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I was browsing youtube videos of Ralph McTell and found that there were clips of him singing his classic “Streets of London” during pretty much each decade of his life from the he wrote it — 70’s, 80’s, 90’s — and then a nice interview of him in 2008 talking about the song and what […]
Freddie Aguilar is by no means the only Filipino artist on my short list of Filipino musicians I admire. I’m a big fan of Aegis, a Filipino girl band (sisters Juliet and Mercy Sunot headline it) who, like Freddie, bring forth music that seems to use an international vibe to create a “tunay na pilipino” […]
The just concluded promotional tour that saw Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez travel from Manila, to the US, then Mexico City, has prompted a flurry of articles (most, but not all, by Filipino writers) to the effect that Manny was welcomed with an open embrace by Mexicans, who showed him as much love as […]
The Presidency of Barack Obama
[Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from the Houghton-Nguyen-Acevedo 12th grade American History high school ebook text published in 2111)
The Bush Presidency, with its aggressively militaristic response to the Al Qaeda attacks and anti-intellectual bent, left Americans ready for a change of tone and approach in Washington, and […]
Just as Freddie Aguilar was there singing “Bayan Ko” at the EDSA Revolution for Cory Aquino, and just as John Stewart was there singing songs of hope for Bobby Kennedy — so too was the extraordinary Tunisian singer/songwriter Amel Mathluthi (alternate spelling Amal Mahluthi) at the barricades for Tunisia last January in support of the […]
Out of nowhere, a few minutes ago, I was browsing Youtube for more John Stewart songs (scroll down one post and you’ll see why), when all of a sudden there was a song that had completely flown out of my consciousness — but which had been one the very very original songs that made me […]
Today is the fourth anniversary of the death of John Stewart, the legendary songwriter who inspired me on more levels that I can begin to explain. He left us in 2008 but he’s not gone: his voice, his spirit and his ideas continue. I originally wrote this tribute on what would have been his 72nd […]
There’s only one reason to watch the Dodgers this year — it’s the incredible, soothing, oh-so-human voice of Vin Scully who has been calling Dodger baseball since 1950. That’s not a typo — it was 1950 when Scully as a 23 year went to work for the then Brooklyn Dodgers. Scully is unique on so […]
Fareed Zakaria, during his “my take” section this morning, made the case that there is something fundamentally inadequate about our Presidential system (particulary when burdened by the supermajority requirement and rampant filibustering) when it comes to getting reforms enacted. He starts from the observation that of the 17 countries who have AAA credit ratings — […]
A few years back during a Christmas visit home, I rooted around in the attic and found boxes of pictures going back multiple generations in our family. I took the pictures with me back to California, and they stayed in a box for several more years until tonight, when got out the box, and a […]
It’s probably been at least 20 years since I looked at, or even thought about, the Muppet Movies, and today I stumbled across The Great Muppet Caper on cable and decided to watch for five minutes. I was hooked, laughing more than I do at most comedies, and found myself blown away by the creativity, […]
Love this clip. 25 great famous scenes that were unscripted. You could work your whole lifetime as a film-maker and never get one of these to happen.
The returns are in — Rise of the Planet of the Apes brought in $54m its first weekend and far exceeded expectations which were in the mid 30m range. Word of mouth is clearly helping the pic tremendously — and a lot of that word of mouth is all about Andy Serkis (“Gollum” from LOTL) […]
Francesco Quinn, who played the title character “Vlad” in my first film as a director and who was a good friend and great man, has died tragically and unexpectedly at 48. A health nut who kept himself in great shape, he died of a heart attack while running near his home on Friday […]
I’m a news junkie, political junkie — the works. I feel incomplete if I don’t get a full dose of the news everyday. But I have to admit, the debt ceiling negotiations pretty much did me in — I started tuning out, I just couldn’t take it any more.
So now the debt ceiling fight […]
At a time when watching the news is just painful because of 24/7 coverage of the debt ceiling fiasco, Shree Bose popped up on a CNN report and totally inspired me with the story of how the 11th grader won the Grand Prize at the first ever Google Science fair with a Science Project that […]
There has been something distinctly inspirational about the way Norway — from Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg to teen survivors to parents of those killed–seemed to instantly grasp the real threat from the attack was not to the security of Norway’s citizens — it was a threat to a treasured way of life, an open culture […]
As a lifetime fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs, I have waited DECADES for this movie to finally get made. It has been in active development since at least 1990 — went from Cynergi to Paramount to Disney and at one point had Robert Rodriguez attached to direct–in the end it’s Andrew Stanton and it looks […]
If you missed the USA-Brazil World Cup quarterfinal soccer match in Dresden Germany today, go find someone who DVR’d it and watch an instant, transcendant classic that had everything — heroes, villains, plot twists and reversals, and a final transcendent moment where patience and incredible effort were rewarded with a magical goal (the latest ever […]
As weekends go, this will never go down as one of my best — some personal dramas definitely interfered with my ability to enjoy the U.S. Open. But Rory McIlroy did a lot to cure me from my malaise. Not only was he brilliant as a golfer — but also as a human being. Such […]
Reprinted from MichaelDSellers.com
It’s a rainy Tuesday afternoon in Los Angeles and I am beset by a mountain of problems, deadlines, tasks unfinished, things to worry about — you name it. But all day, ever since I heard the news that my boyhood idol Harmon Killebrew died yesterday at the age of 74 […]
I was looking forward to writing about the Pacquiao-Mosley fight, but this is a hard one to analyze and didn’t produce and revelations in the same way that the Margarito fight did. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it on a first viewing, so I watched it a second time this morning, […]
Thank you to everyone in the Hollywood Steakhouse family who participated in our “Global Reunion” last night. What a blast! Here’s a video of the party-in-progress. At this point the people here at our place were partying via skype video with a group of about 30 HSHers in the Philippines. It’s been 10 years since […]
Celebrity deaths happen – we read about them every day. So why is it that some truly hurt, while others don’t? One that truly hurts me just happened — Seve Ballesteros, the Spanish golfer, has died at 54 from a brain tumor that he had been battling for more than two years. Seve was an […]
Well, another Pacquaio fight is almost upon us — he’ll be taking on Shane Mosely a week from tonight. I’ve been lying low lately but now that the fight is almost here, I’m excited to have a chance to think and write about Manny Pacquiao again. For starters –before getting to Pacquiao-Mosley I want to […]
I’m on record as recognizing the greatness of the original “Opulence, I Has It” commercial for Directv — a sequel, “I Am Epic Win” (?) is out now and I think it’s as funny as the original. Here it is. Note how the Russian gazillionaire’s electrode assisted muscles are bulging while the […]
News just came that my favorite uncle, Arthur Wagner, age 94, has passed. He was more than an uncle to me — a mentor, grandfather, the grand patriarch of our clan who occupied a huge and honored place in my world. Feelings are complicated; he was 94; he lived a long and fruitful and much-loved […]
Last week I wrote about the “Great Facebook Revolution of 2011”. This has been a tough week in Libya, but here is a video of Gigi Ibrahim, a social media participant in Cairo. She is an inspiration.
Years from now, will the wave of change that is rolling through the middle east be remembered as the Facebook Revolution of 2011? Will this be the point where, looking back, it will be seen that social media came of age as the the ultimate and definitive force for social change?
I knew something was up just by the way her voice sounded on the phone — Saturday afternoon call, how ya doin’, Dad? Fine, how about you? Then: “I’ve got news.” I knew immediately what the news was going to be because Kaitlyn and Andrew have been together for four years and seem like true […]
