(As told to me by Punxsutawney Phil)

It's been happening for over a century, and to be quite honest, it needs to stop right now. It needed to stop last year. It needed to stop after the Bill Murray movie. Shadow or no shadow, you people in Punxsutawney need...

Band front men always take time out from performing to offer up some politically-charged comments, rants or rapid allegations. Let's be clear right off the bat: Semi Precious Weapons lead singer Justin Tranter is not and never will be that. For starters, the Chicago native is more focused on which...

The Hot Stove has been, for lack of a better pun, quite cold this winter. Bloggers and baseball analysts have weighed in on where they think players will end up, but in the end, it just ends up as speculation with little concrete information to back any bold statement up....

The Oscar nominations are always more exciting than the award show itself - what with the anticipation and suspense over who's getting nominated and more notably who's getting shut out.

Focusing on the latter, when the nominations were read aloud this morning there were some notable surprises (Richard Jenkins...

Paula Abdul gets thrown under the bus every time she slurs her words, tosses out irrational "I love you's" or talks out of turn to Simon Cowell on the Fox freight train American Idol, but there's more to the pop sensation then meets the eye. Long before she sat in...

My college campus was filled with geese and their subsequent droppings. One couldn't take a step anywhere without stepping into their business or, at the very least, getting cackled at. Years after graduation, when I was a local news reporter, I'd often cover stories about how municipalities were trying to...

There's no mistaking that American Idol has hit a creative slump over the past few seasons: uninspiring contestants, outdated mentors, tired banter between the host and judges, and more montages than a typical Oscar telecast has entering the fourth-hour mark.

While it slammed through every scripted show since it...

With apologies to VH1, the best thing to happen to the 1980s hasn't been an I Love... produced special or a Bret Michaels or Scott Baio trainwreck series. It's unabashedly Fox's 24, which has breathed new life into stars of the Teddy Ruxpin decade for years now. It all started...

A few weekends ago, I was shopping at a Silver Spring, MD mall with my wife, sister-in-law, and her husband when I was struck by something I'd never seen before: a display stand like no other with everything from handbags to do-rags with Barack Obama's name and/or face emblazoned on...

I remember one-and-a-half hours into 2008's biggest hit and best film The Dark Knight, I had to go to the bathroom. After holding it for another 30 minutes, I pounded my fist on the stadium-seated armrest, and literally ran out of the IMAX screening. I wasn't alone.

Right behind...

In the new Jim Carrey comedy Yes Man, the protagonist shakes up his mundane every day life by taking part in a nutty seminar where a guru (played gloriously by Terrence Stamp, by the way) guides him to saying "yes" all the time. The movie is adapted from a British...

As 2008 draws to a close, I've been doing a lot of reflection of late. I've met presidents, movie stars, and countless others whom I have long admired, but in my 11-year career in journalism, it's still my favorite story to tell. My guess is it will always be.

It's quite ironic that The Wrestler, the buzzworthy film with Mickey Rourke playing an aging wrestler trying to survive life outside the ring, is the best and easily most honest film about the wrestling industry. It was made by a man who barely watched it.

"A lot of guys my...

It's wonderful that George Clooney has grown a mustache for an upcoming role, and is getting press for it. Ditto for Jude Law, Matt Damon, and Brad Pitt, all of whom have sported some sweet 'stache for films they're currently shooting.

The fad isn't limited to A-list movie stars....