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…

Throwback: Fake cover for imaginary album by faux band. Really!

Back in the late 1970s, our two bedroom, one-bath apartment in Adelphi, Md., was always rocking. Yes, Twenty, Aggo and I were eyebrows deep into two years of hard university time within those walls in the cockroach-inhabitated complex we used to lovingly call Residential Plaza, dropping their officious P from the first name because that…

Cherry tree picking

A cherry tree will be going into the backyard of the Little Bitty in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood. My dear wife Karen and I took the trip to Chuck Hafner’s Garden Center in North Syracuse this past weekend, walking the aisles under the sun out back and inside the greenhouses, too. We spied…