Late this Spring, my parents were in a car accident. It was early evening. It was raining, and the car hydroplaned. It went over a guard rail, flipped over, and came to a stop on the side of a hill. My mom suffered some severe but not life-threatening injuries. She was beside my father as the first responders tried, but ultimately failed, to revive him on scene.
They were out of province, on their way home from their 33rd wedding anniversary vacation. Continue reading
It’s Canada’s 146th Birthday. In celebration, today’s post will focus on Canadian made products. Try not to get all emotional. Continue reading
Mara Wilson, former child performer and star of films like Matilda and Mrs. Doubtfire, is probably an anomaly among her colleagues; despite her failure to fade into obscurity, she has survived being a child performer without becoming an object of public ridicule. Going by her piece for Cracked, Wilson’s not only an example of how to thrive after wrangling with the frequently grown-up expectations thrust on child stars; she’s one of the best advocates that peers struggling for footing as adults, recycled in the tabloids time and again, could hope for. Continue reading
I adore a juicy read in the summer. I like to dumb it down a bit as well. It’s just too hot for me to get into the heavy stuff and magazines have less and less content these days. Plus, it’s harder to digest hard words when you’ve had a few cocktails. Therefore I choose this time to delve into several biographies/autobiographies that have been gleefully gossipy page turners. Here are some good ones that I recommend for your beach or poolside reading. Continue reading
LGBT YouTube comedienne hartbeat creatively tackles gender stereotypes, demonstrates healthy self-image, and shows that it’s possible to make a bra out of watermelon shells. Continue reading
Let’s mix it up a little. Instead of posting a picture you’re going to post your voice. Vocaroo is probably the easiest way.
Because I can’t think of anything else how about the opening paragraph to A Tale of Two Cities. Continue reading
Sunnylands is a 200 acre estate located in Rancho Mirage, California and is owned an operated by the Annenberg Trust with the idea that the estate itself will be used to host retreats for some of the most powerful individuals on the planet. Blah blah blah. Let’s get on to the design of the place.
Fair warning: this post will be full of detail oriented photos.
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For dedicated fans of podcast savant Marc Maron, it can be a real challenge to list all the amazing aspects of his WTF podcast.
First there are the jokes; those are pretty good. Then there are the incredibly revealing interviews with comics and other performers.
Plus there’s the astonishingly consistent quality of those conversations: By now most of Maron’s guests know what to expect from the interviews, so they could easily prepare some boilerplate responses — but almost none of them does. Also there’s the incredible volume of podcast material available: 375 WTF episodes and counting, each one an hour long or more. And there’s the fact that practically every WTF episode has been made available (temporarily) for free — which for a product of this impossibly high quality seems to defy not just the rules of show business, but of capitalism itself. Continue reading
This morning, I saw the following Facebook post from a relative whose worldview I admire:
“This day commemorates the day that everything changed in the world…the concept of putting others ahead of ourselves was born today, hope was born today.”
He was commenting on an article he’d read with which he said he wholeheartedly agrees. Continue reading
Here in 2013, American short-fiction author George Saunders is having a moment. His fourth collection of short stories, Tenth of December
