OUT OF MY HEAD

OUT OF MY HEAD: When Your Parents Come Home for the HolidaysJoe KillianThe Carolinian11/29/05
This Thanksgiving was the first I’ve spent out of the dorms since I got to college – and I had no idea how nice it would feel.
The holidays on campus are a strange mixture of stress and relief. The campus empties as [...]

Why aren’t you listening to…The Metasciences?

Go check out The Metasciences, a band playing strange acoustic pop whose lyrics make me smirk, make me laugh out loud, make me shiver, make me cry.

Warren Ellis pointed a small legion of people in their direction and they’ve apparently seen a lot of traffic in the last two days. But the website’s holding up [...]

"The Paris Hilton of Postmodern politics"

Thought I would exhume this entry about a Time Magazine cover story on Ann Coulter today because I’ve noticed that since Yes! Weekly began syndicating her column in Greensboro I hear a lot more people of every political persuasion bitching about her day-to-day.
A few years ago, when I was writing a lot about politics, [...]

Have some free music. You’re welcome.

Deathboy has been holed up for a few months, creating the follow up to their first album, Music To Crash Cars To.
You can get exclusive, full-length preview tracks from the new album, End of an Error, here.
I recommend “Smile, You Fuckers” and “Cheap Shot.”
If you haven’t heard Deathboy — it’s a bit like the industrial [...]

C.S. Lewis – live from the grave

Via Boing Boing , a letter by C.S. Lewis opposing any sort of live action Narnia film and saying he didn’t want Disney to do it, even as a cartoon:
The Kilns,Headington Quarry, Oxford 18 Dec. 1959
Dear Sieveking (Why do you ‘Dr’ me? Had we not dropped the honorifics?) As things worked out, [...]

Free Wi-Fi in the new New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) — Hurricane-ravaged New Orleans is starting the nation’s first free wireless Internet network owned and run by a major city, a move aimed at boosting the city’s stalled economy.
Mayor Ray Nagin made the announcement at a late morning news conference.
Similar projects elsewhere have been stalled by stiff opposition from telephone and [...]

A bad death

A reporter with whom I work is going to witness an execution.
I think I’d have an easier time watching a man torn to pieces by wild animals than strapped to a table and calmly put to sleep.

Everyone should be reading "A Softer World"

From “A Softer World”:

Giving them a talking to

The latest on WFMY News 2 screwing up royally and borrowing liberally from any and all other forms of local media without attribution…
From News & Record editor John Robinson’s blog:
“I talked with Gina Katzmark, news director of WFMY, today about the similarities between our list of restaurants open for Thanksgiving and the list on their [...]

Narnia, anyone?

Huge, 9 minute “supertrailer” for the first movie in the Chronicles of Narnia series here, at a Swedish television site.
WARNING: Gigantic spoilers in this trailer. If you haven’t read the books or want to be surprised by the film don’t watch this.
You’ve been warned.

The death rattle of the social drink

All right, people.
Guide me.
Where are you drinking in Greensboro, Winston-Salem or High Point and should I do a column on it? Have a small and growing list but I know you people are holding out on me.
The search for an actual bar that wasn’t inside a Chili’s, TGI Friday’s or a Hotel in High [...]

Sips: Cape Cods at Buffalo Wild Wings

On Thanksgiving, there’s no arguing with a drink with cranberry and a sports bar with six big screen TVs on which to watch the game. The Cape Cod may have a reputation as a sweet “vodka and…” concoction beloved by the off-the-clock business women during the Reagan era. But to my mind, it’s time it [...]

Miss Pentitentiary

SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) — The sweltering heat inside the Capital Female Penitentiary got hotter, as contestants in the Miss Penitentiary pageant were working overtime using hair dryers.
Angelica Mazua, a statuesque Angolan facing international drug smuggling charges, was voted Miss Penitentiary 2005 on Thursday after a six-hour contest pitting 40 female inmates from 10 prisons [...]

I CAN’T BELIEVE I: Drank Moonshine

Joe KillianThe Carolinian10/25/05
There’s no way to explain, exactly, what possesses someone to stare down at a glass of moonshine – pure corn liquor made in an illegal still – and decide to put it in his body. But, two years ago, I did just that for the first time.
A friend of mine, a giant native [...]

SIPS: Cape Cod at Buffalo Wild Wings

Joe KillianGo Triad11/24/05
Buffalo Wild Wings Grill & Bar
Address:5836 Samet Drive, High Point
Telephone: 760-9233
Drink Specials: They’ve just opened, but pop by to see what shakes out.
Website: www.buffalowildwings.com
Drink: Cape Cod
Rating: Three swizzle sticks
The Skinny: On Thanksgiving, there’s no arguing with a drink with cranberry and a sports bar with six [...]

Grocery shopping, the night before Thanksgiving

Yes. Yes, they are.

Nice work if you can get it

Am working on three stories simultaneously (outside of my regular column and the guest column I’m doing this week) and am excited about all of them.
This Life section thing is growing on me.
The other night I had a dream that I was waiting tables again. Waking up and going in to work, where I wrote [...]

Remembering Rosa Parks

If you didn’t catch it in the Oct. 28th edition of the News and Record you can now read UNCG professor Frank Woods’ rememberance of Rosa Parks on UNCG’s website, where it’s archived and linked from the front page.
Woods is a great professor, hell of a nice guy and director of the African American [...]

Monday, Monday…can’t trust that day

Thought I had kicked the best part of my sickness by sleeping nearly all day Saturday. Woke up feeling like I’d had a hot shower and a shave – though I still looked like hell. I’d gotten my color back, my throat hurt less and I no longer had a fever.
And then today I woke [...]

Sips: Whiskey Sour at Old Town Draught House

Sips: Whiskey SourJoe KillianGoTriad11/17/05
When I was sick as a kid, my Irish grandfather would insist all I needed was some whiskey to knock it right out of me. The last time he put this to me – about a year ago – I reminded him of the old saying: “God invented whiskey to keep the [...]