Valentine’s Day is the perfect holiday for showing your significant other just exactly what you feel about her. A special day trip can add an extra element of fun and excitement, and makes a unique gift. It’s also important to explore and support local events and landmarks; it helps you to feel more connected to the place where you live. I thought I would share one of my own experiences in unique gift-giving, from many years ago. I hope it gives you some great ideas on what you can do to make your own Valentine’s Day extra special.

I spent my college days at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. My moving out to New Mexico to be with her impressed my girlfriend, but she was rarely impressed by anything else I did.  My gift-giving skills were, she told me, consistently disappointing.  For instance, one Valentine’s Day I cooked her a meal consisting of Smack Ramen and Spam, with conversation hearts floating in Jell-O for desert (I was poor).  The year before, I presented her with a Bullwinkle T-shirt I had won by eating 40 Taco Bell tacos in a month (she gave it back to me).

Well, this particular Valentine’s Day, the one I’m discussing right now, I was determined would be different.

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Tags: ends & odd, his & hers by Ricky Sprague
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Sometimes our celebrity brethren need to feel the white hot sting of my bitch-slap o’ advice so badly, I have trouble even typing. This, friends, is one of those times. Our girl crush Scarlett Johansson, who, until very recently, was married to Ryan Reynolds, People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, may be hooking up with — guys, y’all might have to sit down for this – Sean Penn. Ohhhh, it hurts. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, Meg gives advice to famous people by Meg Boyle
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Healthcare is in peril. Whether it is from spiraling costs, the effort to curb same; a vicious program of exclusion or a dunderheaded attempt to baby-proof the globe we can all agree, the benefits of our current system and whatever medical promises held in the future all hang by a thread. Here agreement ends, however. The concept of polarization doesn’t begin to describe it. The Arctic and Antarctic have more in common than the warring factions that promote and oppose the thing we are not supposed to call Obamacare. [Read more →]

Tags: health & medical, on the law, politics & government by Ken Watson
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I do love my detectives and their tough-guy sidekicks:  Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, Spenser and Hawk, and now Elvis Cole and Joe Pike.  Elvis Cole is an ex-Ranger with a Mickey Mouse phone, a bright yellow Corvette and a troubled past  Joe Pike is his silent partner — dark shades, distinctive tattoos and very few words.  The bonus for fans like me is that Robert Crais has taken the sidekick in his popular detective series and given him a series of his own — double the reading, double the pleasure for me.  His latest Joe Pike novel, The Sentry, draws Pike into the problems of a lovely woman and her shady uncle…whether they want him there or not. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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There has been a lot of talk lately, mostly on the political right, about the U.S. Constitution. You may recall that the entire document was read in Congress a few weeks ago, a few sentences per member, like schoolchildren at an assembly proving their patriotism. It seems the Constitution is especially popular these days with conservatives and Tea Partiers. I’m not sure why. [Read more →]

Tags: diatribes, on the law, politics & government by Jeff Scheuer
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You might have heard about the Huffington Post being sold to AOL for around $315 million. The internet was “virtually queefing” about it yesterday. Unfortunately, now that the vaginal farts have stopped and the dust has settled, we’re getting slavery metaphors.

Huffington Post runs its organization like an “antebellum plantation.” Now, I can’t take credit for that particular bit of wordsmithery — that comes from the mighty keyboard of a man named Tim Rutten who works for a real news organization, The Los Angeles Times. In an editorial with the cutesy-poo title AOL ♥ HuffPo. The loser? Journalism, Mr. Rutten isn’t afraid to risk looking completely stupid as he lays it all on the line:

The other partner to this dubious arrangement is the Huffington Post, which is a new-media marvel of ingenuity, combining a mastery of editing geared to game the search engines that stimulate Web traffic and overhead that would shame an antebellum plantation. The bulk of the site’s content is provided by commentators, who work for nothing other than the opportunity to champion causes or ideas to which they’re devoted. Most of the rest of the content is “aggregated” — which is to say stolen — from the newspapers and television networks that pay journalists to gather and edit the news.

