For the drive to NYC yesterday the car rental company got me a nice big new Cadillac. It was huge, and silver, and had a hood ornament, and it drove like a low-altitude flying carpet. It had leather seats and "OnStar" and turn signal arrow lights embedded in the side mirrors. I had to say goodbye to my Caddy today, and I can't say there weren't some tears.

The Interview panel thing was great. Very funny and helpful, though focused on how to handle interviewing celebrities. The goal of the interviewer is to get the star off-message, because they've done tons of interviews and have an agenda in mind. Some gossip was spilled, usually anonymous but with enough clues so you could figure out who was being discussed (David Rakoff mentioned a tough interview with an icy president of a catalog company, "the name of which is an initial and a name of a sport"). Though I don't interview actors, I do have to deal with getting interviews with people who have a phalanx of publicists surrounding them. Dealing with overly-controlling and protective publicists seems to be a universal problem. Publicists are going to be with telemarketers and infomercial hosts in the lowest level of hell.