You Wanted the Best. You Got the Best. The Hottest Band in the World . . . (KISS Memories: Childish Things)

I’m willing to bet that even if you don’t know the names of its members, you know who the rock band KISS is. Truthfully, I only know Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley in the band’s most recent configuration. They are the two founding members and the songwriting duo credited with most of their hits. I’m […]

In the Writers Room (with Firewater) #8: Blake Snyder’s 10 Types of Movies

A while back, I published a post titled “The Seven Basic Plots (and how I got there with the incidental aid of Rob Lowe).” Rob Lowe was the host of a Netflix documentary, Attack of the Hollywood Clichés! He mentioned that there were only seven basic plots in an offhand way, which led me to […]

\m/15-Minute Hellmouth\m/: Buffy the Vampire Slayer DeepWatch: Season 2, Episode 4: “Inca Mummy Girl” (airdate: Monday, October 6, 1997): Part 2 of 3

15:01 – 30:00 Previously on \m/15-Minute Hellmouth\m/ . . . The Cultural Exchange Program has arrived in Sunnydale, California. Many students, including Buffy Summers, will be hosting foreign exchange students for two weeks. Meanwhile, a South American exhibit, which includes an actual Inca mummy girl, arrives at the Sunnydale Natural History Museum. Ne’er-do-well Rodney Munson, […]

You Ruined All My Favorite Songs (Sgt. Pepper’s wasn’t always my favorite Beatles album)

For a time, from the 1980s until some point in the 1990s, my favorite album by the Beatles was what is universally known as the White Album. I listened to it a lot during some very bad times. For some reason I found many of the songs on the album to be comforting. At some […]

|||[Boldly Going]||| Star Trek: The Original Series—Season Two: Ep. 2.19 “A Private Little War” – (Original air date: Friday, February 2, 1968)

Before I get started, I just wanted to write that, yes, I realize it’s been over two years since I’ve published one of these “Boldly Going” entries. Here’s the thing: if anyone reads the previous entry and then this one, they’ll never realize there were two years between the two. Plus, TOS is timeless. In […]

\m/15-Minute Hellmouth\m/: Buffy the Vampire Slayer DeepWatch: Season 2, Episode 4: “Inca Mummy Girl” (airdate: Monday, October 6, 1997): Part 1 of 3

00:00 – 15:00 What were you doing on Monday, October 6, 1997? I don’t remember either. I wasn’t watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer yet. We’ve talked about this before, you and I. That came much, much later, after the series was off the air and I was married to a different woman. I wasn’t working […]

In the Writers Room (with Firewater) #7: The Three Parts of Stories and Novels (According to Stephen King)

I do make fun of Stephen King at times. Mostly I mock his inhuman prolificacy. He’s probably published something new in the time it took me to craft this sentence and look up the noun form of the word prolific. That’s it. I’ve got nothing else bad to say about the man. He ensnared me […]

Seven Existential Questions Asked by Minnie Driver: Yes, Virginia, There is Another Questionnaire

The actor Minnie Driver apparently had a podcast called “Minnie Questions with Minnie Driver.” Full transparency here: I’ve never listened to the podcast and couldn’t even tell you if it is still being recorded. The article I read about it was published in 2021. I saved the piece and recently pulled it out when I […]

Firewater’s Bold Statement about the MCU

Okay, this is a misleading title. Maybe you expect me to jump on that internet bandwagon. You know the one I’m talking about. “The MCU has lost its way, and, for that reason, I refuse to watch any more of the movies and television shows it keeps cranking out.” That bandwagon. Let’s be real. You […]

\m/15-Minute Hellmouth\m/: Buffy the Vampire Slayer DeepWatch: Season 2, Episode 3: “School Hard” (airdate: Monday, September 29, 1997): Part 3 of 3

30:01 – THE END Previously on \m/15-Minute Hellmouth\m/ . . . As it turns out, Spike can’t wait until the Night of St. Vigeous, that huge Maguffin all the vampires are chanting about, to kill the current incarnation of the Slayer. Instead, he leads a group of bloodsuckers in a raid on Sunnydale High’s Parent-Teacher […]

Grimdark Fantasy (I’m still not sure what it is exactly but I know I like it)

It comes as no surprise to those of you who may have read my stuff before, but I don’t do a particularly good job of staying abreast of trends. Current trends, I mean. I’m up-to-date on most twenty-year-old trends. Well . . . maybe more than twenty years. It still boggles the mind that twenty […]

