My Blog
All Blog Posts by Date
Below is a list of all my blog posts. I hope you enjoy them.
"Trumbo" the Movie
I’m not going to be doing a Book of the Week for the next month, I’m going to do a Movie of the Week. As you may remember, I am, among other things, an actor and a member of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG). SAG has its own awards ceremony for actors that only other actors can vote on. So, I have to watch all the movies and TV shows that there are nominees in so I know what I’m voting on.
Religious Experiences on Mushrooms?
Did you know there is someone in the country who is legally permitted to take recreational drugs? Believe it or not, it’s true. Or it was, anyway. I don’t remember his name, so I’ll just call him Fred. Fred he was a very normal looking guy, about average height, not thin but not heavy. Perhaps not surprisingly, he did have longish hair and a beard. So, why was he allowed to do drugs?
Coulrophobia? What’s So Sacred About Greek?
Coulrophobia has only been in the lexicon for about 20 years. It means an irrational fear of clowns. Apparently, that fear has been around for a while, but nobody told the Ringling Brothers or P.T. Barnum.
"Gypsy, A Memoir" by Gypsy Rose Lee
I remember Gypsy Rose Lee as a talk show host. I had no idea who she was, but my mother told me she had been a very famous stripper. I believed her, but I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I just didn’t understand how this really nice, fun lady could take her clothes off in front of people.
"And When She Was Good" by Laura Lippman
One of the reasons I like Laura Lippman’s books is that I recognize the places she talks about. I’ve seen them, I know where they are and what they’re like because she’s from my hometown and the city figures prominently in most of her books. he other reason I like her books is that they’re really good. Like all of her books, the characters in this one are very well drawn, they are not the overdrawn superheros so many authors try to pass off as “ordinary people.”
"I Don’t Want to be Your Bridesmaid" by Adina Ferguson
Last week I interviewed, Adina Ferguson, a recent graduate of a Creative Writing and Publishing Arts MFA curriculum. Not surprisingly, the thesis for the degree was a book. Students had to do not just the writing, but the page design, cover design, choose the paper and the cover stocks, all those little things you don’t think of when you pick up a book, but that are all critical to the success of the book.
"Sparks of Genius: The 13 Thinking Tools of the World’s Most Creative People" by Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein
What makes someone creative? And if you’re not creative, can you learn to be? To answer the second, yes, you can. To a degree, of course, but you can absolutely increase your creativity if you work at it. The Root-Bernsteins liken it to cooking. We can all cook, if we have to, but not all of us cook equally well. But we can all learn how to cook pretty darned well, if we work at it.
Anybody Else Tired of Precocious Kids?
Is anybody else tired of those precocious children in television commercials? First we were inundated with them in TV shows. It seemed like there were no normal kids anymore, they were all going on 40. It’s cute once, but after a while, you just want to see some little brat eating dirt or something.
Subject-Verb Agreement
I recently saw this quote from a New York Times article: “The couple, who are married, lives in Price.” Wow. Where do I even start? Is there subject/verb agreement? Hard to say.
