The Blog Summit

(If you missed this blog’s fifth-anniversary post over the weekend, check it here. Now, our regularly scheduled program.)
A couple of years ago, The Mrs. and I were hanging out on the Memorial Union Terrace here in Madison when we met a couple I’ll call Rex and Ellen. Rex was an elderly gent; Ellen was younger [...]

This Geek Goes On

I’ve been reading John Irving lately, and I just finished The Cider House Rules for the third time the other night. Irving’s work keeps me humble: He’s writing, and I’m just typing. He’s creating art, and I’m just killing time.
Toward the end of The Cider House Rules, one character is describing the ocean to another [...]

No Shirt, No Clue

The fall of 1977 was one of those seasons when the radio was talking to me constantly. When the chatter got too much, I’d put an album on the record player, and in that season, it was usually Emerson Lake & Palmer’s Works Volume 1.
Works Volume 1 was the first new studio recording from ELP [...]

Bird Watching

Mark Fidrych died this week. Sports fans know his name, although memories have grown dim; non-fans may never have heard of him. He was a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers who came to the big leagues in 1976. He had an odd pitching motion, a mop of curly hair that stuck out from under his [...]

493 Words About Jazz

Housekeeping Note Before We Begin: I have rejiggered the blogroll a little bit, removing a few links and adding a few. If you have a blog and you link to this one, e-mail and tell me to link you back, if I’m not doing so already. Find my e-mail address under “About This Blog.”
April is [...]

Confidential Report

Rock and Rap Confidential is a newsletter that music critic Dave Marsh has edited since 1983 or thereabouts. It’s published intermittently, arriving in my e-mail every so often—there’s a website, too, although the current stories on it haven’t been updated since October of last year. But I’m hopeful that the stuff in the latest newsletter [...]