[I‘m working on a new column about product placement on “Days of Our Lives“, where plugs for Cheerios, Chex Mix, and Midol have been written into recent scripts, when I realized I wrote about something similar four years ago. Look below!] Good news: Television commercials are nearly extinct. The rise of TiVo, DVRs, broadband video… Continue reading Advertainment: Product Placement Makes Crap Crappier
[Here’s another classic rant from 1998. I’m pretty sure county clerks are still selling your name and phone number to telemarketers. And they still suck. Interesting, back in ’98 I was bitching about telemarketers disrupting my Saturday morning tea-and-writing sessions. Now weekends are packed with kids, chores, kids, errands, kids, home improvements, and kids. But… Continue reading Why County Clerks Suck
[This is one of my wife’s favorites. Originally published in March 2002, and revised for Father’s Day 2013] In honor of Father’s Day, June 16, I’d like to travel back to before I was Autism Dad, when I was just “a new dad.” The moment my son was born, I realized I held the most… Continue reading Revisiting Fatherhood Boot Camp This Father’s Day!
[Being a columnist allows you to chronicle the way your opinion changes (or doesn’t) over time — sometimes drastically and embarrassingly so. Nowhere is this more evident than the column below. In February 1999 I was single, childless and carefree. Compare the column below with the next one I’ll post from 2002, six weeks after… Continue reading Proud parents await Millennium’s birth
According to New York Daily News columnist, Jay Maeder, two high-tech crematoriums in Sweden are piping posthumous candlepower to local energy companies. In short, the bodies of the dead are now heating thousands of Swedish homes. This has caused quite a public uproar in Sweden, a controversy fueled all the more by the fact that… Continue reading Let’s Burn The Dead And Heat Our Homes
Excuse me, I feel a little queasy – I’ve been experiencing keitai shosetsu. What’s keitai shosetsu? A new Asian flu? Not exactly. Keitai shosetsu are “cell phone novels” and they’ve been all the rage in Japan and China for the last decade. Yeah, novels written on cell phones in tiny, 100-word chunks and delivered in… Continue reading Waiting For The Great American Cell Phone Novel
My last column dealt with the Japanese literary phenomenon of cell phone novels [Rob Note – I’ll post this column next – it’s fascinating!]– novels written on cell phones and distributed directly to other cell phone users. While the cell phone novel is an interesting art form for a number of reasons, I’m concerned that… Continue reading American Culture Becomes Amateur Hour
Hey, blogosphere! This is my first post, so be gentle! The first thing you should know is I’M NOT A BLOGGER. I’m a syndicated newspaper columnist with over twenty years of writing, reporting and editing experience. Ink flows and trees fall so that my work may live! I’m not bragging, but I’d like to think… Continue reading Rob Errera – Blogger
