Words and Music

From the Classical Vault Dept .: The Tokyo String Quartet was founded in 1969 by students who had been schooled in Tokyo before continuing t...

From the Culinary Vault Dept .: Monday’s post, revisiting my 2008 DiCarlo’s review , mentioned McGeary’s Irish Pub, my 2010 review of which,...

From the Culinary Vault Dept .: When I reviewed the Albany strip club DiCarlo’s back in 2008, it was still under the management of founder S...

From the Tech Vault Dept. : Here’s a pair of pieces I wrote for the online computer magazine c|net some twenty years ago. I don’t know the e...

From the Literary Vault Dept. : Ernie Pyle turned out the best-written, most-insightful profiles of all manner of Americana as he traveled f...

From the Vault Dept .: What a delight it was, 30 years ago, to see a George Carlin performance. He gave us a sense of hope that the lunacy o...

SEVEN YEARS AGO, Pete Seeger ventured the hope that “the human race has a 50/50 chance to be here a century from now.” He had, at that point...

From the Food Vault Dept .: Here’s an excellent example of an eatery that thrived for over half a century, then closed (in 2013) while it wa...

Guest Blogger Dept. : Les Hendrix wrote for Schenectady’s Daily Gazette for 22 years, retiring in 1997 – not long after filing the doozy of ...

From the Music Vault Dept .: By the time I saw “Sweeney Todd” in its original Broadway run, Cris Groenendaal had taken over the part of Anth...

From the Theatrical Vault Dept. : Unless a play establishes a rollicking Broadway success, even the finest scripts are inclined to slip from...

From the Vault Dept. : I wish I’d bothered to note just who it was I shared a table with at Caffe Lena seven years ago, on the night when I ...

From the Culinary Vault Dept .: Cookbooks are their own kind of ephemera, easing in and out of print as culinary fads come and go. Here’s a ...

From the Theatrical Vault Dept .: O, witless youth! Here’s the young (or at least substantially younger) me carping about populist entertain...

Guest Blogger Dept. : Robert Benchley weighs in with sound advice for the temporary summer bachelor. The Detroit Athletic Club, founded in 1...

From the Vault Dept. : T.E. Breitenbach’s painting “Proverbidioms” took on a life of its own as it was discovered and studied by countless c...

Celebrating Labor Day as it was meant to be celebrated. The Manhattan Chorus sings Maurice Sugar's "Sit Down." Recor...

From the Vault Dept. : Speaking of comedy , and going back a mere decade this time, we find Louis C.K. peaking in his ascent to the top tier...

From the Vault Dept. : New York’s Capital Region endured a comedy threat 33 years ago – at least, that’s when I wrote this piece about it. O...

From the Vault Dept. : It was a delight to review all manner of entertainment event, and the opportunity to see Margaret MacLeod was not to ...