The Sammys wants your best work

‘Tis the season to think about awards shows. Organizers are asking for the best work from Syracuse-area musicians and producers again. The Syracuse Area Music Awards has put out its annual application for submissions for the 2016 edition of the show that’s affectionately called the Sammys. The impressive black trophies will be handed out March…

Simon and Garfunkel looked a bit tense back as old friends in Central Park

Where was I on Sept. 19, 1981, when all those people crammed into Central Park to see Simon & Garfunkel get back together on stage? Big night, indeed, I could tell as my dear wife Karen and I watched on the wide-screen in the living room of our Little Bitty in the Syracuse city neighborhood…

The slippers and the stoppers

What makes me happy on my birthday morning proper? My dear wife Karen handed over two nicely wrapped packages just seconds behind my coffee in the cup the size of my head two days ago. Ellie B aka Dogamous Pyle watched closely ready to take credit, too. Ah, yes. New slippers, same as the old…

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When the temperature hits this high during my birthday week in double-digit December, well, my dear wife Karen, Ellie B aka Dogamous Pyle and I celebrate with a nice near-winter walk around our Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood. We took a long one, in fact, enjoying a nice late weekend morning together a couple of…

Ron Howard tries too hard to take us deep into the heart of the tale of Moby-Dick

Ishmael and that great, big whale brought to the world from the pen of Herman Melville 165 years ago are back. Ron Howard, one mammoth director by any standard, has latched onto the prequel, if you will, of what went on in Nantucket back in the day that allowed Melville to open his mind enough…

A skating day to the ‘T’

A business lunch took me to downtown Syracuse. I made sure I passed the ice rink in Clinton Square. A few folks were taking advantage of our warm upstate New York December weather on a weekday afternoon. It was unseasonably warm for a December day in Central New York. I was still wearing my winter…

Sweet times in Hershey

My dear wife Karen and a few of her friends really missed their buddy Carolyn. So they jumped in the Mazda and drove south from Syracuse, N.Y. Carolyn headed north from the Washington, D.C., area. Hershey, Pa., was a great destination for a weekend getaway, my wife reports. She texted from the restaurant of a…

A little holiday light on the Little Bitty

I came home from work one night and the lights caught my eye right away. Good Neighbor Tim and his Wonderful Wife Lorraine had chosen to decorate a nice bush toward our side of their house for his holiday season. A multi-colored string of lights provided the festive touch. I liked it. Very much. And…

Sinatra’s still special 100 years later, but his CBS show was a tad lacking

I tuned in to the CBS tribute Sinatra 100 Sunday night with great anticipation. A fan of Frank Sinatra my whole life — or at since my father Frank introduced me to the music of the man known as both Ol’ Blue Eyes and The Chairman of the Board before I even went to kindergarten…

Jason Bean goes deep, Eddie Z digs it stripped down

Jason Bean, Mudfish Records Black Then Blue Then Gray Syracuse singer-songwriter Jason Bean thought he’d had emptied that musical well after he’d written, recorded and released his fourth album, Twenty Seven, in 2012. “My songwriting had become so personal, and in some cases, personal, that I walked away,” Bean says. A people person, he got…