So here's the deal: There is going to be a LOT of money spent this holiday season. Much of it is going to be spent, directed or otherwise influenced by women. Women control over 80% of consumer spending, drive huge internet shopping sites like Gilt Groupe, Zappos, &...

A few weeks ago I tried a little experiment: I unplugged for the Sabbath.

I'm Jewish, but not overly religious, and have certainly never formally observed the Fourth Commandment, other than via the tradition of wearing white on Friday nights at summer camp, which never seemed to dovetail...

It's hard to remember it now, but a year ago, Twitter was still hovering on the fringes of the mainstream. Before Oprah, before Ashton vs. CNN, before Kim Kardashian was selling out in 140 character bits — a year ago, Twitter had...

You know, I had no problem with Tim Tebow's pro-life Superbowl ad. It was fundamentally about choice - about the choice of a mother to keep her baby, which is a choice that resulted in a talented and seemingly highly moral, decent kid who happens to be ginormous football...

Yesterday, I hearkened back to September 2004 when NBC made the announcement that Conan O'Brien would be replacing Jay Leno as the host of the Tonight Show, five years in the future, in 2009. In hindsight, knowing what we know now about the events of the past week...

Team Conan.

Conan O'Brien's kiss-off letter to NBC is going to make him a hero, not only to people who started off loving him (and watching him!) and not only to creative types sick of being pushed around by The Man. It's because he's been cast as the underdog...

My new favorite song — played and replayed umpteen times over the past day is a simple, fabulous acoustic-guitar Lady Gaga medley by Sam Tsui and Kurt Hugo Schneider. Heard of them? Maybe not, but 1,231,924 plays on YouTube says a whole lot of people have. Actually, they've got MILLIONS...

It's nice that in 2010 we can still get excited about a female singer whose entire body is covered from the neck down. Well, except that the singer is Jennifer Lopez and her body was covered in a sparkly skintight semi-see-through bodysuit that clung to her every famous curve. So...

There was Britney with the snake. J Lo's Grammy dress. Madonna's various gender-bending and envelope-pushing over the years. Music awards shows have always featured big, sexy, diva-like moments, and maybe that's...

Twilight is upon us! From the frenzy surrounding the release of the second movie in the smalltown-teen-vampire-romance series, you'd think someone had opened a vein.

The books in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series — Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn — have sold over 85...

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.
----------

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...