This is the first in a series of posts that include songs that I would put in a themed playlist. Consider this an “annotated playlist”. Feel free to include your suggestions in the comments! ***************** Not long ago I was teaching my high school course on American popular culture post-WWII. The class mainly…
I have nothing meaningful to add to the plethora of efforts to commemorate (or exploit) the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. I was not in the vicinity of New York, Washington or Shanksville, and none of my family or friends were harmed in the attacks. But like all…
As I’ve already noted in this space, I have been a fan of professional wrestling for over thirty years. One of the things I appreciate about wrestling is the storyline aspect of a good match. When things are done right, two grapplers will battle over and over again, sometimes exchanging victories, until there…
I’ve always loved science fiction. Full disclosure time here: I just spent hours trying to make my iPad look like a PADD from Star Trek! Anyway, as a young person I spent a lot of time watching Star Trek and Jetsons reruns. To the point that I found it very depressing that we…
In the fall of 1981, just as I was beginning 6th grade, my father surprised us by hooking the house up for cable tv. I think that we were only the second house on our block to get cable, and it was wonderful. Suddenly we didn’t have to get up and adjust the…
I had a small realization the other day that blew my mind. The Sassy Librarian and I were watching one of our favorite movies, “On The Town“, a 1949 Gene Kelly-Stanley Donen musical about three naive sailors given 24 hours shore leave in postwar New York City. They don’t have much time to…
On Friday, July 8, 2011, the Sassy Librarian and I went to Citizen’s Bank Park for her first ever Phillies game. Courtney has become a devoted and passionate Phillies fan (after 18 years with me, it was only a matter of time!) and we were thrilled to be able to go to the…
I have a guilty secret. I am an ego-surfer. “Ego-surfers” periodically type their names into major search engines to see what comes up. According to Wikipedia, this term has been around since 1995, which is approximately how long I’ve been doing this for, back when I would get different results on Lycos (now…
You have no idea how many times I’ve uttered those words in regards to my latest computer acquisition. It comes up a lot, because I’ve been a user (more likely) or owner (less likely) of a LOT of different computers over the past 30 years. Inspired by a retrospective on all the guitar…
On March 6, 2011, Lester J. Mazor died after a short illness. Lester was a major figure in my life from the first time I was a student in his class (January 1989) until his death. He and I corresponded regularly, especially during the fall of 2010, as he and I rooted for…