Last year I discovered my review of Amsterdam listed as recommended criticism on Ian McEwan’s official website. I was surprised because it was a fairly negative review of his only book to receive a Booker Prize.  My guess is that they posted it because in an interview the… Read full post »

Back in July, Open Salon readers were some of the first people to see the trailer for the Quirk Classic mash up, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. It’s since gone on to win Amazon’s best book video of 2009.  But to be honest, I had some misgivings… Read full post »

Hey Americans,

How are you doing today?  Apparently not so great, according to what I just read in Salon.  

Wow, Allen Barra, one of my favourite baseball writers, has a very unfavorable impression of my country.  Normally I thrill to Barra's intelligent,  subtle analysis of… Read full post »

From the website of the Canadian Center for Childhood Disability research 

I've been hoping for too long for the New York Times to run an article about my son's under diagnosed learning disability.  So, wow, did my heart ever sink yesterday when I read "Watch How You… Read full post »

Ben, self-portrait

“Oh, Mommy, it smells. It smells.”

Ben rubbed his hand hard into his face, as though the smell would only go away if he wiped his entire nose off.  It was early spring in Montreal. And we were in the park, a thawing freezer… Read full post »

It comes as no surprise anymore that the baptist independent travellers (I've decided not to call them missionaries anymore in deference to actual missionaries)  who were detained at the Dominican border were charged today with kidnapping.

 As I blogged yesterday, there's plenty of evidence… Read full post »

 Cabarete, where the Haitian Orphans could have kitesurfed

I've been to Cabarete a few times as a travel journalist who used to specialize in The Dominican Republic.  It's a fun, thriving little resort town, about half an hour from Puerta Plata International Airport.&… Read full post »

 www.unplggd.com

Dear Apple Tablet,

This week, before your unveiling,  Open Salon asked us to write about what we hoped from you. My wish list is short but, I'd like to think, significant.

I don't need any nifty features for myself, and truth is it's probably going to be a… Read full post »

 Courtesy of New Line Cinema

My son, Ben, and I are reading The Golden Compass.

In Phillip Pullman’s rich fantasy world every human being has a visible daemon, a spirit that takes an animal form, and serves as a lifetime companion. Daemons protect their humans, nudge them i… Read full post »

Hesiod and The Muse by Gustave Moreau 

There was a period right after I graduated from university when I knew I wanted to write, but I wasn’t sure exactly how to start going about that.  To support myself I worked the Saturday shift at an old… Read full post »

As Kate Harding points out in Salon, there's good news and bad news in the recent California District Appeals Court decision to deny Roman Polanski's request to have his 30 year old rape case dismissed.

In a very unusual move the court actually gave Polanski some detailed advice on how to… Read full post »

This week's New Yorker has a compelling feature on the Roman Polanski Case written by best selling legal journalist Jeffrey Toobin.  Almost everything you've ever wanted to know about the history of the case is in there, and Toobin does an admirable job of journalistic neutrality, showing how Po… Read full post »

One September morning, on the way home from the dog park on edge of Montreal’s Little Italy, I stopped by  Boucherie Capitol to buy a chunk of pecorino.  Capitol is one of the city's busiest Italian food specialty shops, so I remember noticing it was unusually empty.

T… Read full post »

I'm Canadian so we had our Thanksgiving back in October.  But Thursday morning my nine year old son let me know that he was decidedly meh about the Tofurkey slices I'd tried to slip into his lunch that week.   As I was staring at these thin,… Read full post »

November 25th  was the 10th International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. 

I'm guessing many people here didn't know that.   At first I thought it was my Canadian browser, but this blog at The Village Voice confirms the lack of attention this day receives in the U.S… Read full post »

I wasn't going answer this Open Call.  For some reason there was just nobody  coming to mind this year.  But then Salon picked Levi Johnston as their 11th sexiest man of 2009.  And as I was cringeing watching Levi and Kathy Griffin flirting away on Larry King,… Read full post »

The  saga  of Canadian folk musician Dave Carroll just never seems to end. 

Three months ago Carroll became famous for the viral  hit song "United Breaks Guitars," a song he composed after United Airlines destroyed his beloved $3500 Taylor guitar on the runway, while he watched f… Read full post »

Yesterday Condé Nast shocked the media world with the announcement it would be closing Gourmet Magazine.   In 2006 I  interviewed editor-in-chief, Ruth Reichl. While we were talking about “Consider The Lobster” the  famous essay she commissioned from Da… Read full post »

Poor Wisconsin.  In the last year its various tourism boards have really taken a beating in the schoolyard of the Internet.

First, there was This Is My Milwaukee,  an alternate reality game which hinged on this  hilarous parody of a tourism board video. 

From Rebus Charivariques, A French Alphabet book published in 1840

Lately I’ve been experiencing a bout of blogger’s block. I went on vacation in early August, to a place where internet access involved fighting other family members for the one working computer.  I deci… Read full post »

A little over a month ago, on my birthday, I opened the New Yorker and found an intimate, in depth review by Nicholson Baker  of  e-readers currently on the market.  He hated his Kindle 2. Mostly he hated the e-ink, the technological “innovation” that is supp… Read full post »

If nothing else, season 5 of So You Think You Can Dance has been a fascinating mystery. All season I've been like Hugh Laurie on House, busting my snark addicted brain trying to decode the inexplicable symptom that just keeps returning week after week, no matter what my team of judges… Read full post »

Tonight's result show marks the 100th episode of So You Think You Can Dance. And it sounds like it’s going to be a great show. They’ll be repeating some of the favorite routines of the entire five seasons. Katie Holmes will dance, If I understood correctly, we’ll the see the incompa… Read full post »

In his book Emotion: The Science of Sentiment, British evolutionary psychologist Dylan Evans argues that one of the things that distinguishes us from animals is that we are the only species that has invented artificial technologies to alter our moods. The first of these was language. &… Read full post »