Musicals aren’t my first choice for entertainment, but I’ve enjoyed sing-along performances of My Fair Lady played at the Retrodome, now 3Below, located in San Jose, California.  During my 1989 three-month tour of Europe, I spent a week in Salzburg, Austria, where I stayed at a hostel which offered daily Sound of Music tours and […]

The first episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel contains the greatest television scene I’ve ever witnessed. Until reaching that magic moment, viewers receive introductory material about Miriam “Midge” Maisel, a well-to-do resident of the Upper West Side in New York during the late 1950s.  Her husband’s a professional, her father’s a mathematician at Columbia University, […]

In 2019, Worldcon, the annual World Science Fiction Convention, happened in Dublin, Ireland.  Beyond enjoying the convention, my time on the Emerald Isle represented a homecoming, an unexpected reunion of sorts, because I connected with my familial roots in a stunningly unexpected way. The process began with my mother, who passed in 2004, and who […]

In 2016, Justice League Action premiered on Cartoon Network. Each episode featured two fifteen-minute segments during which members of the Justice League faced off against any number of villains. The series lasted for one season and although the format was geared toward younger viewers, references to Silver Age heroes and concepts kept older fans interested […]

If you ever go back into Wooley Swamp, son, you better not go at night!There’s things out there in the middle of them woodsThat’d make a strong man die from fright!There’s things that crawl, and things that fly,And things that creep around on the ground!And they say the ghost of Lucias Clay gets up and […]

Two films bear the title The Tower of London, both offering interpretations of events surrounding Richard III that exploit elements of horror.  I saw the first forty years ago, and when Chris Garcia proposed an issue of The Drink Tank focusing on all aspects of the Tower of London itself, I decided to not only […]

My excellent friend the Hugo-award winning Maurine Starkey reconnected me with a significant artifact from my childhood, Jim Steranko’s two-volume History of Comics.  My first copies disappeared from my father’s storage warehouse during the 1980s, along with a large portion of my library.  Online agencies – eBay, for example — have helped many to acquire […]

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 the hell are they […]

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 […]