For starters, I don’t pay any attention to the Grammy Awards. I think the last time I watched was when Milli Vanilli beat out Living Colour for best new artist. The Grammys generally don’t bother with music I enjoy, so I don’t bother with them. This year there was apparently a bit of controversy when Beck won…
Do you ever wonder how something becomes a Thing? I wonder about it all the time. How did knock, knock jokes become a Thing? Can you imagine the first person to tell a knock, knock joke? “I’m going to say, ‘Knock, knock,’ and you say, ‘Who’s there?’ OK?” “Why?” “You’ll see. Just do it.” “But…
The title of this piece is not accurate. Hannah Davis is the cover model for the 2015 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. But every single headline I saw lead with Derek Jeter, look at Yahoo!, CBS Detroit, and the Huffington Post. In other news, Pierre Curie’s wife won the 1903 Nobel Prize for Physics. Oh, and…
Today is my 40th birthday. One question that I got repeatedly today is, “How does it feel to be 40?” Well, so far, it feels like I have a head cold. I guess I’ll have to wait a few days to figure out if I have a head cold or if being 40 feels like…
If a person is looking to find out what Cyrus Chestnut is all about, this is the perfect record. It is thoroughly modern, but his influences are all there. It is jazz, but blues and gospel are never far away. It is clearly improvised, but never lacks direction. The album was recorded live at Smoke,…
In part one of this post, I talked about how difficult it is to use rights as the basis of an argument and proposed some ways we can make the discussions involving rights more fruitful. Now, I’m going to talk about what got me thinking about this in the first place, guns. There are two…
I went to see Eddie Izzard the other night. It was a very funny show. He did one bit about how Myanmar, Liberia and the U.S. are the only countries that haven’t converted to the Metric System. It was a funny bit. And it got me thinking. Personally, I’m glad there are three countries that…
Update: Wendell Holmes died today from complications due to pulmonary hypertension. This isn’t surprising since he posted this open letter a few days ago. In honor of his life, I thought I’d re-post the piece I wrote in January when we lost Popsy. Willie “Popsy” Dixon died on Friday of bladder cancer. For those who…
The new class of the baseball Hall of Fame was announced today. Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, Craig Biggio and John Smoltz were all elected. I was a fan of all four players, so their enshrinement makes me happy. Unfortunately, baseball writers seem determined to take all of the fun out of this. Whether it is…
As we come to the end of the year, there is a lot of talk about New Year’s Resolutions, diets, weight loss, etc. I have good news for you. I know the answer to all of your questions about diet and exercise. Are you ready? Here it is. . . All of the above. I…
