Transmissions

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

“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...

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...

I made a quick stop at a neighborhood GetGo earlier this afternoon — which happens to be December 25, a day when I typically try to avoid stores of any kind at all costs. For those of you outside of the Midwest or East Coast, GetGo is a chain of gas station / grocery...

The gifts are bought and wrapped. The pantry is fully stocked for any family members and friends who come our way in the next few days. All the things that can be done – the planning, the purchasing, the preparations – have been done. We’ve come to the moment in the...

Christmas is less than two weeks away, but the title of this post may not mean what you think it means. For those too young to remember, it’s the title of a song from the soundtrack to Mary Poppins, Walt Disney’s 1964 musical adaptation of the children’s book series...