We saw The Help via Netflix last night. Very enjoyable film. Certainly makes the blood boil ... the grotesque treatment of black maids portrayed therein. It's an Oscar nominee, and in a sense it's the film I most enjoyed of the (only) three nominees I've seen, but I'm not convinced it's a worthy winner. Mostly that's because I felt manipulated a ( Read more... )

I don't post personal news much anymore it seems. Not sure why -- laziness, I guess.

Well, this weekend was a sad one. We had to put down our dog, Strider. He was a Black Lab mix, a very big dog, about 80 lbs, very sweet to us but not very tolerant of other people. He was about 10 years old -- we got him (from the pound) the year The Fellowship of ( Read more... )

We live about 2 miles from Sunset Hills, MO, where an EF-3 tornado touched down yesterday. As it happens, I was driving to Walgreens when the storm hit -- and in the direction of Sunset Hills. The Walgreens I was in is maybe 1.5 miles from the tornado. The other one I thought of going to ended up losing power and having the major road it is on ( Read more... )

I've been very bad and not posted here much lately. So what's up -- lots, lots I'll forget, doubtless.

First I should mention that the outstanding fantasy fiction website Beneath Ceaseless Skies has just published its second anniversary issue. BCS publishes "literary adventure fantasy", quite exactly -- fantasy stories (with the occasional ( Read more... )

It's been a whole month since I last posted here ... business is one reason, and a bit of writer's block is another ( Read more... )

Memorial Day weekend normally means a trip to Kansas City for ConQuesT. Alas, I couldn't make it this year. I miss the con -- one of my favorite places to be, lots of friends -- but I had a good reason to miss: My nephew, Sam Davidson, got married. His wife, Kim, is a girl he's known since they were both about 8 -- they went to church together, and ( Read more... )

Quick STAR TREK rant ( Read more... )

CRAZY HEART; Speak, Memory

Last night we saw CRAZY HEART. It stars Jeff Bridges as an aging, alcoholic, country singer. This is the role for which he won the Best Actor Academy Award. The costars are Maggie Gyllenhaal as a reporter with whom he has a fling, and Colin Farrell as a younger singer whom he mentored, and who has become a big star.

The ( Read more... )

I start these entries with similarly dated ones from previous years. This one began with a 2004 post. 6 years ago, my gosh. Yet the concerns were largely the same. For instance, trivia nights. We won one recently, but the losses were harder, particularly one in which 67 teams participated -- a very high number indeed. We lost by 2. There was one ( Read more... )