That's The Ticket!

Friday, May 03, 2002

Downtown Brown

. . .

Tina Brown was the guest speaker for the last of the Delacorte Lecture series. The place was packed, a lot of non J-school students showed up. I was annoyed throughout the lecture by one of my fellow students sitting two rows in front of me, some ex-Israeli soldier turned journalist. He and his girlfriend and their damn PDA. It didn't help that he had plumber's butt. I mean, I'm okay with PDA but there is a time and place. Bar? fine. Sidewalk? sure. Grad school lecture? Yasser says no, sir.

And he also kept looking at the back of the room every 30 seconds and every time he did his stupid girlfriend would follow his lead and look. Later i would find out that he was looking out for his friend, who ambled in about 45 minutes after we got started. whatever.

Anyway, Tina had prepared a long ass speech about how she got started as a reporter for The Statesman before moving on to edit the Tattler in London. She then moved to New York to resurrect Vanity Fair (she talked at length about the risque naked Demi Moore cover), then how she moved on to the New Yorker and finally Talk magazine and its inevitable demise. It was a nice lecture with a handful of snorts, a few titters of laughter, and an occasional chuckle burst.

When question and answer time came up, none of the audience was asking questions. Prof Navasky who was moderating stalled for time and it was at that point that i decided to step up. (richard) Prior to that, a question flashed through my mind. I rehearsed it in my head for about 15 seconds and walked 6 inches to the mic (i was sitting right next to it).

the gist:

"Hi. I have two professors this semester who used to work for you. I'm not going to name names but it's Jim Stewart and Dave Blum. (laughter). Damn, what was I gonna say. (laughter). Oh yeah. We've also had a number of guest speakers in my classes who have also worked for you at various publications and we talk about how to pitch stories to magazine. What do you mean when you say a story has to be "hot." (laughter). I mean, they've explained it a bunch of times but I still don't get it." (laughter).

Tina replied with some shit and talked about an example of a story that was to her, "hot." It was something about nuns, I don't remember exactly.

I guess this needs an explanation. Among writers, Tina is known for only wanting buzzworthy stories which she classifies in two categories of "hot." T-hot or V-hot. Too/Very. I still don't get it.

Anyway, a bunch of people gave me props as we were drinking beers at the West End. In conclusion, I'm hot.