Cover Story In Hoboken Progress

Last week's (June 5th) edition of Hoboken Progress featured a cover story I wrote about Hoboken mayoral candidate Peter Cammarano. It was part of a preview of the June 9th runoff election in Hoboken between Cammarano and Dawn Zimmer.

Pete was a nice guy and he's very knowledgeable about all the issues facing Hoboken. The interview focused on quality of life issues, something Cammarano has strived to improve during his tenure on the Hoboken City Council.

The election was so close that it will be decided by the absent tee and provisional ballots scheduled to be counted on Friday, June 12th. Click on the picture above to read the cover story and here for the continuation on page 7 of the newspaper.

Guest Post On Hoboken Now Blog

Check out NJ.com's Hoboken Now blog today for a guest post written by me. Many thanks to the supremely talented Carly, one of the reporters at The Jersey Journal, whose ubiquity around Hoboken makes the blog unrivaled in The Mile Square.

The post is about a minor cameo Hoboken made on last week's season finale of the NBC police procedural Law & Order. One of the bad guys involved in a political pay-to-play scandal--ripped from the headlines--was arrested at his apartment in Hoboken. Click here for the post.

Article On NYMag.com Today

Check out New York magazine's Grub Street blog today for an article I did about the Oak Room restaurant at the landmark New York City hotel The Plaza. 

After being closed for much of the decade, the Oak Room reopened, to much fanfare, in November of 2008. However, things didn't go so smoothly and several vendors, who wished to remain anonymous, claim they're owed thousands of dollars for food they supplied to the restaurant. I was able to obtain an e-mail from a French company that's been stiffed by the Oak Room to the tune of $35,000 plus. Of course, the Oak Room denied it's not paying bills and basically threw its former head chef under the bus.

Feature In Hoboken Progress

I wrote a Memorial Day feature for last week's Hoboken Progress, a weekly newspaper that covers the mile square. The piece is a profile of Carmine Varano, one of Hudson County's most highly-decorated WWII vets still alive. Varano was an unarmed medic in WWII, who was injured as the war in Europe neared its conclusion. For an 86-year-old, Carmine is still very with it, has a great memory of the things he experienced in war and even has a bunch of interesting memorabilia, some of which I shot pictures of for the article, which you can see the first page of here and the second page of here.

Report In TV Guide Magazine

Pick up a copy of this week's (the May 18th) issue of TV Guide, turn to page 19 and look for a report on shout-outs by TV writers which I wrote. It's a pretty cool piece about TV writers who've named characters after their friends and family. I talked to/e-mailed with a few cool writers--Shonda Rhimes from Grey's Anatomy, Ryan Koh from The Office, Terence Winter from The Sopranos and others. Everyone was very nice to take a few minutes to share their stories and all gave me interesting anecdotes. Check it out. There's no byline under the piece, but if you turn to page 20 you'll see a "reported by" credit. Also, the piece is only the magazine and not online. So, if you didn't pick up a copy, you can click here to see it and here to see the credit.

Nominated For Daytime Emmy Today

Well, for the second time in my career I've been nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award by the National Academy of Arts and Sciences...this time as a member of the Cash Cab writing staff. If you've never seen Cash Cab, it's a game show in a taxi cab and you can check it out on the Discovery Channel. The show's hosted by Ben Bailey who actually does an amazing job of negotiating patience-challenging Manhattan traffic while quizzing contestants/passengers. We had a great team of writers (whose names you can see in the screen shot above--click it to enlarge) that came up with really great material that's played well. Cross your fingers for us, though I won't be holding my breath for a win. We're up against some stiff competish: Jeopardy and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, a show I used to write for.

Interview on Mediabistro.com

My interview with Marc Rosenwasser, executive producer of Worldfocus, was published today on Mediabistro. You can see it here, however the interview is only partially accessible to non-members of Mediabistro. If you're not a paying Mediabistro member, I'll have the full version of it up shortly for anyone who'd like to sample my interviewing skills--see the sidebar on the right. Marc was a very nice guy and we had an interesting conversation that hit on a bunch of different topics. And congratulations to Marc and his staff are in order--they won the RFK Journalism Award a couple of weeks ago.