The Voices in Frank's Head

One of my friends from Detroit Synergy , Matt Clayson , is a guest blogger for Metro Mode. His latest post makes the argument that if you're not living in the City of Detroit, you're basically just wasting your time. I can't help feeling that he took his sentiment a tiny bit too far. After having been robbed three times in three years, and getting almost no response from the Detroit Police Department, I can certainly understand those who chose to support the city, but chose to live in the suburbs. Armchair boosters and armchair advocates, is what Matt calls them. No matter what, I'm sure that Matt's words will stimulate some interesting conversations around metro Detroit. And that, afterall, is one of the great things about blogs. They get people talking about vital issues that tend to get forgotten by the mainstream media. Oh, and he didn't mention it in his blog post, but Matt is one of those who doesn't just talk about something - he lives it. He was...

Okay - I really shouldn't spend so much time surfing the web. I keep finding so many cool products out there that I want to buy. At least this time, the two things that I found were relatively reasonably priced so I won't have to max out my credit cards buying them. I found these cool stemless wine glasses at SurLaTable.com . I'm usually not a fan of stemless wine glasses so I would probably use them for something other than wine. The cool thing about them though is that they settle the eternal debate as to whether the glass is half-empty or half-full. The glass has a line that delinates the exact middle of the glass. Above the line is the Italian word for optimist. Below the line is the Italian word for pessimist. Those crazy Italians! Always giving me an excuse to keep my glass full. I also got a huge kick out of the Lego ice cube tray that is available at Lego.com . Not only can my glass tell the world whether I'm an optimist or a pessimist, but I can keep my ...

Steve Jobs introduced the new iPhone earlier this week. The thing just looks so darn cool! Cool interface that looks easy to use; Lots of great features, including the ability to add widgets ; 2 megapixel camera; and Either 4 or 8 GB of storage space. The only things that I don't like about it is that a) according to the press release, it won't be available until June (which means, it should be in stores by August) and b) it's only available for Cingular (which means that I'd have to change my networks; probably have to change my phone number as well and pay a cancellation fee since I'm still under contract with Sprint ). I'm also wondering a) just how many contacts one can store in an iPhone and b) if I can import them from Microsoft Outlook. It would be so sweet if the answers to those questions were a) more than 500 and b) yes. (Let's face it, manually programming a bunch of people into a phone is a pain in the butt.) Apple's web site didn't...

It's weird how my memory is slowly coming back after the auto accident . I find myself remembering the strangest things. The other day I was walking around in Greektown . This, of course, is where I was returning from the night of that collission. I walked past the Bouzouki Club and remembered that I had one of their "No Cover Charge" passes. More importantly, I remembered that I had it with me on that fateful evening, but that I decided to go home instead of using it. And that was when it dawned on me. If I had used that pass, I wouldn't have been on the road at the same time as that drunk driver and, in all probablity, wouldn't have been rear-ended like I was. My life today would be almost exactly like it was on December 22. The moral of this story: I should never pass up a chance to see naked women for free.

First off, thank you to everyone who posted or emailed me to express your support after the accident I was in last week. I still have the bruises, some soreness and a persistent ringing in my ears. However, I am getting better. I'm heading out to enjoy the New Year with some friends soon. However, I would be remiss if I didn't take a moment to wish everyone a Happy New Year! Here's to hoping that 2007 brings the world peace, love, prosperity and laughter!

I was at the Old Shillelagh in downtown Detroit recently for a friend's birthday party. I don't actually remember a whole lot about the party except that there were a lot of people there and some great Irish music. I don't even remember leaving the party. The next thing that I do remember is feeling very sore as a man in surgical scrubs told me that I had been in an automobile accident and that I was at Oakwood Hospital . I later learned from my brothers that on my way home from that party, my car was rear-ended by a drunk driver. According to the police accident report, this woman was traveling at a speed in excess of 100 miles per hour when she collided into me. The aftermath of this is: My car is totaled, which leaves me without transportation for the time being; I have a lot of muscle soreness in my neck and shoulders, which the doctors tell me will clear up in a couple of days; I have a persistent ringing in my right ear, which should also clear up on on its own e...

I'm glad that Tara Conner won't lose her title as Miss USA because of her drunken antics in New York last December. It's not that I'm a huge Tara Conner fan or even a fan of the Miss USA pagent in general. I just think that if women were ever penalized for dancing on a table while drunk or kissing another woman, well - my life would get very boring, very quickly.

One of the great things about living in the 21st Century is the simple fact that cool things keep happening that one would never have expected 20 years ago. Sometimes those are very big things (like the International Space Station ) and other times it's very simple things just blow me away, like an on-line music video that is customized according to your location as well as your local time and weather conditions. The Unseen Video is a music video for You Make Me Feel by Mike Milosh that does just that. The web site automatically determines where you are visiting from, retreives current time and weather information about your hometown from the internet and then adjusts the music video from there. Welcome to the 21st Century!

Peter Boyle , the grouchy father on Everybody Loves Raymound and the tap-dancing monster in Young Frankenstein , has passed away after a battle with multiple myeloma and heart disease. He was 71 years old. I loved his character on Everybody Loves Raymound . I don't think there's another actor who could have played it better and very few could have even matched his performance. I was also impressed by the pure depth of his experience as an actor. His filmography on IMDb.com lists 93 different roles that he had played over the course of his career. In fact, even at age 71, he was still working on different projects. At the time of his death, he was in pre-production for a romantic comedy called Chatham and in post-production for drama called Shadows of Atticus . It is truly impressive how he always kept going. Peter Boyle will be deeply missed.

