Quick hits: Greg Rucka’s A Gentleman’s Game is a stomach tightening thriller, especially its climax, and never uses clumsy phrases like “stomach tightening.” The book made me care about its heroes and villains and guess (wrongly) at how complex but visceral situations would play out. This bears repeating, it made me eager to see how [...]
A good family movie gets laughs from kids and adults. The movie shouldn’t soar over the heads of young, or bore the… less young. Easier said than done. Jokes that adults find tiresome, might be a kids favorite part of the movie, content adults enjoy could be inappropriate for young eyes, or incomprehensible to young [...]
Last Sunday when the Lions won and the Bears lost, the book was shut on any Super Bowl hopes for the Bears. Scenarios in which the Bears enter the playoffs are now so improbable, that Sam Hurd is more likely to get into the Hall of Fame than the Bears are to get into the [...]
Escapist fantasies take many forms: superhero books, scifi stories, swords and sorcery tales, and romance novels. They don’t all do the same things, but they can scratch the same itch. Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere has something in common with Chuck Palaniuk’s Fight Club they both follow pushovers, bored and worn down by the world they submit [...]
The Bears came into Sunday’s game against the Seattle Seahawks as the 4.5-point favorite. A few weeks ago that would have seemed an insult to Chicago but with injuries to Bears quarterback, Jay Cutler and running back, Matt Forte, as well as one-sided losses to the Chiefs and Broncos, the situation had changed dramatically. As [...]
Non-stop charter flights can now travel between O’Hare and Jose Martí airport in Havana, Cuba. The first of these flights took off November 25th of this year. The charter airline that flew this first trip, C & T Charters, say they plan to continue these flights on a weekly basis. Previously, government regulations would have [...]
Do your homework! I was once a sixth grade math teacher, so I am used to telling people to do things that aren’t fun. I tried to do as little of that as possible when I was a teacher and I try to do the same as the columnist for Vámanos but I want to [...]
The holidays happen at the wrong time of the year. From Thanksgiving, the busiest travel holiday in the U.S, to New Year’s week, there is an excess of travelers. We all try to make it through the airports in a lump, like a big mouse in a small snake, and the airports have trouble digesting [...]
I remember feeling trapped at grandma’s house, 13-year-old Casey, trying to figure out how to play Uno by myself. Columbus Nebraska has never been a playground for the rich and famous, but when I was 6 it was great fun. I remember my pre-puberty self digging through dusty crates of old toys, finding my fathers [...]
Experience cuts both ways. People often say they travel to “try something new” or “break out of a routine.” Novel and different things excite us. Dr. David Eagleman said in an article in Current Opinion in NeuroBiology “perceived durations can be distorted by… an oddball in a sequence,” put simply, doing something different can change [...]
