Eddie Blazonczyk, a polka singer and bandleader who led bouncing, swaying, beer-hoisting dances for generations of Americans as one of that small genre’s biggest fish, died on Monday in Palos Heights, Ill. He was 70. The cause was multiple organ failure, said his son Eddie Jr., who took over the operation of his father’s band, the Versatones, in 1997. In the world of polka — invisible to many Americans but a steady cultural presence in parts of the Midwest and elsewhere — Mr. Blazonczyk was one of the few figures to find a national audience. He won a Grammy Award, kept a vigorous touring schedule and maintained a mini-empire of polka in Chicago, including a record label, a recording studio, a retail store and a ... Continue reading →
Ryan J. Reilly May 24, 2012, 5:00 PM A New Jersey mayor and his 22-year-old son were arrested Thursday for allegedly hacking into an e-mail account and website set up in an effort to recall him. Felix Roque, 55, and his 22-year-old son Joseph Roque allegedly worked together to take down RecallRoque.com by hacking into an associated email account. The feds said that “Victim 1,” a resident and government official in the county, anonymously established and moderated RecallRoque.com in early February. The Democratic mayor and his son, along with an unnamed conspirator allegedly began plotting to harass whoever was behind the website. Joseph Roque was able to successfully hack into an account associated with the website and had GoDaddy.com take the site down. Mayor Roque ... Continue reading →
Off Piste - And he stoned me 24 May 2012 The ebb and flow of time has served only to deepen Ray Dolan's passion for Van Morrison's restless musical journey into the mystic I recently edited a book titled The Neuroscience of Preference. Unsurprisingly, this got me reflecting on my own preferences. It was hard to avoid the conclusion that few have endured the ebb and flow of time. In fact I often experience what I suspect is a common phenomenon: private embarrassment at these temporal disjunctions in taste. A recent example was seeing a model of car that I owned in the late 1970s. At the time it seemed desirable and the essence of modernity. What presented itself to my eyes all these years ... Continue reading →
Doug O’Neill, the trainer of this year’s Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes winner, was suspended for 45 days Thursday for exceeding the allowable limit for total carbon dioxide in one of his horses. He will still be able to saddle his Derby and Preakness winner, I’ll Have Another, in the Belmont Stakes on June 9, when the colt has a chance to become the 12th Triple Crown champion and the first since Affirmed in 1978. O’Neill’s punishment will begin no sooner than July 1, and he has the option to appeal the suspension and the $15,000 fine recommended by a hearing officer and upheld by the California Horse Racing Board. Although it was a California ruling, most racing jurisdictions will honor it. It was the ... Continue reading →
For true believers only THE Heartland Institute, the world’s most prominent think-tank promoting scepticism about man-made climate change, is getting a lot of heat. In recent weeks it has lost an estimated $825,000 in expected donations, a couple of directors and almost its entire branch in Washington, DC. At its annual shindig in Chicago this week, the institute’s president, Joseph Bast, said Heartland had “discovered who our real friends are.” The 100-odd guests who failed to show up for the “7th Climate Conference” were not among them. The institute’s problems began in February when an American water scientist, Peter Gleick, published internal Heartland documents that he had obtained under a false name. They provided details of its accounts—including references to an anonymous donor who gave ... Continue reading →
Advance Publications, owned by the Newhouse family, said Thursday it would scale back the printed edition to three days a week and impose staff cuts as a way to reduce costs as well as shift its emphasis to expanded online coverage. The decision will leave New Orleans as the most prominent American city without a newspaper that is printed every day. But it also reflects the declining lure of the paper as a printed product. In 2005, before Katrina struck, the paper had a daily circulation of 261,000; in March of this year, the circulation was 132,000. The developments were the latest instance of reorganization in a rapidly changing industry, which continues to struggle with declining advertising revenue and the changing preferences of readers for ... Continue reading →
A man in custody in Manhattan has confessed to strangling Etan Patz, the 6-year-old boy who vanished in SoHo on his way to school in 1979, wrapping his body in a bag and putting it in a box, a law enforcement official said on Thursday. The confession comes a month after investigators spent five days excavating a SoHo basement near where Etan disappeared in what turned out to be a fruitless search for his remains. The news of the confession is the latest chapter in a wrenching story that has tormented the city since Etan's disappearance 33 years ago in a far grittier neighborhood than today's SoHo, with its tourist-clogged streets filled with upscale boutiques and trendy restaurants. The man, Pedro Hernandez, told investigators that ... Continue reading →
