Last year, while sorting through some mildewed videotapes in my garage, I discovered three VHS tapes that contained the complete year-end countdown of MTV’s top 100 videos of 1988, unwatched by me since they were broadcast over the last ten hours of that year. Since then, I’ve been working my way through the tapes, and […]

posted 29 April 2009 in 1988. 4 comments

As previously mentioned, I visited the auction-house exhibition of Michael Jackson’s possessions from Neverland last week. The auction itself had already been cancelled by Jackson at the last minute. Pick your theory as to why: (1) He got a last-minute cash infusion (2) He never intended to actually sell his stuff, but wanted to (a) […]

posted 27 April 2009 in Photos, Tasty Bits. 2 comments

I spent the morning at the public exhibition of the contents of Michael Jackson’s Neverland ranch (for an auction that has since been cancelled–if it was ever intended to actually happen in the first place). The visit started off kitschy and entertaining, but by the end, the whole thing just seemed like the detritus of […]

posted 24 April 2009 in Photos. no comments yet

(New to the countdown? Catch up here.) We return from the commercial break with an interview clip of Terence Trent D’Arby, looking impossibly young. He appears to be sitting in the hallway of an awards show (the background includes both a folding chair and a guy in a tuxedo). “Nowadays you can make three albums,” […]

posted 23 April 2009 in 1988. 7 comments

For your reading pleasure on this hot Monday, an episode in celebrity medicine from The Andy Warhol Diaries: Sunday, December 19, 1976 Went to work (magazines and newspapers for week $26). Lou Reed called and that was the drama of the day. He’d come back from a successful tour, he was a big hit in […]

posted 20 April 2009 in Excerpts. no comments yet

Marching on with the flipwalks, and this time I’m particularly pleased with the photograph. A teaser to whet your appetite: To see the complete image, click here. I made a few tweaks to my standard format this time. The first is that the page for flipwalk #40 has a link to a larger version of […]

posted 17 April 2009 in Photos. no comments yet

I had hoped to return to the 1988 countdown today, but it looks like that’ll be delayed another week; my apologies. In the meantime, since Phil Spector is in the news this week, having been convicted of the murder of Lana Clarkson, may I direct you to this long, fascinating email I got from him […]

posted 15 April 2009 in Archives, News. no comments yet

I am delighted to announce that my 2006 book, Is Tiny Dancer Really Elton’s Little John?: Music’s Most Enduring Mysteries, Myths, and Rumors Revealed, has been translated into German. “Is the title all one word?” asked one friend. Alas, no, and surprisingly to me, it’s not even all German: it’s Do You Want to Know […]

posted 13 April 2009 in Buy My Stuff. no comments yet

It’s been almost two months since I posted a flipwalk; if you’re new to the project, you can catch up here. That’s a blown-up detail from the final image; for the story of my hour-long random peregrination and the resulting picture, you can click here.

posted 10 April 2009 in Photos. no comments yet

Kurt Cobain died fifteen years ago this week. When I heard the news, I bolted from the office of Details magazine (my then-employer) and went home to Brooklyn to find my Nirvana notebooks. I had toured around Germany with Nirvana in 1991, as Nevermind was becoming a blockbuster hit, and done another extensive interview with […]

posted 8 April 2009 in Archives, Articles. 2 comments