Supermoon 2013 Rising Over Manhattan, Photographed From Hoboken, New Jersey

Below are a few photos of the Supermoon rising over Manhattan tonight that I snapped with my Canon 40D from Pier 14, in Hoboken, New Jersey. There were a bunch of real photographers (which I'm not even close to being) on the pier, who probably got some much better photos than these. The moon began rising over the Chelsea skyline at about 8:50 pm, and I was able to get a handful of decent shots. Enjoy:

Click here for a larger slide show.

 

'Home of the Brave' Debuted on Aol.com Yesterday

A new video series I've been working on with Neil Katz and Shawn Efran premiered on Aol.com on the Fourth of July. The series is called 'Home of the Brave' and features real, often intense, war stories told by real American war heroes -- in their own words. Efran, who directed each episode, is an Emmy-winning and Peabody winning TV producer and his skills really are on display in this series. The first episode is very gripping and graphic at times, but was well-received by the Aol audience and seemed to do well on social media. It even caught the eye of actor Stephen Baldwin who Tweeted the link to his followers. Check out the debut episode right here--and enjoy.

Living In The (Not So Distant) Past

Before you say goodbye to 2011 for good (or after you do it), take a glance back at the year that was in news stories. My Aol.com colleagues and I compiled a list of our 25 favorite stories that we covered on the homepage this year. Some of them are huge news stories you no doubt recall while others are on the obscure side, but are no less interesting or unforgettable. Perhaps you missed a few of them.

My favorite story basically came down to a toss-up between this amazing story and series of photos about a bunch of lions in the wild and the overall 'favorite' story on our list, which you'll have to click through to the article to see. Check out the entire list of 25 right here and bring on 2012. Happy New Year!

Exclusive Photos: Uptown Hoboken Waterfront Walkway

Work began on the waterfront area of Hoboken Cove (or Weehawken Cove as many call it) in September 2010, and included the demolition of the few remaining ruins of what used to be the Todd Shipyard. Construction on the waterfront walkway to connect Hoboken and Weehawken began in earnest about a year ago, entailed some minor reshaping of the waterfront geography and is nearly complete. So, how's it looking? Pretty good, as these photos reveal:

Interview with New York Times reporter Diana Henriques for HuffPost

Last week, I had a Q&A interview with Diana Henriques of the New York Times published on The Huffington Post. Henriques is a Times veteran and an award-winning writer whose book, The Wizard of Lies, was released last week. The book chronicles the epic Ponzi scheme perpetrated for decades by Bernie Madoff.

The interview mainly focuses on Henriques's experience getting to know Madoff, corresponding with him over the phone and e-mail and meeting with him in-person at a federal prison in North Carolina. Henriques was the first reporter to interview Madoff and the only author who's written a book on Madoff to have his cooperation. We also touched on the state of the SEC pre-Madoff and some of the changes the regulatory body has made in the wake of Madoff's arrest and imprisonment.

She also gave her analysis on just how much Madoff's wife and kids knew about the Ponzi. It's a fascinating interview and Henriques, who really dove deep on this project, provides some marvelous insight that you probably can't get anywhere besides Bernie Madoff. Check it out.

Tupac Look-a-like Story is Popular

Surprisingly, one of the most popular stories I've ever written (in terms of Web traffic generated) is this piece about a guy who's known as "the Pathmark Tupac" that I wrote for The Hudson Reporter newspaper group. It's not going to be in the print edition till this Sunday--and I'm not even sure if it's going to be in the The Hoboken Reporter or The Jersey City Reporter--but it was published online two days ago.

The basic gist is that this guy looks exactly like the late Tupac Shakur and is trying to get movie director Antoine Fuqua to cast him in a biopic about Shakur. It's kind of interesting--I actually spoke with Tupac's dad for the story and an exec from Morgan Creek, the company producing the movie.

It's weird, though: 75 percent of the interview I did with this guy was completely inappropriate for a newspaper story and, therefore, unusable, but it was also completely interesting and amusing. I should probably look into doing another story about him for another publication.

Interesting Stuff for Summer in Various Pubs

I've had a few interesting stories in the works and published of late. All are worth checking out, so give them a read if you have a minute.

First, I have a cover story (see left) in the summer edition of Palisade magazine, which you can read on pages 23-25 of the online version. It's a Q&A with Jason Cameron, the affable host of DIY Network's Man Caves. Jason is a great guy--this is actually the second story I've done with him--and his show is pretty good, too. Hopefully, he'll build me a Man Cave someday in return for all the good press I'm giving him.

Also, in the latest edition of Palisade's sister mag, Jersey City, I had a story about Anthony Amoroso, a local chef who ended up defeating renowned sushi chef Masaharu Morimoto on Food Network's Iron Chef America. You can read that story on pages 28-29 of the online version.

