“Me too!”
My mom actually had a dress decorated for my three year-old daughter with her all-inclusive expression painted above a daisy.
Abby came into my life five weeks before my father left it. She was kind enough to arrive ten days early, at the respectable time of mid-afternoon for Patrice, who doesn’t mind a good night’s sleep. Abby’s is a good old soul and today she’s done with high school.
We were worried that … Read More…
“On summer nights, before anyone had air-conditioning,” recollects my friend Tony Shaieb, “you could walk down the street and listen to Ernie Harwell call the entire ball game through the open windows.”
Tony’s memories are quite a bit more romantic than the eerie bluish-glow from my neighborhood’s 60″ plasmas tuned to Fox Sports Detroit
My wife and I were taking the dog for a walk last night and I had a similar flashback to the legendary Tigers broadcaster. A few of my more enthusiastic neighbors who foolishly believe in fertilizer found themselves already mowing the young grass—and what better time to run the Toro than 8:30 pm? (When our kids were toddlers, our considerate neighbor Thad would wait another 90 minutes before he’d begin.)
A breeze blew to me the … Read More…
Ken Pickering, GM’s retired Executive Director, Engineering and Design Services, joins Digging Detroit’s Kevin Walsh and Pete Kalinski to discuss his career in the exciting years of design in the 1950s and beyond.
In February 2014 I received a text from Jason Potash, producer of Storyboard Entertainment’s Dial a Prayer. “How old is your house?” I wrote back “1929.” He was back home in Detroit with writer/director Maggie Kiley and they were scouting locations for their upcoming film to be shot in the area. They stopped by 90 minutes later and while our old house didn’t make the cut, we ended up dropping in on nine other friends in Royal Oak that same night—two of their houses ended up in the film, one by pure chance.
We were stepping out of my friend Micah’s brick home on Hawthorne when I … Read More…
Ladd Biro has loved music and been a performer his entire life–but never wanted to be a starving artist either. For 40 years he has worked in the entirely non-9-to-5 world of the track–and been in bands and created albums.
He contacted Kevin Walsh about creating a music video for “In Days Gone By,” a song that a friend of his wrote for his niece’s wedding–dedicated to the special relationship between a father and daughter.
Ladd joins Kevin as they discuss:
At the end of the 98-hour day that my father died, it surprised me that the hardest part wasn’t hearing “He didn’t survive surgery,” but instead having to tell others–the slow pressing of numbers of the phone, knowing that someone’s life is going to be changed right after, “Hi Kev. What’s up?”
In a strange twist of fate that afternoon, my three sisters, Katie, Colleen and Maureen were all en route to Detroit Metro within an hour of one another. When they had left Chicago and New York, after our call from the hospital, they knew only what we were told—“Dad’s been in a bad accident—he’s in surgery.” By the time they were air-born, my mom and I were told of his passing and taken upstairs to see his body. … Read More…
Following a contest on MyMediaDiary.com, the top three winners guessing the 24 categories from the 2015 Academy Awards, Collin Ward, Melissa Balan and Steve Palizzi, were invited by hosts Kevin Walsh and Kale Davidoff to discuss the following:
In the podcast, Melissa … Read More…
I knew last night seemed familiar as the Academy Awards dripped by. I was once again trapped in the living room of my grandmother’s 1974 Florida mobile home. The room was stuffy; there was nowhere to go, even shuffleboard or laps on the awesome giant tricycles were forbidden to all under 65–and the pond had gators, reportedly.
Last night I watched my 40th consecutive Oscars. It began when I was in fifth grade with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest sweeping the major awards. With the advent of cable TV’s 400 more channels, Twitter-feeds and on-demand viewing a lot has changed. Except for the Oscars.
It still starts at 8:30 pm, still runs past midnight due to the the Death Valley of songs, oddball tributes and eternal commercials somewhere half-past “It’s-gotta-be-over-soon” o’clock. There is still the same generally awkward monologue/opening … Read More…
Predict how tonight’s ceremonies will go! Will it be a laugh-riot or a slow-motion train wreck? At least this year, there’s less certainty of the 1-2 front-runners. But with John Travolta’s famous mispronunciation last year along with Kim Novak’s awkward moment, there’s always more to watch than the happy and pretending-to-be-happy faces of the nominees.
The winner (or winners) will be invited to join us on our post-op podcast this week!
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For some other Oscar-related posts…
Maybe Washington could do with a leach or two…
If you were sick in ancient Greece your body’s chemicals were simply off-kilter–a bad mix of the four humours: blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile…
There are four seasons (for now), four legs on a chair and four balls for a free base–but only two parties running the country. Have you had much luck on a two-legged stool lately?
