Maybe it’s because I work in computers for a living and know firsthand the perils of Version 1.0 (of anything), but when it comes to technology, I’m no early adopter. I’m a Mac specialist, but I learned to use OSX only when I had to support other OSX users. I’m …

Shame on me. For all my complaints about Maureen Dowd, I somehow failed to notice that she was the only regular female columnist at The New York Times. For that, shame on the Times. In her column today Dowd points out that the Washington Post also has only one female …

The Matthew Skoller Band makes solid, harmonica-heavy, Chicago-style blues. Skoller’s husky voice, like Stevie Ray Vaughn’s, contrasts nicely with his ace band’s smooth (but mercifully un-slick) arrangements, while his virtuoso harp playing lends both pathos and sheen to many of these mostly original tunes. This, the band’s fourth CD, opens …

CNN is refusing to broadcast a rather shocking anti-landmine PSA which you can read about and see here. No point starting a discussion if you haven’t seen it, so check it out. Here’s a direct link to the video if you’re so inclined.

You know the O’Jays. Even if you don’t think you do, you do. Beginning with “Back Stabbers” in 1972, the group had a string of hits that also included “Love Train,” “Give The People What They Want,” and the dark masterpiece “For The Love Of Money.” Produced by the legendary …

Bored now.

The spacious, airy song “Amsterdam,” which opens Griffin House’s CD Lost & Found, announces that we’re in serious, sensitive-guy territory.  But though the tune recalls Sting’s “Why Should I Cry For You”, House has an earthy, pop-Americana style that ought to stand him in good stead in a mileu where …

Hello To All That: A Memoir of War, Zoloft, and Peace recounts in time-shifting chapters the author’s depression, pharmaceutical cure, and subsequent formative experience as a freelance war correspondent reporting from the siege of Sarajevo in 1993-4. The parallel stories are interesting and vividly told. But readers expecting something heavy, …

Stand aside, Bridget Jones. Look lively, Carrie Bradshaw. And look out, Adrian Mole: if you see this woman, run. A sharp-witted British social satire fresh from the New York Times bestseller list, Confessions of a Sociopathic Social Climber hits the idiot box on March 12 courtesy of Oxygen Media. The …

This DVD documents the 2003 Springing the Blues Festival in Jacksonville, FL. Interspersing performances with artist interviews, it conveys the flavor of what’s happening down South on the blues festival scene in the 21st century. The interviewers also elicit from the artists verbal descriptions and private demos of what the …