Willie Mays: Remembering How He Inspired

 Posted on August 5, 2024  |  5 minutes  |  876 words  |  Billy Koelling

Millions of kids who watched Willie Mays play during the prime of his major league baseball career, or were born after he retired from the game in 1973, pictured themselves making “The Catch.” Or practiced making “The Catch,” just like Mays—who died peacefully on Tuesday afternoon, at 93, the San Francisco Giants announced—did that afternoon back in 1954. Throw a ball up into the air, behind you, in your backyard, turn around and chase it down, making an over the shoulder grab with your mitt, and conjure up the cheers of a packed Polo Grounds. [Read More]

Women demand total honesty from men every time; but do they really need it?

 Posted on August 5, 2024  |  4 minutes  |  756 words  |  Tandra Barner

You hear them say stuff like ‘even if it’s just sex he wants from me, I’d appreciate it if he says it from the onset.’ But the question is this: are women really ready for this level of honesty? Will you truly be cool with a guy meeting you from the very beginning and showing nothing but a desire in your body and the pleasures to be derived from that carnal attraction? [Read More]

 Posted on August 4, 2024  |  5 minutes  |  895 words  |  Tandra Barner

Some nude scenes are meant to be sexy. Others are meant to be funny. David Duchovny took the latter approach in his latest movie, “Reverse the Curse,” which he wrote and directed. [Read More]

'The Bachelor' Review: Season 20 Kicks Off

 Posted on August 4, 2024  |  7 minutes  |  1294 words  |  Billy Koelling

Welcome to The Bachelor’s 20th season, which is best commemorated by gathering round the warming glow of the television set as last season’s biggest loser on The Bachelorette, Ben Higgins, looks for love in all the wrong places, e.g. in Bachelor Chris Soules’s recycling bin. Bachelor Ben is best remembered as an adorable aw shucks of a man who may be the only 27-year-old male on reality television who prefers to stay up and talk all night instead of getting it on with a dance instructor. [Read More]

20 Best Movies New to Streaming in September: The Little Mermaid, Wes Andersons He

 Posted on August 4, 2024  |  11 minutes  |  2194 words  |  Martina Birk

The fall movie season officially begins with the Labor Day holiday weekend, but it’s one of summer’s biggest blockbusters that’s set to dominate streaming this September. That would be Disney’s live-action “The Little Mermaid,” starring Halle Bailey as Ariel. The film earned a mighty $297 million at the domestic box office over the summer, while its worldwide gross tapped out at the $569 million mark. Bailey earned unanimous raves for her luminous star turn as Ariel, which marked her first leading role in a feature film. [Read More]

Books: Early Pasternak | TIME

 Posted on August 4, 2024  |  3 minutes  |  446 words  |  Billy Koelling

THE LAST SUMMER (159 pp.)—Boris Pasternak, translated by George Reavey —Avon (paperbound, 50¢). “A new novel by Nobel Prize Winner Pasternak,” trumpeted the gaily colored cover. Actually, the book was neither new nor a novel. Scarcely longer than a long short story, The Last Summer was first published in Leningrad 25 years ago, some two decades before Doctor Zhivago was written. Last year, with a shorter introduction (soso) and in the same translation (first-rate), the story appeared in the U. [Read More]

Books: Ethel & Ernest | TIME

 Posted on August 4, 2024  |  1 minutes  |  83 words  |  Kelle Repass

Steven Henry Madoff October 25, 1999 12:00 AM EDT A best seller in Britain, this winsome little book is one family’s 20th century, told as a comic strip that fast-forwards through the decades. Briggs’ artful rendering of his parents’ striving captures the English working class, and as the tale progresses, you find yourself slowly sucked into their daily patter, amused by their cooing voices, impressed by their bravery. At the end, you’re hardly prepared for the emotional wallop. [Read More]

Books: The Hermit of Lambertville

 Posted on August 4, 2024  |  22 minutes  |  4670 words  |  Martina Birk

(See Cover) The greying, handsome man, a novelist by trade, sat in a New Jersey inn, talking amiably with two companions and sipping his favorite drink, an ice-cold, bone-dry martini with lemon peel. An animated party of four came in and sat down at the next table. The handsome man shifted uneasily. Beads of sweat pebbled his forehead as he stole a shy half-glance at the strangers. Abruptly, like a swimmer surfacing for a gasp of air, he got up, grabbed his drink and pivoted toward an untenanted dining area in the rear, taking his tablemates in tow with the muttered words: “Let’s eat in the back and get away from these people. [Read More]

Buck O'Neil (Baseball Player and Coach)

 Posted on August 4, 2024  |  1 minutes  |  199 words  |  Patria Henriques

Profession: Baseball Player and Coach Biography: The first African-American coach in the history of Major League Baseball. During the time that American baseball was segregated, O'Neil worked for many years in the Negro American League with the Kansas City Monarchs. Helping to renew interest in his era of baseball, O'Neil had a major hand in establishing the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City. He also gained national fame though Ken Burn's 1994 documentary miniseries " [Read More]

Charles Manson and His 'Family': Scenes From Their Desert Hovels

 Posted on August 4, 2024  |  2 minutes  |  424 words  |  Martina Birk

The Manson Family murders have assumed a near-mythic quality in the 45 years since Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten and others slaughtered seven people — Sharon Tate; Jay Sebring; Wojciech Frykowski; Abigail Folger; Steven Parent; Leno and Rosemary LaBianca — in the summer of 1969. The sickening, vicious nature of the killings terrified and riveted a nation already convulsed by the violence and cultural upheaval of the late Sixites, while the seemingly random nature of the crimes spoke to a near-primal, universal fear: marauders invading one’s home and wreaking mortal havoc. [Read More]