Strong Words, the reading series I co-founded in 2005 and left in June, returns to the Free Times Cafe tonight at 7:30 PM with what’s sure to be another great reading. Darren Bifford, Michael Lista, Paul Vermeersch and Natalie Zina Walschots will be featured. Do check it out if you can, guys. It’ll be the […]

The folks at Babylon Telecom have just launched a new website. Driven by WordPress, and clearly in its earliest and most “under construction” stages, it nonetheless looks like it’s the start of a whole new wave of content. For one thing, they’ve recently launched an account of their own on Twitter. For another, they’ve just […]

As you’ve likely heard by now, a Toronto Police sergeant named Ryan Russell died in hospital this morning after being struck by a stolen truck in the line of duty. He leaves behind a wife and a young child. The CBC has the story. Sergeant Russell is the fortieth officer in the history of the […]

“I love the Republican Party,” Arizona Legislative District 20 Chairman Anthony Miller said in an email on Saturday, “but I don’t want to take a bullet for anyone.” Miller was one of four Arizona Republicans to resign in the wake of the weekend’s shootings in Tuscon. It’s important to note that this wasn’t a snap […]

I like Twitter as much as the next guy, but I’ve never thought of the notion that it could somehow replace journalism as anything more than hyperbole. It’s a great way to communicate with people, and there’s certainly a lot of potential value to tweeting on the ground and providing an alternative to official press […]

When it comes to the dialogue over race in America, few people bring as much balance and perspective to the table as Cornel West. So when he was asked on Twitter on Friday what he thought about the new revised version of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I figured his answer would be a good one. […]

According to a recent item over at the A.V. Club, which cites a report in the New York Times, 2010 was the year that Americans watched more television that ever before. And when they say “television,” they mainly mean “CBS.” If there’s a bright spot to this story, it’s surely the fact that every single […]

My friend Rich recently shared this story with a few of us via email. We’d all just seen the rather excellent Rush documentary, Beyond the Lighted Stage, and I guess it seemed like an appropriate epilogue. Thanks, Rich!

I finally watched Starship Troopers a little while back, and I rather liked it. Like many Paul Verhoeven films, I found that half the fun was in trying to guess which actors got the point of the film, and which ones clearly didn’t. Neil Patrick Harris got it, for example. Michael Ironside totally got it, […]

The elevator service at my job is terrible. It’s so terrible, in fact, that I’ve actually been able to bond over it with friends and loved ones who work in the same building. My brother’s girlfriend Jocelyn used to work a few flights up, and back when I was first getting to know her, it […]