Ever since I started writing for Cook County Chronicle, it's been a constant exercise of "surely, they can't possibly accept that pitch?" A look at a recent Pace suburban bus service expansion? An article delving into the ins and outs of connections between suburban Metra train lines? An in-depth look into Chicago's Russian community? Surely that's ( Read more... )

Last week, I came across a bunch of scans from an art book of giant robots from the Super Sentai series.

For those who don't know, the Super Sentai franchise was a long-running Japanese live-action series that, since 1993, has been adopted into Power Rangers. The show uses the Super Sentai giant moster/robot battles, and some the Sentai footage ( Read more... )

So I was trying to look up I Ship It (the Icona Pop parody) on Youtube when I found something else entirely ( Read more... )

So, last Friday, my brother was on WGN Radio again. On the same show he was on last time - the late-night Pretty Late with Patty Vasques.

Is it going to be a regular thing? Because I'm honestly kind of hoping it would be a regular thing. Or at least a recurring thing.


( Read more... )

Happy Birthday to skybreak_seeker. It may not be the roundest of birthdays, but at least it's indivisible by anything but itself. As always, I hope you achieve more than you expected, that you spent more time in the company of friends, that your hobbies bring more joy than fanwankery and that unpleasant surprises are few and far in between ( Read more... )

This has been on my review queue for a while. Like, since the summer for a while. It's not like it took me that long to read it - I finished it months ago. It's just that just about everything else always seems to take priority. But there is only so many times I can review a book even with the Chicago Public Library's generous renewal terms, so I ( Read more... )

Like I said in my previous post, today, i went down to Hyde Park to the South Side Weekly Lit Issue release party. There will be a separate post about how that went sometime tomorrow. But for now, i wanted to mention a few things that caught my eye on the way there (and back)

***In my neighborhood, Muslim women are not exactly a rare sight. ( Read more... )

Free Comic Book Day has been around since the early 2000s. On that day, comic book publishers put together special comics (usually containing previews of their upcoming titles) that are completely free. The idea is to have something that potential customers who don't know much about comics would get a taste of what the publishers (and the comic ( Read more... )

I've been reading The World of Ice and Fire, the companion book to George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire - the fantasy series that was adopted into Game of Thrones. The book is a fascinating work in its own right - it deals with the history and geography of ASOIF universe from an in-universe perspective. It's meant to be a history book an ( Read more... )

I've written before about the controversy over costume designs for female comic book characters - designs that, even in this day and age, are often more about sex appeal than any practical considerations. It is possible to balance the two, but it's tricky ( Read more... )