Category: default || By jt3y

Things I learned on the Internet while looking for other things:

--- McKeesport Candy Co. has a great Web site, and I can't believe I haven't looked at it sooner. With Halloween just two weeks away, it seems like an appropriate topic for discussion.

It turns out McKeesport Candy is now specializing in Internet sales of "retro candy" like Necco wafers, root beer barrels and licorice.

The company is now among the largest online candy retailers in the U.S.; and it's the subject of a profile this month in Fast Company. Last year, it was featured on NBC's "Today" show.

Of course, McKeesport Candy also supplies many convenience stores and supermarkets with brand-name and bulk candy. And if you see any bagged "loose" candy --- gumdrops, licorice laces, chocolate-covered peanuts, etc. --- with the label "Todd's Candies," that's coming from Our Fair City, too.

The company is family-owned and operated, and based right Downtown on Fifth Avenue near McKeesport Hospital since 1927.

I have no connection to McKeesport Candy, by the way, except as a consumer of their products. Including an entire bag of Todd's malted milk balls at the drug store on Saturday morning while waiting for a prescription. (I'm not a proud man.)

It's too bad no one in Our Fair City makes floss and toothpaste. What a one-two combination punch that would be!

--- Vance Holmes, a talented actor and writer from Our Fair City who now lives in Minneapolis, has set up a Web site seeking information that will bring the murderer or murderers of his brother, Tommy Holmes, to justice. Vance's father, the Rev. Sylvester Holmes, is the well-known pastor of Zion Baptist Church on Locust Street.

A 21-year-old city man, Joseph Rhone, is charged in Tommy Holmes' death; Vance Holmes contends that investigators are not telling everything they know about the shooting. Read his Web site and judge for yourself.

--- A Salon writer went telemarketing in Picksberg on behalf of Yawn Kerry, and wrote about his experiences (warning: partisan leftist ranting).

--- The Germans are coming! The Germans are coming! All of the Airborne Express trucks are now wearing garish yellow and red paint jobs as the company gets absorbed by DHL. It turns out that DHL is owned by the German post office (Deutsche Post AG) and it's making a major push to take market share away from UPS and FedEx.

But that's not all. You've seen those T-Mobile ads featuring Catherine Zeta-Jones? (The first few ads could have been selling clods of dirt for all I knew, because I never paid any attention to the phones, if you get my drift.) Well, T-Mobile is owned by the German national telephone company --- Deutsche Telekom AG --- which was also formerly controlled by the German post office.