I also wrote for a story for The Jersey Journal about Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino making an appearance to promote a new tanning salon in Hoboken. He said he was "too tired" to answer my interview questions (which were great, I promise) that night, but I may catch up with him again at some point. Anyway, see below for a picture I shot of "Sitch" amusing (I guess) perhaps one of his eldest fans. Click here to see the rest of the pics from that night.

Continuing with the tanning theme, I wrote and photographed a story for Patch about the thriving tanning culture in Hoboken, NJ.

Prior to that I had two interesting pieces published about The Pit, a 2010 indie documentary film about the end of a time-honored practice known as open outcry trading that was used for over 100 years at NYBOT. The film made its east coast debut at the Hoboken Film Festival earlier this month.

The first piece was a Q&A with Johanna Lee, the film's director and it was published on New York magazine's "Daily Intel" blog. The piece comes complete with a cool trailer of the movie, so check it out.

Then, for Patch I wrote a feature about Jon Horowitz (or "Newbie"), one of the guys depicted in the film who lived in Hoboken and worked at Willie McBrides, a Hoboken bar, while also trying to make it big trading coffee futures on the NYBOT floor.

Q&A with Lou Dobbs in NJ Monthly

Does Lou Dobbs prefer Jersey rock god Bruce Springsteen or Bon Jovi? And why does he seem to be softening on amnesty for illegal immigrants?

Find out in the May issue of New Jersey Monthly. At long last, my interview with the one and only Mr. Independent is available on the Web site of New Jersey Monthly and in the May issue, which should be on newsstands very soon.

I hung out in Dobbs's radio studio a couple of months ago and watched him do his syndicated show and then interviewed him for an hour afterward. No matter what you think of his politics, there's no denying he's a smart guy and a great broadcaster.

He was also a very nice guy--in fact, I made him bristle with a couple of my questions that didn't make the cut, including one about the John Deere hat he was wearing that day, but he took it all in stride and remained the consummate pro. Also not making the cut due to a lack of space was this question I posed to Dobbs:

Before leaving office, former Gov. Jon Corzine made N.J. the 14th state to legalize marijuana for medical use. Where do you stand on the issue?

I’ve got no problem at all with prescribing marijuana for a medical purpose to alleviate the pain of any patient. For personal, recreational use—we’ve got millions of lives being devastated in this country by addiction. We should come up with a solution to the current addictions that afflict society and then I’d be delighted to entertain legalizing whatever drug you want to discuss.

Hopefully I'll get to interview him again as he makes decisions on his political future. Also, I took the picture accompanying the piece.

Article on NY Mag about Facebook/IKEA Scam

Yesterday, I had a story on New York's "Daily Intel" blog about a scam being run through Facebook that offers a phony $1,000 gift card if you become a Facebook fan of IKEA and invite all your friends to do so.

Read it here and don't be lured by the $1,000 gift card.

Also, in the May issue of New Jersey Monthly, an interview I did with Lou Dobbs should be published. It's pretty interesting and I'll definitely post a link to it here when it's online.

Work on HuffPost, Patch & NJ.com

In an exercise of obligatory soul-selling, I covered the meeting of a pair of reality TV stars.  Snooki, an MTV reality star from Jersey Shore, paid a visit to Carlo's City Hall Bake Shop this week to shoot a scene for the hit TLC reality series Cake Boss. I know--reality cross-over madness! But, I managed to keep my poise and get some pics of the meeting and sold a story about it to The Huffington Post, which you can read here. For more pics of Snooki with the Cake Boss, click here.

Also, in addition to writing for Hoboken Progress, lately, I've contributed a few stories to Patch, a recently launched news site in Hoboken. For a story about a union using the universal symbol of labor grievance to battle drug store giant Walgreens, click here. 

For a story about a man in a cow costume delivering lunch to the Cake Boss, click here. And for a story about Barnes & Noble ending its 15-year run in the Mile Square, click here.


And last but not least, I contributed a couple of stories to The Jersey Journal, which you can read here and here.

Intrigue. Celebrity. Deception. It's All In NYP's Flavor of the Week Column...

...the latest edition of which was written by yours truly. This is a good little story from back in my NBC days--one that fellow former Pages will likely appreciate--of an encounter I had with an apparent Oscar nominee at Underbar in Union Square. Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote an edition of the New York Press's  weekly "8 Million Stories" column, titled "Bus Justice," which you can read here. 

Click here to read the full story in this week's New York Press.

A few more stories for various publications

I've had a few more stories published recently in a couple of regional New Jersey publications. First, there is this interview with photographer Ben Fernandez, which I did for Palisade magazine, that turned out to be pretty interesting.


Then, a story about Hoboken, NJ getting its first 7-Eleven in December of 2008 for The Jersey Journal. Also for The Jersey Journal, a story about U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez being honored by a local nonprofit and a piece about A&E wanting to bring its reality series Parking Wars to Hoboken.


I have some more interesting stuff coming up in the next few weeks, so check back soon.

