When I was a kid, my favorite baseball player was Ozzie Smith. He played shortstop as I did. He was small, fast, and had a golden glove. I was small, not terribly fast, and used a hand-me-down glove that I loved. I didn’t throw super balls against the back door and catch them in my glove for hours on end (that was my brother), but I did pretend to be Ozzie on more than one occasion standing between second and third.

Much later in life and after Ozzie had retired, my new favorite player in a Cardinals uniform was Albert…

While at home during this awful pandemic, I found myself occasionally falling down ye olde YouTube rabbit hole and finding a whole ‘nother wonderland of entertainment I never knew was possible. Or, you know, I just clicked to watch a video I wanted to watch, and ye olde algorithm found me some more related videos. The funny thing, I don’t think any of these content creators I’m gonna highlight below have much in common.

Still, all of them have a ton of content that you can fall down that aforementioned rabbit hole and enjoy. …

More than a decade ago, John Scalzi had a couple of observations that I found incredibly interesting:

1. People who don’t know what they’re talking about don’t like to have that fact pointed about, especially if you use the word “ignorant” in context to the fact.

2. People like to confuse “pointing out the fact you don’t know what you’re talking about” with “being hostile,” because it makes them feel better about themselves. It’s generally not worth arguing to them that it’s not necessarily hostile to point out when someone doesn’t know what they’re talking about, but inasmuch as many…

Imagine, if you will, four young musicians.

Three of them are siblings growing up in a household full of KISS, Alice Cooper, and Cheap Trick vinyl. Their parents would spin the discs nightly. Everyone would be jamming to KISS Alive! and Cheap Trick at Budokan whenever there was a family road trip.

The siblings decided to start a band. They add a family friend who loves monster movies and science fiction―Godzilla and Star Wars.

It was only natural the group gravitate toward theatrics, and they’d experiment with make-up and pyrotechnics.

They name themselves Kabuki Theater and dress in costumes and…

There have always been science-fiction movies.

Over the years, technology has improved nearly everything in these movies, from special effects to costuming. I mean, just look at the difference between the 1902 short A Trip to the Moon and what we will see nearly a century later in Dune. Still, I think the most important things to consider in these movies, and frankly, all popular entertainment are the characters and the story. Do they tell a good story?

The last decade has seen plenty of good science-fiction and science-fantasy movies. However, I did not have a problem picking my favorites…

I’ve concluded that I cannot watch, read, play, or listen to all the entertainment that I would like. There is simply far too much quality entertainment. This is a good thing, but also disappointing.

I mean, I carved out chunks of time to watch Zack Snyder’s Justice League. It’s a long, long movie. I had other things to do in my life that did not include watching gods among mortals fight the inspiration for Thanos. Still, there’s so much good stuff out right now. …

When I entered high school in the early 80s I was a musical neophyte. I didn’t know any popular music and I ended up becoming a sponge listening to everything from Iron Maiden to Journey. I grew up in the era of MTV, so I was bombarded with Madonna, Prince, and Michael Jackson videos. The idea of music and visuals became cemented in my mind. A lot of the big music videos of the day were in reality mini-movies.

Music and movies have always been at the forefront of my pop culture existence and when they collided it was always…

Let me get this out of the way… I’m not a fan of the Zack Snyder movie aesthetic. I understand what he’s doing. It has its fans. For the most part, it just isn’t something that appeals to me. His aesthetic with the slo-mo, dark streets, saturated colors, and needle-drops is never subtle. I love it in 300. I like it in Watchmen. I dislike it in practically all the rest of his movies. He’s a thinking man’s Michael Bay, which is as nice a compliment as I can muster.

That all being said, the fact Snyder has completed his…