I'm sitting at my computer, radio tuned into the game. Baseball just isn't the same on television. There's something authentic about hearing radio's detailed commentary, focusing on the crowd noise that you never really notice on the tube. I feel a little furtive. If you read my posts, you know I live in New York City, in the East Village, just a few miles from Yankee Stadium. I'm the fourth generation to live in the city. My great-grandparents Abe and Rose lived here, my grandpa Eli ...

Last night Mrs. blogic and I managed to combine going to a new movie theater (the relatively new Loews on Second Avenue -- not so far from the United Nations) and catching a zombie movie. All in all, that's a great night for me, and it was topped off by Indian food afterwards. Shaun of the Dead is a comedy, if sometimes a dark one. Of course, zombie movies have a proud history of dark comic moments, dating back to at least the original Dawn of the Dead , but Shaun is as much a com...

If you had asked me last night what conversation I least expected this morning, it would have been learning about Mrs. blogic's secret admiration for Tony Danza. Huh? That was really out of the blue. Flipping through Star magazine, on the way to New Jersey to babysit our nephew, she suddenly started gushing about his new show. The weird thing is, I don't even think she's seen it. She started talking his charm, and topped it off by dropping the bomb: "Tony Danza is very engaging". Hu...

Hi all, i've seen that some users have multiple blogs; how do I set that up? Is that a feature available to ordinary users? Thanks.

This is another installment in my ...bLOgS FrOM tHE crYPt... series. In an another life -- remarkably similar to my current one, but earlier, in Washington DC, and while gainfully employed -- I kept a blog at another site that is now derelict. Pushing aside a moldering tombstone covered with painfully punned headlines, I found this ancient post: [in a spooky voice] ..BloGS frOM ThE CryPt... "I'm Next to the Crazy Lady, Trapped in the Taxi from Hell" So, I took a taxi a cou...

First of all, in case you don't know what "Bizarro World" is, read this snippet from the wikipedia : "In the Bizarro world, society is ruled by the Bizarro Code, which states that it is a crime to do anything well or to make anything perfect or beautiful. Predictably camp lines abound. In one episode, for example, a salesman is doing a brisk trade selling "Bizarro bonds. Guaranteed to lose money for you". Later in this episode, the mayor appoints Bizarro #1 to investigate a crime, "Becau...

For the last couple of days, I've been thinking about the Dancing Baby a lot. As I mentioned before, I jog; mainly so that I can eat lots of unhealthy processed food. You think I'm joking, but I'm not. Back in college, my school (go UC Santa Cruz, go Banana Slugs!) sent home a questionaire asking for parents to send in the recipe for the child's favorite food. My mom and I joked about her cutting out the instructions to Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. Anyway, I usually jog over Manhattan's cit...

I was listening to Air America Radio this morning. They announced a new show from a guy with the unlikely name "Bobby Kennedy Jr.". Since I'm lazy, I'm not going to bother checking if he's the BKjr, but I'm guessing no. On the other hand, he is a crank. So far, AAR has been good about having funny hosts, but this guy just sounds nuts. Like he's stepped out of his house for the first time in thirty years, to find out that the world has gone to hell. I don't even remember what he said....

I'm at home today, gray skies outside my apartment, working on thank you notes. The good news is that guest were generous were their gifts. The bad news is that I have to thank them. I'm genuinely thankful, but I hate writing the same stuff over and over again. It reminds me of when I was a teaching assistant and wrote the same stupid comments on nearly every paper. After a while, you just want to switch to using single letter codes, and completely cut on the "caring teacher" aspect. How ...

From Reuters : MONTREAL (Reuters) - Fans of the Montreal Expos prepared to bid adieu on Wednesday, as Canada's first big league baseball team appeared set to move to Washington. I feel for Montreal, but after living in DC for five years (go Adams Morgan!), I'm pretty jazzed to see the District finally getting a team. It's the largest metropolis without one. This decision does make baseball less international in at least two ways: (1) Duh, Montreal is in Canada, won't have a team now and (...

Okay, I'm continuing my break from Chasing the Queen Mary 2 . About a week ago, my monitor stopped working. That's not quite correct, because it still does a very good job of making weird clicking sounds when I plug it in, but it doesn't show any image. The clicking sounds kind of scared me; I pointed the screen away from me when I tested the monitor. As a computer consultant, I can report that monitors do sometimes explode, and I'd rather not be accessorized with shards of glass. Y...

For me, one of the hardest things about writing a blog entry is that I usually don't know say what I'm thinking about. I have a certain thought/feeling in my head, but I don't know how to set it down. I guess that distinguishes writers from the rest of us. For example, I listen to the rock musical "Jesus Christ: Superstar" periodically. I've listened a lot to it recently, because Jennifer and I were cleaning up the apartment for my grandpa's visit, and we'd already burned out on much of ou...

From WCBS News : EVERGREEN PARK, Ill. (CBS 2) A south suburban Chicago wedding reception comes to a shocking end when cops responding to a call about loud noise allegedly attack the bride and her father with a taser gun. Wow, that's a bad way to end a wedding. I wish I had spent more time reading about disastrous weddings when Mrs. blogic and I were preparing for our own... it would have saved us a lot of stress. Hearing about fiascos like this definitely would have lowered the bar on how ...