Corned beef and cabbage

Today is St. Patrick’s Day, and I am making corned beef and cabbage.I have made it every year on this day since I first moved out on my own.Outside there is uncertainty. There is a global pandemic. St. Patrick’s Day celebrations have been canceled the world over.But I am making my corned beef and cabbage.……

Remembering Challenger

I can’t believe it’s been 34 years already. That morning I was playing in my room with my sister Anna; if I recall properly, Skeletor had teamed up with the Purple Pie Man to vex the joint forces of He-Man and Strawberry Shortcake. The phone rang, and our mother yelled up the stairs to say……

This is it! This is the sign!

The trailer for the new Ghostbusters flick dropped today: https://youtu.be/7yZCOXBAyWo This is it. This is the movie I have waited 30 years for. Ghostbusters, and to a lesser extent Ghostbusters 2 and The Real Ghostbusters, has been profoundly influential on me. In second grade, my friends and I performed a Ghostbusters routine in the school……

Weren’t they good? They made me happy!

This post was originally published here on December 3, 2012. It started off small. Innocuous. A simple Facebook status update by Mike Nesmith on August 7th: “We may be coming to your town.” Then I started to lose my mind. On August 8th, we were treated to this: Two days later, tickets went on sale,……

My Date With (the) Davy Jones (Memorial Celebration)!

Originally posted on Atomic Wanderers:
Davy Jones passed away on February 29, 2012. On March 10th of that year, a memorial celebration was held in his adopted hometown. The following is an account of my visit. I have written before of my life-long affinity for The Monkees.  I’ve made no secret of it.  They were…

Remembering Leonard Nimoy

Leonard Nimoy died today. I see the words on my screen, but I can’t comprehend them. They seem like a fiction, and a terrible one at that. I feel like a two-bit hack for writing such unbelievable dreck. But it’s not fiction. It’s fact. Leonard Nimoy died today. When he was rushed to the hospital last…

See You on the Other Side, Tony

I learned today that Tony Ruggerio died this past Friday. He was 40. Tony and I grew up together, and, like many childhood friendships, grew apart over the years. After we graduated high school, I occasionally ran into him at Rowan, and we actually had a class together (along with Kim Clements — now Duffy……

Some Idle Tuesday…

Seventeen years ago. Bob Craig and I were sitting in a pub at London Heathrow. We were on a five-hour layover coming back from Poland, where we had attended the wedding of Christopher and Aga Schleyer. At first we thought they were showing a movie. Then we saw it was CNN. We thought it was……

Shore Leave, Here I Come!

Finally! After a two-year absence, I’m pleased to announce that I will once again be travelling to Maryland as a guest at Shore Leave Convention, now in its 40th year. I’ll be arriving Friday evening with the rest of the riffraff, and you’ll probably see me and my wife R3wandering around until Meet the Pros……

Wild About Harry…

We lost Harry Anderson today. He was 65. And it feels like learning about the death of an old friend. It’s no secret to those of you who read my stuff that my life has been heavily shaped by Star Trek, Batman, Ghostbusters, The Monkees, Universal Monsters, and any of a host of other geekish……