Ryan Coogler impressed me mightily with his direction of Black Panther, and since I’m already a horror fan—and writing about vampires has been part of my writing career for a while now—this seemed like a no-brainer. I met my friend Karen and we went to the local Flix Brewhouse (https://flixbrewhouse.com/) for a Tuesday night showing. […]
Read MoreOriginal television programming was one the sole purview of the big three – later big four — networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, and later, Fox. They were the only ones with the budget and the facilities to produce episodic programs for consumer viewing. That strangle hold has all but disappeared now, challenged beginning in the 1980s […]
Read MoreWarning: might contain spoilers. Like many people, I thoroughly enjoyed Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. It was a fantastic journey through mythology and how the ideas humans worshipped grew and changed over centuries and millennia. When the television series of the book was announced, I was thrilled. I looked forward to meeting what the filmmakers and […]
Read MoreWord got out this week about a blog post from “comedian” Bill Maher regarding the death of Stan Lee. He wrote: “The guy who created Spider-Man and the Hulk has died, and America is in mourning. Deep, deep mourning for a man who inspired millions to, I don’t know, watch a movie, I guess. Someone […]
Read MoreDid you ever have a song stuck in your head? It happens to me frequently, though rarely for very long. Today, for example, I had two songs fighting for headspace: The Who’s “Baba O’Reilly”, and “I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart” as sung by Peggy Lee with the Duke Ellington Orchestra. I […]
Read MoreI was looking over the list of things I wanted to experience: films, books, TV series — all of it. It turns out that there’s more I want to see, read, and do than the time that exists to do it in! I can’t keep up with all the films I want to see. We […]
Read MoreWriting villains is easy. Writing GOOD villains is substantially more difficult. As with any character, they need to have a reason to exist, and often a reason for their evil. They have to have motivations that are grounded in reality, motivations that make sense. Even if that sense is twisted, we still have to be […]
Read MoreAs a youth, I collected autographs of baseball players the couple of times a year we were able to attend pro baseball games. I managed a few good ones too: Hall of Famer Paul Molitor, Bob Uecker, better known for his Hall of Fame career as a wisecracking baseball announcer than as a player, Cub […]
Read MoreYeah, I realized I missed posting last week. Truth is, I’ve been obsessed with something lately — to the point where I’ve stopped thinking about much else. Back in June, my “friends” Matt McElroy and Monica Valentinelli were trying to convince me that I should give Pokemon Go! a try. They were having fun with […]
Read MoreI’ve been thinking about zoos a lot lately. What started it all was a whiff of nostalgia: one of my all-time favorite commercials EVER, created by and for the Detroit Zoo circa 1982, showed up on YouTube. It was later modified to be a general-purpose zoo commercial run on national television in the US, frequently […]
Read More