To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
I might have mentioned that I have an aunt who might be terminally ill in St. Charles. I have been remiss in visiting the St. Louis area and seeing her in the last ten years since we bought Nogglestead–I might have been back only two or three times–so I have been inventing excuses to drive […]
This weekend, or more to the point, this Sunday and Monday, I traveled to a work retreat in the Washington, D.C., area. When I travel, I like to pack my personal item with magazines that I can read and discard on the way, which means my bag gets lighter as I go. As I might […]
I got this book at LibraryCon 2019. The author/artist had a couple of regular, staple-stitched comics that I bought as well as this collection which has a flat spine and hence gets counted as a graphic novel and eligible for my annual reading list and an official MfBJN book report. This book is a collection […]
So I was looking at the Smooth Jazz Cruise 2021 because Keiko Matsui lists the 2020 cruise on her tour dates page, and my beautiful wife has been jonesing for a cruise for about a decade now. Unfortunately, the 2020 cruise with Keiko Matsui is sold out, and she does not appear on the 2021 […]
So I went out for a run last night, which makes it sound like I’m a runner, which I am not. I am not the sort of person who’ll take off from my driveway and go for a little run, mostly because I don’t really like to run and also because I live in the […]
Springfield native Molly Healey has a new album coming out. She plays cello and violin and sings, but she’s a is a little too folk to be in my wheelhouse: But if I run across one of her CDs at a silent auction, I’ll probably overbid on it.
I might have mentioned that I liked the album The Sunshine Project by Lily Belle. I play it from time to time, sometimes “Good Morning” to get my children up and moving in the morning (mainly because they’re preteens and hate the song). So I did what the kids today do and visited YouTube to […]
I read in Metal Hammer magazine that metal is family, but I found that hard to believe. When I was growing up, the kids who listened to metal in our trailer park certainly didn’t treat the awkward, small younger version of me like family at all. So I’ve been skeptical of the claim even as […]
As you might know, gentle reader, I like to flip through the society pages of the local slick and browse through the equivalent gallery pages of the Springfield News-Leader because Springfield is a relatively small city, and I’ll often see someone I know attending some event. So yesterday, I’m scrolling through the gallery of people […]
Kim has discovered Anastacia, and he likes her voice (and her looks) but not so much that she sings club/pop music. As you know, gentle reader, I’m an Anastacia fan from way back, wherein “way back” means last year. Like Du Toit, I appreciate jazz and torch songbirds, but I don’t mind pop or dance […]
I don’t want my children to understand the music of Everclear. My parents split up on October 25, 1981, when I was nine years old. My father pulled me away from a television movie (Twirl) to sit my brother and I down into what was up until that moment my parents’ bedroom and to tell […]
So I received the physical CD of Rebecca Black’s CD RE/BL, delayed because she was in Italy or something. So I announced to my beautiful wife that it arrived: ME: I got the Rebecca Black CD. SHE: Who’s that? ME:: She’s a pop singer that Charles Hill is really high on. She was a viral […]
Linkbait headline is 10 Things That Didn’t Exist 10 Years Ago That We Now Can’t Live Without. Here’s the list (in descending order in the article). I’ve put in italics things I’ve used and in bold things I cannot live without. Uber Bitcoin Instagram The Selfie Stick Spotify “Woke” Airbnb Snapchat Tesla The iPad Number […]
Danger Danger’s The Return of the Great Gildersleeves: Well, all right, maybe not, but the old timey blogs pointed the way. First, on the Facebook, Blackfive posted a song by eighties band Danger Danger: I liked the sound–man, do I miss the eighties–so I bought the debut CD. When I was thinking about picking up […]
So, I’ve done something I haven’t done in almost twenty years: I got a membership at a video store. Now, gentle reader, you might remember my December rant on the limited catalogs of streaming services (What I Want To Watch, When I Want To Watch It). I still feel that way, but I’m pretending to […]
So I was listening to WSIE, and another jazz singer caught my ear: Sacha Boutros. So I checked Amazon, and her CDs are crazy expensive: $30 and up. But her Web site offers them for $19.99. Autographed. Since it accepted PayPal, and I had some money in my PayPal account from a writing assignment payment […]
This album features Kate Smith of “God Bless America” fame singing a selection of Christmas carols and other things. I know, a day after saying that Robert Goulet’s Christmas album was too big, I’m giving a favorable review to Kate Smith’s. However, the different between the two is a big voice and a big delivery. […]
It’s been a bad season for the local book fairs and Brian J. I missed the one in Clever because I didn’t know when it was (although since I’m a Friend of the Clever Library, I probably got a notification that I discarded). I missed the Christian County Library book sale due to car problems. […]
This book is a collection of philosophical quotes about Jim Henson and his work. Well, somewhat. The quotes by Jim Henson are philosophical about the nature of work, collaboration with coworkers and underlings, and the balance of life vis-a-vis work. He’s almost like a cuddly Ayn Rand character when he talks about doing what one […]
I’ve been a curmudgeon since elementary school, but I cannot feel like an old curmudgeon these days when confronted by stories written, obviously, by a 20-something who thinks history began sometime in Bill Clinton’s reign. First, this piece in Vanity Fair talking about the sameness of culture since that era: The past is a foreign […]