First we watched "Senna". Formula One is close to meaningless in America, but the longer you watch this movie the more you get hooked. By the spectacle, the racing, the athleticism. Ayrton Senna wins the Brazilian Grand Prix and passes out, it was just that much of an effort, just that draining. Walking through the […]

Don’t sit here and lament "American Idol", laud Simon Fuller for coming up with the concept of "Pop Idol" and extending the brand. And while you’re at it, give credit to Lou Pearlman, who created the boy band paradigm when no one wanted it. You can’t look in the rearview mirror. You must look ahead, […]

I’m reading an oral history of MTV. I find these off-putting, good for bathroom reading but disappointing as books, but maybe the hit and run nature of "I Want My MTV" works because that’s just like the station, it lacked depth, it was in your face, it was the opposite of classic rock. MTV changed […]

So I’m watching the George Harrison special and I’m staggered to learn he grew up in a house without electricity. But it was worse. Heat was one stove, fired by coal, could that have contributed to his cancer? And then they go to Hamburg, where Klaus Voormann talks about seeing the Beatles on the Reeperbahn. […]