An open and closed case from the mind of Jack Nicklaus

Tater topped KP and I again as we got the second of our three Syracuse Golf Show coupon rounds in last week, utilizing another sunny, warm blue-skied day to its maximum. The 18 holes that golf legend Jack Nicklaus designed for Timber Banks in Radisson, on the western outskirts some 20 miles from Syracuse, surely…

Goofy decisions on ‘Guy’s Grocery Games’

My dear wife Karen and I are relaxing in front of the wide screen with some easy-to-watch TV, as we like to do, and a previously DVR’ed episode of “Guy’s Grocery Games” from the Food Network is winding down. I’m splitting my attention between the contestants and my iPad Air and Ellie B aka Dogamous…

If you want to sing in public badly enough, you can

I enjoyed judging the karaoke contest Saturday night at Village Lanes in East Syracuse. The nine singers who signed up ranged in talents, certainly, from very good to very brave. That’s one of wonderful things about karaoke. Anybody who wants to sing can. It’s really the great equalizer. You don’t have to be great. Maybe…

Celebrating a Sammy with Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers didn’t just accept his shiny black Sammys trophy and go home. Well, the singer, guitarist and songwriter perhaps did something of that sort the night in March after he won the Syracuse Area Music Award category for best Americana recording. Rodgers instead planned a Syracuse gig for the band that recorded the…

Avengers find Ultron formidable, but they’re still a marvel

You don’t just try the waters of the Avengers franchise by sticking your big toe into the pool a little bit. I joined the all-ages throng that filled the big theater at the Regal Cinemas at Syracuse’s mega shopping, dining and entertainment complex Destiny USA for the Sunday matinée of “Avengers: Age of Ultron” not…

Blue skies, red shells fill downtown for first fest of season

Life was good for thousands of reasons Saturday afternoon as the crowds spilled into Syracuse’s Clinton Square. The sun was shining, and the temperature one the AXA/Equitable Tower peeking through the nearer buildings read an oh-so-pleasant 64º F. Crawfish Festival pulsed with people of all sizes and ages and colors, this first of a series…

Student reporter’s paradise

“What happens when you fly over Los Angeles?” the stewardess asked me. Yeah, me, I thought, attempting to come up with a winning reply. “You land, I hope,” I said, lamely, not being quite that slick yet and never to see her smiling face again as I was getting ready in 1978 to begin another…

California, there we came

In May 2005, I jumped on a plane in Syracuse, got off in San Diego, and jumped into a powder blue Ford Mustang convertible. My dear wife Karen knows how to plan a vacation. We’d been together in our Little Bitty in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood for less than a year, she was…