Flat screens, empty stools at the bar and my dear wife Karen

Our tummies full from a great New Year’s Eve dinner at Rico’s Ristorante and the clock still more than three hours from the ball-drop, my dear wife Karen and I headed to our favorite neighborhood bar just blocks from the Little Bitty in our Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood. The lights were on along James…

Rico’s Ristorante does it right on a New Year’s Eve

My dear wife Karen and I have had good times and not so good times while eating out on New Year’s Eve. It can be a tough night. Big crowds. Tense wait staffs. Smaller menus. Frustrated Mark. I come here today to praise Rico’s Ristorante of East Syracuse, N.Y. I’d chosen Rico’s as our New…

Go ahead, ask me what I think and you’ll get Free Advice

I’m not shy about sharing my thoughts on your blog. Yeah, I know that you know. I made that year-end Top Five commenter list on the Monkey Report for a lot of you, didn’t I? Thankfully, as I made my way through the Happy New Years and glad-to-know-yous this past week — all heartfelt and…

‘Sex Tape’ soils the top of my worst 2014 movie pile

My bottom 10 from the 52 first-run films that I saw for my weekly Monday Film Review Blogs on the Syracuse New Times site is over yonder, the first entry for my 2015 Thursday Film News Blogs. Talk about making news … You can read my Bottom 10 for 2014 on the infinitely interesting Syracuse…

Resting my eyes and mind for a few days …

Take a gander, a gaze, a good long stare at that photo of my dear wife Karen and I above. That’s what we looked like before I discovered WordPress. It was a celebration for the wedding of our dear friends Julie and Aaron in October, 2008, nine days before we slipped away to City Hall…

Happy New Year’s Eve from Syracuse, N.Y.

Are you ready for the ball to drop for 2015? Do you feel you dropped the ball in 2014 or handled life pretty well? Today’s the day to tie up any loose ends for this year. Better hurry. And tonight’s the night to welcome in the new year with great hopes, big plans, newfound inspiration,…

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…

At the Blog of Funny Names, I offer Aloe Blacc, singer

So I was watching one of the happy time-and-space filling Christmas afternoon holiday specials on that big day when who should pop up amid the musical segments but one Aloe Blacc. It was an interview about the meaning of Christmas, and this man of a Funny Name revealed that his father was one of 13…

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…