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Mr. Robot – A Good Show or a Great Show?
You’re going to hear a lot of big names when you first hear about USA’s first-ever golden-era show, Mr. Robot. Kubrick. Fight Club. Christian Slater. The Pixies! What does it all mean? And should you watch Mr. Robot? After ceasing to accidentally call this show Dr. Robot, I gave it a try. My first thought…
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“The Martian” movie: A smug motherfucker, marooned
“That didn’t have a thing to do with the triumph of the human spirit,” my girlfriend Dana observed as we walked out of a screening of The Martian. “It was just like, ‘He’s a crazy wizard who can grow potatoes on Mars!’” It’s true: Ridley Scott’s fast-paced and jaunty adaptation of Andy Weir’s 2011 novel succeeds as…
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Soap Factory Haunted Basement 2015: Choose your own nightmare
I let my sister get abducted by Santa. She did come back, but she was bloody. At least, that splatter of red on the shoulder of her t-shirt looked like blood. I think it might have come from Santa’s empty eye socket. Fortunately, we’d come prepared for gore. When I wrote to invite Julia—my longtime Haunted Basement…
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Why an ex-Catholic watches the Pope
The Pope is in America. I’m reminded of Pope John Paul II’s 1987 visit to the U.S., which my father and my maternal grandmother sat together and watched on TV. Dad and Grandma didn’t have a lot in common, but they were both descendants of the German-Catholic diaspora that flowed into Minnesota in the 19th…
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In Guthrie Theater’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a “Watchman” quietly waits
I didn’t read Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird until I reviewed it for a children’s literature class I was taking in college. On my review, my professor commented, “not really a children’s book.” That’s a matter of semantics, but the book is often picked up by young readers—and it feels like a children’s book, not…
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