A few weeks ago I mentioned the now-in-progress competition to design what will be the tallest building in San Francisco — or for that matter anywhere on the West Coast — a new tower alongside a new bus and railway terminal being built by the Bay Area’s Transbay Joint Powers Authority. The three contenders are designs from the …
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There was a time, before the rise of blogs, MySpace and Facebook, when people wanting to immerse themselves in the hyper-self-conscious navel-gazing of the self-aware and highly educated had to depend on the TV shows of Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick. Now the people who brought you thirtysomething …
Alice in “I Wonder” Land
As in — I wonder how long it will be before Alice Walton has her way with the Stieglitz Collection at Fisk University? Actually, while we’ve been talking about 9/11 this week, there’s been movement on two Walton-related artworld dramas.
One of them involves Walton and Fisk. Earlier this week a Tennessee judge disallowed a deal …
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Two-ned In: Happy Birthday to Us
It is a momentous day for three major world religions. Muslims begin the celebration of Ramadan. My people mark Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. And in the dominant American religion of television worship, we observe the anniversary of the day, two years ago, that a plucky home-design-empire CEO strutted out of jail and onto her own …
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What He Said: Good Shows with Bad Theme Songs
Peter Ames Carlin at the Portland Oregonian (see the blogroll at right) is a regular read at Tuned In HQ, and his latest blog post proves why, hammering the condescending folk whine Little Boxes that opens the otherwise excellent Weeds.
When I first heard the Malvina Reynolds song at the opening of the pilot of Weeds, I cringed, …
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Stewart at the Oscars: Why? Why Not?
So the Academy Awards have asked Jon Stewart back to host, despite the fact that his last outing, in 2006, drew fewer viewers than Chris Rock before him and Ellen DeGeneres after. Naturally, people are starting to ask why, including LA Weekly’s Nikki Finke. (To be specific, she asks: “Has the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences …
9/11 Art
Tumbling Woman, Fischl, 2002 — Photo: AP
Over the past couple of days, Blogger Tyler Green has had a series of posts about art produced after 9/11 that tried to come to grips with the event. Interesting idea. Let me throw in one candidate not mentioned by him so far, especially because it’s very effectiveness caused it so many …
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George W. Bush, Intellectual Elitist
From the washingtonpost.com chat with Robert Draper, author of Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush:
Baltimore: Does president bush ever comment on people like Keith Olbermann or other liberals who really hate him?
Robert Draper: Never! He is not one to pay attention of any kind to his critics. And for that matter, Bush told
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9/11 + 6 + 1 Day
My long commentary yesterday on the state of reconstruction at the World Trade Center site brought in a number of passionate replies from readers. One of the most typical? That the powers that be should simply have re-built the towers as they were. (Or as one reader proposed “but taller, much taller!”) Even now, when it’s plainly not …
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The Making of Many Top 100 TV Lists Hath No End: Now It's TV Guide's Turn
No sooner did time.com post my All-TIME 100 TV Shows than a package showed up at my office with a brand-new book: I Heart TV: Your Ultimate Companion to 100 Essential Shows, from the editors of TV Guide. Spooky! Well, not so much, since the book was messengered over by TV Guide’s publicist, but still, what are the odds?
So how do our …
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JPTV: What I'm Watching Tonight
Your computer continues to eat your TV. Online gossip guru Perez Hilton–who did a bit this summer on Victoria Beckham’s NBC reality special–premieres What Perez Sez About tonight on VH1. (Or is it just called What Perez Sez? There seems to be some disagreement.) Out of sheer curiosity I (which, as always, means, “at least my TiVo”) …
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"We've Just Had Another Explosion"
It didn’t take long after that cloudless Tuesday on the Eastern seaboard for the Sept. 11 attacks to become video wallpaper–the crashes, the fireballs, the towers collapsing, over and over and over. Six years later, plenty of people are still bothered by how often and how casually TV news replays what are, after all, the images of …
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That Darn List! The Top 10 TV News Events
Bernard Shaw and Peter Arnett from Baghdad in 1991.
When I finished the All-TIME 100 TV Shows list, I had so much leftover list-making energy that I came up with a sidebar list of 10 influential TV news events. The editors of time.com decided that was one more bell and/or whistle than the package needed. But waste not, want not: I give …
