Casa Jonsson

Nils & Araceli’s home on the web, est. 2003

It is not: your father’s Oldsmobile

The last Olds, an ’04 Alero, rolled off the assembly line today. Explore the history of America’s oldest automotive brand. 

1937 Oldsmobile Eight Convertible Coupe

The sincerest form of flatulence

I saw a trailer this week for Richard Gere’s upcoming feature, a soporific remake of the Japanese sleeper Shall We Dance? My first question was, What’s Stanley Tucci doing in this movie? My second question was, Do we get a Celine Dion ballad with the closing credits?
Gere has vandalized perfectly good foreign films before by […]

Choosing to lose

My brother-in-law, Tom, recently sent me a New Yorker review of a book entitled The Paradox of Choice. (Ironically, I didn’t run across this review on my own because, as Greg said during a conversation we had over dinner this week, I prefer The Atlantic to The New Yorker because it comes out less frequently—there’s […]

Jonsson family vacation

Johnson Family Vacation is making a splash at the box office this weekend. Art—if the term applies to films starring Cedric the Entertainer—does not imitate life in this case; the Jonsson family will not be making any trips by road or air this summer.
AAA can’t help the roadside emergency that is the Johnson Family Vacation. […]

Marsalis’s Magic

Bob Edwards is stepping down as host of NPR’s “Morning Edition,” a post he’s held for 24 years. I’ll miss his no-frills style and dry wit.
A few days ago he interviewed one of my musical heroes about his latest record, The Magic Hour.
Those final minutes of the day, when parents everywhere are trying to get […]

Bill Gates publicly admits “Whidbey” is vaporware

Watching the video (Windows Media Player required) of Bill Gates’s keynote at VSLive! San Francisco, I was astonished to hear him tell conference attendees that the highly anticipated next version of Microsoft Visual Studio is an empty promise.

“(Hmm … maybe I shouldn’t have said that—Ballmer might try to arrange my death in a squash court […]