Spring Training

Hey all you regulars checking out my site (Mom, Dad and other McGonagles who stumbled upon this site using Google to find a distant Irish relative from County Donegal while you were simultaneously cross searching for information about Richard Widmark.) It's been months since I've posted to the blog and things are really heating up here at good ole "It's Not The Years, It’s The Mileage." First off I've discovered the most amazing empanada place here in my beloved neighborhood of Sunnyside, Queens. It's called "Mira Cali" and their beef empanadas are so amazing, you may consider consuming them as your sole source of sustenance for the rest of your life (as long as that mint green colored spicy sauce is included with each take-out batch.) This reporter has pondered such a life of devouring nothing but their fried deliciousness, a dollar fifty at a time. That said, the discovery credit of the aforementioned empanadas must go to Shaunna, her boyfriend B and their fantastic website “Shaunna Eats Sunnyside.” It's an informative, charming and well written site that does the gustatory fan's legwork for Sunnyside. Here’s hoping those kids get back on their feet and start devouring the fantastic edibles here in Sunnyside as quickly as possible so people like me can use their knowledge for their own taste bud gain.

Time for a little shameless self-promotion. I started writing for a website called NewYorkology.com a few months ago and I’m enjoying it tremendously. My editor lets me choose and write about the films playing here in the city that are exclusively unique to NYC as opposed to say the mainstream ones playing at the megaplex in Terre Haute, Indiana (sorry latest Adam Sandler vehicle, some other hack blogger will have to cover your amusing cinematic romp that’s rife with fart jokes, Sandler getting a football in the nuts and a touching lesson at the end.) NewYorkology.com is a great site full of stellar information with fantastic contributors that want to get the word out on events happening here in the greatest city on earth. It's advertised as a New York travel site, but it's not hard to see it's just as geared toward the NYC locals. Aesthetically it may be no great shakes (the candid part of this entry), however, my editor Amy tells me the site is going to be visually re-hauled very soon and that will only buttress the truly solid content of the site. Type in “New York Travel Guide” into Google and NewYorkology.com comes up second on their list. That’s like a silver medal in the Olympics if I’m not mistaken. Anyway here are just a couple of the links for the NewYorkology.com pieces I’ve done in the past few months.

http://www.newyorkology.com/archives/2009/02/cinema_file_bro.php

http://www.newyorkology.com/archives/2009/01/needle_park.php

http://www.newyorkology.com/archives/2009/01/cinema_file_god.php

Also coming here the second week of March, I will be reviewing Billy Wilder’s classic Ace In the Hole for the Noir of the Week site. The way Kirk Douglas smokes in that movie makes me want to run out and buy a carton right now (Of course I would never do that Mom and distant cousin McGonagle reading this.)

-T.J.M.