Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Live from New York City

Er, that's about it. But while this is my fourth or fifth time here, it's the first one I've been like a tour guide: I'm showing my mother the place.

And I must be doing okay because she's said this holiday is the greatest experience of her life. She said it in the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue, so maybe she just meant she'd had a Damascus moment there and joined the faith, I'm not sure.

But may I offer you a sample of the kind of indepth local knowledge I've been displaying?

New York City is the best place in the world.

There you go; I've often thought it, I've always thought it really, but I haven't said it to you.

William "Wearing his new NYC Sweatshirt and Only a Little Bit Embarrassed About It" Gallagher

Thursday, May 17, 2007

RIP Veronica Mars

Rumours have lurched to the good and the bad for months but as of this afternoon, it's official: the US drama Veronica Mars is over.

Did you know? Did you spend the day checking all the US TV news feeds waiting for word? Because I did. And I would say that it's hard to remember the last time a show had me checking like this but it isn't: I was exactly the same at exactly this point last year. And it was exactly waiting to hear if Veronica Mars was to get a third season.

It did and, I'll tell you straight, the news improved the holiday I was having at the time.

I have to think that its time was up and that if it had gone on longer it would perhaps have weakened. But I have to think that because there's no other solace available.

There was about half a second of hope when the network, The CW, announced it was talking the Mars creator about some kind of related new series, but then they said words to the effect of "not that it'll come to anything". A lesson to us all: if you're going to dangle hope, don't destroy it in the second half of the same sentence.

w