’ve ever met (internet “met,” that is), is the creator of the Adventures of the S-Team web comic, regular NaNoWriMo participant (and winner), and now the head of a workshop (which he imagined and then created) on writing successful action scenes. The workshop is scheduled to hold its […]

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Interviewing the interviewer – About Sandy Ward Bell

Veteran radio personality Sandy Ward Bell, whose decade of experience working in a variety of radio formats was put on hiatus when her daughter  was born, is back. “Out of retirement,” she  writes in her blog talk radio bio, “to interview writers, musicians, and artists.” Bell is also an author, and her novel In Zoey’s […]

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The popular dead guy across the street.

Last winter, I moved into a house across the street from a cemetery. Not sort-of across the street, as in, down the road and across the street, but immediately across the street. If-I-press-the-gas-too-hard-when-backing-out-of-the-driveway,-I’ll-end-up-desecrating-someone’s-grave across the street. As someone who likes to avoid all things death, yet who simultaneously spends an inordinate amount of time thinking […]

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Former Counterterrorism Director Richard Clarke explains why the US attacked Iraq

It’s one thing to have heard talk of something, but it’s another to hear it said in this way by a person who was in the room at the time. Thank goodness for DVR, which made rewinding and transcribing (and pausing to type and pausing to type) not only easier, but possible.  The exact words […]

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Readers slam blog in defense of “Girls Gone Wild” victim “Jane Doe”

In what I think is an incredible show of united support for a woman who claims to have had her privacy violated, readers of the blog “Riverfront Times” left nearly 150 comments on two separate articles to blast the publication for doing what readers amounted to condoning sexual assault. (In cases like this, I’m used […]

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Avianova Airline’s Racy “Airline” Ad

So, there’s this Avia Nova ad coming out of Russia (see video at the Huffington Post) that starts off super-cool. Note the neat-o multiple-plane effect as it swoops down from the sky! And then there’s this: See how it looks like the plane is in two different locations at once? It’s like immediate travel. “We […]

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Interview with Murray Dunlap

The worst two things that can happen to a writer are losing the hands and losing the mind. Just a little over two years ago, on 6.7.08, a man who wasn’t watching the signals breezed through a red light and slammed into Murray Dunlap’s blue Volkswagen Jetta. After a three-month coma, Murray woke up to […]

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