Today, a month and 30 days after my fortieth birthday, I realize that, when I go, it is getting more unlikely that people will say, “He was too young.” Instead, they will say, “I guess it was about goddamn [...]
|
|||||
|
Standing in line with a thousand other people this morning for my Swine Flu (It’s Not Just for Pigs AnymoreTM) shot, I was struck by how, if only the public health system had been as advanced during the time of “The Stand,” Las Vegas would not have been destroyed by the Trashcan Man’s atom bomb, [...] “He knows what scares you,” said my friend Brad Moore of Stephen King when we were both in fifth grade. Brad was a precocious reader who read for fun, and he suggested I read “The Shining.” And some of the images in that book, snow falling from an advancing hedge animal, a glimpse of [...] Without knowing there was a movie coming out, I started reading Phillip Pullman’s brilliant “His Dark Materials” trilogy, the first book of which, “The Golden Compass”, has been adapted for film. My education in fantasy stories has been limited by my dislike of most people who like fantasy stories. It is an ancient prejudice. But I’ve [...] Scholastic, the publisher of the “Harry Potter” books, printed 12 million copies of “Harry Potter And the Deathly Hallows”, one of which arrived at our door, personally delivered by the mailman, last Saturday. “I never leave them at the door because people steal them,” he said. (This guy is an improvement over our last mailman, who wouldn’t [...] TAARG noticed that the food critic/Alan Rickman character in Pixar’s Ratatouille (played by Peter O’Toole) recalled the food critic in T.C. Boyle’s short story “Sorry Fugu” from a 1989 collection. In the movie, the merciless critic Anton Ego caves in to a simple peasant dish that he remembers from his childhood. In the short story, [...] As tied in to the high school industry as it is, American Heritage Dictionary Publisher Houghton Mifflin still manages to astonish with its blatant product placement in this month’s publication of “100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know”. The list also targets parents, hinting that they, too, should run to a bookstore and buy a [...] |
||||
|
Copyright © 2010 Marty Barrett: Refenestration Consultant, Aerialist, Raconteur, Tycoon - All Rights Reserved |
|||||
Comments