Don’t interrupt my TV

While Todd Dorman makes valid points for local television stations keeping the public informed about impending and sometimes life-threatening storms in his Gazette column Tuesday (April 22), I must take issue with what often appears to be overkill.
“Blowhards who make angry complaint calls when TV stations break into programming for tornado warnings need to get [...]

MTV’s “The Paper” Not Reality

There’s no reality like your job, so with more than 30 years of experience in the newspaper business I couldn’t resist tuning into MTV (it used to stand for Music Television) last night to see its latest reality show – “The Paper.”
If newspapers of the future operate like “The Circuit” at Cypress Bay High School [...]

Ban the Bomb – What Next?

The Peace Symbol recently celebrated its 50th birthday and brought with it memories of the late 1950s through the ’60s. Among them are the Russian’s launch of the first satellite, Sputnik, Fidel Castro’s takeover of Cuba, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the invasion of the Beatles, the escalation of the Vietnam War, protesters who [...]

Why Ashton and Demi Visited CR

Word comes from an alert reader that Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore were in Cedar Rapids three weeks ago for the funeral of his grandfather on his mother’s side. (See previous post about them ordering food to go from Hacienda Las Glorias in Cedar Rapids.)
A search of Gazette archives shows that Vincent R. Finnegan of Williamsburg died March 6 following a [...]

Ashton and Demi in CR?

Today may be April 1, April Fools’ Day, but this is no April Fools’ Day joke.
Last Friday night when my wife, Suz, and I stopped to have a margarita (the best in town) at Hacienda Las Glorias on Center Point Road NE in Cedar Rapids, we learned that CR’s own Ashton Kutcher and his wife, [...]

March Madness – Good Luck with your brackets

March Madness arrives on the first day of spring this year.
For the first time in recent memory I’m more excited about spring than I am about college basketball. Don’t get me wrong, I love watching college basketball. But I’m more ready for spring.
Maybe I’ve lost interest this year because Iowa, Iowa State and the University of Northern Iowa [...]

TV – Take it or leave it

Roy O’Sullivan, he of Irish descent and a decent Irishman to boot, can pretty much take TV or leave it.
As the subject of my St. Patrick’s Day Ramblin’ column on Monday, we met Roy at his Hawkeyed Upholstery Shop in North Liberty and learned of his birth in Cork City, Ireland, his welcome immigration to America and how [...]