Voilà a few raisons why I-yam hooked on Le Tour. I used to hate July. With fall practice still a month away, and national signing day a distant memory, July represents the low point of the year for people who (like me, once upon a time) have no life outside college football. That was Before … Read More
Dancing In The Street (Revisited)
(Photo by The Birmingham News) It’s taken me some time, but I can now honestly say I miss City Stages. Not the City Stages I skipped from 2004 to 2008—and regretted attending in 2009—but the festival which, at its best, was as good a thing as my hometown has ever done for itself. I’m talking about … Read More
Could I Get One More To Go?
(Special thanks to Joe York, and the short film “Gus”, for the image.) One Saturday morning in mid-April, my wife joined our son and me for one of our periodic bike trips from the house in Forest Park to Downtown and back. Along the way, we visited several of the places we often stop: Sloss … Read More
I Like To Watch, Eve. It’s Very Good.
This month’s title is a quote from Being There, one of my favorite movies of the last three decades. In it, Peter Sellers plays Chance—a man with the mind of a child who knows virtually nothing outside what he has learned from television. Which, by the way, he spends nearly every waking moment watching. It’s … Read More
CTRL + ALT + DELETE
(Confessions of a NumLock) Over the past several months I’ve had three paradigm-shifting experiences in my personal relationship with the computer. The first occurred last April. My office email program crashed, and I lost every single message I had sent over the previous two months. Several hours after I regained consciousness, I found myself completely … Read More
Living The Dream? (Part 2 of 2)
(Special Thanks To Sarah Best) I don’t know about you, but it seems to me like this country has been stuck in a serious mood-funk over the economy for close to three years. Now, a lot of experts are predicting 2011 won’t be any better than 2010. Probably the same experts who told us the … Read More
Seriously, People: We’re Better Than We Think.
(Bull Connor: He’s dead. Really.) Birmingham is full of losers. None bigger than yours truly. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever met someone who’s relocated to Birmingham from a comparably-sized (or larger) city without asking them, “What in the world got you to move here?” The inherent assumption, of course, being that nobody would move … Read More
Apple: The New Beatles?
June 18, 2010: After months of intense speculation, adoring fans across America are queued-up (some since the night before) to be among the first to own the latest release from Apple. It’s a scenario not uncommon to my generation’s once-upon-a-time frenzy to procure tickets to a Beatles concert. And in many ways, Apple today has … Read More
Jumping Isn’t The Only Thing We Can’t Do.
I suppose this is going to make somebody mad, but here it is… While watching the NCAA basketball tournament last night, an interesting thought crossed my mind: Why are there so many white coaches on the sidelines? Because that’s where they spent their careers as players. Not only was it a common occurrence for all … Read More
The Messiah Complex
(ANOTHER FABULOUS DAVID BROOKS EDITORIAL) Every age produces its own sort of fables, and our age seems to have produced The White Messiah fable.This is the oft-repeated story about a manly young adventurer who goes into the wilderness in search of thrills and profit. But, once there, he meets the native people and finds that … Read More