Another PSA I wrote for The Huffington Post:

Vanity Fair Starts New Feature “Hitch Bitch” To Field Hitchens Hate Mail

Portfolio.com’s Jeff Bercovici writes today about ‘Hitch Bitch,’ Vanity Fair’s new feature that gives readers the chance to take on the magazine’s controversial columnist.

“No V.F. contributing editor arouses more reader ire than our tireless columnist Christopher Hitchens,” reads the explanatory note. “VF Daily will post a selection of the sharpest, snappiest, and/or most elegantly reasoned letters, but keep in mind that what you submit may be edited. Please include your full name and hometown–and please, don’t write anything you wouldn’t want your mother to read.”

Read The Full Story…

More from The Huff:

Us Weekly’s Janice Min: Proud To Be Gay-Friendly


Us Weekly Editor-in-Chief dedicated her “From Us To You” letter to readers this week to sharing news of Us’ nomination for a GLADD Media award (which, incidentally, came in January — but better late than never). Min excitedly explained:

I was so excited when senior editor Bradley Jacobs called to tell me Us Weekly had been nominated for a GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) award for Outstanding Magazine Overall Coverage.

Read The Full Story…

My first blog at The Huffington Post! If only didn’t have to come at the heels of such a tragedy. Lawrence King, a 15 year-old who had recently come out to his friends and family was shot by a classmate this February. A few days after the shooting, I had checked Anderson Cooper’s blog and seen that he’d written about King’s murder. He said that the national media had largely neglected King’s death, but that he was going to include a segment on the murder in the “Anderson Cooper 360 Show” that evening. Now, I missed the show on TV, but I since it’s podcasted, I thought I’d be able to find it online. I looked everywhere, but no dice.Click to see my blog post here (bonus: my embarrassingly “serious” headshot). Or, continue reading:

CNN Cuts Gay Teen Killing From Cooper PodcastLast night, Anderson Cooper announced on his 360 blog that Monday night’s show was going to focus on a story that hadn’t received the attention it deserved. He was talking about the murder of Lawrence King, a 15 year-old who was shot in the head by a 14 year-old classmate two weeks ago in California. Shortly before his death, King had come out of the closet and had begun to modify his dress to reflect his sexuality. As a result, he was subjected to homophobic slurs all through his final days. Read The Full Story…

When I joined The Huffington Post earlier this year to work with media editor Danny Shea and entertainment editor Katherine Thomson, this was my first assignment: an editorialized compilation of reviews pitting “Cashmere Mafia” against “Lipstick Jungle”. I had seen Cashmere’s pilot right before I put together the article, but hadn’t yet seen “Lipstick Jungle.” This is because (a) it hadn’t aired yet and (b) I was too busy watching “Gossip Girl.” Sad but true. Anyway, ever since GG went on hiatus, I needed something else to watch during my nightly dose of lasagna from the Italian take out place down the street. “Lipstick Jungle” worked perfectly. But, that is now. This was then:

Lipstick Jungle Reviews: Living in the Shadow of a Hit Series

With the official ‘Sex and the City’ movie coming out this May and two shows vying to claim its place on television, 2008 seems like the fabled year that SATC fans could stop watching re-runs. Or not. The trailers for movie are undeniably lame, and ‘Cashmere Mafia,’ the brain-child of SATC’s producer Darren Star, has been universally panned.

So ‘Lipstick Jungle,’ the new series premiering this Thursday on NBC, is the season’s last remaining hope. It’s major selling point is that it has Candace Bushnell fighting in its corner. The author of ‘Sex and the City’ was devastated when Star, whom she’d known for over 20 years, beat her to the punch with ‘Cashmere Mafia.’ Mafia’s been floundering for several weeks. Question is, will Lipstick join them at the bottom of the Hudson?

Salon.com’s Heather Havrilesky gives the show its most glowing review:

Lipstick Jungle” isn’t perfect, but the dialogue is sharp and funny, and for once, we’re given female characters who don’t sacrifice their dignity or personal power for the sake of another lovable, goofy story line that’s guaranteed not to intimidate female viewers. These women are making tough choices, they’re good friends to each other, and they feel fairly genuine in the show’s first two episodes. Here’s hoping the show’s producers will stick to their guns (even if their overbearing network bosses disagree) and stay committed to these unapologetically strong female characters.

Read The Full Story…

My review of Peter Temple’s “The Broken Shore” appeared in Salon.com’s “Summer Reads” for 2007.


I thought it was a pretty gripping thriller. And the writing was just beautiful — Temple really is a master of the English language.You can read my review here. And you can purchase “The Broken Shore” from Amazon.com by clicking on the thumbnail of the book’s cover on the right.

And, as always, here’s a pdf of my review:

“The Broken Shore”

By Peter Temple

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25

It may be summertime in America, but it’s winter down under. In Peter Temple’s “The Broken Shore,” big-city detective Joe Cashin returns to his hometown on the South Australian coast to recover from a run-in with a felon that nearly claimed his life. He busies himself by playing with his dogs, taking walks in the country, and restoring the house his grandfather ruined when he blew himself up on the premises. This could be a novel in itself, with Cashin confronting the skeletons — literally — in his closet. But when a local millionaire is brutally assaulted and the three aboriginal youths accused of the crime die in quick succession, he is pulled back into the sleuthing biz.

Read The Full Story…

I’m only getting into “The Sopranos” now, and I finally understand why people were getting so emotional about the series finale last year*. Putting together a Salon.com prediction pool, again with Thomas, was one of my most fun assignments. Speculation was rampant — Berkley Breathed even drew a cartoon ending. But the coup de grace, getting a soundbyte from Tucker Carlson!Click here to see the post with predictions from Heather Havrilesky, Berkeley Breathed, Jennifer Egan, Stephen Elliott, Erica Jong, Rich Cohen, Jonathan Ames, Anthony Gottlieb, Laura Lippman, Franch Rich, Tom Tomorrow, Tucker Carlson, Steve Almond, Lisa Lutz, Regina Barreca and David Handler.

And here’s the pdf:

*I was kind of miffed that “The Wire” finale this year wasn’t as big of a deal, but one has to give credit where credit is due. “The Wire” was good, but “The Sopranos” is epic.

Don Imus’ getting kicked off the air, ironically, got me one of my first major(ish) assignments at Salon.com. My NYU classmate Thomas Rogers and I — Salon being a hothouse for NYU grads — put together a roundtable on “Safe Speech” featuring some of the site’s favorite personalities.

It took a LONG TIME. To begin with, it was kind of last minute. To make matters worse, any actor/ singer/ writer/ blogger/ New York City resident of note has an agent. Having to go through middlemen took up the better part of 2 days.

The final panel included Floyd Abrams, John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats, Greg Gutfield, Brian Lehrer, Michael Musto, Scott Simon and comedienne Sandra Tsing Loh.

But we eventually got something together. You can see it here.

Or download a pdf version here:

When I joined Salon.com in 2007 I was working with entertainment editor Scott Lamb (now at BuzzFeed). We’d get up early every morning to put together The Fix. The Fix was Salon’s daily pop-culture blog. It was meant for readers who were interested in pop culture, but didn’t have much time to surf the Web. It was Salon’s most popular feature and accounted for the bulk of the site’s traffic. It was RSS enabled and allowed readers to join an email listing that would forward the web page, as is, to their inboxes. Our goal was to give a reader, within about 10 minutes, a comprehensive and enjoyable update on the media and entertainment industries.

You can check out some examples of The Fix here: