Dan Hanson's Blog

According to the New York Times, this is the most shoplifted book in the modern era:

The Virgin Suicides: A Novel




Lots of teens sure get into death and goth and the macabre. Cheer up! Wait till you become an adult. Then you can complain (grin)

Here's a blurb from Publishers Weekly

Eugenides's tantalizing, macabre first novel begins with a suicide, the first of the five bizarre deaths of the teenage daughters in the Lisbon family; the rest of the work, set in the author's native Michigan in the early 1970s, is a backward-looking quest as the male narrator and his nosy, horny pals describe how they strove to understand the odd clan of this first chapter, which appeared in the Paris Review , where it won the 1991 Aga Khan Prize for fiction.

Shhhh!

Let them sleep. Santa has a busy night coming up

More Christmas pictures

Sometimes I love my job.

Last Monday I got to witness history as Tsingtao Brewery Co. signed a multi-year agreement with the NBA Cleveland Cavaliers to become the exclusive Chinese beer of Quicken Loans Arena.

The partnership is the first between Tsingtao (pronounced CHING dow), China’s most popular beer company, and an NBA team and arena in the United States.

Of course, as I explain in my postings at greatlakesgeek.com this is much more than a contract to sell beer. It opens Cleveland up to China and China up to NE Ohio.

There are a lot of photos and videos, including Cavs players and the Cavs Dance team and award-winning Tsingtao Dancers so be sure and check it out.

To top it off, free Tsingtao beer was available to everyone!

Sometimes you are lucky and sometimes not so much.

I was frustrated last year when I had an equipment failure during my interview with former HP CEO Carly Fiorina. Of all times for a breakdown!

But I got lucky with a photo of Cleveland Cavs center Anderson Varejao. I was at the Cavs and Monsters Christmas event at the Q last Monday.

I shot a lot of pics and video and posted the best on ClevelandWomen.Com.

Andy Varejao was a popular player to pose with so I shot a lot of pics of him with kids. This one picture of him with a tiny baby is a classic IMHO.

To me, the classic Christmas song is Silent Night. Sure, I love Run Run Rudolph by Chuck Berry (and the Keith Richards version) but Silent Night is the best.

It was great to hear the song sung, in German, at a party held by the German American Business Association on Monday.

In German, Silent Night is Stille Nacht.

Check out the short video and photos/videos of other German Christmas traditions such as cutting the stollen with a sword at ClevelandPeople.Com

Jim Brickman was born in Cleveland and began playing piano at the age of five. He lived here until he was 28 and he says "he loved it."

He attended Shaker Heights High School after which he simultaneously took music classes at Cleveland Institute of Music and business classes at Case Western Reserve.

ClevelandWomen.Com has a contest for free Jim Brickman CDs including and autographed copy of Beautiful World.

Enter to win Jim Brickman CDs

A classic Bobby Vinton song for the holidays

Listen here

What began as the secret Tin Fu group has evolved into an annual lunch event hosted by the Great Lakes Geek. It's strict invite only and an eclectic group of business people, techies, sports figures, media types and others make up the annual mix.

If you want to be invited, we are raffling off 2 invitations to people who purchase the Cleveland Cooks cookbook at the special $10 holiday price (normally $15).

Proceeds from the cookbook go to Computers Assisting People (CAP).

Check out and order the cookbook in the next few days for a chance to be invited to next Thursday's bash.

Labels: geek party cookbook cleveland

I'm not sure if the miracle is getting the dog and cat in those clothes or to have them pose like that.

Either way, Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours

Enjoy these Thanksgiving recipes, facts, history and advice.

Labels: cat, dog, thanksgiving

# posted by Dan Hanson : 11/25/2009 01:10:00 PM

I am used to small websites taking content from one of ours and posting without authorization or credit. What can you do? But it always irritates me when one of the big players does.

MSNBC took direct quotes from our profile of Paige Palmer and posted it on their site without any credit to us.

That’s just wrong.

Do your own work! Or at least ask for permission (we would have given) or give credit.

When the NY Times quoted our Dante Lavelli story, they gave proper credit.
But MSNBC is far from the NY Times.

Television Pioneer, First Lady of Fitness and Fashionista Paige Palmer passed away in her sleep early Saturday (11/21) morning.

She was a true pioneer and legend and a very classy lady. I only met her a few times but she was always very gracious. My sister Debbie met her many more times and wrote her story and they had a close relationship.

Paige was one of a kind and will be missed

Paige Palmer profile

IBM scientists, using an ultra-powerful supercomputer, have just replicated the cerebral cortex of the average house cat. The simulated cat brain uses 147,000 CPUs.

Insert your own cat joke here.

More details on the IBM cat