My ‘beat’ goes on
I was Googling Mike Belkin for links to his website (http://www.mike-belkin.com) when I came across this review of “Cleveland Rock & Roll Memories” from the Akron Beacon Journal in May 2007....
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Reset
Penny Stetz, a tech whiz I met through Macintosh guru Spike, is coming over to help me update technologically. Blogs take feeding; Facebook takes even greater attention. I have both, and I don’t use...
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Linguistic differences
Read this book. It's really cool. I had a difference of style with a major newspaper the other day when the editors there sanitized my review of a book based on the work of Philip K. Dick, the science...
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Rocker bliss
Lylah and I drove to Fredericksburg, an Ohio town so small it seems like nothing more than a string of houses between huge tracts of land, today to pick up a bentwood rocker from Marty Hershberger....
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The pleasures of local color
I spent a few hours on Larchmere Boulevard in Cleveland yesterday, baking in the sun to sell copies of my book, “Cleveland Rock & Roll Memories.” I was part of the Loganberry Books local authors’...
View ArticleMy favorite books of 2009
These are my best 2009 reads. I reviewed all of them except Box 21. Maybe I included that one because I read it for fun. T.J. Stiles, The First Tycoon (Knopf) Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone...
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An apology to my website
I’ve been neglectful of my website. It’s been nearly a month since I updated. I’ve been very busy, but it’s time to catch up. In mid-December, my wife suggested I e-mail as many people as I could think...
View ArticleStimulated
I just started Week Two of mental stimulation marked by seeing six movies at the dazzling Cleveland International Film Festival, a great, too-short concert by John Zorn’s Masada Sextet (here’s my...
View ArticleUp in the air
I’m off to Europe on a hotel trip today, back May 1. Didn’t think I’d go because of the Iceland volcano, but the Continent seems to have quieted down, and the trip is on. I’ll be in Brussels,...
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Putting the past in perspective
I miss my parents lately, particularly now that I’ve read The Orientalist, Tom Reiss’ biography of Lev Nussimbaum, a tortured intellectual and prolific writer who lived while the great empires—the...
View ArticleCleveland rocks again!
Yes, that’s a cliché, but Justin Carr has given it new life with a 17-minute DVD about Cleveland’s role in rock. In it, I talk about the city and its rock tradition, along with Rock Hall head Terry...
View ArticleiPad lust explained
I haven’t read every word in J.D. Biersdorfer’s “iPad: The Missing Manual,” but I’ve read enough to know that a) I want an iPad more than I did before dipping into this; b) I could get around an iPad;...
View ArticleSigns of spring
It’s March 30, and it snowed. Just a few inches, but still. Goes against what I’m doing, which is reviving, getting a full head of steam: writing for Lodging Hospitality again, rejoining the Cleveland...
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The pressures of reinvention
I’m in Dallas working on two Hilton hotel stories, occupying a lovely, 19th-floor suite at the recently refurbished Hilton Anatole. It’s nearly 100 degrees, so I’m staying in, thank you. A month ago, I...
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Goodbye to summer
Last time I posted I was into writing for Lodging Hospitality again, in addition to writing occasionally for Hotelnewsnow. Since then, I’ve been to Dallas and reported my LH stories; vacationed on Cape...
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Closing Out 2011
It feels good to be working on Invisible Soul, my Cleveland soul music book, on the last day of a busy, fast year. I’m writing several chapters to send to a publishing house at a university in the...
View ArticleFormat Frazzle
My new acquaintance Alex Malkin, a recent attendee at the Bratenahl ping pong club I help manage, Friended me on Facebook after he saw my blog. He said he thought it was interesting but when I told him...
View ArticleThe first trimester
My book, Invisible Soul, has been in gestation for nearly a year and a half now, but I still feel as if it’s in the earliest stage. I’ve written (and revised and rewritten) several chapters, at one...
View ArticlePushing out
I’ve been poring over the interviews at the core of Invisible Soul all week, trying to see what’s common, what themes to earmark for the book’s sectioning. It’s coming slowly; naturally, most cover a...
View ArticleSoul DJ
I spent most of this afternoon listening to tracks from Boddie Recording Company, the three-CD box Numero Group released in November. I’m selecting ones to play this Sunday afternoon over WRUW (91.1...
View ArticleSoul rising
Last Friday, I sent off a chapter about Motown and its relationship to Cleveland soul music. It went to an editor at an academic press in the South who said he’d get back to me about it first week in...
View ArticleShore thing
It’s our third day in our house a block from the beach in Stone Harbor, the Jersey Shore town we hanker to visit at least once a year. Yesterday was stormy and grey with patches of dry, a perfect day...
View ArticleForward 2012
A vague post today, like Obama’s 2012 campaign “slogan.” But forward nevertheless, if by fits and starts. I missed posting a blog Tuesday though I’d sworn to post one every Tuesday. Have to remind...
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