... observations from a lifetime of geekiness.
******STARSHIP-SIZED SPOILERS!****** Way back in the dark days before streaming or even affordable home video, I used to place my old audio tape recorder up to the TV speaker and record Star Trek episodes during their syndicated broadcasts in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I d taped roughly half of them before the shifting sands... Read More
San Diego Comic Con Sidequest During our recent annual trek to San Diego Comic Con, our hotel was located in the Little Italy area of downtown San Diego, a few blocks from the San Diego Maritime Museum. On the day of our arrival, I walked down to the shipboard museum, which is centered aboard the... Read More
*****SOYUZ-SIZED SPOILERS!****** Apple TV s For All Mankind presents a more cosmically expansive, inclusive alternate-present for America than the one we re currently enduring in our own timeline, and it s all based on a simple premise; what if the Soviet Union beat the United States to the first manned lunar landing in 1969? In this series reality,... Read More
******3,000 YEAR-OLD TROJAN HORSE-SIZED SPOILERS!****** On the surface, writer/producer/director Christopher Nolan ( Interstellar, Oppenheimer ) is a cross between Ridley Scott ( ALIEN, Blade Runner ) and David Lean ( Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago ); sharing their love of grand spectacle and pioneering visual effects, with a knack for attracting all-star casts who earn their paychecks. With…
Like that line from The Godfather Part III, Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. My wife and I have been attending San Diego Comic Con together for roughly 22 years, only missing it in 2007, and, of course, the year it was shut down in 2020 for COVID. As... Read More
******UNSETTLING SPOILERS!****** Made on a sub-shoestring budget between $750,000 (yes, thousand) and $1 million, the Universal-Blumhouse distributed Obsession debuted at the Toronto Film Festival last year, and was a huge hit. When it was released in the United States this past March, it did incredible business, making over 400 times its production budget, and becoming... Read More
After a wonderful weekend celebrating pop culture at a horror convention this past weekend, I woke up this morning to the terrible news that actor Sam Neill, whose work I ve long admired over at least five decades, has passed away at age 78 an age that seems terribly young to me these days as I tentatively... Read More
Trick or Heat In 2022 a new horror convention called CreepIEcon came to the Inland Empire of SoCal (hence the capitalized I.E ), and it was small but attracted a decent enough crowd to warrant a second show, called CreepIE Aftermath, in September of 2023. Now both shows have evolved to attract a larger talent pool,... Read More
******SUPER-SPOILERS!****** Growing up in the 1970s reading random Marvel comics books ( SpiderMan, The Fantastic Four, The Hulk ), I wasn t much of a DC kid. Despite being old enough to have seen TV s Adventures of Superman (1952-1958) in reruns (as did friends of mine), I never really got into it, and the only reasons younger-me ever... Read More
26 Miles Away In 1999, my wife and I honeymooned on Catalina Island off the Southern California coast, and we still have near-annual getaways there to celebrate anniversaries since. The island was sold to the Wrigley family (the chewing gum magnates) back in 1919, and was quickly turned into a famed movie location as well... Read More