When I grow up, I want to be like Calvin Morris. If you’ve ever passed the Publix shopping center on Green Springs during weekday lunch hours, Calvin is the guy dancing on the sidewalk with the Firehouse Subs sign. In my entire life, I have never seen anyone bring more joy to his work. Calvin … Read More
## The following “Farewell” column was written by Thomas Spencer for the 10/26/03 issue of The Birmingham News. It remains one of my all-time favorite pieces from that fine and venerable publication. ## Lord Baltimore Gin was his balm and pork his passion. Virtually every evening after work, Franklin Headen would hold court from a … Read More
REMEMBERING TECH’S COOLEST CONTROL FREAK. It’s six days after Steve Jobs’ death, and I interrupted my work flow this morning to click on a melodramatic story headline about the biological father he never knew. Needless to say, I can’t ever remember being so endlessly fascinated by a company CEO—which is why, at the 11th hour … Read More
(A true story, by Bob Carlton) NOTE: Bob wrote this column for The Birmingham News August 6, 1999 . If you asked me, it’s still just as good 12 years later. I have seen the Blair Witch. It was right outside my tent. But first some background: Last week, I interrupted my annual baseball vacation … Read More
If you asked me, Pete Townshend’s classic line has a lot more to do with attitude than age. First, make no mistake: When it comes to lifestyle, nobody’s older for his age than me. At 25, I married the perfect excuse to stop going out on weeknights. Six years later, we gave birth to the … Read More
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
It’s the ever-popular SEC Helmet Schedule. ( Special Thanks To CrimsonAudio.net ) ENJOY!
(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
(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
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
