Football, basketball and a signed book for Christmas

The college basketball season started last night. Around here, Syracuse walloped a team from Kennesaw State, 89-42. If you’re interested, you can find a report about the game here. College football cranks up again today. Most teams have three games left in the regular season, then conference championship games before the first-ever four-team playoff to…

A lake shore alive with holiday lights, you can count on it

I counted 117 million light bulbs ablaze with holiday fever along the shore of Onondaga Lake in the Syracuse suburb of Liverpool on Wednesday night. Now that would be a frustrating chore, wouldn’t it? Seven million eight hundred thousand eight six … dang, lost count, I have to go back to the start! In Syracuse,…

Two weeks down, Nano Poblano, time to hop in and volunteer

The fun continues as week two of Nano Poblano concludes, Team Pepper. Interesting posts abound. My click finger may never be the same. Our three Little Pepper Blog Hops are still jumping between squad members. As you recall, Fish of Gold started our ball rolling with a short story opportunity. I came in thereafter with…

New rooms, familiar players, cool release … and I still dig the Syracuse sound

Back when I covered the Central New York music scene for the big daily, I always had it in the back of my mind somewhere that these voices, these talents, these people I was hearing, seeing, watching, following, talking with, tracking, well, they were as good as the folks other people doing this job in…

Can an actor make you laugh with just one word?

A few times now, the funny-looking man at the front desk of a big city hotel has recited his name and a word that you don’t hear much these days. It’s a trailer for a movie that’s opening on Jan. 23. The make-up job is good, because the actor is Johnny Depp. He’s the title…

Abandoned And Arrested

An outstanding Nano Poblano prompt in a comment below from our teammate Colleen. Find a similar lost soul building in your neighborhood, take shots, and share. Thanks for your beautiful post, Chatter Master!

On Nov. 11, in Syracuse, N.Y., we played sunny golf

I’ve had a new saying lately. Syracuse is the new South Carolina. What I mean is … The periodic bursts of warm weather we’ve been getting this fall has been knocking me out. On Tuesday, Nov. 11, Veterans Day 2014, it reached 65 degrees in Syracuse, N.Y. That, my friends, is not the usual sort…

Zoomy with my new iPhone 6

My own shots always win out over their better-looking brothers and sisters I can find with a good Google. What with the largesse granted blogworld by Getty Images for photo use within sensible limits, one could pretty up most any post with professional portraits, landscapes, action. But still I go my own way with my…

Keaton’s ‘Birdman’ alights on a lofty perch at Manlius Art Cinema

It felt right to see “Birdman” in an art cinema. The Manlius Art Cinema, to be exact, a tiny movie house about a dozen miles to the southeast of Syracuse, N.Y., where art movies come to run on a screen way smaller than those employed by the big chains nearby and watched by … well,…

The balls were rolling

To complete the thought on Oh, balls … I like bowling on Sunday mornings in my Thursday night league. See my previous post if that statement leaves you scratching your head. Cici’s Pizza took two of three games and total wood from the second-place team. I was happy with my first and third games, most…