by mike | Jan 18, 2024 | Creature Features, Disaster Movies, Horror, Horror Movies, Monster Movies, Movies, Thrillers, Uncategorized |
A creature feature that the critics liked? How rare. This post first ran in 2020. The 2019 creature feature/disaster flick, Crawl, is an anomaly. It did well at the box office, which is not that odd for the genre. But it also garnered its share of excellent reviews,...
by mike | Jan 15, 2024 | Adventure fantasy, Aging, Books, Life, Science Fiction, Uncategorized |
This hardcover copy of the Jules Verne classic, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, has been in my life for as long as I can remember. A “Rainbow Classic,” this edition was published in 1946, the year of this “young fart’s” birth. It is generously illustrated and...
by mike | Jan 11, 2024 | Curious Possessions, Myths & Legends, Travel, Uncategorized |
When my bride and I returned from an amazing trip to Iceland over a decade ago, we brought home the studious troll you see pictured here. Icelanders love their trolls (and elves, too) and are happy to point some of them out to visitors—the ones that have been turned...
by mike | Jan 8, 2024 | Aging, Holocaust, Humor, Life, Uncategorized |
Being retired means never having to wear a tie. But I was a long way from retirement the last time I actually put on one of the damn things. How long? Let me share this story. QUITE AN HONOR March 6, 1996: a significant date in my life for a number of reasons. First,...
by mike | Jan 4, 2024 | Aging, Baseball, California, Death, Life, Uncategorized, Writing |
I didn’t have all that much to do during the pandemic, other than write blog posts—and an entire novel! This post first ran in—when else, 2020. Day 9,254 of the Coronavirus Pandemic (give or take)—did the Mayans get it wrong, or did we misread their calendar? Was it...
by mike | Jan 1, 2024 | Books, California, Horror, Myths & Legends, Native Americans, Uncategorized, Writing |
First of all, Happy New Year! For my first post of 2024, I hearken back to my first of four horror novels. Originally titled The Well and published by Bantam Books, the book is now called The Modoc Well and is part of my own imprint, Atoris Press. In addition to being...
