Oprah goes OVERBOARD

Last week on Oprah …

A while ago, Oprah & co. chose James Frey’s book “A Million Little Pieces” as their bookclub book of the month selection. The book was pitched as being his real-life story of alcohol & substance abuse, and surving that. Of course being chosen as Oprah’s choice book & author – is a liscense to print money.

Eventually people figured out, that some of the stuff in the book – couldn’t have happened…. in fact it stunk of fiction rather than non-fiction. Frey went on Larry King to debate “non-believers” in his story.. and even Oprah called to defend him.

That Oprah – what a gal !

Eventually, even Oprah stopped believing. Last week, she invited him onto a live broadcast of his show – essentially to embarrass him as being a LIAR on national tv.  To say it was uncomforteable tv – is not saying enough. Oprah cut the guy down – and came off looking like a hero.

My view on this..

Oprah should be more than ashamed. She has a city of people on her staff, and even before the book was featured on Oprah, there was some controversey about it. If it was the least bit questionable, it should have been picked apart by her people WAY before Oprah featured it, way before. To only realize this way after the fact, seemed disingenious of her – and even an abuse of her power/authority over the man. I doubt she cared less whether or not the guy lied or not, just how it made her look foolish, moreso for defending him on Larry King – when at that point her staff should have been working overtime to find out the real truth.

To invite him on her show – just to slam him, seems like dirty pool. Shame on you Oprah. You don’t invite people into your “house” – just to be mean to them.

 

A bad day

Lost a friend today. My friend Sean passed away without any warning, at the tender age of 28. We weren’t super-close- but I did like him a lot. Just saw him Friday and laughed with him about stuff going on. What stood out about him most, if you looked past the fact that he had the body of an Adonnis – was that under it all – he was actually quite a shy and nice guy. I’ll miss him, he left way too early. Condolensces to his loved ones.

Site of the WEEK

My #1 site of the week is… DRUMROLLS PLEASE ……….

http://www.pandora.com

Brought to you by the same fine people that produced the music genome project. No, I don’t really know what that is either – and don’t really care that much to tell you the truth, but I do know that they’re the ones responsible for it.

Essentially, Pandora.com is an online radio station. The difference is – you make the choice of what’s played, at least in a manner of speaking. What you do – is enter in an artist or song that you like, and the “station” starts playing music that will similar to that song in terms of style, genre, artist, etc. It’ll then build on that choice. For instance, picking a song by John Lennon – may lead into a song by the Beatles- which he was a part of – which may lead into a song by Oasis, who have songs in the same style as the Beatles – which may lead into a song by Kula Shakir who… and so on.

There will likely be hits and misses, but chances are – you’ll hear some new music along the way that you’ll like. People who bitch about the sad state of radio today, will likely find this a really nice alternative.

Hello world!

First posting is ALWAYS a bitch, so I will make it short. I’m going to alternate between using this page as a place to rant and a place to post cool links that I like. I plan on using essentially the same format that Augie uses at variousandsundry.com – so if you like that – hopefully you’ll enjoy this.