While a psychology major at San Jose State during the mid-1980s, I interacted with a group studying psychopathology with Sheila Bienenfeld, a professor famous for using biographies of noted writers to teach diagnostic methodology. Here assigned selections included Louise DeSalvo’s Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work and […]
2016: the eternal goat fuck. Actually, my current path began in July 2015, the beginning of the last fiscal year, when upper management changed my job classification to one with a limited amount of per-year hours attached to it. Now until July 1, 2016, I hang on to the remaining sixteen like a Bedou clinging […]
How embarrassing to admit that until recently I had not read anything by James Tiptree, Jr. The realization about this gigantic hole in my reading came when Christopher J. Garcia asked me to review Letters to Tiptree edited, which forced me to answer, “I can’t until I’ve actually read Tiptree’s works,” because a simple […]
Since 1978, Gavin de Becker and Associates has been providing worldwide protective security and logistical consultations for celebrities, media figures, politicians, athletes, and other high-profile individuals and organizations at risk for violence. A senior fellow at the UCLA School of Public Affairs, de Becker himself has been twice appointed to the President’s Advisory Board […]
On March 26, 2015, more than five hundred years after his death, Richard III again was laid to rest at Leicester Cathedral. This time, the Archbishop of Canterbury presided, and days before thousands of English had lined the streets with white roses, the symbol of the House of York. Most are familiar with the […]
I originally wrote this article to support the History of Marvel Comics show that the NerdVana Podcast recorded on Saturday, June 8, 2013. What a task: outlining the entire history of the Marvel Universe, from the very beginnings of Timely Comics, to the horror stories of the Atlas Era, to the rise of heroes during […]
In recent years, the field of Comics Studies has exploded. Back in the 1970s, when my older brother occasionally drove me to Bob Sidebottom’s Comic Collector Shop on San Fernando Street in San Jose, the only widely available explorations were Jules Feiffer’s The Great Comic Book Heroes, Steranko’s two volume History of Comics, and Michael […]
