It was my wedding day, and we were gathered in the church for pre-wedding photographs. My bridesmaids seemed a bit a-flutter, so I asked them what they were talking about. “Who is that guy who looks like Walt Disney?” …

Holy tax returns, Batman! The Joker has taken over Warner Bros.! Like most of the geekverse, I was surprised to hear that the upcoming Batgirl movie won’t be released — not in theaters, not on streaming — despite being pretty well finished. From Variety to Forbes (not exactly the standard…

Who would you be, if you could be anyone? Recently, I attended a convention that took place entirely in the virtual reality world of Second Life due to the pandemic. …

There’s a little coffeehouse in Our Town that has been intermittently responsible for much of my writing career. It’s been in business forever, even before we moved here. It’s on Our Town’s little Main Street, across from the historic old theater and a few blocks away from the Route 66…

It’s something to be halfway through a semester studying the works of Toni Morrison when you read of the boneheaded decision of the Wentzville (Mo.) School District to ban The Bluest Eye from classrooms. It never ceases to amaze me that people think young readers need to be sheltered from…

How often are nonconformity and defiance of social norms dismissed as madness by those focused on maintaining the status quo? Last month’s exploration of madness in fiction focused on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which I read many years before. …

That which the gods would destroy, they first make mad… One of my literature classes this semester focuses on the depictions of madness in fiction, with a reading list that includes King Lear, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Wide Sargasso Sea, The Bell Jar and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s…

Elon Musk is a bad Person of the Year… but not for the reasons you think. I’ve written this column before. In fact, I think I’ve written it several times. …

How to survive a horror movie Halloween 2022 edition Once upon a time, my father the film professor wrote an academic research article analyzing the behavior of horror movie victims in the light of Darwinian theory. He titled it, “Don’t Do That, You Twit!” It got published. In an academic journal. As I was the biggest…