Transmissions
A continuous signal on any and all frequencies about any number of topics. The aim is to be interesting and engaging, without ranting or screeching. If you’re looking for a glimpse of what’s percolating in one writer’s gray matter on any given day, you’ve come to the right place.
Roger Corman’s “X” Factor
Somewhere during my middle school years in the mid-1970s, I started dialing in to the late-night sci-fi/horror movie of the week that the CBS affiliate in Cleveland (WJW, Channel 8) aired every Friday night after the eleven o’clock news. I was probably twelve or...
A Shadow Takes Shape
The Shadow, the star of his own pulp magazine and a popular radio drama during the 1930s and ‘40s, takes another incremental step closer to his 100th birthday this month. We can be fairly certain that he’s figured out in that stretch of time what evil lurks in the...
Suspended Programming
"Yes, there were times, I’m sure you knew When I bit off more than I could chew…" I was going to start this post with an explanation of the lyrics above, and how they come from a song that originated in 1967 with a French pop singer and songwriter named Claude...
In Memory of Gus McCrae
Since the silent era in the early years of the 20th century, Hollywood has generated a seemingly endless parade of leading men and leading ladies, many of whom have become iconic in the decades since their passing. In parallel to this procession is an even longer line...
The Long Goodbye
No songwriter consciously sets out to write a standard. A song becomes a standard on its own over time, after it’s been recorded and re-recorded and re-interpreted by numerous artists specializing in various styles over the course of several decades or even...
Hornet on the Air
Last summer I wrote in this space about my first encounter with vinyl LP recordings of the Superman radio program of the 1940s and early ‘50s. I was only about ten years old at the time of my discovery, but I’d already had an understanding what the golden age of radio...
Hollywood Howard
In November of 1996, I went to a movie theater somewhere in the east suburbs of Cleveland with a few friends to see a newly released film called The English Patient, directed by Anthony Minghella and starring Ralph Fiennes, Juliet Binoche, Willem Dafoe and Kristin...
Celebrating the Bat
What happens when you take a crime-fighting detective with a decidedly gothic fashion sensibility from the pages of mainstream American comic books and filter him through the high-camp, pop-art zeitgeist of the mid 1960s? The answer is a prime-time TV phenomenon...
Inspired by London
“Don't loaf and invite inspiration. Light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it, you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it." —Jack London In my generation, Jack London seemed to be a rite of passage for junior high students...
The 2026 Agenda
I’m typing these words on the first Monday of 2026. The Christmas decorations in our house came down this past weekend, and 2025 is in the history books. As always, the new year starts off with a long to-do list: Front and center is The Midnight Guardian: March of the...