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Brick Bats Reportage

Steve and Steve, Paul and John

Steve Wozniak of all people showed up in Fayetteville, Ark., for a campus speech Sunday night. He spoke engagingly for a senior status wonk-nerd-geek — he is 62. Is there humility in a guy like that? Yes, after a fashion. “Woz” is certainly an electronics genius following a childhood as a certified math prodigy (literally, […]

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Brick Bats Reportage

Euphonium Rocks!

Unemployment during the Good Depression is no time to be extravagant. I tend to be stingy during good times as well, but blowing a fair amount of money for top seats for The Who on Valentine’s night in Tulsa was crazy-right. The stop was on their Quadrophenia 2012-13 tour, playing through that double album then […]

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Brick Bats Reportage

Concerti on Love in Minor Keys

TULSA — We left Oklahoma six days ago, but the memories are fresh, details helped by notes on the Oct. 14 Neil Young concert. The show, overall lasting 3:40, amazed me. I expected a great time, and it surpassed that. Reviews remain a parasitic genre: You should’ve been there. Careful essays on Young’s current Alchemy […]

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Brick Bats Reportage

A Legacy of Carnegie

Laurence “Larry” Luckinbill should be a more familiar name. Sure, he’s from Fort Smith and I’ve seen a number of his movies, but if you start thinking about all those solid character actors from say childhood on — sigh, it’s a lot of folks. Why it was just the week before last that a stray […]

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Brick Bats Reportage

Crotchety Old Ppl

Copyright 2011 Ben S. Pollock Reflections on the Paul Simon concert at Kansas City’s Midland Theater on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2011 KANSAS CITY, Mo. — When a conversation turns to popular music, sometimes one is lectured on who has the definitive voice of the generation. Most of the time one learns it’s Bob Dylan. A […]

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Brick Bats Reportage

A Columnist’s Scrapbook

The following is my president’s column for the June 2011 edition of the monthly newsletter of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. The NSNC Conference, three days out of 365, is a highlight of my year. Apparently, I mustn’t have a life. Actually, I do have a grand life, and NSNC has been a huge […]