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Back in the late 1980s, INXS bestrode the rock world like a colossus. Their most successful album, Kick, came out in 1987 and included such minor classics as “Never Tear Us Apart” and “Need You Tonight”. But I had already been a fan for years by that time, having gone through high school listening to…
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One of the first books I ever checked out by myself from the library was Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man. I was a tween-aged sci-fi nerd at the time (as opposed to a middle-aged sci-fi nerd now), and this book started my life-long love affair with Bradbury’s fiction. More magical realism than actual sci-fi, his…
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Years ago, my son Connor and I went on a hiking trip with my dad. At some point along the trail, we stopped to rest, and he told us about something from his past that he’d never talked about before. Namely, that in high school, he once had a part-time job delivering ice. Not those…
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Ever since the first publicly available AI SaaS offerings (that’s Software-as-a-Service for all you non-geeks) like ChatGTP hit the market, the media ecosystem has been in love with the subject of AI as a major disruptive force. Disruptive, that is, in the creative industries hitherto regarded as safe from any kind of automation: illustration, film-making,…
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One summer in the early 1990s, I drove across the country with a beautiful, brilliant girl named Susan. We drove from Manhattan, New York all the way to Tucson, Arizona, and by the time we reached the desert southwest, we had driven each other a bit crazy, to the point that it pretty much marked…
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I have had the dubious privilege of living through three epic financial bubbles: the Reagan stock rally of the 1980s (it crashed in 1987); the DotCom boom of the 1990s (crashed in 2002); and the Sub-Prime bubble of the mid-2000s (crashed in 2008). As if we needed more proof that rich people run our country,…
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In some ways, Missing Persons was the ultimate west coast 80s band. With their heavy synth sound and propulsive drum beats, they were a band that could make you think and make you dance. Plus, I simply loved Dale Bozzio. Not just your average bottle-blonde space-age sex-kitten with a plexiglass bustier, Bozzio could really sing.…
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One of my favorite novels is William Makepeace Thackery’s The Luck of Barry Lyndon. I first got interested in it after seeing Stanley Kubrick’s amazing film adaptation, Barry Lyndon, which I didn’t really understand but which blew me away anyway. Like the movie, the book is a tragedy, the story of an honorable young man who slowly transforms…
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(…and a shameless plug…) For all my old (cheap) friends who love free stuff, GoodReads is holding a Give-Away of my book! Five lucky souls will win a free print copy. Enter now!!!
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If there is a single genre that has been totally overused, tapped-out, wrung-dry, and exhausted, it would have to be the Zombie Apocalypse genre. From books to movies to TV shows, the idea of a world overrun with mindless, brain-eating zombies has been so fertile that it even engendered a classic spoof in Shawn of the Dead (and…
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Ash Clifton, Writer 