Write, Teach, Laugh

Author: Leo Sopicki

Great Things in 2020

2020

As part of planning my life for the new year I usually take several classes and read articles on goal setting. This year was no exception. One of the classes, by Vanessa Van Edwards, threw me a curve. She suggested we look back at 2020 for all the good things. “Good things? You’ve got to…

Four Teachers

As I came of age in Baldwin Park, California, four teachers had an impact on me and my life. First, the lay of the land. When my parents chose Baldwin Park in 1957, it was still SoCal country. From the late 40s till the mid-50s it had been the home of the Country Barn Dance…

Bringing Ron Home

I got a surprise today. It was the last stop on a journey that began on March 18, 2016. I was at the SXSW film festival in Austin, Texas. Things were wrapping up and I was looking forward to spending a couple of days in Houston with my sister-in-law Mary and her kids. Then I got the message from home. My son Ron had fallen. He was vomiting blood. The doctors said he had a stroke.

Concert Review: Route 91 Harvest Country Music Festival 2016 Rocked Las Vegas with Toby Keith, Martina McBride, Brad Paisley, and Luke Bryan

The Route 91 Harvest Country Music Festival brought joy, country music, fun and surprises to the Las Vegas Strip, September 30 to October 2. The three-day event provided excitement each day, taking place at the MGM Resorts Festival Grounds, giving it the feel and experience of a traditional music festival like Stagecoach but enabling you to sleep in a Vegas hotel instead of your camper.

E3: Games, Doritos and Wiz Khalifa take over LA

This year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) was bigger and more virtual than ever. In recent years, the event was confined to the Los Angeles Convention Center and the sidewalks outside. This year it expanded to the street between Staples Center (home of the LA Lakers) and beyond into the popular eating and entertainment district, LA Live. The expansion made elements of the show available to not only attendees, but also casual passersby. And this year, there were dancing Doritos chips.

E3: Games that Don’t Go Boom, but are Fun Anyway and Have Bacon

e3

E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, invaded the Los Angeles Convention Center from June 12-16, and left craziness and delight in its wake. I’ve never been a great fan of the shoot’em up games. Instead, I searched the humongous displays in the Los Angeles Convention Center for build’em ups. I found two: a relative newcomer, Farming Simulator, and the newest iteration of a classic, Sid Meier’s Civilization.

Interview: Ayla Brown at Concerned Vets Rally 2016 – Country Music Is Not Just Country Anymore

Ayla Brown

Country singer Ayla Brown is the whole package – singer, songwriter, and owner of her own music production company, Ambient Entertainment. And that’s not counting her previous careers as a college basketball star at Boston College and a correspondent for ‘The Early Show’ on CBS. She was also an ‘American Idol’ finalist.

PlayOn Makes It Easier to Cut the Cord

PlayOn DVR

“Cord cutting” means getting your news, sports and entertainment direct from the Internet, rather than through a cable company. PlayOn software makes this task less daunting by pre-populating its interface with almost all the popular online programming sources. On top of this, it gives you a software based digital video recorder (DVR), they call a Streaming Video Recorder (SVR).

NAB Show 2016: Batman versus HDR – You ain’t seen nothin’ yet

HDR ATMOS

Eighty-nine years ago, Al Jolson said to the audience watching his film ‘The Jazz Singer,’ the first film with synchronized dialog, “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet.” After viewing the demo of High Dynamic Range (HDR) video and Dolby ATMOS sound at the Future of Cinema Conference in Las Vegas, I can confidently say, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”