Rose's Cantina

Hilaria Baldwin, the wife of actor Alec Baldwin, took to Twitter yesterday to recount the terror she experienced the other day when pursued by the paparazzi. "Trust me, when you ask someone to leave you alone and they follow you, and encroach on your space, that feels threatening," she wrote, then added. "The news shows what is convenient for their story. They didn't show when (the photographer) approached me with my baby after I politely asked her not to." This really makes me mad. I told her, in my opinion, these photographers are stalkers who carry heavy and dangerous equipment. It's fair game, I suppose, for the paps to pursue criminals and bad-deed-doers, people like Simon Cowell. I have no problem with them chasing down the "stars" who actually pay their publicists to promote their whereabouts, people like Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton. But the media should draw the line when it comes to the families of celebrities particularly bab...

The first time I visited the Big Apple, I was 22 and on assignment for a newspaper, attending the premiere of the James Bond movie Moonraker. I had no idea what to expect. I had very little money, no credit cards and a suit I'd bought at Reitman's for forty bucks. Hannibal Lecter would have noticed my cheap shoes and bag as the serious signs of a hick. I didn't even have enough money to take a cab from the airport to my hotel which was the tony Essex House, the place where all the guests stayed while appearing on SNL back then. Seriously? I was petrified. When I got to the hotel, I was given a key chain with Roger Moore's face on it and my room key. It was noon and I was alone. The rest of the press corps wouldn't be arriving until the afternoon. What was I to do? "Well," the publicist shrugged. "There's the bar." After about two glasses of wine, I relaxed and started chatting up the bartender. Then my other junket mates began to pou...

I woke up in the middle of the night and padded over to the computer to check the progress of Hurricane Sandy. I was really expecting for the worst, and there was some pretty bad news. Fires. Flooding. Displacement. But fortunately for the size of the Bosnywash Megalopolis, there weren't a lot of casualties. Not like Haiti, which apparently saw 68 storm casualties. Despite claiming its mandate was to be the voice of the world, there was nearly no talk on CNN about Haiti and all the people in that storm-torn place who are once again displaced or worse. This makes me sad. It reminds me that the United States continues to be a myopic place. It's to be expected, of course. I'm sure if we had that kind of devastation here in Canada, our focus would be our own backyard. But I do think the Canadian media would take time to recognize the others who have been hurt during such a terrible storm. My Facebook friend, the writer Jon Katz, blogged today that he and his wife ga...