Today marks the 55th anniversary of one of the greatest games in White Sox (and perhaps baseball) history-the Sox' legendary 29-6 thrashing of the newly-transplanted (from Philadelphia) Kansas City A's. The outburst tied the modern baseball record for most runs scored by a team in one game. The record had originally been set in 1950 by the Boston Red Sox when they laid a 29-4 bashing on the St. Louis Browns. The record held up through the 20th Century before finally being broken in 2007, when the...

I was looking through a book about defunct franchises-sports teams that no longer exist, or are in a different city. I was looking to see if the South Side's Chicago Cardinals were in there (they weren't) when I stumbled upon a completely useless, albeit interesting fact-the New York Giants are the only baseball team to field at least one Hall-of-Famer every season during the entirety of their existence, 1883-1957. Of course, this is a bit of a falsity-after all, the Giants still exist, so the truer...

The Last Tycoon-This is the final film directed by the legendary Elia Kazan, and it features a screenplay by Harold Pinter. Robert DeNiro stars as a 1930's movie executive named Monroe Stahr, based on Irving Thalberg. Stahr is a young, arrogant hotshot who is making a name for himself as Chief of Production, a job given to him the studio head, who is basically trying to bring Stahr and his daughter together. Stahr's actions include firing a director who can't handle a tempramental female star, ordering...

I find that I love movies about Hollywood-I just love the entire creative process from start to finish and I like to know about the wheeling and dealing just as much as I like to watch and analyze movies. Even movies about actors and actresses hold my attention. I guess it is the frustrated creative genius in me. OK, "genius" is taking it a bit far. I am like Salieri-blessed with the desire to come up with ideas and stories and camera shots and what not, but the actual execution of them...