Story About Phillies Club for Hoboken Progress

Well, it was a tough week. The Phils lost to the Yankees in the World Series, 4 games to 2. But, in the November 6th edition of Hoboken Progress, I had a feature about Sean Iaquinto, the founder of Hoboken's famed Phillies Club. The club gathers every Friday night during the regular season at a local bar to watch the Fightin' Phils. His group has over 80 regular members and, during postseason play, draws upwards of 200 Phillies fans to the bar to fraternize and watch games.

Iaquinto also founded an Eagles club, which preceded the Phillies club, and he writes the blog Philly2Hoboken.com. You can read the whole story about Iaquinto and his club by clicking on the picture of the front page above and clicking here for the second page and here for the third page of the story.

Small piece on NYmag.com

While covering BGC Partners' Fifth Annual Charity Day--an event where famous people play the role of "celebrity investment trader" for a good cause-- for Hoboken Progress, I shot a picture of the adorable and newly engaged Ivanka Trump closing a trade over the phone. The pic features her enormous engagment ring, supplied by her fiancee Jared Kushner, and I sold it and a short post to New York magazine's "Daily Intel." You can read the article and see the photo here...and no, I didn't get any pictures of Lady GaGa. Unfortunately, I had to leave before she arrived.

The piece I wrote about the event for Hoboken Progress will appear in the September 18 edition of the paper. You can click here to see a few more pictures I shot of Ivanka Trump.

I'd like to thank the Academy...

...for naming Cash Cab the best game show of 2008! The show took place at The historic Orpheum Theatre in LA and aired live on the CW Network last Sunday evening. After a couple of L.A. Times bloggers ripped Cash Cab for its production values and writing and predicted Jeopardy! would win the statue, we pulled out the award, which was sweet indeed. The pic above is our executive producer, Tony, giving the acceptance speech. Below is one of the Orpheum's awesome marquee.

Winning a Daytime Emmy was very exciting, to say the least. A big thank you has to go out to Ben Bailey--the host--who I think really carries the show. Also a thank you to the rest of the staff, every member of which does a fantastic job on the show.

I was also able to get a little press from the win. The blog Hoboken Now, did a small story on me and the same writer of that wrote a short piece about me in The Jersey Journal. And, on its blog, my hometown newspaper, The Intelligencer, ran a blurb about me last week.

Click here for a roundup of cool pics from the evening, here for the video of the Cash Cab team accepting the Emmy and here for a few more pics of our executive producer making the speech.

Cake Boss Story

As I mentioned last week, I wrote a story on Cake Boss star Buddy Valastro for Hoboken Progress and it (and a picture I shot) will be on the cover of the August 14th edition.

You can click on the picture to the left to see/read the cover and then click here to read the continuation from page 6 of the newspaper.

Let Them Watch Cake

I interviewed Buddy Valastro, the star of TLC's hit show Cake Boss the other day. The story I wrote should appear in next week's edition of Hoboken Progress. Buddy's bakery is nearly 100 years old and is located in Hoboken right across the street from City Hall.

Buddy was a very nice guy--and so was his sister, Mary, whom I also interviewed--as he took some time out of his busy schedule of baking and shooting the second season of the show to talk with me. Above is a picture I took of Buddy doing a scene for the show.

Hoboken's Cammarano Resigns

Capping what was a wild week in Hoboken, Peter Cammarano bowed to pressure from the city's residents and the state's governor, Jon Corzine, and resigned from his post as mayor. That paved the way for the City Council President Dawn Zimmer to take over the office on an interim basis. Zimmer was defeated by Cammarano in a runoff election for the mayor's office by just 161 votes on June 9th. I interviewed Cammarano just days before he won the runoff election.

And I covered the events of the last week for Hoboken Progress, and, though it won't be out till this Friday, you can read the report I filed for the paper last Friday. Click on the above picture for the first page of the piece and the picture below for everything after the jump.

Drama In Hoboken

It's been a pretty wild end of the month in Hoboken, with the Mayor getting arrested by the FBI on bribery charges and, ultimately, announcing his resignation yesterday. I interviewed Peter Cammarano, the former Hoboken mayor, for Hoboken Progress just before he was elected and I'm going to try to get another interview with him. His tenure was the shortest of any mayor on the city's history. You can read the first page of the Cammarano interview here and click here for the second page of the story. Also, I have an article recapping the whole week in Hoboken in the next edition of Hoboken Progress. 

Before all the drama unfolded, though, I had a few other stories in Hoboken Progress. A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece on the closing of the Goldhawk, a popular rock and roll bar in Hoboken. Click here for the first page of the story and here for the second page.

The following week, I wrote a profile on Hoboken's new police chief. Click here for the first page of that story and here for the second. And I'll have the article about the resignation of Peter Cammarano up as soon as it's published.

More Stories In Hoboken Progress

Recently, I've had several more stories published in Hoboken Progress, a few of them cover stories. You can check the first one here (for page one) and here (for page two), published in the June 19th edition about some phony campaign work flyers. And click here (for page one) and here (for page two) of a story in the July 3rd edition about Hoboken inauguration-day trivia.