Vin Diesel shares ‘Fast and Furious 7’ still photos with many millions of friends

I’m lagging a bit behind in my Facebook friend count. I found an interesting bit about Vin Diesel’s fan page while researching this week’s installmennt for my Film News blog over at the wonderful Syracuse New Times site. Mr. Diesel and the rest of the cast were given a preview of the trailer for “Fast…

A return home from the Big Apple pleases CNY jazz fans

It’s been awhile since he’d played his saxophone in his hometown, Paul Carlon said while we corresponded about his trip up from New York City with his band La Rumba Is a Lovesome Thing to perform Friday night at Jazz-N-Caz. Yes, Carlon grew up in Cazenovia. Well, to be technical about it, his family’s home…

Maryland had the big plays, Syracuse had the big mistakes

So it was a grudge afternoon, this Saturday trip to the Carrier Dome to see my alma mater Maryland while sitting side by side with KP watching his alma mater Syracuse. Not so much. First off, through 30 years of the best of and worst of stuff, a football game between our old schools felt…

In ‘This Is Where I Leave You,’ it takes a death to jump start a life

Judd Altman goes home to attend his father’s funeral in a stage of his life that, well, sucks really bad. He’s just caught his wife cheating on him. With his boss. So he’s wifeless and jobless. And now he’s forced to sit shiva with two brothers, a sister, in-laws, and a mother who wrote a…

Sometimes you have to grab the tools and do it yourself

Another advantage to the freed weekday hours that showed up this week was when something inside told me I simply had to tackle a couple of house projects that I thought I’d get done with just one movement: hand into cash pocket. Instead, I pulled the screen all the way out of the porch door,…

A return to OCC for Corea sounds great forever

The last time Chick Corea played on the campus of Onondaga Community College some three years ago the American jazz legend was on a huge stage with one of the world’s biggest band’s headlining an enormous free jazz festival. Yes, that night in June 2011 was hugely memorable for all that saw that tingling set…

A cruise with the gang, minus me

My dear wife Karen is aboard Jet Blue, about to taxi down the runway at Syracuse’s Hancock International Airport to head toward Fort Lauderdale. Tonight, Bubba Gump’s Shrimp. Tomorrow morning, the big ship of Royal Caribbean International. Key West. Other destinations and dinners and lunches and breakfasts. Friends we’ve cruised with for eight years now.…

KA-BOOM Thar She Blows!!!

Angie of Kentucky is living out of a Hampton Inn because her next-door neighbor blew up the apartment cooking after midnight. You can’t make this stuff up. Check out her dry style of dealing with yet another roadblock on top of her daily battle with MS.

Can ‘Galaxy’ make a star from the cutting room floor?

I am ever more impressed by the ways fans can tune in to “Guardians of the Galaxy.” The old songs brought the soundtrack to No. 1, and the box office success continued. Now writer/director James Gunn’s continued posting on his social media is including pictures and details about deleted scenes. A picture of a blue-faced…

At Festa Italiana, folks eat it up

Even the name sounds delicious. Festa Italiana. Rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it? Well, sure, downtown Syracuse has its share of festivals that declare their devotion to the culinary. The Crawfish Festival is named after the bright red mud bug dug so much down New Orleans way, and in May, Clinton Square welcomed folks…