A World of Speculation

Elmore Leonard writes about writing

Crime novelist Elmore Leonard joins forces with Mark Twain in Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle. Great advice from two novelists with some characteristics in common–humor, knack for dialogue, fine sense of story. Never mind that...

Mars Orthodox

OK, you’ve got to take a look at this week’s Onion Dome: Russian Lander Finds Orthodox Life on Mars, for two reasons: One, because it’s dead-on funny: “In what could be the most earth-shattering news of the past few millenia, Russian scientists...

It’s only a movie

I know it’s heresy in these waning days before the “post-Passion of the Christ era begins, but I repeat: It’s a movie. It’s a movie by a man who cut his teeth in the action genre. This is not a put-down. I have no doubt of Mel Gibson’s...

Crosswinds

I pulled an LP out yesterday, Crosswinds, vintage 1974, by Billy Cobham. This jazz drummer literally plays up a storm on side one of this classic, which I haven’t heard since, well, probably not since the ’80s. (Funny how time flies when the technology...

Forgiveness Sunday

All of you who have been waiting to find out whether I enter Lent crippled this year will be pleased (or perhaps outraged) to learn that I am not. This is a good thing, a grace, actually, since once again I didn’t do any of the exercises I resolved to do to...