Click here for Peter Travers' video review of Sex and the City

Dear Diary,

Don't hate me. Tonight I did something that most women would never speak to me again for doing, and/or give away organs to do themselves. Practical, intelligent women; and I'm not talking kidneys.

Yes, tonight, I attended the Sex and the City movie premiere at Radio City Music Hall in New York City (with my bestie Ally Lewis.) Shoutoutz!

When we arrived at the pink carpet, the situation was about as glamorous as those Season One episodes where Carrie would turn to the camera and say what was on her mind. (Props to whoever put an end to this.) The rain was coming down, the make-up was running, and the line to get in resembled one of those extreme hamster cages with the psycho tubing.

A mousey girl with a heinous beret climbed onto the nearest barricade and began pouting. "Who's in charge here?" she asked no one in particular. "I've been waiting since 5:30!"

"I've been waiting four years!" I wanted to say back. But no. There was no reason to unleash my inner anger at Minnie Mouse when it was clearly Kim Catrall I wanted words with.

(more...)

American Idol is the type of show you either hate, or fist-fight your roommate over when they suggest watching House during commercial breaks.

For the latter, the only thing possibly sweeter than having six-day-champ David Cook show up at your office for lunch is runner-up David Archuleta joining him, and the two spending the afternoon calling each other "Cookie" and "Archie" as they attempt to figure out which of them is being addressed.

(more...)

Hey guys, just got back from a screening of the Sex and the City movie here in New York City. To date, it's only been shown to select critics and at a premiere in London last week. Obviously, anticipation for this movie is HUGE. We're talking Indiana Jones meets Iron Man huge. Here in New York, there are people scalping tickets to opening night showings for as much as $200 — that's just a seat at the movies!

So on to the review……SPOILER ALERTS EVERYWHERE. DO NOT READ IF YOU WISH TO BE SURPRISED BY THE SATC MOVIE.

(more...)

I’ve managed to stump most my co-workers with this trivia question, so I figured I'd unleash it on the web. What do the Velvet Underground, Public Enemy, The Sugarcubes, Pearl Jam, the Pixies, Primus and the Ramones all have in common? If nobody gets in right in the next few days I'll post a hint in the comments section. No Googling!

Sometimes I forget just how badly the Bush Administration has fucked things up for the rest of us.

During their reign, the worst stereotypes about America have been realized and amplified. And, what's worse, every transgression they've made has been done right under our noses, taking full advantage of the fact that, given a choice between action and non-action, we as a society choose non-action every time. The reason they were able to get over on us like they did was they acted like it was completely normal, and the media did the same. The fact that they've tried to repeal our civil liberties under something named "The Patriot Act" is just a brazen, in your-face "fuck you" to our nation’s values and common sense. These are the thoughts I had while watching the first few minutes of Southland Tales, Richard Kelly's much-maligned, allegorical, apocalyptic sci-fi brainteaser, now out on DVD.

(more...)

Before starting my online internship at Rolling Stone, I thought that there was a magical program that popped all editorial content onto the website. Little did I know that for every article in the magazine, it takes a complicated series of modifications to tailor it for your viewing pleasure.

Take HTML formatting. You wouldn't think twice about the foreign characters in Beyoncé or Mötley Crüe's names, but it's my job to plug in the nerdy combos of ampersands and numbers that make them look pretty on the site.

(more...)

In late 1993 rock and roll was dealt a cruel blow when Robert "Mutt" Lange married Shania Twain. Up until that point Lange had produced some of the 1980s best rock albums — including AC/DC's Back In Black and Def Leppard's Hysteria. Shortly before he tied the knot Lange ominously produced an album for Michael Bolton. Once the ring was on his finger Lange began working exclusively with his wife. Together they crafted her 1997 album Come On Over, which has sold 15.4 million copies in America alone and remains the best selling album of the Soundscan era. Yep, the same man who produced "You Shook Me All Night Long" and "Rock of Ages" is also responsible for "Man! I Feel Like A Woman!"

(more...)

Aside from the free Dunkin Donuts we get every other Friday, one of the major perks of working at Rolling Stone is eating lunch with celebs. Every couple of weeks, someone famous — be it Snoop Dogg, Conan O’Brien or William Shatner — drops by our cozy boardroom to chow down and chat about whatever new project they’re working on. Depending on the guest of honor, these noontime affairs are either attended by lots of ad people and RS editors, or lots ad people and a few RS editors in search of a free sandwich. Either way, they're pretty predictable: there's always a Q&A session, polite laughter at the guests' jokes, and enough chicken-caeser wraps to go around. Yesterday's lunch was different: cameras were flashing, bodyguards were flexing, estrogen was pumping — and all the wraps got eaten. The New Kids on the Block were in the house.

(more...)

Now here in the Rolling Stone office: New Kids on the Block!! Everyone’s here: Donnie, Jordan, Danny, Joey, and the other guy! Like, OMG, best ever, right!!

We’re turning to our correspondent who will live blog the event here in the RS offices:

12:10 PM: NKOTB arrives here in the RS conference room. Several female staffers mob the guys and pull off Donnie’s baseball cap, revealing a…pet rat named Barnaby

12:20 PM: Joey says his three favorite things are cars, pasta, and long, slow kisses. Two girls faint.

12:28 PM: Donnie says he's just looking to settle down and raise a family with a woman who can be "sweet to my mother." Five girls faint.

(more...)

In three years at Rolling Stone, I’ve done interviews with lots of musicians. The best of them usually end up in the magazine, but some gems occasionally fall through the cracks.

In June, 2006, I went to a show at BB King Blues Club featuring two true legends of Mississippi Delta blues, Robert "Junior" Lockwood and David "Honeyboy" Edwards. Both were 91 years old at the time and contemporaries of Robert Johnson: Lockwood learned how to play guitar from Johnson, who lived with his mother for ten years, and, at some point, Lockwood added the "Junior" to his name to emphasize the connection. Edwards was a colleague and friend of Johnson's who was there on the night in 1938 when the iconic bluesman — who sold his soul to the devil to play guitar so well — was poisoned for sleeping with another man's wife.

The interviews were fascinating and we hoped to make them into a piece about these two giants in the history of American music still touring the country in their 90s. As often happens, the piece was pushed back a few times to make room for more breaking news and, at some point, it fell off our radar. When Lockwood died in late 2006, we were able to use some of the interview with him in our obituary. But the Honeyboy Edwards interview never ran at all. I was looking through old transcripts recently and realized that some of this stuff is too fascinating — and historically important — to exist only as a Word file on my hard drive. So here it is.

(more...)