Now that we’ve endured another wet, nippy, blowy holiday time, including ridiculous blizzards up north, it’s time to consider this:
Megyn Kelly tells her Fox News viewers that Santa was a white man.
Predicting the future is a growth industry. From Madame So-and-So’s palm reading parlor to bloated Washington think tanks to Nostradamus, telling us today what will happen tomorrow is a way to make money even in a down economy.
A lady we love seldom asks for a favor, so when she does, we always says, “Of course.”
If you have a friend who needs to learn a lesson about his or her dangerous lifestyle, how about this: Make your friend believe he’s been in a coma for ten years.
If I’m still writing about bad gift situations by Independence Day, somebody pull the plug. Meanwhile here are more “worst gifts ever” contenders, sent by readers. I give no names in the interest of domestic tranquility.
Recently we asked you to share the worst or oddest gifts of holidays past. Can you top these just in?
Most columnists are tempted to write about Thanksgiving this time of year. It’s an obvious, inexpensive way to mark the season.
If you want or just need to liven up a lagging Thanksgiving, Christmas or other holiday party, try this. Ask everybody: “What’s the worst holiday gift you have ever received?”
The Boeing 717 aircraft began service in 1999 flying AirTran routes from Atlanta to Washington D.C. Now it is widely used, a good plane, but its designers left off a key piece of it.
When you travel, what amenities and features are most important to you in the hotels where you stay?
My grandson asked me a question I’ve had trouble answering: “What do you do all day?”
I’ll bet that in this pre-Halloween season, those “haunted houses” that pop up every October, full of scary things, are not as popular as they once were.
This is going to be the most exciting, thrilling and fulfilling newspaper column in American history. Canadian history too. And maybe Belize.
What if 20 authors traveled to a small town in northern Florida for a book- selling festival and hardly anybody showed up to buy books?
Here’s a quiz about you. An interviewer sprang it on me during a recent interview about our new crime thriller novel, “Deadly News.”
No kidding. Turtle lovers, the conservationists, not graffiti-crazed kids with cans of spray paint, say there is a connection between the future of human life on earth and the future of sea turtles.
I’ve enjoyed learning about people’s first cars in recent Farmer File columns. For example, I had no idea how many people have deep and detailed memories of just about everything connected with the cars in their lives.
Being around a zillion books in one relatively small space is a heady, heartening experience.
I am writing this from my cliché place, a quiet corner where my mind rejects all thoughts that include any words coined, minted, made up, imaginated (I made that one up too,) or otherwise foisted on the English-speaking world since at least the year 2000. Or last Thursday.
On Monday, Aug. 5, any number of TV sports analysts, pundits and punks said it was a day that would live in baseball history. Sob. It may be true.
One of the ways a new book gets known to the public is for book reviewers and others to bestow their blessings or their curses or, even worse, their ennui. By reviewers, I don’t mean just official book reviewers/critics for media outlets, print and electronics.
It’s easy to make fun of TV commercials that sell instant washboard ab systems or little squiggly things under cloth that move around driving your cat insane.
Ask people to talk about their first cars and answers mayvaryfrom,“Gee,I’ mnot sure. I think maybe it was a Chevy, a ‘60-something,” to “A red and white Ford Fairlane 500 with stick shift, 375 horsepower, cam framis with chrome wheels, a lighted glove box housing a Pez dis- penser and a Zippo.”
Writing about book clubs in America in a relatively short column is somewhat like trying to write about the big bang theory.
Humans obviously could survive if there were no purple martins on the planet, but it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun for us.
I love baseball. Any sort of baseball, even the legendary excesses of the Babe, the self-defeating steroidal sub-culture, the feckless follies of the St. Louis Browns and the pathetic quality of some umpires these days.
This column is the result of some major investigative reporting.
Never drink alcohol while setting off backyard fireworks. That’s a pretty good policy for a safe and sane Independence Day.
I promise that no alcoholics or teetotalers were harmed in any way in the writing of this column.
While writing our new novel we consulted English friends about a few words and phrases we had written in the book, a crime thriller titled, “Deadly News.”
One has to wonder at the wisdom of world leaders who chose Northern Ireland as the location for the G8 summit, scheduled for next week at a lakeside golf resort there.
Last Sunday CNN turned 33 years old. That sparked memories of some of the fun and funny things that happened in the early weeks and months of my time at the network some snotty, major network people called “Chicken Noodle News.”
As the Cable News Network turns 33 years old this Sunday, major news media in America are having less than a stellar year.
The next time you attend one of those “Tour of Homes” events, why not expand your horizons?
A reporter friend told me long ago that the definition of an “expert” on current events is a person who reads a front page story, then always turns to page 8-A and reads the rest of the story.
Fiction writing is a world into which I am stepping, hoping not to stub a toe or two.
If you make a phone call to Mary Lou Brooks these days and if she does not answer, she may be out skydiving somewhere not far from here.
My recent column on how to make your dogs live longer, healthier lives is prompting a follow-up on the age-old adage that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
A four-minute musical video with almost two million visitors on YouTube is famous across all political lines, with the far left and the far right watching it, talking about it and, in some cases, insulting each other over it.
If you could wave a magic wand at your dog allowing it to answer one question in English, what would be your question?
I’ve written off and on for decades about having seen the green flash, or not having seen it.
As I began to write a column about collecting antique radios, I realized I had left my eye glasses, um, elsewhere, not in the home office where I sat, blurringly looking at my computer.
The first thing I learned when I decided to write a novel was that there is more stuff written about writing than there is about the Kardashians. And much of it has about as much value.
In this space last week I made some people laugh and some cringe with tales of impolite, impertinent, impossible houseguests at a friend’s beachfront home in Florida.
One of America’s quainteries that has survived societal turbulence, social media and even the Maury Povich show’s TV assault on our senses is the newspaper column Miss Manners.
While trying to shed a few pounds these days, I also am trying to shed some of my crotchety ways when it comes to social media.
I have joined the Twitter Tsunami, but only because I was forced to choose between being a Tweeter/Tweetie and being waterboarded.
One of the byproducts of living in an area with people of all ages, which is roughly ages 7 through heaven, is the pesky predilection to make well-meaning but risky social conversation.
A trend in news stories, on radio, TV and in print, is to include some puzzling details that have absolutely nothing to do with the importance or impact of the report.
As you must know by now, Neal Boortz has left the building, literally, and if his schedule hasn’t changed, he and his wife Donna by now are on the road again, in semi-retirement, tooling around the nation in a mansion on wheels.
Commented
Sorry, there are no recent results for popular commented articles.