A couple of years ago The New Yorker wrote a piece asking why genius is so inextricably tied up with precocity, citing many examples, among them Mozart, T.S. Elliot and Orson Welles. There are many more, and we know most of them, especially actors, poets, musicians. Prodigies like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg [...]
Jeff Johnson sent me a website I have not seen before. He is like a Google bot when it comes to rooting around the Web. It was featured on Holy Kow, Guy Kawasaki’s content aggregation site. The site purports to analyze your writing style and tell you what author you write like. It is exploding [...]
There are a lot of new back-to-basics cookbooks being published these days with the Slow Food movement and it’s first through third cousins roaming the aisles at bookstores.
Lance Armstrong has been accused, yet again, of doping before and even during races. This is not a new situation for the cocky Texan. It’s happened before in books (David Walsh’s L.A. Confidentiel) and by other riders like Greg LeMond (a Tour de France winner himself). Even friends (Betsy Addreu, wife of former teammate, Frankie [...]
I’ve often spoken of my bizarre Forest Gumpian past as it relates to famous people (especially Southerners), and I will not rehash that list of historical and cultural figures yet again. It is just not that interesting anymore, at least to me, anyway. But I have had one unmentioned encounter that warrants a story. To [...]
A couple of weeks ago I read, “Donald Frey, Mustang Creator dies at 86.” The headline hung there before my eyes like an aroma faintly familiar but just to the edge of explanation. I’d heard more than a few times that Lee Iacocca created the Mustang. He was the general manager of Ford at the [...]
(Warning: Contains rock lyrics from 40 years ago) Some music goes beyond the sound that comes out of your speakers. From time to time, these sounds define a cultural or political movement. In a few cases, they become the soundtrack for a generation. Neil Young wailing, “four dead in Ohio,” still conjures memories of a [...]
The Super Bowl is Sunday. It is a big deal for football, entertainment, advertising and Saints fans. If you enjoy the NFL, thank Steve Sabol. His stories created it. Sabol is 67 now. He became famous by turning football into art (according to Joe Posnanski in Sports Illustrated his week). It is a great story [...]
During the holidays I was hit by a moment of revelation while watching Bobby Bowden coaching his last game at Florida State. After his final win, he gave a press conference. He was classic Bobby B. I flipped channels and there was Paula Dean on the Food Network. That is when it hit me; Paula [...]
Speaking of credibility: I love college football. Always have. But there are parts of it that chew at me. This is one of them: When a student athlete transfers to another program (for whatever reason), that athlete is punished by having to sit out a year, basically losing a year of eligibility at a time [...]
Rudy, our Jack Russell, has been the subject of many of my stories. Not that millions of people are reading these blogs, but he has become s bit of a celebrity amongst the dogs in our neighborhood. They hang around the front yard waiting to get a glimpse of him. Even cats have begun to [...]
I heard the man’s name a long time ago – I can’t remember exactly where – but the music he championed was the soundtrack of my life growing up.
We’re all going to be living on bugs in a few years; you know that, don’t you? Roaches, scorpions, grubs, crickets, worms, crispy, crawly crunchies, they are the answer to the coming food shortage — and that shortage is coming. Read around, you’ll see. I’m trying to wrap my head around that insectful situation now.
I’ve often wondered if supposed aliens come here on vacation or is this just a business trip? Maybe you have seen a UFO. Or maybe you have even been abducted and probed or whatever the bug-eyed beings do when they snatch up a human. I have talked to people who swear they have seen strange [...]
In case you have grown tired of the endless things available on the web to distract you, I offer you two more: Gizmodo.com and Engadget.com (thank you again, Jeff). Now I can sleep even less because I’m up all night browsing these sites and watching Mythbuster’s Kari Byron snipe a tree in half with a [...]