Outsmarting your car
Did you know it was possible to disable some of the annoying features of your all-too-modern car? In a recent New York Times piece, I wrote about car owners who had, among other...
Less than the sum of its parts
Rodney Copper-bottom is a robot with vision. Inspired by his idol, Bigweld (voice of Mel Brooks, in his animated feature debut), Rodney (Ewan McGregor) has decided to move to Robot City to pursue...
Creative roots
It's guaranteed that some friend or family member is an amateur photographer and has bored you with portraits of flowers. Equally certain is that close-ups of tulips, roses and/or mums are ubiquitous as...
Spain course
The Salvador Dalì exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is a masterpiece, a tour de force of more than 200 awe-inspiring works by the legendary surrealist. Dalì was born May 11, 1904,...
Banding together for change
During a gig aboard the Moshulu in 1989, Chris Manos and his band set sail for one unforgettable evening. As the five-member group PUBLIC SERVICE! rocked out on the top deck, thick clouds...
Behind the curtain
Neil Simon never played down the emotional significance of Broadway Bound. It is his most honest, unromanticized look at his roots and it is both powerful and evocative. But for all its exuberant...
Watch out, suckers
You have to give the good people at Disney credit for creative thinking. If I were an executive in charge of the family films division, action hero Vin Diesel would not be on...
Cruiser control
Did you know that 2004 was the fourth-warmest year on record, and that 2005 is likely to be the second-warmest? It's enough to discredit all that hot air from the climate skeptics. They're...
Criniti Ristorante Italiano
Think South Philly, think Italian -- namely restaurants. But changes are taking place in the local restaurant scene, even among the genre of Italian restaurants. More refined menus are appearing in the community...
Betting their place
Two South Philly community leaders will have a voice on Mayor John Street's newly formed Gaming Advisory Task Force. The mayor created the 42-member panel to analyze the anticipated effects of gambling in...
