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On the Original ZOLA
Just a few more stacks and I can live like the Collyer Brothers…surrounded by my own novels! The title of this post is to clarify that it’s not about Janicza Bravo’s terrific 2020 road movie with...
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The Sideshow Hootenanny Comes to Brooklyn!
Exciting news for lovers of sideshow and the variety arts! The Sideshow Hootenanny (previously known as the Southern Sideshow Hootenanny), now celebrating its tenth year, and making its NYC debut!...
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Happy 80th Birthday, Craig T. Nelson
We’ve had call to mention Craig T. Nelson (b. 1944) a half dozen times or more here — I’m an unabashed Craig T. Nelson super-fan and I don’t care who knows it! And, happily, I can open this tribute...
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This Friday in Hollywood: Michu Gets Memorialized
L.A. Friends, this jumped out at me as something worth attending, and, as Wilford Brimley used to put it, “the right thing to do”. Today at 1pm Pacific time the remains of Hungarian-American little...
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Love For Lord Buckley
A reference on Robin Williams’ 1979 album Reality…What a Concept was my first introduction to Lord Buckley (Richard Buckley, 1906-1960). Buckley was gone long before I came into the world, and his...
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V for Victory Bateman
April 6 was the birthday of stage and screen actress Victory Bateman (1865-1926). She was named after the triumph of the Grand Army of the Republic over the Confederacy; Lee’s surrender was three days...
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Killers of the Flower Moon
Warning: I include spoilers. Chronic back pain combined with the flu (ugh!) sidelined me yesterday so I took the opportunity to finally catch up with Killers of the Flower Moon. To my mind it’s among...
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Speaking of Earthquakes…
The title of this post of course because yesterday in the Northeast we experienced an extremely rare earthquake that measured 4.8 on the Richter scale, which is roughly a once in a century event in...
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STEVE! (martin): a documentary in 2 pieces
I’m fairly ecstatic at the advent at Morgan Neville’s new two-part documentary about Steve Martin, not just because it filled me with such mirth and pleasure to reconnect with memories of the comedian...
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John Gavin: The Statesman from “Psycho”
I try, very consciously, never to glamorize guns, but this is the only picture of our subject I could find that made me pay attention to what I was looking at. John Gavin (1931-2018) was a very good...
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Valerie Solanas Was Right
With the exception of Charles Manson, surely no public figure has ever looked so unhinged in so many photographs as Valerie Solanas (1936-1988). You can actually feel the simmering intensity across...
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30 Years Ago: Memories of MacDowell
I went to my local woods to witness the eclipse a couple of days ago vaguely hoping something magical would happen. Something most assuredly did, though nothing so crassly obvious as, say, all of the...
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Last Weekend in April: Two Chances to Catch Me — If You Can Run Fast Enough!
If I look crazy in the photos above it’s because I must be! I booked two very involved and very different events back to back in two geographical locations that are both far from my house and far from...
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Shining Sunlight on Chief Thundercloud
April 12 was the birthday of the film actor known as Chief Thundercloud (1899-1955). As it happens, there is a “thundercloud” surrounding the actor’s true identity. His real name has been given as...
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What Became of the Dumont Network
When I was a kid, grown-ups spoke of a fabled time long before I was born when there were as many as FOUR American tv networks operating simultaneously, keeping me spellbound in much the same way as...
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R.I.P. Schappell Twins
Word has just come down that the conjoined Schappell twins, Lori and George (b. 1961) passed away on April 7. Wait! You’re already a little confused, I bet. How can identical twins be differently...
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130 Years Ago Today: New Yorkers Get the First Movies on Demand!
On April 14, 1894, the first Kinetoscope parlor in the world opened, at 1155 Broadway in Manhattan, not far from Madison Square Park and the Garden. Originally, my headline was more specific as to the...
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Charles Willson Peale and the Prototypical Dime Museum
We have a duel objective in giving the Travalanche treatment to Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827) and his distinguished family this morning. The first is that the Peales figured in the American...
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R.I.P. Robert MacNeil
PBS’s Robert MacNeil (1931-2024) passed away back on April 12. On the Newshour, Jim Lehrer, like most of MacNeil’s friends and colleagues, used to call him “Robin”, but I’ll refrain from taking that...
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A Charlie Chaplin Finding Aid
With the exception of the Marx Brothers (and there are five of them) Charlie Chaplin (1889-1975) is the stage and screen performer about whom I’ve written the greatest number of articles on...
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