I freely admit that much about the Matrix series confuses me, so while I’ve seen the films I haven’t become so much a fan as an interested observer. Nonetheless, as with literature like Finnegans Wake or Ezra Pound’s Cantos, I find elements that compel me to try harder, to strive toward answering the question, “What […]
Every Saturday at 6 PM, WTBU 89.3 Boston, the “Beat of Boston University,” airs Your Auntie Grizelda with DJ Amber playing a selection of music from the 1950s to the 1980s. Most student listeners might require an explanation about the show’s title to help them understand its significance. More than a few older faculty members, […]
Between 1996 and 2006, mockumentaries, films spoofing the documentary form, enjoyed their heyday thanks in large part to the creative team behind This Is Spinal Tap (1984) who then moved on years later to produce The Return of Spinal Tap (1994), Waiting for Guffman (1996), Best in Show (2000), A Mighty Wind (2003), and For […]
Verle (Father) Chuck (Son) CHUCK: You first came to came to California in 1954? VERLE: 1954, yeah. CHUCK: And you just had Tom at that point? VERLE: Yeah, well, actually it was 1955 when we came. Because Tom was born in 1954 in September and we came down to California in June of 1955. CHUCK: […]
Novelist Grady Hendrix, most noted for Horrorstör and My Best Friend’s Exorcism, casts a nostalgic eye on his forebearers with Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ‘70s and ‘80s Horror Fiction. This was the generation that spawned Stephen King, Dean Koontz, John Saul, and Clive Barker. Hendrix doesn’t spend much energy on those gentlemen, […]
Over the past two years, my comic-reading habits have shifted to titles featuring female leads. I can’t get enough of Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting’s Velvet, Greg Rucka and Michael Lark’s Lazarus, James Robinson and various artists’ Scarlet Witch, Chelsea Cain and Kate Niemczyk’s Mockingbird, and my favorite female superhero of all time, the Black […]
An ongoing debate over steampunk’s viability has been underway for some time. In 2013, an IBM algorithm, the Social Sentiment Index, predicted that by 2014 steampunk would become a major force within the retail industry, a dominant influence on clothing, jewelry, and accessories. Well, not so much, as time has shown, except for those dedicated […]
During an interview at the most recent Marvel Retailer Summit, David Gabriel, Vice-President of Sales, blamed declining sales of Marvel’s titles on people who were “turning their nose up against” diversity in Marvel’s titles. This inspired a storm of online articles by commentators disagreeing with Gabriel, most of whom cited instead Marvel’s glut of crossover […]
To augment a special issue of the popular fanzine Journey Planet dedicated to Batman, co-editor Christopher Garcia asked fans to name their first memories of that hero. To answer, I shared about how at four-years old I wandered into my two oldest brothers’ shared bathroom to peek at their stag magazines. What confronted me instead was a stack of half-ruined […]
The fourth season of Orphan Black is underway and over the years the show has garnered a solid fan base. As of this writing, 727, 809 individuals like the official Orphan Black page on Facebook, and 132,666 have shown support for the page dedicated to the show’s star, Tatiana Maslany. Message boards, a wiki, and […]
