Ruth Buzzi’s Review is Making the Rounds Originally posted on Amazon.com, Ruth Buzzi’s beautifully personal review of Dear Austin – A Letter To My Son has been picked up by the widely read, and highly respected literary blog, The New Book Review. Ruth’s review includes a recounting of her own departure from home at the …
Category Archives: Review
Fat, Dumb, and Not So Happy
After my annual physical, a little over a year ago, I was told that I needed to lose some weight and lower my blood glucose level. I was informed that I had slightly elevated blood sugar and my doctor warned that, if I ignored it and it continued to rise, it could grow up to …
Masterful Performances Freshen a Familiar Tune
Okay, stop me if you’ve heard this one. A broken down, burned out, booze-pickled, emotionally incapacitated country music legend swerves across the Southwestern U.S. in a prehistoric GMC Suburban (I think) playing one-night-stands in gloomy bars and bowling alleys, while steering his life directly for a cliff, where he is apparently content to fly off …
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A Disturbing, Powerful, Starkly Emotional Surprise!
I am almost at a loss for words to describe the film Precious, except in one and two word gasps. It is the most disturbing and emotional film experience I’ve had in recent memory. But it is, ultimately, inspiring as well. Not in a feel-good Rocky kind of way, but in a more sober, realistic, …
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Does Your Barbeque Suck?
Competition BBQ Secrets: A Review I may have mentioned, once or twice on this blog, that I’m from Texas. At the time I was growing up, and it probably hasn’t changed much, there were a handful of things that the male of the species was just expected to do if he was gonna be a …
Babs Ain’t Lost a Note – Updated
My first recollection of Barbra Streisand is the 1964 release of the Columbia LP, People. That was her fifth album. Her first, the original cast recording of I Can Get It For You Wholesale, was released in 1962. She has been a recording artist for forty-seven years, a performer for fifty, a star for almost …
The Beatles Remastered – Updated
I have excerpted Bob Gendron’s excellent and thorough review of the upcoming EMI/Capitol reissue of the Beatles catalogue from his column at TONEAudio. His article has me very excited to hear all of this old and familiar material again through the ears of 21st century mastering technology. The remastering engineers at Apple Records have not …
Road Song: A Review
I’d never heard of Rob Ickes until hearing a snippet of Road Song on radio a few days ago. (Yes, some people still listen to radio.) Ickes is the long time dobro player for Blue Highway, a contemporary bluegrass group who’s work had also escaped my attention before now. Road Song is Ickes’ fifth solo …
Gather Your Thoughts Beautifully
A new site is getting a lot of national attention for a new twist on a vintage theme; be kind to the planet. In the interest of full disclosure, the co-owner of Plum Journals (or co-plum, as she likes to call herself) is an old personal friend of mine, but that’s not why I’ve decided …
Outliers: A Review
I just finished reading the book Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell. I don’t pretend to be an astute interpreter of social comment or literary works, but I found this book fascinating. What apparently started as an investigation of the super-successful, in search of clues we might all use to improve our chances …