10-List: First Seasons (Since September 2023)

I enjoy when I finish watching all of a series. It’s the satisfaction of completing a collection, which is something you understand if you have the collector’s gene. But one of my other favorite things is to begin watching something new. It’s like unwrapping an unexpected gift. Since September of 2023, I have watched the […]

In the Writers Room (with Firewater) #6: Teaser and Four: Using Firefly to Plot Your Story (modeling your story structure on a television episode) [Part Two of a two-part discussion]

During our last meeting, we discussed, briefly, the three-act story structure which is often credited to Aristotle from about two thousand years ago but most assuredly has been around even longer, probably since before written language. I mean, it’s intuitive, right? Beginning. Middle. Ending. I suppose you can imagine writing something that is all Middle […]

Dogs Playing Poker (Or, a brief digression about dogs, memory prostheses, and white trash art)

My wife and I share our home with two dogs. Moxie and Cooper. Both were rescues. All of our dogs over the years have been rescues. Not because we’re cheap, mind you. No, not at all, because we’ve spent a small fortune on our pets. Moxie had to have surgery on both of her rear […]

\m/15-Minute Hellmouth\m/: Buffy the Vampire Slayer DeepWatch: Season 2, Episode 3: “School Hard” (airdate: Monday, September 29, 1997): Part 2 of 3

15:01 – 30:00 Previously on \m/15-Minute Hellmouth\m/ . . . Buffy Summers, the Slayer, and newly-introduced bad girl Sheila were ordered to prepare for the upcoming Parent-Teacher Night by Principal Snyder. It’s some sort of punishment, or perhaps a contest to find out which girl the principal is going to expel. In the interim, a […]

10-List: The Chandler

The recent death of actor Matthew Perry sent my thoughts down a few previously undiscovered pathways. I liked the series Friends. I wouldn’t call myself a super-fan, whatever that is, but I believe I’ve managed to watch every episode of the series at least once over the years. You probably have, too, whether you wanted […]

Space Invaders (Or, a brief digression about social biomes, video games, and The Ballad of Spike)

My personal coming-of-age story is set during an amazing time. I watched the original Star Wars at the Crown Cinema in Lancaster, South Carolina, in 1977. This was before it became Episode IV: A New Hope. It was the only Star Wars. The Empire Strikes Back, still my favorite Star Wars movie, wouldn’t come out […]

In the Writers Room (with Firewater) #5: Aristotle Was Onto Something (acting out your story structure) [Part One of a two-part discussion]

You’re no dummy. You are already familiar with the three-act story structure that Aristotle suggested for tragedies in his Poetics. Maybe you’ve even read some of the stuff written by the late Syd Field, who also championed the three-act structure in screenwriting some two thousand years, give or take, after Aristotle. In hindsight, it seems […]

\m/15-Minute Hellmouth\m/: Buffy the Vampire Slayer DeepWatch: Season 2, Episode 3: “School Hard” (airdate: Monday, September 29, 1997): Part 1 of 3

00:00 – 15:00 Newscaster David Brinkley retired, at age 74, the day before this episode aired. He would pass away six years later. Jury selection in the trial of Oklahoma City bombing suspect Terry Nichols began the same day. Unlike co-conspirator Timothy McVeigh, Nichols would not receive the death penalty. Instead, he’s serving 161 consecutive […]

1701 (Concerning date formats around the world)

Happy Star Trek Day to my friends in the UK. This one was originally posted four years ago, but I felt like celebrating and didn’t want to write another post. Here in the United States of America, we commonly use the date format mm/dd/yyyy. So, the date I’m writing this post—January 17, 2020—is commonly written out […]

You Are Here (Or, a brief digression about Firewater’s weird fascination with maps)

I’ve always been fascinated by maps. Many of my earliest memories are set in Puerto Rico, where my Navy dad was stationed for a time. I recall my mom showing me the island on a map and telling me where we were in relation to something called “the mainland.” As a preschooler I had only […]

The Upcoming AI Apocalypse (Or, a brief digression about human extinction, gambling odds, and why Firewater doesn’t worry about self-driving vehicles)

I was reading some scholarly journal or other today . . . Okay, that’s a lie. I was reading. That part was true. I was reading a blog post that referred to a scholarly abstract that has a whole lot of words and facts and figures containing the results of a survey of two to […]

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