SIEGE OF TROY

Sondra from Sparkshooter by Yonami Background. Years ago, Becky and I were at Disney. A little kid, no more than seven or eight, raced up on what was obviously his little brother, maybe five or so, and screamed, "WHERE THE HELL YOU BEEN?" in a voice very reminiscent of Short Round (who, incidentally, has returned to theaters in grown-up form in Everything Everywhere All at Once . So. Serendipity. I am well aware that I haven't written here in about six months. When that happens, I always say, "Things got crazy." Well, things got crazy. Toward the end of the year (2021), I had a veritable tsunami of Topps writing roll in. It was getting toward the holidays, we were trying to finish the kids magazines at The Post, I had that stuff and it was nuts. And then more stuff happened. I did The Brandon Peters Show  a couple of times. I had a comics project come up. We actually do other things. And suddenly, it's April. And I just finished two more Topps sets. Huzzah.

Hey! It’s been a while. Long story. And a story for another time. SO. I was going to write about something else, but then this happened, so I thought I’d tell you about it.   On Monday night, Connor got back from tennis. Yes, he’s driving. Yes, you’re old. Enough. So, I heard a vehicle and since Becky and Connor would be arriving about the same time, I went to see if they needed help. (Becky frequently has her workbag and other stuff; Connor has the fifty pounds of bricks he puts in his backpack along with his laptop, his tennis gear, etc.). For you Kyle fans, he was upstairs already. Before I got to the door, the doorbell starting ringing in quick succession. I stepped it up, thinking that meant that someone REALLY needed help. I opened the door and there’s Connor with all his stuff. He said, “I need help.” As I opened the screen door, he stepped back and pointed. There was a small child (I guessed three, but we’d find out four) standing behind Connor. All the kid had on was Lig

  The boys should form a cover band that only plays songs by brothers that fought a lot.  Oasis. The Kinks. The Beach Boys. The Bee Gees.  Or just bands that had brothers in them. INXS. Cowboy Junkies. The Stooges. Allman Brothers. AC/DC. Van Halen. Arcade Fire. And so on. Name? I'M TELLING MOM.

 Hey, kids. Welcome to a new label, THAT TIME . . ., which will be devoted to occasional instances of supreme weirdness, cool events, or odd occurrences that may or may not be writing-related. Here's a good example: That time my Oz article made the Today Show website. My recollection of the relationship between Whomever Owned Newsarama in 2009 and The Today Show is lost in the mists of time, and I don't care to look it up. But apparently there was some sort of reciprocal agreement that allowed Today to post certain articles on their site. That happened with me a few times, but this one, IIRC, was targeted for attention. With the (then) 70th anniversary of The Wizard of Oz  film coming up, I did a piece about its influences. Soon after, it went to the House of Roker. Over time, I had a few articles that made that leap, but this remains one of my favorites. It's not dissimilar from the stuff that I still do today for The Saturday Evening Post . At any rate, enjoy. https://www

Slippery When Wet Sign, Caution, Floor, 1/2015 by MikeMozart of TheToyChannel and JeepersMedia on YouTube THE STANDARD INTRO: ROCK SOLID is my semi-regular music column. Its Mission: To re-examine acts and songs to find stuff that’s, if not critically good, at least entertaining or enjoyable. Am I going to find charitable things to say about acts that have been marginalized or maligned? Sure. Am I going to take up for acts that have just one good song? Sure again. We should always be re-examining or re-evaluating. You might find that something you shied away from is something that you actually like. (But not Imagine fucking Dragons). This time, we’re tackling something that I like to call “The Betrayal of Bon Jovi.” Essentially, I’ll be saying good things about a segment of the catalog, but not the rest of it. And part of that ties into a couple of central problems that I have with the concept of “Bon Jovi” in total. The first thing is that most people don’t know that the band it

FROM THE SHOTGUN REVIEWS ARCHIVES: PORNUCOPIA aka THE AMAZING PORN ESSAY (1997)   If you’re one of the few, you happy few, who remember the original ShotgunReviews.com , you might be saying, “Wait! I thought The Mighty Shotgun didn’t open until 6-29-99!” And you’d be right. I wrote “Pornucopia” in 1997 while I was still working at Old Towne Video in Terre Haute. Grad school was wrapping up, and I’d depart for Indianapolis in October of that year. But I was still writing things just to have them and would kick off the original version of Shotgun on ComicKingdom.com, a site officiated by my friend Nick Jankowski. This piece, nicknamed “The Amazing Porn Essay” by Shawn Delaney, would end up being the anchor of the Feature Forum section on the Shotgun site. I decided to put this one up because, in some ways, it’s hilariously quaint. Video stores are basically gone; even the brick-and-mortar Family Video stores went down in January after 42 years. Really, only Redbox is the last kiosk