The folks at Wanderlust Designs came up with a really interesting idea: a Cereal Bowl Light . Touch the spoon and your bowl of Fruit Loops lights up like what you see at the left. It seemed really odd at first, but the more I think about it - the more I want one. Oh, and those are real Fruit Loops in that cereal bowl. The whole thing is just kind of cool.

Merriam-Webster selected "truthiness" as the Word of the Year for 2006 , having beat out other entries such as: google (as a verb; not as a company); decider; war; insurgent; terrorism; vendetta; sectarian; quagmire; and corruption. I can't help but feel that the selection of nominees for Word of the Year underlies a certain amount of cynicism within this country. The most positive selection on that list is "google" and that's simply because its connotation is a neutral one. It's kind of scary when you think about it. Anyway, kudos go out to Stephen Colbert for the way that he promoted "truthiness" as the way he used its selection in his show. (Check out the clip on Comedy Central's Mother Load .)

I was surfing on-line and found NASA's press kit for the current space shuttle mission (officially known as STS-116 , which is the 117th mission for the space shuttle program). Included in this 135 page press kit is the to-do list (or as they prefer to call it "mission priorities") for the current flight. I have my own to-do list for the day (pay a few bills, a half dozen or so phone calls to make). Their mission priorities, however, kick butt. It's interesting that I have three college level physics courses under my belt as well as a semester of Air Force ROTC behind me and I only understand about half of what they are doing on this twelve day mission. For the curious amoung us, here is their list. It consists almost entirely of things that are happening on-board the International Space Station. Perform inspection of space shuttle heat shields and downlink sensor data for evaluation on the ground; Document space shuttle tile during rendezvous with station using i...

NASA lauched the Shuttle Discovery into space tonight at 8:47 p.m. from the Kennedy Space Center. The whole launch just looked so darn cool! It was America's first nighttime launch in four years; the lastest step in NASA's rather ambitious schedule to finish the International Space Station. Best of luck, guys!

Go west, young gal (Metro Times Detroit) Sarah Klein , the venerable culture editor of the Metro Times , announced in her column yesterday that she is leaving Detroit for the sunny climate of California - joining the ever increasing tide of Detroit expats. I dealt with Sarah a couple of times on a professional basis, most recently when I was promoting my documentary on the Book-Cadillac Hotel . I have always been impressed by the quality of her work. If you asked me three or four years ago, I wouldn't have even hesitated in joining the mass exodus of young folks out of Michigan. After all of the folks that I've met through the FoBC and Detroit Synergy , however, I would be hard presed to do the same thing today. There's just too much cool stuff going on. Regardless, I wish her the best of everything in the Golden State.

Goofs for Star Wars (1977) I was surfing the web today and came across a list of goofs for Star Wars . I couldn't help but wonder just how many times someone had to watch that movie in order to notice all of those errors.

My latest literary masterpiece is now available in the December issue of HOUR Detroit magazine (page 86, to be precise). It is an article on the historic Book-Cadillac Hotel in downtown Detroit and why the place is so cool. My article appears with a set of amazing photographs by Roy Ritchie . He took some very cool fashion shots that contrasted nicely with the Book-Cadillac in its current, raw and undeveloped state. The issue officially doesn't appear on bookshelves until Friday, December 1. However, a few bookstores around town already have it out. I will be at Shop Detroit 3 this Saturday. I'll be happy to autograph copies of the article for anyone. :-) Oh, and speaking of the Book-Cadillac Hotel, my friend Liza Lagman-Sperl sent me a photograph that she took the other day. This is a billboard along I-75 in Detroit that advertises condominiums in the Book-Cadillac being for sale. This is a very, very cool thing! That sign is the result of a whole of effort by numerou...

Yahoo! Music This is the coolest darn thing I've seen on-line in weeks. It's the guys from Bowling for Soup doing a cover of London Bridge by Fergie . I swear, if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it. Okay - that's not totally true. The guys from BfS are so strange that I'm not sure if there's anything that they wouldn't do. Now, I just have to make up my mind as to which version of that song I like more. LOL

There was a dense fog throughout Detroit when I woke-up yesterday morning. It was the day after Thanks- giving so there really wasn't much work to do. I, therefore, convened a special meeting of the entire board of directors for Prince Igor Productions, Incorporated . We decided to close the office for the day so I could spend the day taking pictures and having fun. (There are days when it really is a blessing to work for yourself!) Anyway, I started with the streets near my house. Photographing them in a foggy condition with different exposures and different setting on my camera. After a little while, I decided to move on to River Rouge Park . That was where I shot this cool close-up of a cannon along with a bunch of photos of the baseball diamonds and trees. You can see all of those photos over on Flickr . Once I got those shots, I decided to head downtown so I could shoot some more photos along the Riverfront. The fog was still fairly thick there, but slowly starting to lif...

It's weird. The other day I was reading through the comics section of the Detroit Free Press and I saw myself. Not literally, mind you. Rather, I saw a comic strip that made me say aloud, "Oh, my God! That's totally me." Yes, I am Jon Arbuckle and Garfield all rolled into one package. (Although, I'm not totally thrilled with Wikipedia calling Jon a "fictional character". He seems all too real to me.) Anyway, if you excuse me - I have to go meet up with Pooky the Teddy Bear . We're going to play "Guess the Burp."

TIME.com: Exclusive: Charges Sought Against Rumsfeld Over Prison Abuse -- Page 1 Oh, this is just priceless. First, Donald Rumsfeld resigns as Secretary of Defense. Then, not to be outdone, the German government announces that they are seeking criminal prosecution of him, and several other officials within the Bush Administration, for their involvement in torturing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison and at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Priceless. Truly, truly priceless.