It’s easy to imagine the pitch for Bless This Mess, the new half-hour shitcom on ABC TV whose pilot aired last month. Imagine the hip, hoodie-wearing pitchman or pitchwoman at the head of the Disney boardroom table giving this elevator summary: “It’s like a reverse Beverly Hillbillies or a modern-day Green Acres but with hipster […]
Let me start by saying this reporting is all observational. I didn’t go to San Juan, Puerto Rico, to dig into the island’s recovery efforts and reveal the pain and healing amongst the survivors. I went to get a tan. And to swim and drink rummy drinks and get away from sub-zero, dirty-snow Omaha, at […]
Twenty-five years is a long time to do anything, let alone publish a newspaper. When people ask me what I know about John Heaston — the publisher of this here rag you hold in your hands, a publication that’s celebrating its 25th year — the first thing that comes to mind is his tenaciousness. The […]
I’ll write this only if you promise to keep it from You Know Who. I know, that’s a hard request to fulfill. No doubt, Mr. Trump gets his copy of The Reader hand-delivered every month, placed gently on top the stack of ’50s-era porno mags next to the golden toilet […]
Dec. 1, 2018 — I was mindlessly flipping through my iPhone, half-glancing at photos of strangers that make up most of the people on my Facebook feed before I ran across a story from CNN with this headline: More than 100 sea turtles found dead off Cape Cod. The headline […]
Season 3 of the Serial podcast is under way and it’s (once again) engrossing and addictive while it shines a much-needed light on issues that are frustrating and appalling. This time listeners will be enlightened at Serial‘s deep look inside the Cleveland judicial system that also will leave them disgusted at the racism, […]
I picked up a copy of the Sunday Omaha World-Herald at Baker’s last weekend to see what I’d been missing all these years. We quit getting the daily paper almost a decade ago but kept the Sunday edition coming because, well, just because. Then a few years ago during September […]
Maybe they should rename Lincoln Calling the “On Their Way Up Festival.” The annual festival, which runs Sept. 19 to 23 in the heart of downtown Lincoln, is celebrating its 15th anniversary. To mark the occasion, you’d think they’d try to do something bigger than ever, but this year’s festival […]
Aug. 1, 2018 — Well, no one shot me after last month’s Trump column, so that’s a good thing. This month is a mish-mash of random thoughts that aren’t likely to get me killed. Aren’t these fun times we live in? * * * First a bit of […]
Some days I still wake up and can’t believe Donald Trump was president. I remember feeling the same shock the morning after the election; that the whole thing had been a strange dream, that it couldn’t have happened. The feeling never left for all the years Trump was in office. […]
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