Look Who's Back!

It's our old friends CHINA AND GERMANY! Glad you decided to come back. Mebbe someone told you that a budding author is in charge of this fine blog.

I would like to address some comments about my upcoming book  LOVE IS ON THE AIR, coming soon to a bookshelf near you. I AM happy for my friends who have had success with self-publishing, but, seriously, how can you call it SELF-publishing if you have to surrender your first-born to some stranger who  will  probably edit the heck out of it?(The book, Silly!) You have to remember, editors killed Superman and Phoenix from the X-Men! I know, they came back,but that doesn't completely absolve them! I believe that MY idea of self-publishing is better, old-fashioned as it may be, because you actually TALK TO REAL LIVE HUMAN BEINGS who place pictures of Uncle George, Uncle Abe, and Uncle Andy in your hand when you sell your books on the street, or, if such is the case, send thank-you notes to nice people who order your book by mail FROM YOU, not from some river in South America!  As  I hinted last time, I haven't exactly had the best of friendships  with Random House. I wrote a novel I thought was the greatest since Gatsby, dropped it off with some friends in the mailroom, and what do they do? REJECT IT! Forget school libraries, Big Book
(Penguin Random House, Harper for example) is the greatest threat to literary freedom today, and those so-called "self-publishers"? They ain't so great either! I'm  Steven Eisenpreis, and I approve this message.

Ooooookay, time to climb down from my soapbox and make a major clarification. When I said the girl who was injured in that taxi accident was OK, I should have said at least she was ALIVE, although I know she's
not very well. I just hope that guy who thought he was A.J. Foyt (Google him!) either takes a safe driving course or gets ready to pack his bags for a LOOOOOOONG vacation on Ryker's Island.

It's not like I'm  really giving anything away, but as  my upcoming book is  set in the world of cable TV, I'm dedicating it to a pioneer of cable news,  my close,  warm, personal friend Mary Alice Williams who has worked for Lifetime, Verizon, The CW's New York home, PIX 11,  NBC and CBS on the local and national levels, and, more importantly, CNN, which many people called Chicken Noodle News, but became the Network Of Record for the 80's  and much of the 90's. As  M.A., as her posse called her, was a cable bigwig, I had what I consider now to be a very weird notion that she was invited to EVERYTHING cable, including the MTV Video Music Awards, which, in the 80's, featured everything from New York's  feisty mayor Ed Koch borrowing Michael Jackson's sparkling glove to Madonna's  controversial performance of "Like A Virgin." (which  was  recreated by Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera and ended with Brit-Brit and Madge's even-more controversial girl-on-girl kiss) She said,no,  and  she didn't have any regrets, because she thought the VMA's were, AND  I QUOTE DIRECTLY, "dumb." I still have no idea of MTV's whereabouts when brains were being handed out, because instead of going back to where it all began thirty years ago, Radio City Music Hall in New York, they're going to the Barclays Center in Brooklyn without any regard whatsoever for the greatest moments in VMA  history! (My favorites: When MTV invaded the cultural capital of the East Coast, Lincoln Center in 1999, Jay Leno riding onstage in a motorcycle,Beyonce hugging Taylor Swift after Kanye West interrupted her award presentation,and I can't finish THIS train of thought without mentioning at least ONE Michael Jackson  memory: He and his then-wife Lisa Marie  Presley came onstage and kissed and he said, "And they said it wouldn't last!") As somebody who lives a good walk away from Madison Square Garden and loves the Knicks, Rangers  and Liberty and respects the tradition of the World's Most Famous Arena, I believe the Barclays is the WORST thing to happen to New York area sports and entertainment. It's better suited to funerals than to basketball games and concerts,and I believe worldwide audiences are going to tune away in droves when they see the House That Jay-Z Built, more a tribute to himself than to anything else.

ONE LAST THING: The week of September 2 begins with the culmination of America's  Labor Day Weekend, and Rosh Hashonah, the beginning of the Jewish New Year falls on Wednesday the 4th, so the weekday Steve's Blog will be published on September 2, and we'll return to our regular schedule the following week with ONE exception: The Weekend Blastoff will be published on September 12,not only because the following day is Friday the 13th, but because Yom Kippur, the long Jewish Day of Atonement, (which may be familiar to some of you goyim who heard Train's "50 Ways to Say Goodbye") begins on the 13th, which means we'll meet back here on the 15th.

As for THIS weekend, hope you're enjoying it, and I'll see you on HUMP DAAAAAAAAAAAY!
Steve