One advantage of unemployment is that I’ve been catching up on my reading. That will end next week when I go back to work. Click through for more detailed reviews. Homeland – Cory Doctorow: Disappointing. Almost Perfect – W.E. Peterson: Who knew one of the losers in the word processor wars had such an interesting [...]
A LA based publication published a list of the top 20 hair metal albums a while ago. I just found this via an imaginary Internet friend. I had some issues with their list. 20. Junkyard Junkyard (1989) It’s not a bad album, but I can’t see how this makes a top 20 list. It was [...]
American Fencer is the autobiography of Tim Morehouse, US Silver Medalist in Team Saber at the 2008 Olympics. We got this for my son for Christmas, as he is a fencer. He read it quickly and passed to me. I enjoyed it greatly. Tim’s journey from a 7th grader who signed up for fencing because [...]
A day in the life of Phin, a gorilla mascot at a Chicago used car dealership that picks up an odd job from a friend delivering a package to Normal IL. The zipper on the gorilla suit is stuck, so Phin sets off in the suit with the mysterious Mr. E and a beater dealer [...]
The pile of books on my bedside table was getting dangerously high, so it is probably time to make a few notes here and move them to the bookshelf. Travis McGee Novels by John MacDonald: The Long Lavender Look, The Quick Red Fox, Bright Orange for the Shroud, The Deep Blue Goodbye, Nightmare in Pink. [...]
If two years in a row makes a tradition, then we have a tradition of spending Black Friday on a trail, far from a mall. This year we went to Sky Meadows State Park to do a 8.4 mile loop hike. It was a perfect day, 60ish degrees and blue skies. The trails are well [...]
Pirate Cinema is a ripped-from-the-headlines near future tale in which 16 year old Trent McCauley gets his family’s Internet access blocked for a year because he was downloading movie clips for the brilliant remixes he makes and posts online. The lack of Net access costs his father his job, and makes it very hard to [...]
EP #2 (of a 4 record series)from Drivin N Cryin is out. This is the punk EP. And what an EP it is. Song 1 (Hot Wheels) is a classic Drivin N Cryin rocker. Songs 2-5 sounds like they were candidates for the Scarred But Smarter album. They are rough around the edges punk tunes. [...]
Back in the old days, there was actually effort involved in selecting an album or tape to listen to. We couldn’t carry our entire music collection around on a device the size of a Tic-Tac box, but thinner. We couldn’t create a playlist to automatically skip the crap songs. Skipping a song on the album [...]
It’s kind of embarrassing to admit that last night was my first Jimmy Buffett show. Real life events have conspired for about the last decade to keep me busy on the weekends when he was in town. It was worth the wait. All the stories you’ve heard over the years about his live shows are [...]
I finished the Steve Jobs biography last night. Nothing I read will motivate me to change my long standing bias against Apple products. In the Gates vs Jobs battle of very closed systems versus mostly closed systems, I stand with the penguin and open systems. They talk a lot about the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion [...]
Some random thought on the Alice Cooper / Iron Maiden show last night. $11 for a Bud Light? Are you freaking kidding me? I drank water. If you are 50ish and overweight with a bad dye job, shorts and a bikini top is not your look. Likewise, if you are a 50ish overweight guy, a [...]
I’m shamelessly stealing this post format from Rude Cactus, because as should be very evident to anyone still reading, I’m pretty much out of ideas. The week in beer: It was a draft Yuengling kind of week. First at the Purdue Club of DC happy hour, then at the newly re-opened pub 1 mile from [...]
I predicted the rise of Twisted Sister long before any of my head banging friends in high school got on the bandwagon. I had You Can’t Stop Rock and Roll and Under the Blade before Stay Hungry hit big and made them famous. So nobody should be surprised that I bought Dee Snider’s autobiograpy Shut [...]
I Was Right On Time is the autobiography of Buck O’Neil, Negro League player, manager, and all around wonderful human being. This is a must read for any baseball fan. Buck traces his path from skipping high school because he wasn’t allowed to attend the local high school, through his years playing and managing in [...]
