Crosswalks to Nowhere

Leonard Cohen appeared before a sell-out crowd at the Chicago Theatre tonight. We were thrilled to be there.

Similar to the Bob Dylan concerts we saw a few years ago, it was amazing to see a musical legend performing right in front of us. Unlike Dylan, Cohen was engaging, funny (!), and seemed to be having a wonderful time as he played through his catalog. He expressed his appreciation to the audience and his bandmates several times through the show, tipping his hat and bowing after every song. Not once did his actions seem insincere.

I've only been to a few shows where more than a single standing ovation was given, and I counted no fewer than seven during this show, including the minutes-long ovation Cohen received when he first walked on stage.

Cohen welcomed the audience to the show by saying he hadn't been around for about 15 years, when he was 60 years old and "just a kid with a head full of crazy ideas." He also told us how the years have treated him, listing off the (prescription) medications he's experienced along with his delving into various religions. This latter effort was often thwarted because "cheerfulness kept breaking through."

He covered all his hits, including "I'm Your Man," "Bird on a Wire," "Suzanne," and of course "Hallelujah." The band was tight, and the songs were all wonderfully arranged. One of my favorite moments of the night was when "Tower of Song" was given the same cheesy arrangement that appears on the I'm Your Man album, complete with Leonard plinking out notes on a small keyboard.

The sound was amazing: the band was tight and we could hear every note that was played. You can get a taste of what the show sounded like by picking up the new release Live in London which came out last month.

The audience seemed to be mostly in their mid to late 50s, although there were several people there in the early to mid 20s, which speaks to Cohen's appeal.

After the final song of the second set, Cohen and the band came back for a great rendition of "First We Take Manhattan." This was followed by two more encores, and the show ended around 11:30 pm.

"We don't know when our paths will cross again," Cohen said at the end of the evening. We're just glad they crossed tonight.

Last summer, I put up a blog posting about some of my favorite cookies of all time, Sunshine Lemon Coolers.

I recently walked through the cookie aisle of my local Dominicks when I discovered these cookies: Niche Foods Lemon Cookies.

Niche Foods bills itself as a company who is "attempting to fulfill a niche within the food industry where you, the consumer, have a voice in what you want served on grocery shelves." They're specializing in two products right now, Lemon Cookies and Original Garlic Spread Concentrate.

The Lemon Cookies come very close to the original Sunshine cookies-- the only difference is that the Niche cookies have less powdered sugar coating than the originals. Other than that, these are almost identical to the cookies I remember.

The cookies are in limited distribution, so check a grocer near you!

In November of 2007 I wrote about Thom Foulks, the guy I believe to be the true godfather of technology talk radio. I closed the piece by saying that I wished that I had saved some tapes of Thom's show, Computing Success!

My wish has been answered-- a few months ago, Thom's son Dana e-mailed me to say that he enjoyed my previous blog posting and that he had some recordings of his dad's show that he would send me.

So, thanks to the tiny world we live in today, I can bring you an entire two-hour episode of Computing Success! that ran on the Business Radio Network on April 26, 1992. You can click on the links below to play in your browser, or you can right-click (Windows) or control-click (Mac) to save the files.

Part One

Part Two

I tried to clean up the audio, yet it's not perfect-- but no matter, I say. I'm just happy to be able to hear this again.

In addition to enjoying Thom's laid-back style of delivery, you'll also hear his wonderment at the then-new PC sound card technology-- part of the recently-announced MPC standard), and questioning whether the Logitech Fotoman (which you can see halfway down this page) was worth the expense. There are also lots of mentions of things we don't really worry about any more, such as config.sys files and where the "himem" command should go in your autoexec.bat.

There are also mentions of the Apple PowerBook and NeXT computers. Neat stuff.

I hope you enjoy these sound files-- they brought back a lot of memories for me. Thanks, Dana!

As is our May tradition, we rode in this year's Bike The Drive event, and as always, it was a blast.

This year, Lisa, Emma, and I were up before dawn with our bikes on the back of the car, zipping down the expressway towards Grant Park. We arrived just after the start of the ride (5:30 am) and we rode the north 15-mile loop.

This year I rode my Specialized Allez road bike as opposed to the Schwinn hybrid I've used in the past. This was a good idea-- the Allez is significantly lighter and really rides well on the freshly-paved patches of Lake Shore Drive.

After the ride, we had breakfast at the White Palace Grill, always a favorite.

Next up: the Miller Lite Ride for the Arts in Milwaukee.