Good Grief!

I am currently testing a cereal called Optimum Zen, a Nature’s Path product. According to the back of the box, Optimum Zen will “bring back the peaceful sigh of being in tune with yourself, those carefree days when all you have to do is enjoy physical and mental harmony.”
Who knew you could get Zen and […]

It’s time for a new home theatre system, mostly because the ratio of VHS cassettes to new-fangled digital discs at TLA video is not looking good these days. I decided to buy a no-name DVD player because it has all of these features for the low, low price of fifty bucks:

DVD, CD, MP3, WMA, […]

Live from Scopitones.com, here are some Scopitone* videos for your Valentine’s Day viewing pleasure:

The Web of Love - Joi Lansing
Queen of the House - Jody Miller
My Teenage Fallout Queen (a significant song of social protest that you can dance to) - George McKelvey

*What’s a Scopitone? According to ye old Wikipedia:
In the 1960s, French […]

The Gates. Pretty cool. I made the trip to NYC with Scott, who wanted to learn the SEPTA/NJ Transit ropes, and we were both impressed by the magnitude and span of Christo and Jeanne Claude’s latest work.
According to Scott, the pair originally wanted to show The Gates in conjunction with Central Park’s fall […]

The Market Report is a weekly column written by Ken Klein of Klein’s Supermarket in Philadelphia’s Fairmount neighborhood. He writes the column for the Art Museum Area News and kindly allows me to post it here. The report is a fascinating look at the forces that drive the quality and price of our […]

After last Sunday’s brunch, when I was all happy and caffeinated and filled with tofu scramble, Superwoman and Em tricked me into stopping at the University City Gap. “Just a quick visit on the way home,” they said. Of course it didn’t end with the Gap—we also had to visit Ann Taylor. By the way, […]

Once or twice a year, I take the train to New York City and wander around for a day. Make that trains plural, since I’m too cheap to take Amtrak and instead make the perilous Trenton SEPTA/NJ Transit connection (though I’m not so cheap that I’ve tried the scary Chinese busses, which careen down […]

An explanation for non-Philadelphians: these phones are part of the Underground Franklin Museum, the city’s trippy tribute to the real Big Ben. Visitors use the phones to call D.H. Lawrence and Thomas Paine and other famous people who wax poetic about Benjamin Franklin and his various deeds.
Alas, the Franklin Exchange is on the […]

Cabbing it back to Fairmount on Saturday night:
Becky: Hi, I’m going to W— Street.
Cabbie: Ok, that’s between some road and some other road, right?
Becky: Er, yeah. Specifically, between T— Street and C— Ave, behind Eastern State Penitentiary.Cabbie: Great, thanks.
Cabbie: See that car stopped in the middle of the road? […]

Good news! I am going into the publishing business to fill a terrible void in the women’s periodical market. Why do boss-across-the-hall and his ilk get magazines full of gadgets and half-naked babes, while we women get nothing?
Grrl Toys is my answer to Sync. Grrl Toys is not about the gadget–it’s about […]