Melissa Lafsky is a friend of mine, but she's always seemed strange to me for one reason: She loves horror movies. Loves them. Thrillers, slashers, creature features — she's seen all of them,...

Yesterday morning, I was up early with big plans for knocking out a few Twitter Lists, boom boom boom. Ha. As if. I could NOT believe how what a time-waster it was — not only do you have to add everyone one by one, but you can't even type a...

I read The Shining before I ever saw the movie, when I was maybe 12. It's an incredible book, one which taught me to fear hotel room bathtubs, what a topiary was, why you can't forget about the boiler, and the phrase "officious little prick" (I've met plenty of them...

The Internet is a wide, wide world — you can't know about everything. Which means often, you don't. Recently a group of my colleagues started throwing around the names of the biggest bloggers on the web. The usual supects emerged: Josh Marshall, Matt Drudge, Perez Hilton and this blog's namesake,...

Shalom! I write this from balmy and bustling Tel Aviv, where I landed last Thursday morning, marking my first-ever visit to Israel. I made my first-ever pilgrimage here after years of promising "Next Year in Jerusalem!" at Passover seders; God will only let you off the hook for so long....

The SNL sketch "Biker Chick Chat" from the season opener of Saturday Night Live got a lot of attention thanks to newcomer Jenny Slate's F-bomb. But what didn't get attention: the frickin' bikes, dude! Though they swore up a storm and had very impressive hair, I'm not convinced...

Tonight Dave Letterman goes back on the air after one hell of a weekend. And I'm already confused.

Thursday night — as I'm sure you know by now — he went on the air and told an extraordinary story, first about being blackmailed and then about what...

What's more important to SNL, comedy or buzz? To the writers, players and guest hosts, it's probably the former; to Lorne Michaels and the suits at NBC, it's ultimately probably the latter. The show can't exist without being funny, at least some of the time -- that's its raison d'être....

UPDATE: Well! That was an eventful season premiere. The biggest takeaway: Newcomer Jenny Slate dropping the F-bomb on live TV. Wow. That may change everything I said below. Scroll down for my post-show takeaway.
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In its 34th season last year, SNL went mainstream — super mainstream....

You heard me. Aside from being an object of reverence for millions and having a rather shayna punim, these two have something very specific in common, tied to recent events. Yes, Megan Fox may give boys the kind of heart palpitations requiring proper health care, and yes President Barack...

Yesterday I watched one of the most bizarro TV shows that I have ever seen: Glenn Beck's 9/12 special on Fox News.

Even now, I am not sure what it had to do with 9/11 -- other than completely co-opting it for Tea Partiers, Fox News, dissent and -- oh,...

Where were you a year ago today? If you are a political journalist -- or media hanger-on -- chances are you were living out of a suitcase at the 2008 Presidential Conventions, with the Dems nominating Barack Obama in Denver and the GOP nominating John McCain in Minneapolis/St. Paul. Remember...

Remember when an anchor stepping down was a huge deal? Tom Brokaw. Dan Rather. Peter Jennings. These names were huge pillars of the news ecosystem, and their departures were big stories — as well as the fraught issue of who had the gravitas, the experience, the journalistic, anchor-ly heft to...

On the Internet, everybody has an opinion about everything, but if you're smart you know when to keep your mouth shut. That was me during the "Cash For Clunkers" story, which I still don't really understand nor have any desire to. I am not a car person -- have never...

You'd have to be living under a rock not to know that Mad Men debuted its third season tonight. For the past month fans have been inundated with Mad Men Twitter avatars, Mad Men window-dressings, and Mad Men-themed websites. All that smoke-filled, sexed-up, whiskey-splashed glamour...

"I told you so" moments are pretty sweet — and thanks to Sarah Palin, now I've got one. Ten months to the day after her speech at the Republican National Convention, I would like for this woman to eat her words:

I'm not a member of the permanent political...

Tonight, ASSME — or, the American Society of [Recently Fired] Media Elites, as the NYT's David Carr so delicately puts it — is having their first-ever Swag-A-Thon, which I am pleased to have had a modest role in helping with along the way, through my micro-giving site,...

"It's humbling to think that our 2-year old company could be playing such a globally meaningful role that state officials find their way toward highlighting our significance," a post on the Twitter blog by co-founder Biz Stone read. Therein lies the uneasy truth: In a major international crisis, one of...

Journalists, if you are going to spout off about Twitter, I beg you: Do some research. This has occurred to me frequently since Twitter hit the big time earlier this year, mostly because there have been frequent glaring errors on the part of "mainstream" journalists who write precious little articles...

This is unbelievable. In last night's "NBC Nightly News," Pete Williams had a segment on the Holocaust Museum shooter, James von Brunn, and they presented a guy by the name of John de Nugent to attest to his pre-shooting mental state. Which John de Nugent, you ask? This...