Amount: $1,870 To: Shuck-Britson For: Payment for 2013 parking garage repairs ($6,633.26 remains unpaid). Amount: $7,572.32 To: Speck and Associates For: Payment for Walnut Street streetscape design project ($704.77 remains outstanding). Amount: $111,276 To: Elder Corporation For: Payment for pavement resurfacing work on the Southeast Connector — Southeast
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Posted October 09, 2013in Locker Room
So often sports are tied to the definition of “an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.” And why not? It would seem at the very least the physical exertion should be mandatory. But let’s take a look
Read More →More bang American Exceptionalism: Which is more characteristically American, that a Texas company could invent an ordinary rifle that mimics a machine gun or that America’s incomparable legal minds could find a loophole in existing anti-machine-gun laws to permit it to be manufactured and sold? The Slide Fire company’s weapon
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Posted October 09, 2013in Sound Stage
The Mews’ late show was kicked off by Patrick Tape Fleming’s Gloom Balloon. I’ve been critical of Gloom Balloon in the past, for reasons that are too complicated to indulge in here. But there were highlights in this evening’s performance. Topmost among them was the live performance of Gloom Balloon’s
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Posted October 09, 2013in The Sound
“Envy Corps is Radiohead for Coldplay fans.” That’s how the band has referenced itself in T-shirt form. And curiously, whether you take that as a statement of self-congratulation or one of oblivious pretentiousness, it doesn’t make the sentence any less fitting. The Envy Corps has always taken a high-minded approach
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Posted October 09, 2013in Film Review
“Captain Phillips” 4 stars Rated PG-13 134 minutes Action Starring: Tom Hanks, Barkhad Abdi, Barkhad Abdirahman The grueling 2009 kidnapping ordeal suffered by U.S. cargo-ship captain Richard Phillips comes to tangible life in Paul Greengrass’ nonstop nail-biter. Nerves will be rattled. Regardless of the audience’s political opinions of the underlying
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Posted October 09, 2013in Joe's Neighborhood
Holland for seven months. Can you believe it? My wife is volunteering to go over to The Hague for seven months to assist in the prosecution of war criminals. Not your run-of-the-mill bad guys, by the way. One of the defendants she is working on has a murder scene involving
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Posted October 09, 2013in Civic Skinny
The resignation of Republican Kent Sorenson and the arrest of Democrat Tony Bisignano last week are screwing things up for both political parties in central Iowa. First, Sorenson: He resigned under pressure Wednesday after special investigator Mark Weinhardt reported to the Senate Ethics Committee that Sorenson probably broke ethics rules
Read More →Courtesy of Beaverdale Books Review by Julie Goodrich Picador USA 6/4/13 $15 288 pp. An out-of-work web developer stumbles upon an odd bookstore and begins the adventure of a lifetime. What follows is an artful, sparkling tale that twists together the past, present and future. Big ideas about tradition, passion,
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Posted October 09, 2013in Political Mercury
U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin’s days in the great American food-stamp fight go back to the 1970s, his first years in Congress representing Iowa. “I remember going through all these things about, ‘Oh, people are gonna cheat, people are gonna cheat, people are gonna cheat,’” said Harkin, a Democrat. “And at
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