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Let’s face it. New Wave music has a bad rap. It’s associated with bad 1980s movies and “Old Wave” nostalgia night at your local dance club. Having grown up in the era of both punk music and New Wave, I can say with some authority that New Wave music, at its best, was every bit…
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Having once been an art student (well, a creative-writing student; close enough), I know from experience that the quickest way to start an argument among a bunch of art majors is to ask them what the definition of “real” art is. Similarly, the best way to start an argument among a bunch of cinephiles is…
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I am very happy to announce that I am a finalist in the Best First P.I. Novel category for this year’s Shamus Awards! Many, many thanks to the good people of The Private Eye Writers of America for this great honor. Good luck to all the other nominees, especially my friends Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson and Henry…
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American cinema and theater has lost another great character actor this week, Harris Yulin. With his lumpy face and gruff demeanor, Yulin was an everyman—one of those actors that you recognize from countless roles but whose name you never knew. He was one of the most respected stage, film, and TV actors in the country.…
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Okay, let’s get this out of the way: Something Wicked this Way Comes is not a science fiction novel. It’s dark fantasy, and, in my opinion, a precursor to many famous books in that genre from the likes of Stephen King, Anne Rice, Erin Morgenstern, and others. However, Ray Bradbury’s books were always sold in…
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Of the hundreds of kids who graduate from Gainesville High School every year, relatively few (I’m guessing) are aware that they attended the same school as the late, great Tom Petty. (My son Connor definitely was aware because I was constantly reminding him of it, to his annoyance. LOL.) Petty is still Gainesville’s most famous…
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It’s time for another entry in my ongoing series Synchronicity for Bookworms. In this episode, I will describe the incredibly tenuous and yet undeniable connection I found between the great stage and film actor Jeremy Brett and George Eliot’s classic Victorian novel Middlemarch. As you might recall, I recently did a blog post on Arthur…
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Recently I was watching an episode on one of my favorite YouTube channels, Answers with Joe. The episode was about UFOs, which made it was automatically a winner for me. Specifically, it focused on a few UFO videos that even a smart skeptic like Joe finds compelling. I enjoyed the episode so much, in fact,…
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As some dedicated readers of this blog might know, my friend Margaret Luongo and I posted a pair of videos discussing George Eliot’s classic novel Middlemarch to our “Read A Classic Novel…Together!” channel on YouTube. Ever since then, I’ve been meaning to take the time to write a post about it, mainly because it had…
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Forget Van Halen. Forget Hendrix. Forget Clapton. Lindsey Buckingham is the greatest guitarist in the history of rock music. Don’t believe me? Listen to this song, “Trouble,” from his 1981 solo album Law and Order. If it doesn’t transport you to another plane of existence—yes, forgive the cliche; to an actual soundscape—then you need to…
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