Having spent another iteration of this national holiday watching political figures and institutions that are diametrically opposed to the tenets espoused by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. opportunistically and hypocritically celebrate his legacy, I’m appreciative of those who approach the … Continue reading The Revolution of Values
I make a point of writing something every day, but after today’s catastrophic events in the U.S. Capitol, I am too exhausted and livid and heartbroken to put words together properly, especially about some movie or comic or other diversion. … Continue reading Tomorrow is a highway broad and fair
I post in this space every day (with the occasional self-gifted break), but I feel like today isn’t the right day for my words. The words of some other people are far more important. As the political party most complicit … Continue reading Ceding the Floor
I haven’t been watching the vital Congressional testimony taking place today, but I have been following it, largely through the lens of social media and online news sources. Particularly when considering the courage it took for Dr. Christine Blasey Ford … Continue reading Programming Note
True story: When I was a wee child, springing from bed far too early once per week because I was excited to watch Saturday morning cartoons, I soothed the anxiousness that arose when I switched on the set to be … Continue reading Programming Note — TV Week
With the occasional exception, I haven’t used this space to promote an ongoing charitable effort my household has undertaken since the most recent U.S. Presidential election. This month, however, I want to put these words wherever I can. The following … Continue reading STRATEGIC ACTS DONATION — OCTOBER 2017
I struggle over what to post on holidays. Except for a few instances in which I’ve settled into a comfortable, easy pattern — a silly animated gif on Thanksgiving, a Calvin and Hobbes comic on Christmas Eve — I find I come to the most significant individual days on the U.S. calendar with a measure of uncertainty. I have no wistful memories to offer up, no strident calls to value the meaning of the day within me. Usually, I punt, tapping out some bit of simple nonsense in a minimum number of words, confident no one is much likely to … Continue reading On Memorial Day
This all started in the middle of 2009. As the calendar moved into the second half of the last year of what might awkwardly be termed “the aughts,” I decided I was going to revisit an exercise I’d indulged in about a decade earlier, albeit without a public outlet. As I explained at the time, I previously commemorated the end of the nineties by swapping lists of the top fifty films of that span with my colleague from our bygone days offering up movie reviews on the radio. Now with a swanky digital platform at my disposal, I decided I was … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of…
I was just about the ideal age for Late Night with David Letterman. The program was there for me throughout my teenaged years, providing absurdist, anarchic, highly ironic comedy at the exact point that my swarming hormones made me inclined to reject staid sincerity and childish silliness. Letterman operated his show with a thin undercoating of hostility for the very showbiz conventions he was charged with upholding, and yet his jagged view of the proceedings was tempered by a Midwestern decency that was very familiar to me as I watched in my small town Wisconsin home. It was this latter quality that his bookers … Continue reading More fun than humans should be allowed to have
This is a piece I wrote for a friend’s self-published magazine about a year-and-a-half ago. With Room 237 in theaters now, it seems a fine time to share it here. With only a few modifications–including some helpful hyperlinks–here’s my take … Continue reading You’ve Always Been the Caretaker: The Many Lives of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining
Coffee for Two 