About "conspiracies" but do a web search on "phone call flight 93 passenger bathroom" and you will find that in the early news stories about the phone call, the operator recounts a man saying that there was an explosion and white smoke and the plane is going down. Later stories refer only to "a panicked passenger calling from the bathroom" of the plane. No mention of what he said.

Why do we need heroes so badly? The passengers on Flight 93 weren't heroes, they were normal people who knew they were doomed and tried to do something - anything- to prevent their deaths. That is normal behavior. It is not heroic; they were not putting their lives on the line to save other people. They tried to get into the cockpit to take control of the plane, not to crash it. There was a passenger on board the plane who was a qualified jet pilot who may have thought he could take control of the plane if the passengers overtook the hijackers. The passengers never made it into the cockpit.

I was awoken by a phone call on the morning of 9/11, and told to turn on my TV. I saw the second plane hit, ran to my window, opened the blinds and was confronted with the horror of a smoke-filled sky. I lived through the day thinking that maybe the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building and the UN were also targets that may be hit. I thought there may be carbombs in Midtown. It was a sad, frightening day. And it was a defeat. It's still a defeat. The hole in the ground is still there as creepy financial and political guys bicker about office space and retail shops. We're in a misguided war. George W Bush made clear on the first anniversary of 9/11 that he was going to go after Iraq and nobody stopped him because America had deemed George W Bush a "hero" president. He could do whatever he wanted. Rudy Giuliani was a "hero" mayor. The passengers on Flight 93 were "hero passengers". I'm sick of the mythology of Flight 93. I'm sick of all the mythologies we've created to turn 9/11 into a glorious victory of heroes instead of the total tragic catastrophe it was and remains. And that's one of the reasons why people in Manhattan theaters are silent. A sickening feeling of "here we go again", another version of mythology about a day we lived through and the months that followed. The only person who adequately portrayed 9/11 was Michael Moore. He didn't need to show it happening. We heard it and then we saw what led to the successful attack and the following dreadful war. Incompetence, that's what. Not heroes. I wish America would stop clinging to hero stories of 9/11 like a security blanket and look at the truth. September 11, Flight 93, the whole attack could have been avoided and it wasn't. I wish America would admit that. Instead, we keep getting bombarded by movies that play the game. No matter how realistic the movies look, they're just continuing the mythologies that we know are not true.

I recently sold my apartment in Manhattan after more than 20 years because the town has become a hotbed of soulless, surgically-sculpted know-it-alls who spend all their strength trying to bend others to their will, all for the privilege of a life in a "luxury" studio apartment and a weekend share in the Hamptons.

Thank God I bought all my real estate before so many of these workplace vampires and trust fund brats multiplied like mold spores after a wet spell. They're heinous, but they made me rich without my having to backstab anyone. Unfortunately, they've made the city a sterile, boring place. I started to yearn for the days of the Aggresive Homeless ... that's when I knew it was time to leave.

"would you believe Carrie Fisher isn't even 47 years old?"

She's 49. She'll be 50 later this year.

The easiest way to make a killing today is to write a crappy book --- either a crappy self-help book, a crappy polemic, a crappy self-congratulatory "I've made it, why can't you?" book, a crappy memoir made up of gross exaggerations and outright lies ... you get the picture.

Flanagan wanted to be a millionaire. There are tons of books on how to be everywoman; she simply said "Fuck that, I'm going to write one that's the exact opposite and I'm going to get tons of publicity just on the very nature of the topic itself."

And she did. She's getting tons of publicity and tons of money for being a contrarian, like so many other people today. She figured "Hitchens and Paglia are cleaning up like bandits, why can't I? I'll pen an antifeminist, pro-1950s housewife load of horseshit and it will sell itself. I'll get to go on a shitload of TV shows. That will get my name in lights and I'll be invited to all the cool publishing cocktail parties."

The "controversy" is meaningless and the outrage directed at her is knee-jerk. She successfully marketed an idea and people bought into it. She's no more worthy of political or social seriousness than your average motivational speaker appearing at the local Marriot conference room this weekend.