I've had an appetite for nostalgia this week. I've been watching back-to-back episodes of the first season of "Mad Men." For anyone not familiar with the AMC series, it's a throwback to the early 1960s that delves into the lives of sharply suited and carefully coiffed employees of a New York City ad agency. ...more

December 17, 2008

I've had an appetite for nostalgia this week. I've been watching back-to-back episodes of the first season of "Mad Men." For anyone not familiar with the AMC series, it's a throwback to the early 1960s, which delves into the lives of sharply suited and carefully coiffed employees of a New York City ad agency. ...more

December 17, 2008

I got an e-mail announcing the reissue of two albums by Volcano Suns, the band formed by Peter Prescott following the breakup of Mission of Burma. ...more

October 10, 2008

Oscar Silva lives at BrandyWine apartments in St. Petersburg just a few hundred feet from the Raytheon defense plant. Tuesday, the Florida Department of Health sent a letter to Silva telling him the indoor air in his apartment has a cancer-causing level of a chemical called 1,2, Dichloroethane, also known as DCA, one of the chemicals showing up in the Raytheon groundwater plume that has been spreading under the neighborhoods since 1999. ...more

September 18, 2008

It didn't take much of an imagination as Lisa Shasteen walked through the dust, hanging wires and paint cans in the old Floridan Hotel to sense the strains of a Tommy Dorsey tune, the clinking of cocktail glasses, the alluring aroma of cigarette smoke wafting across the air. ...more

July 24, 2008

In 1997, I traveled from Ho Chi Minh City to the Central Highlands of Vietnam. The all-night trip was bumpy on a rickety bus filled with cigarette smoke. But I didn't have to worry about snipers and land mines this time. ...more

June 29, 2008

Teach your kids how to kick cigarettes superhero-style with DC Comics' newest Justice League comic, "No Smoke Without Fire." ...more

June 14, 2008

Planning to dodge the risks of secondhand smoke by sitting outside at a wine bar tonight? Surprise: If people are smoking on the patio or sidewalk, the air there is just as bad as it is in the smoking section indoors. ...more

May 23, 2008

DION: SON OF SKIP JAMES (VERVE FORECAST) *** He's best known for doo-wop and streetwise, East Coast rock 'n' roll, but Dion DiMucci was brought up on blues, folk and country like all the early rockers. ...more

January 24, 2008

As we bask in the umpteenth showing of "A Christmas Story," dine on ham and turkey and prepare to hit the malls for the annual after-holiday spending spree, we must pause a moment and remember why television needs writers. ...more

December 25, 2007