Left to my own devices

For our latest pic of the week we once again feature British diver Jack Laugher, shown here in recent fine form...

I've been immersed in the world of cinema the past few days. The 16th annual Roger Ebert Film Festival has been taking place in my hometown of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois this week. Ashley & I have been to every festival since 2001. So many great movies have flashed across the screen of the Virginia Theatre during the long days of the festival over the years. Last night saw director Spike Lee host a screening of his 1989 classic Do the Right Thing . It was my first time watching the seminal film about race relations in America, and it definitely provided food for thought.

Having grown up in Champaign-Urbana, IL, I have memories of people and places that are no longer with us: Keith Page, Mr. Roberts (both local weathermen), George Valentine, Nicole Storch (educators), Burnham Hospital (where I was born) and, of course, the movie theaters. There was the Co-ed on campus, which was long ago demolished, the Thunderbird in Urbana, which has been re-purposed as The Canopy Club , a hot spot for live acts, Market Place Cinemas in Champaign (demolished), and Country Fair Cinemas (long-closed). For the most part, these places exist only in memory. One local movie theater that has stood the test of time is The Virginia . Opened some 90 years ago, it began life as a vaudeville hall, and then made the transition to showing films. By the time I came on the scene, the Virginia was in its waning years as a first-run movie house. Multiplexes were becoming the in-thing, and single screen movie palaces were on a major decline. After closing its doors in 1991, the ...

The cutest member of the Magic Mike crew, English actor Alex Pettfyer, turns 24 today. He is our Pic of the Week. Enjoy!

Last night I saw Noah , the new film based upon the Biblical legend of a man, touched by God, who builds an ark, inhabits it with his family and two of every species, and survives a great flood while residing within its walls. The flood is God's punishment upon mankind for it's sinful ways, and wipes out everyone except for Noah and his family. That, at least, is how the film portrays things. Depending on your Biblical interpretation, there may have been a few more human survivors of the flood. Or perhaps not. Regardless of the details (and, really, the details change like shifting sands when it comes to Biblical interpretations and adaptations), Noah is a fairly engrossing movie, if somewhat hampered -- plot-wise -- by its source material and the director/co-writer's version of the legend. Darren Aronofsky, an atheist, has attempted to provide the film with a mash-up of Creationism and Evolution, a situation which muddies the waters of reason even further. Indeed,...

It's been awhile since we've had pic of the week and, well, yet again it's British diver Chris Mears! Hey, he's handsome, straight-but-gay-friendly, and good in his profession. There you go.

I was having dinner with my mom t'other night, and she related a story about how, on a first date, a woman's bare posterior had become frozen to a car, and the guy she was on a date with had to pee on her in order to get her unstuck. This was, apparently, sent to my mom by a friend via e-mail, in which it was described as having been a segment on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno . It all sounded a bit made-up to me and, after checking around , I learned that it was, indeed, untrue. This sort of thing happens all the time. Well-meaning people hear (or read) of a funny incident, and pass it along so that others might have a chuckle. They don't really doubt its veracity, and so there is often no intent to deceive. I've witnessed this scenario play-out on social media sites, most notably on Facebook. They will become memes that people share, and can take the form of either supposedly true stories (that are not, in fact, true), or quotes that are attributed to various ...