Place Your Bets

The good news just keeps flowing the way I see it. Delaware has started on the road to table games with the first ones expected by January. Sports betting is pretty much a done deal. I scoped out some good football weekends and actually made a reservation (it’s easy to cancel) for the hotel at […]

Book Review: 1949

I have a decent background with Ireland. I traveled there once, did my senior thesis for college on Irish literature and have read several different books on the island’s history. Still, I almost didn’t read Morgan Llyewen’s historical novel 1949. Part of this was because I bought the book at a discount store a few […]

What a Coincidence

I could not believe my eyes. As I sat with my daughter to eat lunch at the Maryland Zoo 10 days ago, I thought I saw someone I knew. Since I grew up and now work in Baltimore, this should not come as a surprise, but I still had trouble wrapping my mind around it. […]

ITEOTWAWKI: Back in Action

I have procrastinated posting this, but the boys of R.E.M. – well two of them at least – have started the process that will hopefully lead to the follow-up to Accelerate. Peter Buck and Mike Mills got together in Portland last month with Bill Rieflin and Scott McCaughey, who are basically non-voting members of the […]

How Could They Tell?

Sometimes the jokes just write themselves. I feel bad for the poor MillerCoors PR guy who had to announce this news. MillerCoors has recalled a batch of Coors Light in the Southeastern United States after taste tests at the company’s Georgia brewery found the beer to be subpar. “We sampled it and realized it wasn’t […]

I’ll Take This Hangover

I get this way with movies sometimes. “Fandango” did it to me in college. Most recently, “Old School” made me think they should just stop making films altogether. I am sure others made me feel that way in between, but something new has caught my attention. “The Hangover.” You would think that a movie so […]

Book Review: Taverns and Drinking in Early America

Now that I work at an academic publisher, I sometimes have the opportunity to get my hands on books I might otherwise not know about. My most recent read, Taverns and Drinking in Early America, falls squarely in that category. I occasionally go through a non-fiction phase and might embark on that sort of journey […]

Stop the Madness

Sometimes, I don’t know what to make of what goes on in this crazy world of ours. Things just keep heading in the wrong direction. This has nothing to do with the economy or pig flu or anything like that. I’m talking about chicken here. Did you hear that KFC has come out with a […]

Keep Your Ear Open

I don’t know how I ended up as an eavesdropper. Maybe growing up with seven older siblings who liked to keep secrets from me had something to do with it. Some of my earliest memories come from receiving bribes to sneak into our living room to spy on my oldest sister and her boyfriend. I […]

Saving the Children

I feel like I have saved the youth of Hanover single-handedly. All it took was a trip to the library. Everything started when I read an item in the newspaper. The library wanted to expand their collection and put out a call for used video games. A small stack of those just happen to sit […]