Lifestyle Archives - Hal Phillips

Ernie D Built the Big East, One Local College Basketball Broadcast at a Time

Hal Phillips — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 20:46:39 +0000

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (Jan. 5, 2024) — It’s never too late to mark and quantify the impact of Ernie DiGregorio. Not in New England. Not when the subject is college basketball. Yet here’s the immediate news peg, the reason to contemplate Ernie D and his attendant rabbit hole early in 2024: It was 50 years ago […]

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Pocket Full of Mumbles Ruminate on their Tribute Band Origins

Hal Phillips — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 23:01:51 +0000

Heartiest New Year’s greetings from the band to everyone out there in Mumbles Nation. We wanted to share some content here and encourage you to monitor this space, as 2026 is shaping up as a busy year on the gig calendar. We should soon have news about a cool April date at a new, prestige […]

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Cassette Tape Revival? Hipsters Need a Primer on What They’re Getting Into

Hal Phillips — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 20:29:46 +0000

It’s weird to learn via media report that specific, intimate aspects of one’s own cultural history are making “comebacks”. Maybe 15-20 years ago, a certain American demographic started collecting and playing vinyl records again, for example. Out of nowhere this became trendy. Today, folks of all ages are still giddily sourcing records from Discogs and […]

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Oh, Pioneers! GenX Rediscovers the Moderate Joys of Microdosing

Hal Phillips — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 11:56:58 +0000

Observing the proliferation of dope stores here in my former mill town is, by now, old hat. They’re everywhere across the Great State of Maine and their attendant foot traffic has even begun to attract pleasantly parasitic commerce, like the Casa Del Taco truck that took up residence beside one shop, the Cure Cannabis Co., […]

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What Made Grandma Grandma? Graver Fleshes her out, using Family History and Fiction

Hal Phillips — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 20:16:03 +0000

Book Review There is historical fiction. There are the literary cousins of memoir and family history. Then there is the canny, lyric hybrid Elizabeth Graver conjures in Kantika, the 2023 novel that tracks her own family’s 20th-century journey from Constantinople to America, by way of Barcelona and Havana. Don’t worry: Ellis Island and its many […]

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RIP Robbie Robertson, The Man who Understood Branding a Bit Too Well

Hal Phillips — Sun, 13 Aug 2023 16:59:03 +0000

[August 12, 2023] My parents, like so many elder Americans, loved The Band. And so it was no surprise the Aug. 8 passing of lead guitarist and songwriter Robbie Robertson resulted in a widespread outpouring of praise and reflection. Yet very little of The Band’s long-term renown never made obvious sense, including why its reputation […]

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Universal NCAA Bids: Let’s Qualify every D1 Team for March Madness

Hal Phillips — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 15:37:46 +0000

Another bout of March Madness is nearly upon us. Alas, the current NCAA men’s basketball tournament format — 68 teams, with 8 playing off/in to create a field of 64 — begins with the worst sort of capricious, competitive folly. From the moment the play-in gambit was instituted, in 2001, the slope got very slippery […]

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Iceland Travel: Where the Fun is Truly a Matter of Degree

Hal Phillips — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 21:40:11 +0000

While rounding a mountainous spit of land north of Husavik, my Iceland travel companions and I reckoned we’d better stop the car and get a picture. We’re honestly not the selfie-taking types, but 66.201 degrees was as far north as any of us had ever traveled before — or were likely to travel again. So we smiled […]

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Great Moments in Getting Towed: A Brief, Late ’80s Anthology

Hal Phillips — Sun, 06 Jun 2021 13:34:55 +0000

It’s been a long time since I’ve lived in Boston, which is to say it’s been a long time since I’ve experienced the complicated sensations of getting towed. Cars do get towed in Maine, I suppose. But vehicular hazards here are more often centered on large antlered mammals in the roadway, as opposed to somewhat […]

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Golf on Sand: Ascendant Neo-Scrub Movement Meets Curious Headwinds in Asia

Hal Phillips — Tue, 16 Mar 2021 18:11:01 +0000

There are two kinds of golfers in this world: those whose tastes hew to The St. Andrews Ideal, and those whose preferences gravitate toward The Augusta National Ideal. Courses built and maintained according to the St. Andrews paragon we identify generically as “links”. This prototypical golf on sand, natural and treeless, firm and fast, lightly kempt […]

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