My cousin Brian Hague weighs in on whether "Captain America: The First Avenger" has any substance -- or whether it's little more than an intellectually vapid moving comic book.

Also check out Brian's observations on "Did J.J. Abrams Ruin 'Star Trek'?" and whether Edgewater Inn Has the Best Pizza.

ChicagoScope feedback line: 312-683-5272. ChicagoScope@gmail.com.

Thanks to Paul Swansen for letting me know about ipadio, a nifty and free service that allows you to create audio programs on your iPhone or Android and then publish them to the Web.

You can listen to ChicagoScope's brief mobile podcasts by clicking on the player at right. The ipadio shows also are being sent through my Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr accounts.

I've been impressed with the audio quality, and the interface couldn't be easier. Sometimes, ipadio has even converted speech to text. It hasn't done so for the past couple, so maybe I accidentally changed a setting. I'll have to check into that.

Is ipadio a success? Time will tell, but I'd be willing to pay for it.

I'm having a ball with ipadio. Why don't you give it a try yourself?

ChicagoScope feedback line: 312-683-5272. Send email to ChicagoScope@gmail.com.

ChicagoScope visitors might have noticed that a number of photos, graphics and related images have disappeared from this site. For the past several years, I'd been manually posting images and uploading them into what turned out to be a non-supported directory path. When Liberated Syndication moved to a new publishing system, those links broke.

The good news is I've figured out how to fix things. The bad news is that I'll need to manually replace five years worth of URLs.

In the meantime, please enjoy this actual Chicago Tribune headline from a couple of years ago. Doesn't it make you think of that famous scene from Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita"?

I enjoyed riding Amtrak's Empire Builder so much in 2009 that I did it again last month. This time, I took the train all the way from Chicago to Seattle -- and back. I had a great time and would recommend the trip to anybody.

ChicagoScope feedback line: 312-683-5272. Send e-mail to ChicagoScope@gmail.com.