Or an Ellie or Golden Pen or CRMA plaque or whatever it is you award to groundbreaking regional magazines published by newspapers. “Baby, Give Me a Kiss” is what we in the editing business affectionately call “Writing Gone Wild.”

Hoffman’s story in the LA Times West magazine, published on August 6, was simply one of the most brilliant pieces of narrative journalism I’ve read in — well, ever. The story is about Joe Francis, the founder of the “Girls Gone Wild” series of softcore porn videos, but it’s much more than just a story about a sleazy businessman. I laughed out loud at a few places–especially when Francis starts chastising women for not knowing what a qwerty keyboard is, and then ragging on the reporter for what he assumes will be a merciless article about him:

“She’s going to slaughter me now,” he shouts to the group as I keep smiling, writing in my notebook, tape recorder running. Apparently, he wants more of a reaction. He’s pantomiming me typing furiously, writing an article.

“She’s going to be looking at her keyboard going, ‘Ah, you think you’re so smart now.’ Qwerty keyboard. Who’s smart now?” He sounds happy. “She’s going to be playing that tape back. It’s going to be echoing in her head. Qwerty, qwerty, qwerty. She’s going to go all psycho.”

He’s right, of course. Hoffman slaughters Francis in her story. But not for the reasons he anticipates — that she thinks he’s condescending to her or that she’s got the hots for him. No, in fact, she tells the story of an underage girl who was raped by Francis on one of the days that Hoffman was, with his permission, shadowing him. At which point the story transitions expertly from a humorous profile of an eccentric, sleazy, wacky entrepreneur into a riveting expose of our exhibitionist culture, the objectification of women, and the abuses and crimes that this mindset can perpetrate. At 6,000 words, the story ain’t short, but it’s every bit as brilliant as anything I’ve read in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, or any other publication (excluding InTown, of course) in the past year.

Many thanks to my colleague Robert Zeliger for pointing me to this story. And one last time, just ’cause it bears repeating: Somebody please give Hoffman a Pulitzer!

I don’t know if purchasing your first full TV show season on iTunes qualifies as a technological rite of passage, but if it does, I’m guessing it falls somewhere between the intellectual self-indulgance of downloading the New Yorker podcast at Audible and the willful absurdity of creating your own Wikipedia entry.

At any rate, I think I’m going to finally make the plunge by buying Weeds Season 2. Ever since ravenously watching Weed Season 1 on DVD — and proclaiming it the best sitcom I’ve seen since, well, ever — I’ve been eagerly looking forward to the encore. It premieres this coming Monday, August 14. However, I’ve gamed out the costs, and ever though iTunes’ $20 cost for the season seems steep, it’s still cheaper than subscribing to Showtime for 3+ months. I suppose I could wait for the show to graduate to Netflix (probably sometime in mid-2007), but that’s just going to take far too long.

There’s no link to Season 2 on iTunes yet, but you can link to Season 1 here.

I keep meaning to carve some time out to blog in earnest, but work has been wearing me down lately. If I have the energy for an episode of “America’s Got Talent,” I consider myself lucky. So, forgive me, I’m going to just post some more links to some of my recent, favorite magazine features (all of which I’ve added, along with plenty of others, on my MediaBistro portfolio).

1. “Extreme Makeover: Purdys Edition,” from InTown Northern Westchester’s August issue – A story in which I went undercover when Extreme Makeover arrived in Westchester to do a home in Purdys. I tried to uncover what really goes on in those 30-second time lapse shots, when the homes appear to spring up suddenly. Hint: It ain’t Ty Pennington doing the work.

2. “Where Have All the Caddies Gone,” from InTown Sound Shore’s June issue – An exploration of caddie culture in Westchester, and whether they’ll one day lose the battle to golf carts. (Best part of this story: getting to interview and write about the original, quintessential caddie, Michael O’Keefe — aka Noonan from Caddyshack).

3. “The 7 Most Interesting People in Scarsdale: Carl and Clarence Aguirre,” from Scarsdale Magazine’s May issue – This one was short, but one of my favorite stories to write. It’s about the formerly conjoined Aguirre twins, who turned four on my birthday. It was a nightmare to get that photo of the kids, as they were attacking each other like rabid dogs the entire time, but it was utterly fascinating to meet them and talk with there mom, Arlene, a single mom from Manila raising the kids in a donated Scarsdale home all on her own.