Pretty day outside, if you like bleak. Mist, rain, a world of grey. October in the northeast. Bleak. Not much better inside. It’s becoming a chore to watch some of my favorite television programs. The other night, after sitting through about 10 minutes of The Daily Show, I walked out of the room. I deeply…
Sauntering through Digitalville, sipping news and trivia like a hummingbird sipping nectar from a flower, looking for nothing in particular, except maybe an idea for something to write about. Anything in the comic book line? Ah. Here’s a news item (if you can call this kind of stuff “news”) informing us that in the coming…
C’mon. You can trust me, you know you can. Just tell me your secret – whisper it in my ear… Secrecy is a’riding the autumn air. Bradley Manning, who revealed hush-hush information while in the Army, was sentenced to 30 years; Edward Snowden, who leaked details of government surveillance programs to the press, is hiding…
Imagine: the word Shazam is uttered and Boom! – from the far reaches of nether being a lightning bolt, a very peculiar looking lightning bolt, flashes toward Earth. But something goes amiss! A crack in the cosmic egg? A misalignment of creational energies? Instead of altering a red-sweatered youngster into a larger and much, much…
Gawdy laws! What is all the commotion?! Somebody find out about the attack on voting rights? The bloodshed in Egypt? In Syria? The shrinking food stamps program? Oh. An actor was hired to do an acting job. And a lot of moviegoers are unhappy about it. Well… The angst might be a little premature. A…
Here we are again, in a bardo state. (Note: “Bardo,” as all you Tibetan Buddhists know – and among our readers, you are legion – refers to an intermediate state, as between one life and the next. I’ll use it to mean any state between a current important thing and the important thing one is…
A big black hole – The galaxy’s bowl? Captain Power’s goal? Enough poesy. What we’re dissertating on today is not verse, which I’m pretty sure I don’t quite understand, but goals. But first, a brief look at what are widely considered the seven basic plots. I’ll be courteous enough to add, under each one, an…
Well, I see that 2 Guns was the weekend box office champ, followed by Wolverine, though the latter has underperformed according to some estimates though we shouldn’t worry because it will almost certainly make a profit when the final reckoning is in and… I didn’t have to go far to learn these facts, and many,…
I wasn’t wearing a tie last Friday when Mari and I hied ourselves up the road to the monsterplex to watch the movie du jour, The Wolverine. Nothing unusual there; to the best of my recollection, I’ve worn ties exactly twice in the last quarter century. The first such occasion was at my wedding, a…
Did you see me there? Where’s there? Oh, come on…The San Diego Comic-Con! Where else? And, as I type this on Monday evening, are you perhaps just getting home. Are you frazzled? Exhausted? And are you happy? Was the adventure all you’d hoped it might be? Do you have, encased in plastic and two slabs…
You’ve watched the newscasts? Read the papers? You’re aware of what’s been happening in the courts and Congress? It is a time, perhaps, to consider wickedness. Outside, our patch of the Lower Hudson Valley is again suffering brutal heat and if your life has given you certain prompts – if someone much taller than you…
I’m hungry. Gimme a plate. No, a bigger one. Bigger. Bigger! Big as a house, a stadium. Now, lemme eat. Eggs and cheese and pork chops and ice cream and popsicles and pickles and brownies and doughnuts and cake and candy and pies and french fries and hot dogs and hamburgers and cinnamon rolls and…
