Day 801: Billy The Kidd – A Brutal Pirate. Well, Maybe

originally published March 11, 2014 Sometimes our most loathsome villains have been misunderstood, their legacies forever stained by the thick-bristled brush of historical “common knowledge”. William Kidd’s name is uttered in the same venomous breath as Blackbeard, Black Bart, and that Rupert guy from Survivor. He makes nearly every list of famous historical pirates, and […]

Day 800: 100 Movies, 100 Improvements

originally published March 10, 2014 Some days it’s not easy to drag my sinewy carcass in front of this computer to punch a thousand words in the throat. Some days it’s easier to drown my brain cells in daytime TV, in mindless games or between the sprocket holes of a good movie. I’m having one […]

Day 799: Poon Adrift

originally published March 9, 2014 Each of us possesses a limited reach of survival, a finite extension of our bodys’ and minds’ capabilities to endure. Fortunately, we live within the sanctuary of modernity, with a rather slim likelihood of our true survival being tested. This is a good thing. Let’s be honest, if most anyone […]

Day 798: MacBe— Sorry, The Scottish Article

originally published March 8, 2014 I live in a house with two theatre people. And just as they have learned to live with the eccentricities of a writer (it’s normal to scream obscenities at one’s fingertips, right?), I have come to adapt to the weirdness of their world. For example, during an exhibition of my […]

Day 797: ‘Twas A Good Time For The Great Taste

originally published March 7, 2014 I read a story last week – an actual news story, written and published by actual news people who weren’t pranking their employers – that our world is entering into an actual clown shortage. There are people (mostly people who run clown schools, I imagine) who are worried about this. […]

Day 796: Science-Sanctioned Baby Torture

originally published March 6, 2014 I have always been an enthused spectator to science, particularly when it aims to show off just how messed up we humans can be. I wrote about the Milgram Experiment, in which doctors talked their subjects into inflicting painful electrical jolts through innocent people, and I’ve also touched on some […]

Day 795: Smelling The Glove – Controversial Album Covers Part 1

originally published March 5, 2014 As I’m often heard remarking to strangers in the check-out line at Safeway, music is best when it’s either controversial or being sung by the aural euphony of Michael McDonald. In those sepiatone days when rock music was still gathering its struttin’ legs beneath its warbly frame, artists found new […]

Day 794: London, 1858 – Awash In A Fecal Funk

originally published March 4, 2014 It was only a matter of time before this illustrious project, which had launched itself with such promise and potential, devolved into a dignity-free river of steaming poo. We can blame the natural progression of time and the tenuous maturity of an overgrown teenager at the keyboard’s helm, or perhaps […]

Day 793: Curious Bond-ities

originally published March 3, 2014 After three years of film studies classes, I have yet to find any university prof who will bestow more than a grunt upon the phenomenon of James Bond. I understand that – if ever there was a formula film genre, Bond takes the golden crown of convention. But they are […]

Day 792: The Day The Suffragette Was Run Over By A Horse

originally published March 2, 2014 It was a beautiful sunny June afternoon at the 1913 Epsom Derby in Surrey. Thousands of people had gathered to watch horses run in a circle because it was 1913 and television was not yet invented. Also, the horse of King George V was among the competitors, which added the […]