Wouldn’t it be great if, like mood rings, we could glance at someone’s wardrobe and know who we’re about to ask to babysit your kid? The Scots had it right–you could spot an enemy clansman running up the heath by the pattern of his kilt. Even in the Harry Potter series, my own kids walked around the house with Griffindor’s gold-and-red scarves. Now … Read More…
Alex MacLean has seen Detroit from the sky at various stages since 1980. The large green-spaces below, for example, were once crowded neighborhoods and business districts in a city’s footprint that is large enough to fit Houston, Boston and Manhattan. These grassy fields seen from Google Maps might be mistaken for parks.
Similar green spaces a few miles north of town generally have bunkers and greens fees.
A trained architect, pilot, author and photographer, MacLean lives in Massachusetts but has seen Detroit from above as Ronald Reagan received the Republican presidential nomination, for the 1998 demolition of the landmark Hudson Building and last autumn at a request from the New York Times. Each visit is like dropping into a different chapter of the city’s history–urban farms were previously dangerous abandoned homes and lots.
From the sky, many travelers … Read More…
Sometimes, feeling useless can feel quite nice–particularly on a movie set. Hurry-up-and-wait sums it up, of course. But if you’re just lurking like I tend to do, watching former students do their thing, you can be quite invisible and love every minute of it.
As an extra in Gran Torino, on the other hand, I felt useless even though I did have a job to do. I was told to walk down the street toward the Grosse Pointe hardware store and act like that wasn’t Clint Eastwood in front of me. It took me five times, but I did it. And when the camera stopped rolling, I quickly came to realize that I wasn’t a person, really–I was a prop, a prop that could be replaced much easier than the rake in the window … Read More…
On the two-year anniversary of MyMediaDiary.com, featured writers Kale Davidoff (a MSU Spartan) and Steve Mitzel (a UofM Wolverine) cover the following sports topics with host Kevin Walsh:
Digging Detroit’s Tom Reed and Pete Kalinski discuss the early days of Detroit’s automotive history with historians Bailey Sisoy Isgro and Madelyn Rzadkowolski.
Topics include:
Following the December 7, 2014 publication of his New York Times Sunday Review, “Detroit By Air” which examines the city’s dramatic haves and have-nots, photographer Alex MacLean is interviewed by Kevin Walsh and Thomas J. Reed, Jr. of the new website, DiggingDetroit.com.
Topics include…
More information on Alex can be found at his website: http://alexmaclean.com
Perhaps it’s osmosis, but Ric Viers has noticed that his son seems to have his dad’s ear. In the middle of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, there is a Foley mistake–a sword that didn’t clash to the ground. “And I saw it and I just kind of smiled, but before I could even say anything, my kid leans over and says, ‘Dad, they forgot one of the sound effects.’”
After years of on-the-job training, sound effects expert Viers has learned valuable lessons for not just audio but life, not the least includes keeping ones car keys in the refrigerator.
Owner of the world’s largest collection of sound-effects, The Detroit Chop Shop, Ric Viers was a guest speaker in November … Read More…
Veteran film and TV sound expert Ric Viers, author of The Sound Effects Bible and The Location Sound Bible, joins Kevin Walsh following a workshop Ric gave to Michigan high school students on his 10 Location Sound Commandments, which offer important life-skills as well.
They discuss:
Check out Ric’s page on Amazon as well as his own website, Read More…
I was too calm at work. Something had to be wrong. Then I realized that I had left my phone at home—on the kitchen counter–probably under the bread wrapper. It was the same unnerving peace I felt on a vacation last summer–when we left the dog with friends.
Smudge is a hybrid, a schnorkie-poo, who, in the thankful absence of rats, is obsessed with one thing—the perfect blend of dye, felt and rubber toxins that is the tennis ball. He is so completely focused on bringing you that ball for you to obediently throw it across the yard/basement/bathroom that he’ll forgo food, rest and common sense—crashing into fences, couches and unsuspecting two year-olds. If you don’t follow his escalating sequence of hints (sitting patiently, rolling the ball closer, grumbling, grumbling louder), he’ll finally … Read More…
Kevin Walsh interviews author and educator Dr. Erik Bean on his most recent books, including:
– Rigorous Grading Using Microsoft Word AutoCorrect
– WordPress for Student Writing Projects, Grades 6-12
They discuss…
– Overcoming student and teacher fatigue essay-fatigue with the technology
– Student and teacher reactions to new tricks for the old dog of MS Word
– Advantages of blogging for students (and overcoming stage fright)
– Trolling (and how to address them)
– Getting published–five times!
Take a minute and flip through your phone’s pictures taken this Thanksgiving weekend–now zoom-in to something in the background. Do you notice anything interesting–or something that <em>might </em>be interesting in a few decades?
The new Stephen Hawking bio-pic, The Theory of Everything, can drive you a little crazy if you are one of those people who needs to straighten a picture frame in a friend’s house. Hawking’s glasses are always crooked and always needing cleaning.
The color-correction folks in film know what they’re doing when they choose their palettes. It’s hard not to get nostalgic with a shot like above–and if you add in string instruments and piano you’re … Read More…
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