The Indignant Wife, Indignant Child and I watched Transformers over the weekend. I know that it make $24 zillion at the box office, but I held off watching it until it came on cable for two reasons: first, I was too old to be into the “car/plane turns into robot” toys back in the 1980s; […]

[Read more →]

Speaking of music concerts, the reclusive Sly Stone is scheduled to lead a revised Family Stone at the Vic Theater this Saturday. I say scheduled because Sly has a long reputation for not showing up for concerts. Locally, I remember when Sly cancelled a concert in Grant Park in 1970 that started a huge riot […]

[Read more →]

As you can see, it’s been a few days since I put anything down, but it was for a good cause: the family and I spent the weekend in New Orleans at the 39th Annual Jazz and Heritage Festival, and it was quite a time, with lots of rubbing elbows with great musicians. First came […]

[Read more →]

I’m sitting here listening to “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” from Bruce Springsteen’s second album that features a great accordion part by Dan Federici. We all knew that Federici had been battling cancer; he left the tour late last year as a result, and the last I had read, the band thought he was […]

[Read more →]

In the movie business, a film’s revenues are king, and in many cases, the first weekend is the measure by which a film sinks or swims. Almost every weekend, there is some new movie that comes out trying to hit the jackpot. This week’s entry is Street Kings, a movie that I might have been […]

[Read more →]

Once an oasis of progressive music, Chicago’s WXRT (93.1 FM) is now a bastion of mediocrity. Even worse, it’s just plain BORING! Let us count the ways…   Resigned to the Musical Ghetto Even though I have been listening to the station since the 1970s, when there were two featured artists per day and they […]

[Read more →]