So it is “national poetry month,” whatever that means. I tend to think we make poetry unfortunately inaccessible in how we approach it or when and how we read it. We treat it as the literary equivalent of having to eat your Brussel sprouts; ostensibly good for you, but to be suffered through in order to achieve [...]

For those born anywhere between 1970 and 1980 or so, say goodbye to the next few hours of productivity. Share this:PrintFacebookDigg

The town I’m from has two historical distinctions. It is the birthplace of Nauga-hyde (my dad used to say that if you went by the factories at night, you could hear the cries of the little baby Naugas; I was young and stupid and believed him) and it is the place where Charles Goodyear first [...]

Fifth grade, my dad came home with a treasure-trove. He had  somehow gotten to be friends with a guy who was making a book-based-air-combat game (this is what people in search of gaming did before there was a computer in every home, folks) involving complex rules and charts. He had already designed a series of [...]

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy     Unfortunately,  our president does not.  I really wish he would, though. Share this:PrintFacebookDigg

There are few things I love more than Shawscope Shaw Brothers kung-fu movies from the late 70s and early 80s. Check this out, Legendary Weapons of China, 1982. When they played it at the drive-in I went to, way back when, it was billed as Legendary Weapons of Kung-Fu. That happened a lot with these [...]

That was his name and job description. They used to play the late 60s cartoons in the late 70s on channel 5, WNEW, in the afternoon. This and the Spider-Man one, with the theme song everyone knows. (Does whatever a spider can!) While Spider-Man offered more heroic action, this was always the cooler show. It [...]

  Summer, 1977. I’m 3. My dad asks me if it was my birthday. “No.” Is it Christmas? Hannukah? “No.” Is it ANY holiday? Arbor Day, maybe? “I don’t think so.” Well, he tells me, since it is no holiday at all and most definitely NOT my birthday, then it must be my UNbirthday, and [...]

There may be weirder things than the HAPPY DAYS cartoon. But I can’t think of four of them off the top of my head.  I mean, I know you’ve got to make things a little different for a cartoon but… It featured a talking dog mascot who would grab onto Fonz’s jacket, prompting him to [...]

So there was a recent election for a Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin (that’s how they do it there, by election) that would have been a shoo-in for the conservative judge under any normal circumstances. But Walker’s over-reaching, union-busting brand of republicanism has proven to be spectacularly unpopular in very short order, so this election [...]

A screencap of my Gmail. Friendster is still out there, alone and friend(ster)less, but still hanging on. That’s almost kind of charming. Good for you, Friendster. For those of you who aren’t aware, Friendster is to Facebook as the Atari 2600 is to the X-Box360/Playstation3. It was the first friend-based networking site of any note, [...]

There’s something I totally miss about TV shows. The lots-of-exposition, get-you-up-to-speed backstory origin recap intro. There’s something so earnest about it when it was done back then. To do something like this now would be to make a kind of knowing, meta-reference, like Tarantino did with Shaw Brothers kung-fu conventions and tropes when he did [...]