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Tags: books & writing, trusted media & news by Ricky Sprague
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Stephen Sondheim has been pretty hot in his 80^th year. His book, Finishing the Hat, became available in time for the holidays and I have finally had the chance to read and enjoy.  It is a demanding text.  What is it? The subtitle tells us:  Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes.

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Tags: Broadway Fred by Fred Siegel
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There really is nothing worse than having someone tell you how you are supposed to feel, except maybe having someone blow an emotion right down your throat like a horse pill. This is probably why sentimentality in art has become, over the years, such an offensive sin. But the shame of it is, it seems that some artists have confused sentimentality with the mere presence of emotion in art. These people have allowed the fear of being sentimental to sterilize their work. [Read more →]

Tags: advice, artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo by Chris Matarazzo
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Last week, in his column at When Falls the Coliseum, Michael Cade concluded by presenting his readers with what is surely an important question: How do YOU deal with fear?

Daniel Kalder posted a comment wondering what I might think about the question and later on Michael himself posted a comment wondering the same thing. So I’ve been thinking about it for the past few days. [Read more →]

Tags: that's what he said, by Frank Wilson by Frank Wilson
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“It’s the economy, stupid.” This was Carville’s version of Reaganism. Talk jobs, talk prosperity. Talk up enterprise. Talk down “Big Government”.  Painting in this limited palette with a canvas supplied by the shallowest recession in economic history allowed Bill Clinton and Ross Perot to decisively defeat the hapless Elder Bush who may have then regretted his own tactical distancing from Reagan.

Or perhaps not. It takes great effort now to understand the despite and ridicule that met Reagan whenever he reared his Brylcreamed-head among the governing elite of whatever party. Dick Cheney, we are recently reminded, as a toddler was tasked with casting Reagan (to his detriment) as a second Goldwater. Not Goldwater the man, dedicated friend of liberty and very fine Senator, but rather Goldwater the electoral event which saw a shellacking not yet repeated until, maybe, 1984. One could wonder now how such a program could be possibly entertained, especially when the contest was a Republican Primary, but that is because we now, apparently, are officially unanimous in our respect and affection for Ronald Wilson Reagan. [Read more →]

Tags: politics & government, trusted media & news by Ken Watson
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This week, I am not really digging how I have been feeling lately. I’m in a bit of a rut; at least that’s how it seems. I’m not depressed or anything, but I guess I am down because of the weather, the time of year, and the fact that the Super Bowl featured two teams that weren’t the Philadelphia Eagles. Or maybe my rut is based on the fact that I think my proudest recent accomplishment is that I haven’t eaten a hot dog in nine months. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, Marty digs by Marty O'Connor
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As I write this week’s installment of BSGS, I am watching yet another Eagles-free Super Bowl, this one being held in Dallas, the home of the Eagles’ biggest rival. Despite my favorite team’s continued non-presence, I have been able to enjoy a bit of schadenfreude this week, as I can’t imagine this was what Cowboys owner Jerry Jones envisioned when he won the right to hold the big game at his new pleasure palace. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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10. Players unsettled by Brett Favre constantly sexting them

9. Under the mistaken impression there was going to be a fifth quarter

8. Players constantly getting creeped out by their weird-looking mascot, Steely McBeam

7. Never recovered from the disappointment of Christina Aguilera singing “The National Anthem” instead of “Genie in a Bottle”

6. Going in, they didn’t realize it was a contact sport with lots of pushing and shoving

5. Players crestfallen they weren’t up against the Chicago Bears; they really wanted to meet Obama

4. With no cheerleaders, team was unsure whether or not they should “Push ’em back, shove ’em back, way back!”

3. Players were so excited about seeing The Black Eyed Peas, they completely lost their focus

2. Thought, with six games to go, there was still plenty of time to win the series

1. Players creeped out by Rex Ryan constantly texting them asking if they want to play footsie
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: art & entertainment, Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, sports by Bob Sullivan
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For a while now I have been hoping for an encounter with death– Saint Death, that is, or Santa Muerte, affectionately known to her (largely Mexican) followers as La Flaca– the Skinny Girl. She’s all bones, you see.

