Author: Joe Wilcox

Pulp Media by Joe WilcoxDec 17, 20058:57 pm

‘It’s a Wonderful Life’

Before movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” became a holiday mainstay in the United States, largely because the film’s copyright had expired, I first saw it in the middle of the night in June 1979. That’s right summer, not Christmas

I worked at a local factory, a summer job for me, doing third shift. I liked the late hours because of better pay and my tendency to rumble around late night like a spectre. This night I had off, but couldn’t sleep (it wasn’t my bedtime until dawn), so I caught the 2 a.m. Night Owl late show on one of the local TV stations.

Photo by Joe WilcoxDec 12, 20055:49 pm

Sweet Memory

Last week I upgraded the memory on my 1.67GHz PowerBook G4 to 2GB. The computer came with 1GB of memory, which used to be plenty. But with Apple’s Aperture and bunches of programs running, more […]

Society by Joe WilcoxDec 11, 20055:07 pm

CBC Makes History

It is amazing the way the Web can be a great tool for history. The CBC—that’s Canadian Broadcasting Corporation—has a video clip of the John Lennon and Yoko Ono Bed-In, June 8, 1969. The video features […]

Money by Joe WilcoxDec 11, 200510:29 am

Steve Makes a Good Case

In today’s Washington Post, AOL founder Steve Case eloquently argues that Time Warner should split into four companies. He writes that in early 2002: “I proposed to the company’s board that it was time to ‘liberate’ and split the conglomerate into four freestanding companies—Time Warner Cable, Time Warner Entertainment, Time Inc. and AOL—each with its own strategy, stock, balance sheet, management team, and board.”

He contends that the four units would “benefit from the separation” and “that other parts of Time Warner would achieve similar results if set free from the conglomerate. Time Warner has proven to be too big, too complex, too conflicted and too slow-moving—in other words, too much like a classic conglomerate—to seize new opportunities”. He sees big potential from separation, and I can’t disagree.

Money by Joe WilcoxDec 10, 20058:17 pm

Pop!

The Dec. 19, 2005, Business Week piles on more worrisome indications that the housing bubble is deflating. The story focuses on Loudon County, Va., once one of the hottest real estate markets in the country that is now cooling off. As sales slow, sellers are cutting prices. According to Business Week, “From August to October, the median sales price for houses dropped from $506,100 to $480,000”. I expect falling selling prices and rising days on the market to be the norm in most housing markets, if not now within a short time.

I first blogged on the housing bubble in August, a year after I started warning people trouble was coming. Coincidentally, not a week following the post, a good friend asked me about real estate as an investment. She had come into inheritance money and looked to help another friend, who had been successfully speculating on houses in Pennsylvania. I strongly recommended against real estate as an investment. I hope she took the advice.

Critters by Joe WilcoxDec 9, 20058:08 pm

Bun Bun Backyard

I like the way these photos capture some of Bun Bun’s character. The rabbit is one of two that my daughter cares for. Bun Bun (not her real name) stays in my basement office. Little Bun […]

Society by Joe WilcoxDec 8, 200510:50 pm

Remembering Lennon

December 8, 1980, I was volunteer fundraising in New York City. I beat the street until late and beat to bed around midnight. I lived in a group house a few blocks south of Columbia University on the Upper West Side.

I crawled out of bed around 8:30 a.m. on the 9th, a Tuesday. I recall bouncing down the stairs, laughing as I moved along. In those days, I was skinny and bushy blonde and always bubbling optimism. To a fault. I drove people nuts with my energy and enthusiasm.

Apple by Joe WilcoxDec 7, 20057:12 pm

My First Mac

It’s December and time to remember buying my first Mac. As a long-time Windows PC bigot I used to persecute the heck out of my wife and her coworkers. In the early 1990s, we worked at the same magazine, she as a graphic designer and I as an editor. I would tease the graphic designers, with great delight, about their Macs. I recall reading a University of Delaware study that found Mac users to be 40 percent less productive than PC users. Oh, how I taunted the graphic designers with that information!

So it was with strange compulsion I walked out of a CompUSA in early December 1998 carting an iMac (and free 13-inch color TV, which my daughter uses today). The iMac’s alluring design and blue cool color (OK, more like teal) won over my curiosity.

Photo by Joe WilcoxDec 6, 20058:30 pm

Snow Heart

The overnight snow was a bust, just 10 cm as measured on my porch. So, I’ll remember another snow day, in March 1999, when my wife and daughter made a snow heart for me in the […]

Pulp Media by Joe WilcoxDec 4, 20058:26 pm

‘The Edukators’

My 2005 work schedule has been brutal, with too few cultural breaks but DVDs. Catching movies on DVD puts me about six months behind showings, as was typical this weekend when I watched “The Edukators.” I give the the film high recommendation.

I immediately identified with the main characters, but not their captive, even though he and I are close in age. While I make quite a bit more money than the three protagonists, I can’t even relate to the lavish lifestyle of their antagonists. Like the three Edukators, I am highly critical of the truly wealthy, even though I would easily qualify, based on income, as a bourgeois. I live in a humble home (rented) and drive an old Volvo (dented and purchased quite used). My wife shops at thrift stores and we give more than 10 percent of yearly income to church, charity, people in need, or friends.

Critters by Joe WilcoxDec 3, 20051:20 pm

Where Do They Go?

Every few nights I come down into my basement office—oh, about a half our after the lights go out—and kill crickets. Those pesky varmints are a real pain.

Occasionally, though, I’ll catch one about before the lights have gone out and kill it. Last night, like other times when I squashed one, I was too lazy to clean it up. Like other times, the cricket carcass disappeared overnight.