2014 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog. Here's an excerpt: The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 110,000 times in 2014. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 5 days for that many people to see…

Native funny guys return for Syracuse show

The first time I recall seeing Moody McCarthy, he was kind of shy. Reserved, even. Still, there he was walking up to the stage of Wise Guys Comedy Club in his hometown of Syracuse … Turn back the calendar, oh, to the 1990s, and Wise Guys was in the basement of a Mexican joint out…

Hello, Rex? This is Syracuse AD Daryl Gross …

A call I’d be making today if I were Syracuse athletic director Daryl Gross would go something like this: Hey, Rex, this is Daryl Gross, Syracuse AD. Sorry to hear your bad news from the Jets today. Yeah, tough season. Us, too. Say, Happy New Year regardless. A good coach like you will find something…

Looking at the world through ‘Big Eyes’

A movie about the art world? How boring! Not so fast. “Big Eyes” was produced and directed by Tim Burton. It stars Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz. It’s about about real life artists Walter and Margaret Keane, and there’s a villain and somebody for which to cheer. And doe-eyed children in frames. Many, many doe-eyed…

The muddy prints of a 4-year-old

Somebody young was traipsing through the muddy backyard of our home in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood during this holiday week and then heard visitors arrive inside. They wanted in. Badly. But they couldn’t quite figure out how to work the tricky handle of the French door. We did not have a toddler visiting…