The Night of the Stumblebums
OnBack in my college days, I spent more time in bars than could be considered healthy. However, my friends and I weren’t a fan of the bars near campus, and their crowd of drunken people our age or younger. We craved a…
Category: Essays
Longer form pieces.
Stupid Ideas I Haven’t Done: DEVO Cats
OnLike everyone, I tend to come up with a lot of ideas that I never get around to doing. Sometimes, it’s because they’re pretty stupid ideas. So, in order to do something with them, I’m throwing them out here. If anyone wants…
Things That Are Neat: Ants!
OnAnts are super neat. There’s like a billion different varieties of ‘em, and they do all sorts of things. There are farmer ants who grow a fungus that they then eat, and there are ants that like do things with plants, and…
sanity check: idea for a video game
OnWe got this letter from the Internet Browsing Club: [tell me if this is sane and interesting] game based on the “paperclip maximizer” thought experiment, as featured in My Little Pony: Friendship is Optimal. I have no idea what it looks like….
Celebrating M*A*S*H, Now 30 Years Gone
OnI grew up aware of M*A*S*H. I was just over a year old when the show ended on February 28, 1983. Thirty years ago. But it wasn’t until I was in high school that I fell in love with M*A*S*H. I honestly cannot…
Castlevania III: What Was, What Is and What Might Have Been
OnAh, the days gone by. I remember first playing Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse (known in its original Japanese as悪魔城伝説, or Devil’s Castle Legend) on my Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990 and marveling at how the series had grown and changed. I’d been…
Modern Movie Mediums: Why It’s OK That Blockbuster Is Gone
OnWhen I was a kid in the early ’80s, home video was still a relatively new invention. I remember getting our first VCR and going to the video rental store – the stores had a huge influence on me and can be…
Dr. Daryn Cash Presents: Early Oscar Predicting – The Elimination Game
OnI used to be very cynical about the Academy Awards. I assumed that the voting process was for show and that the awards were given out on a basis of what’s-the-safest-winner. I still talk about ‘them’ ‘giving’ the award to particular winner,…
In Praise of “Goddamn”
OnI wasn’t a huge fan of James Lipton’s Inside the Actor’s Studio, and in fact, I’m not even sure if it’s still on the air. I thought Lipton could sometimes be a little “Dance, Monkey!” — particularly on the episode where he…
What Do You Do When You’re Right In The Worst Possible Way?
OnWhat do you do when you’ve been making fun of someone on a TV show for years for being creepy, and turn out to be right? I’m having that uncomfortable reaction right now. When I worked graveyard shift and Dale worked swing…