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I have a confession to make: I dream about shopping malls. Specifically, one shopping mall, the Oaks Mall here in Gainesville. After my parents’ divorce, I saw my mother mostly on the weekends, and one of our routine activities was to go to the mall. We would have lunch, see a movie, and wander around.…
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Ever since I was a kid I’ve had a deep love for classic murder mysteries like The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep. Combine this with my obsession with history and biography—especially Hollywood biography—and you get something like William J. Mann’s Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood, the true story of…
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Okay, I suck at social media. But I’m working on it. Thanks to Mystery Writers of America for posting this to Instagram.
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Once again, it has taken me far too long to write a short tribute to a fine person who has passed away—Val Kilmer, who died of pneumonia on April 1. This time, it was more than just my workload that explains the delay. I had a bit of trouble discovering what I wanted to say…
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Indie rock is famously difficult to define but I know it when I hear it. It’s got something to do with the DIY quality of the music, and the pared down nature of the arrangements. My favorite Indie band of the last twenty years is Company of Thieves. I first heard them on Daryl Hall’s…
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This entry in my on-going Classic Sci-Fi Book Covers series is both old and new. That is, it’s a modern touch-up of the cover from the October 1949 edition of Astounding Science Fiction painted by Hubert Rogers. That issue included a work by A.E. van Vogt, but not the one we are interested in here.…
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In any given decade, one or two musicians discovers exactly the right sound, look, and vibe to capture the spirit of the times. Such “triple-threat” artists are rare. Elvis Presley was one. David Bowie was another. For many in my generation of kids growing up in the early 1980s, there were two such figures. One…
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** SPOILERS BELOW ** The better part of a decade has passed since Jordan Peele’s landmark horror film Get Out was released, marking Peele’s transformation from famed comedy writer and sketch artist to one of the most important filmmakers of our time. Peele has since added two more films to his horror oeuvre—2019’s Us and…
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Back in the early 1980s when I was in high school, Wendy O. Williams and The Plasmatics played the annual Halloween Festival Concert at the U.F. Bandshell. I didn’t go, but some of my friends did, and word quickly spread that Williams and the band had played a great set. Also, apparently, Williams bared her…
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Ever since Donald Trump was first elected in 2016, people have been talking about the “two Americas.” Namely, the working class, poorly educated, white, xenophobic America that voted for Trump and the middle- and upper-class, highly educated, “elitist,” multi-cultural America that voted for Hillary Clinton (and, later, Kamala Harris). This perception of two Americas—and, indeed,…
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Ash Clifton, Writer 