I don’t remember how I first found out about Lady Death. It was some time last year, while I was prowling the Texas-Mexico border. For the uninitiated, Santa Muerte is a crypto-saint not recognized by the Catholic Church. Nobody seems to know where she came from- one source I read speculated that the cult was new, dating back only to the late 1960s. Another speculated that it was much older, and arose as a result of peasant confusion between a Catholic Saint and an Aztec deity of death. Whichever variant is true, Holy Death emerged looking like a figure from a death metal album cover: grinning skull face, scythe, hooded robe etc. [Read more →]

Tags: travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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There is a blog called Law and the Multiverse, in which two lawyers write entertaining and earnest posts that are occasionally mind-bending in their level of detail about how existing laws would be applied to superheroes. The blog started in November 2010, and they’ve already been written up by BoingBoing, Volokh Conspiracy, and the New York Times.

It’s a fun way to look at the law, I guess, and an interesting (if not completely original) take on superheroes, whose absurdity is often too easy to take for granted. However, there is one major, Mjolnir-sized hole in the logic underlying the blog.

All of the laws that Law and the Multiverse examines would not exist in a world inhabited by superheroes. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, on the law by Ricky Sprague
3 Comments »

Someone may have pointed this out already, but Citizen Kane is quite good. Every few minutes you get an iconic image, the storytelling’s effortlessly visual, it features rousing sledding sequences, etc. Also, it’s ensured that a majority of American movies will be, even if they aspire to greatness, pretty terrible. For most films are not photographed nearly so nicely as Kane, yet they still utilize at least one of its three poisonous legacies: [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment by Sean Cunningham
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 Congress passed a law. A biggun. I won’t indict the methods employed, the simple fact is they got it passed. But this was an unusual critter. First off titanic in size and scope. Also as opaque as a public document could be. As Nancy Pelosi informed us so elegantly, we would have to pass it to see what was in it. Weeks after the vote the first reports from Reality returned. They were bad. Oh, so bad. [Read more →]

Tags: health & medical, on the law, politics & government by Ken Watson
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When Elizabeth Lerner was fifteen, something horrible happened to her: she was kidnapped by a serial killer.  She was held hostage for nearly 6 weeks.  She was beaten and raped.  But she wasn’t killed.  He killed girls before he kidnapped her, he killed girls after he kidnapped her.  He did not kill Elizabeth.  She has never known why.

Walter Bowman is scheduled for execution in just a few weeks.  He has one final chance — and one secret ally — to bring out his version of the truth, and perhaps convince the governor to spare his life.  But it all depends on Elizabeth Lerner. I’d Know You Anywhere tells the story of those final weeks, Walter’s last-ditch efforts, and Elizabeth’s search for closure. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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While the story in The Company Men is not literally “ripped from the headlines,” the film deals with a current and important problem. Although the film is not without flaws, the subject matter is compelling, the performances are strong and the film really resonated with me. [Read more →]

Tags: Gail sees a movie by Gail D. Rosen
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A student of mine just said she has “writer’s block.” It got me thinking about something I rarely consider.

I’m not sure how to say this without sounding smug or arrogant, so I’ll just say it: I have never had an issue with writer’s block, nor will I ever. If you have dealt with creative blocks, I don’t mean to be offensive or condescending. It’s just that I believe that writer’s block is a myth and that once we believe in the myth, it can take us over and drive our creativity into the ground, becoming real to us. I don’t believe in it; therefore, I render it impotent. Consider this the reverse of that scene in Peter Pan where the kids clap for Tinkerbelle to show they believe. Together, we can kill the mythical creature that is writer’s block by simply not clapping. [Read more →]

Tags: advice, artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo by Chris Matarazzo
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