Our country is clearly suffering from severe dysfunction. The economy keeps getting worse by the day. Unemployment numbers are sky high. The stock market is falling. Our debt has never been higher. Even under the rosiest scenarios, our deficits are projected to get significantly worse. We are entangled in who knows how many wars against people in the Middle East.

But, at least we can all take solace from the fact that the president still thinks we’re a “triple-A” country, all the way. [Read more →]

Tags: politics & government, trusted media & news by Ricky Sprague
No Comments »

The recent landscape of American television has been dominated by shows about motorcycle dudes, tattoo shops, vampires, pawn shops, and swamps. It’s like America is suddenly obsessed with the state of Florida (zing!) I am not really into any of those shows, but the Soap Opera Network has afforded me the opportunity to take a not always pleasant trip down memory lane by showing reruns of Beverly Hills, 90210. It’s always refreshing to revisit my pimply high school years via a show about good looking rich kids who looked, acted, and lived like they were ten years older than they really were. [Read more →]

Tags: Marty digs, television by Marty O'Connor
No Comments »

Most of my involvement with sports over the course of my life has been as a spectator. I spent several years playing Little League baseball when I was a kid, and I used to play football, baseball, basketball, and hockey with other kids in my neighborhood on a regular basis. Since then, though, other than some intramurals in college, I have experienced very little in the way of first-hand athletic activity until I started running last summer. The rest has all been watched from the comfort of my sofa, along with occasional attendance at live sporting events. I have great respect for the athletes who regularly put their safety on the line so that I can enjoy a nice afternoon in front of the television. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
No Comments »

10. Anthony Weiner’s image consultant

9. Parka salesman

8. Suicide bomber

7. Amish air conditioner repairman

6. Lindsay Lohan’s bail bondsman

5. Apprentice crackwhore

4. Public pool pee monitor

3. Chris Christie’s lotion boy

2. Shark bait

1. What, people still have jobs?
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: all work, Bob Sullivan's top ten everything by Bob Sullivan
No Comments »

Tags: politics & government, technology by Alexander Thorburn Hoffman
No Comments »

When I was young, droughts were something that happened elsewhere: as a punishment from God in the Bible, or in far off Africa, where unfortunate babies with distended bellies would die in the scorching heat of an evil sun. In Scotland, by contrast, there was never a shortage of rain – quite the opposite, in fact: We hardly ever saw the sun, and might have thought its existence a mere rumor were it not for those people who came back from holidays in Spain burnt red, toy donkeys under their arms.

Flash forward a few decades and suddenly I find myself living in Texas where droughts are a regular occurrence. Currently we are enduring our ninth month of epic dryness, my second drought in five years, which – depending on which website I consult – is either the worst or third worst in the history of the state. [Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
1 Comment »

A friend recently satirized my music in a mock-review.  I won’t reprint it here, because, although it is funny if you know me personally, it would be kind a yawn, otherwise. One thing in it got me thinking, though. The “reviewer” mentioned the tedium of a “forty-minute drum solo” that he imagined my music would contain, owing to the fact that I am a drummer. Forty-minute drum solos — or drums solos at all — are the farthest thing from my mind, these days; however, it occurred to me that in drum solos, we might be able to see, pretty clearly, three distinct types of artistic approaches: 1) unsubstantial  crowd-pleasing popular art; 2) excellent, competent, yet still popularly accessible art and 3) experimental, outstandingly skilled art that leaves the general audience behind in its brilliance. [Read more →]

Tags: artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo by Chris Matarazzo
No Comments »

Here’s a tip: driving through downtown Chicago traffic is not the time to try and absorb the details of quantum physics. Dangerous stuff, that. The Grand Design is part history, part philosophy, part science. It goes back to Ptolemy and Plato, forward to the probable end of the universe. It strives to answer the great questions of life:

“How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves? How does the universe behave? What is the nature of reality? Where does all this come from? Did the universe need a creator?”

Those are weighty questions and a tall order for any book. Of course, there are no concrete answers, but modern science has made a lot of progress, despite those who would hold it back. This book was a fascinating look at one of the approaches to the answers. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
1 Comment »

Recently, I posted on my blog as a “thought for the day” this quote from Jean de La Fontaine: “A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.”

My own life offers evidence in support of this. I was the editor of my college newspaper (co-editor, actually: I shared the duties with a colleague, because I was also the main editorial writer), but when I graduated I had no intention whatever of becoming a journalist, principally because the idea of facing deadlines on a daily basis did not appeal. [Read more →]

Tags: that's what he said, by Frank Wilson by Frank Wilson
No Comments »

In this age of instant communication and an extraordinary number of sources of distraction, sitting down to watch an entire sporting event on television is a commitment. For some, it is only done for big games, where something is on the line beyond the mundane won-loss record. For others, myself included, it is an activity that occurs a number of times a week. I can’t say that I spend an entire baseball game, for example, focused on nothing but the game, though. I have a family, and I also have a laptop that is rarely off. Other things are grabbing at my attention, but I still manage to watch most of any game I set out to enjoy. Rarely does the game end with me feeling any kind of regret for having spent the time, even if the result was not to my liking. Tuesday night, I would bet that any Pittsburgh Pirates fans who made the six-and-a-half hour investment in the team’s game against the Atlanta Braves were pretty unhappy at 1:50 AM, when the game finally ended on one of the worst calls I have ever seen. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
3 Comments »

10. The Green Bay Groinpulls

9. The Utica Underachievers

8. The San Diego Chickens

7. The Boston Beibers

6. The Albuquerque Herky-Jerkies

5. The Seattle Steroids

4. The Fightin’ Amish

3. The San Francisco Prissies

2. The Major League Assholes

1. The Washington Weiners
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, sports by Bob Sullivan
1 Comment »

Our country is currently being held hostage by the partisan bickering that is going on in our nation’s capital. This is just another dog and pony show, to be sure, but nevertheless the stakes have never been higher. We are in an unprecedented crisis, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Great Depression. And still, while Rome burns, our elected officials fiddle, refusing to accept the reality of our situation and do what is necessary to ensure our country’s survival.

