Charged with existential significance, Lost is more than just popular entertainment.

The sixth season of Fox’s juggernaut television drama 24 debuted recently with a typically nightmarish scenario: random terrorist bombings taking place across the United States, killing more than 900 people in 11 weeks and leaving the rest of the population scared to death. America, we are to

The Golden Globes used to be the most relaxed of the awards ceremonies. For many years the lesser-known stepcousin of the Oscars, the Emmys and the Tonys, the ceremony wore its raffish air with the pride of a starlet wearing a couture gown. A recent issue of Entertainment Weekly featured Helen Mirre

Over the Memorial Day weekend I visited a friend who lives with his large family and who owns, improbably, a horse--a retired police horse, to be exact. As we ambled through the stables, my friend’s 13-year-old daughter said, "Do you like Taylor Hicks?" Somehow the look on her face t

When I was a boy, I wanted to be the president of the United States. A lot of us did. Though we were growing up in the 1970’s, we knew little or nothing of Nixon or Watergate, wiretaps or carpet-bombing. Our images were of George Washington crossing the Delaware, Abraham Lincoln freeing the sl

I spent a night with friends a few weeks ago. It was an education not only in child care (never lift over your head a child who has just eaten), but also in the state of television today. In the movies these days everyone has a 32-inch flat screen television hanging in the living room, and the feng