Lit City Blues

I've been watching the unfolding controversy over the whole Kinnick House controversy  that's embroiling Manville Heights in yard signs with a certain amount of anarchic amusement. In general, I tend to roll my eyes at any NIMBY-type movement and start rooting for the other side out of sheer bullheadedness.  Plus, it's not like this is a Rose Oaks type of situation, where actual poor people and minorities are getting screwed. No, this is a rich neighborhood, where a rich guy wants to build a second home for his family and of course, all the other rich folks are up in arms about it. I saw the yard signs denouncing the 'PARTY VENUE ON LUSK AVENUE' and like many I'm sure that read them, my first question was, 'where the hell is Lusk Avenue?' And, thanks to Little Dude falling asleep in the car, I decided to track it down and see what the fuss was about. I've decided that unless you're either a. a resident of Manville Heights or b. Irving Weber...

I don't know why it took me so long to finish this book. I don't even remember when or where I got it, which is kind of sad, but I burned through half of it and then put it down for a very long time, until about a week ago, I picked it up again and blazed through the rest. On Writing is a fascinating journey conducted by none other than Stephen King, who, I think we can all agree, might know a thing or two about writing. Starting with his life story- more or less, King charts his early interest in writing, which eventually lead to his early struggles to break through and then his break through and then all the rest that followed including his descent into drug and alcohol addiction and his way out. For the second part of the book, King starts to do something amazing: share his knowledge about writing and what makes good writing and, more to the point, how to be a better writer. I think it's the tone of the book that makes it special. It's not stern and unbending, i...

The Olympics are over, so This Week In Vexillology, we're returning to our regularly scheduled programming with the flag of Armenia! First of all, let's talk about the country itself. Armenia as a country is old, old, old- the Kingdom of Armenia was at it's height in the 1st Century BC. The Armenia Apostolic Church is recognized as the national church- the world's oldest. So as an idea, as a country, as a people, Armenia has been around for a long long time. Armenia spent centuries under the domination of various other powers in central Asia before being split between Russia, Persia and the Ottoman Empire. The current country is about 10% of what is considered 'historical Armenia' and their people fell victim to the Armenian Genocide before falling under Soviet Domination after a brief period of independence during the 1st Armenian Republic. Getting back to independence wasn't easy. Glastnost and Perestroika brought demands for better environmental care...

When I first heard of this, I was dubious. It seemed like a publicity stunt, to be honest. As this article from Forbes points out, foodstuffs that are marketed as tie-ins to movies tend not to be all that memorable- (the author of the article cites Ghostbusters Cereal as his exception to the rule, but I'd counter that with Ecto-Cooler) and he would be right. But here's the thing, whoever decided to do this actually put a little bit of thought into it, because at the end of the day as this review from Slate noted, this stuff? It's not terrible . Its a blended scotch, not a single malt, so budget wise it's a lot more reachable than single malt, hovering around the $25-$30 buck mark at the store I snagged this at on our super fast visit up to The Cities last month. The blend is 60% malt and 40% grain and includes whiskies from Speyside, the Highlands and Islay. But how is the whiskey itself? Let's check it out: Color: Dark amber/honey Body: Deep, rich and...

Look, good parenting means teaching your kids to follow the rules. I get that. It's about learning how to play fair and the art of winning and losing, but at some point along the way, after umpteen million games of CandyLand, I just stopped caring. I mean, it's CandyLand. It teaches kids colors and counting and how games work. If you're 4 years old, I get that it can seem pretty damn cool.  But for an adult? It's awful. This is the Caillou of Board Games with it's obnoxious characters (Gramma Nut, Princess Lolly, Queen Frostine, Plumpy, and whatever the hell the rest are) and obnoxiously bright colors. There are literally no stakes. I mean, who gives a shit about getting to Candy Castle? What the hell is the point of the damn game? So yeah, at a certain point, I stopped giving a shit. I know, I know. That makes me a bad parent, but it was also kind of amusing to watch Little Man figure out how to count cards so he got the orange one right off the bat an...

I don't know why an American television network can't seem to figure out how to do decent Olympic coverage, but they can't. NBC's coverage has been universally panned as riddled with unnecessary tape delays, commercials, fluff and human interest stories instead of sports and an intense focus on all things Team USA related at the expense of the larger story going on at the games themselves. (Though I'm willing to give them some leeway on that last score. This is America, after all, so in competitions like these, it's generally Team USA and 'all them other people from the funny foreign places.') But in general, it sort of sucks. Why did I spend so much of prime time watching swimming, swimming, swimming and nothing but swimming? Why did gymnastics wait until an ungodly late hour of the night to even begin? I don't care about Michael Phelps vs Ryan Lochte! At this point, their whole rivalry is a horse that NBC has beaten to death years ago. From acro...

This Week In Vexillology, we're wrapping up our little trip down NGO Lane with the final NGO of our trio, the flag of the United Nations: Adopted on December 7, 1946 the flag is pretty basic. A white UN Emblem, surrounded by two olive branches on a blue background. But if you dig a little deeper, you actually find out that there's a little bit more to it than that. The olive branches are simple: they're a symbol for peace. The world map? All the people and countries of the world. But, if you dig into the Wiki-Page, you find that there are some interesting design choices and elements here. For a start, the color blue was meant to be the opposite of red, which people associate with war. While the projection is basically a projection of the world as seen from the North Pole, the original design- way back in 1945- chopped off bits of Argentina at the Southern Hemisphere, since Argentina was not planned to be an original member of the United Nations. They changed that, and ...