We must raise our debt limit by the completely hard and fast August 2nd deadline. If we do not, the United States will default on all of its obligations, and our nation — and, indeed, the entire world — shall be thrown into chaos. [Read more →]

Tags: politics & government, trusted media & news by Ricky Sprague
No Comments »

Dear Ronald McDonald,

First, I want to say thank you. Sincerely and honestly, thank you for your recent announcement that you will be putting apple slices in your Happy Meals. Now, no longer will the toy be the healthiest thing children can remove from that colorful box and put in their mouths. Apple slices are naturally sweet and delicious, and I think you’ll find that the children who eat your food-like products will come to love these apple slices even more than the other things you put in those “meals.” [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting, politics & government by Ricky Sprague
2 Comments »

Dominance got my attention in the very first pages and hung on to it right to the end. It’s a book about a book with an author who may not even exist. It’s about the night class, taken a decade ago, and how it changed the lives of the students who took it. It’s about The Procedure, and the danger it represents. And it’s about a present-day murder and how it may change everything they thought they learned in the night class. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
No Comments »

Robert Irwin is an English writer who has written six amazing novels and numerous studies of different aspects of Islamic culture. He is also the Middle Eastern editor of the Times Literary Supplement and has been instrumental in shaping the list of the hyper literary and thoroughly esoteric publisher Dedalus. While still a student at Oxford in the 1960s he travelled to Algeria with the intention of becoming a Sufi saint, an experience he describes in his latest extraordinary book, Memoirs of a Dervish. Recently I interviewed this remarkable man, resulting in the email conversation which I reproduce for your reading pleasure below.  [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, religion & philosophy by Daniel Kalder
No Comments »

You know what I am sick of? George Lucas bashing. That’s what I am sick of. That said, I don’t think George Lucas is the Jesus of movie makers. I like Star Wars well enough. I really like Indiana Jones. The guy is great, but I’m not going to declare him the Shakespeare of Hollywood. He makes good, entertaining films with enough depth that they hold up for numerous viewings. What more can you ask?

But can we admit something, please? The original Star Wars trilogy is not the apex of film-making. Are those films the equals of Citizen Kane or Lawrence of Arabia or, heck — Schindler’s List? No. Of course they are not. [Read more →]

Tags: artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo, movies by Chris Matarazzo
10 Comments »

It seems to me, doesn’t it to you, that a lot of the public squabbles we incessantly hear of do not arise from mere differences of opinion but from a seemingly primal urge we humans have to tell other people what to do. It’s not enough to be secure in our own certainty. It’s not enough for us to tell other people how right we are and how wrong they are. It’s not even enough for us to simply tell others what to do. We have to tell them what to do and, if they don’t comply, try to force them to do what we say through state action or the courts. It’s a sickness, a human design flaw, I think. I’m not immune. Frankly, I’m writing this to tell people to stop telling other people what to do, which kind of defeats my purpose. But wouldn’t the world be a more peaceful place if we adopted a more ‘live and let live’ attitude; if we curtailed our pursuit of power over others through government fiat; if we were just more accepting of differences in lifestyles, values, and beliefs?  [Read more →]

Tags: movies, politics & government, religion & philosophy by Jay Baldwin
1 Comment »

Everyday I’m shufflin’, and chasin’ around a blond blur known as my son Jack. And everyday I’m stressin’ about my bank account and bills, and prayin’ my car makes it to whatever destination I need to get to. Every night I’m averagin’ about 4 hours of choppy sleep courtesy of Jack. And every weekend down the shore I’m listenin’ to commercial radio loaded with pop music. Guess what? I’m startin’ to dig it. At first, I chalked it up to my unhealthy lack of sleep and maddening descent into domestication. But I am realizin’ that there are other factors involved. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, Marty digs by Marty O'Connor
1 Comment »

Each week, I sit down to watch the NASCAR Sprint Cup race. Some of the time, I turn on the broadcast too early and subject myself to the variety of useless things that the track promoters choose to bring to us, from hideous renditions of the Star Spangled Banner to some wildly unnecessary and expensive flyovers by the military. I am not anti-military by any means, but I am pretty sure there is a better use of the money it costs to run those planes than to fly over some mid-season race that means little in the long run. Save it for the big races, guys. Anyway, part of the pre-race routine always includes some sort of religious (read: Christian) prayer. I find it totally bizarre that not only is this still done, but it is almost always broadcast by the television network as well. This is a practice that should be changed. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
No Comments »

10. Instead of giving you a chair, he makes you squat

9. He insists that you think of him as “Your boss…with benefits”

8. Your healthcare plan is a box of bandaids

7. “Casual Friday” means he comes to work in his pajamas

6. You wish he were only “all hands”

5. Your “probationary period” is now in its sixteenth year

4. You have to submit your request to use the bathroom two days in advance

3. The closest thing you’ve had to a promotion is when they doubled your lunch break to ten minutes

2. He greets you every morning with the phrase, “Do you still work here?!”

1. He insists on paying you in Cheetos
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: all work, Bob Sullivan's top ten everything by Bob Sullivan
No Comments »