I’ve been sick. That’s pretty much it. I spent most of Friday and Saturday crashed on the couch watching old movies in between bouts of unconsciousness. I did get out a little bit despite the circumstances; I supervised an after-hours school field trip with the eldest to see children’s author Graham Salisbury speak at an […]

Ladies and Gentlemen, Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum, placing ideological purity over a well educated American population, speaking to a group of Tea Party supporters in Michigan this weekend: President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob…there are good decent men and women who go out and […]

Slacktivist made mention last week of the interesting dynamic at Jerusalem’s Shrine of the Holy Sepulchre, the supposed location of the crucifiction, entombment, and resurrection of Jesus. The church is managed by an uneasy, tenuous collective of half a dozen competing branches of Christianity, with one other influence continually present to keep the peace between […]

Through the magic of Netflix Watch Instantly, I watched Hackers last night. Despite it being a favorite of a long-time friend, I’d never managed to see it before (though I imagine it had probably been on in the background somewhere at some point or other, because my wife was sure she’d seen it with me). […]

Nicholas Cage, speaking about his craft: Right now, what I’m excited about is trying to create a [pauses] kind of a cultural understanding through my muse that is part of the zeitgeist that isn’t motivated by vanity or magazine covers or awards. It’s more, not countercultural, but counter-critical. …and in regard to his process for […]

Happy Birthday, Andrew.

Because I’m here, and on the computer anyway, I’m doing a random ten, because it’s been four months. I guess I should call it the “quarterly random ten”. Not a bad mix; a couple of nostalgic old favorites, and one new favorite (which is a cover of an old favorite). See if you can guess […]

As I’m an early middle-age white male hipster contrarian type, I mostly ignored Whitney Houston past the initial wave of pop stardom (though “How Will I Know” and all that were pretty popular tunes when I was a ten year old). I saw “The Bodyguard” of course, and spent most of my time cringing at […]

It’s been a while since I touched this particular feature. I don’t know why. Maybe I just needed a break. Or, it could be that I took my big box of discs out of the car a month or so ago, and haven’t gotten around to putting it back. There are, however, still discs in […]

Prolific comics blogger Chris Sims recently posted his thoughts on my current video game obsession, Skyrim, and finds it wanting. He admits that it’s fun to play, but unfocused; he finds the choices presented to the player, choices that should really define the way the sprawling story plays out, have very little impact. For example, […]