Sometimes I decide to craft a list which turns out to be an impossible task. Like this one. When I go through the R.E.M. catalog I am reminded how many great songs they recorded, songs which I had forgotten. Whittling them into a top ten list is like trying to pick up (more…)
So tomorrow we head out for a vacation, a spot of holiday as it were. We are jetting across the pond for a spell. Not like a voodoo spell. At least that is what I have been told. You know, I’ve always thought it weird someone somewhere once decided to refer to the Atlantic Ocean as a “pond.” Apparently they had a really skewed understanding of what a pond is. If an ocean is a pond, what does that make a pond? A puddle? And if a pond is a puddle (more…)
I took this photo several years ago. While some details have changed (the abandoned diner is no longer there, for one) the underlying reality of what this illustrates remains sadly the same. You still see the disenfranchised, disposed and dispirited milling about as you drive through this section of (more…)
When I was growing up my family always had plenty of cars. Not new ones. God forbid. I can only recall one new car during my youth, a blue Chevy Impala. Maybe my sister, who actually has a memory, can clarify this. Aside from that glaring exception we were a sort of urban Island of Misfit Cars. My dad knew a lot of people anxious to sell cars, often for $1. It was illegal to (more…)
For many years the clock buttressing the Colgate factory in downtown Jersey City was the sole impressive sight when folks in Manhattan looked across the river towards New Jersey. Over the past 25 years or so that has changed with the construction of looming (more…)
Today Junior Seau died. He was an ex-football star who had a distinguished 20 year career in the National Football League. Most likely he will eventually – and rightfully – get inducted into that sport’s Hall of Fame. Preliminary indications are he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was 43.
Ever since Twitter burst into the collective consciousness people have used it as a vehicle to express public condolences when someone of note passes away. Today was no exception. Apparently the Twitterverse was bursting with (more…)
You know what’s happened, don’t you? We snatched the exclusive world of superlatives, recklessly threw it into the combustible core of the web, and watched it blow apart in a way that would have made Robert Oppenheimer proud.
As willing participants in this weird alternate universe called the Blogosphere you can’t help but notice the epidemic of exceptional praise for unexceptional performance. (To be fair it extends far beyond our little bloggy neighborhoods.) This misuse of language reaches its nasty tentacles everywhere, much like a cockroach intrusion. You only need to see one to know thousands of similar vermin (more…)
Trask Avenue 