*****
Ed's BACK, baby!
*****
Happy New Year and all that poo. May your life suck way less in '05. (Kidding! You've always been a rockstar, man.)

*****
News
*****
1. LA Times
Magazine Toasts Unabashed Alcoholism
By David Kelly
January 1, 2005
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-drunk1jan01,1,3253036.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

Every hour is happy hour at Modern Drunkard magazine.

It's barely 3 p.m., and Frank Kelly Rich, who edits the bimonthly homage to getting soused, is draining his gin and tonic and eyeing a whiskey bottle on the top shelf. Moments later, he's drinking that as well.

A huge bar dominates the office, the fridge is stocked with beer and the handful of employees is invited to drink. Smoking is OK too.

MORE ONLINE

2. New York Times
THE BOSS: A Big Bite of the World
By Hearst President Cathie Black, As told to JANE L. LEVERE
January 2, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/02/business/yourmoney/02boss.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=

I GREW up on the South Side of Chicago, on the South Shore, kind of a bastion of Irish Catholics. The South Shore Country Club was a couple of blocks away, so I learned to ride horseback and play tennis. We were right on the beach, and it was a very idyllic way to live in a city.

I have a brother who's four years older, and a sister who's eight years older, so I like to say I was the baby, the princess. A lot of the studies would say generally the oldest child is the most ambitious, but for some reason I sort of got those genes. I remember saying to my mother when I was probably 23 or 24, "I don't know what exactly I want to do with my life. I want a really exciting life. I don't want to lead a really traditional life" - which I'm sure hurt her feelings because she was a stay-at-home mom.

My father and I just always were kind of on the same wavelength. He encouraged me for the year that I spent abroad, even though it was not probably a very easy time for me to leave, because he had lost his eyesight and my mother had had an accident. I remember him telling me, "Honey, you've got your whole life to lead and you should go." He died when I was 24.

I went to Loyola University of Chicago's Rome Center. It was just fantastic. We traveled extensively - we went to something like 15 different countries. We spent New Year's Eve in the Nile Hilton and left Damascus by armed guard because some uprising had started. A girl and I and a guy - he left in Switzerland - hitchhiked from Rome to Northern Ireland to visit some of my Irish relatives.

MORE ONLINE