I had the rare opportunity to attend the shoot of the second season of ABC’s Shark Tank. I created “AfterShark” for the first season of the show, and for that, I interviewed the business owners after they had appeared on the show, so for the second season, I was invited to come to the set… Read more »
Something is very wrong on Broadway: There’s a standing ovation for every performance. Last year, I went to see the new musicalThe Addams Family at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. A day later, the New York Timesproclaimed it “genuinely ghastly” and a “collapsing tomb.” Reuters said its “artistic inspiration pretty much ended with the pitch meeting.” The Washington Post deadpanned… Read more »
We obsess over the deaths of individuals. When one notable person dies, or when one person dies notably, we imbue that person with our fears, with idealizations of our better nature, or with a rueful but unspoken gratitude of “there but for the grace of God go I.” But when we die in batches, we… Read more »
There may be few things more annoying than reading the results of yet another study in the press. The only thing more dispiriting, I guess, would be one more self-serving article about Twitter. Enough already! Yet here’s one that dares to be exponentially more pretentious by being both at once. Don’t worry. I’ll boil it… Read more »
Well, this is disgusting. I joined a dating site, OKCupid, early last week. (Stop chuckling. That’s not the disgusting part.) I’m not a big dating site fan, but a friend said it was fun, so I figured I’d give it a try. I’m a explorer by nature. I try stuff. Anyway, OkCupid allows users to… Read more »
You’re going to think I’m nuts. But I’m growing convinced: The Web has trashed the American economy. Back in the ’20s, mass production transformed the way we made and bought things. Henry Ford and his magnate brethren learned how to make vast quantities of consumer items quickly, and to sell those consumer items, they had… Read more »
I am beginning to think that Twitter appeals to the lazy guy in me. Instead of posting something here, I tweet it (@bastable) because that’s quicker and shorter. But so many of my activities are not being properly preserved except at the Library of Congress. Last night, for example. I went to the opening party… Read more »
It happened on March 25, but there had been warnings for years. Factory owners across America amassed fortunes by exploiting what was, at the time, a seemingly inexhaustible resource: immigrants. Newly arrived Europeans were expendable. They had a weak political voice, so crossing them had little negative impact for politicians and none for businessmen, since… Read more »
Since mid-December, I’ve been appearing on CBS’s The Early Show more or less weekly. Strangely, I find it easier than my weekly segment on Fox Philly partly because at CBS, I can actually have a conversation with the person sitting across from me. Part of the reason is because the staff is truly nice, and… Read more »
I interviewed Anthony Bourdain for *********. He was driving his car somewhere, so he put on his car speaker and I chatted with him as he owned the highway, like William Daniels and the Hoff, if the Hoff was a genius writer and not a clown. His response to my last question was so good, but… Read more »