Author: jkonrath
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Death of the Concord Mall, Redux
Almost two years ago, I wrote a long eulogy for the mall of my childhood: Death of the Concord Mall. This was after I heard of plans of the de-malling of the forty-something shopping center. Well, plans have changed. Here’s an update. First, since I last wrote about this, more stores obviously closed. The christian book store…
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Take Care of Scabbard Fish
This entry is a bit of a placeholder, in hopes that somebody will find it in a google search and maybe chip in more information. It’s very odd that searching on “Take Care of Scabbard Fish” brings up almost no results. Even more weird that it doesn’t come up on sites like discogs or allmusic.…
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The 8
It’s that time again – the iPhone no longer holds a charge, and is slower than slow compared to the new ones, so it was off to the Apple store on Saturday for the next iteration of the handheld computer gadget. I got the iPhone 6s in December of 2015, and was thinking of doing…
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Book consumption 2/11/18
I haven’t been using goodreads to keep track of my book consumption, and I need to keep track of it, so here goes. TL;DR: The Best of Odd Things Considered by Anita Dalton – Dalton’s long-running blog started as I Read Odd Books, a compendium of book reviews of the unusual. It later developed into…
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The Amazon Store
We’ve had unreasonably nice weather all weekend, sunny and in the seventies, perfect for walking. I went to Walnut Creek yesterday to get in the daily miles, and eat at Veggie Grill, this overly bright and cheery vegan place, which I thought was only in LA, and I used to eat all the time at…
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Paul Auster – 4 3 2 1
Paul Auster’s new book, 4 3 2 1, was a slog. It had a payoff in the last dozen pages, but it took some effort to stay with this for the other 850. I’ve been reading a lot of Auster recently for some reason, and in the last six months have probably read at least…
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Oculus Rift Impressions
I stopped in Best Buy on Saturday, because I’ve been meaning to check out the Oculus Rift, and the demo people are only there a few days a week, and I keep missing them. Usual thoughts on the death of the Best Buy I used to know, although they did seem to be semi-busy. Anyway,…
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Tank, Oculus, food, more food
Pretty good birthday yesterday. After a bit of writing, I headed to the float tank place for a superfloat, which is what I did last year. A normal session there is 70 minutes, and this is like three sessions back-to-back. Last year, I had a float chamber, which is sort of like a big bathtub…
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47
So, today I turn 47. I was trying to think of what numerological or nostalgic significance this number has, and I can’t think of any, really. 47 is such a weird number. It’s slightly dreadful to me, because it’s in the “almost 50” range, and I’m really not ready to go there yet. I still…
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The Awl
So it looks like The Awl is no more. Another blog bites the dust. The Awl started in 2009, originally some folks who left The Gawker and decided to do their own thing from their apartment in Brooklyn or whatever. It was a general culture blog, with emphasis on New York City, and a bit…