I enjoyed reading Andrea’s piece about her journey into the world of WWOOFing -- shades of the ‘60s and the Back to the Land movement. ...
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When I was a kid there was this 15-minute Claymation show called Davey and Goliath. I remember it came on Channel 9 at odd times….
The other week I was having lunch with a young friend of mine who works in advertising. That’s right, he’s a modern day Mad Men…
If you’re just starting out as a writer, you could do worse than strip your television’s electric plug-wire, wrap a spike around it, and then…
In the thriller Buying Time written by a friend of mine, attorney and mystery writer Pamela Samuels Young, a disbarred lawyer named Waverly Sloan goes…
While I haven’t seen Selma yet, I intend to. Though given I’ll probably see it at the movie theater multiplex in the Crenshaw mall for…
As this is being written, it’s the Wednesday of the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week. The Captain Underpants graphic novel has topped the Banned…
When you have a plot of land, land that your ancestors sacrificed to acquire and maintain –– that’s something you just can’t ignore.
In his 1942 short story “Runaround” visionary sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov introduced his Three Laws of Robotics: 1. A robot may not injure a human…
The sideman. The old retainer. The assistant. The staffer. The aide-de-camp. Finally the task I’d been putting off for decades has been undertaken. For the…
While I’m not waiting for the zombie apocalypse, I wonder are they in the Residences condos above their stretch of Hollywood Boulevard? Does a zombie…
Initially my piece on death and taxes was going to be about the famous and infamous dinged by the tax collector. “Scarface” Al Capone went…
There’s a story we tell in the family having to do with my dad, Dikes, who has passed on now. But some years ago when…
There were several topics I considered for this “How To” post for Dr. Pop. I used to be something of a shade tree mechanic and…
I don’t know if it’s been instructive, but it has been interesting to chart the reactions, negative and positive, Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained has garnered…
Graphic novel is just a shorthand way of saying a comic book in long form. It sounds more grown up to say graphic novel than…
It’s not that Joe Sacco is the first comics artist, a sequentialist if you’ll allow, to produce stories different from the bread and butter of…
In December of 2011, for the fifth time in its history, the pro football team the Green Bay Packers sold stock in the team. They…
This 20th year since the riots or civil unrest if you prefer jumped off that day on April 29 after the not guilty verdicts
When I’m on a panel about writing mysteries, I’ll mention that any student or fan of the genre should read the Maltese Falcon by Samuel Dashiell Hammett