Erotica, fantasy, and horror writer.
Dec 08
The British comedy troupe Monty Python famously skewered the legend of King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, destined to live forever in the minds of a certain generation who encountered it first during a fundraising drive on PBS. ** The Pythons did not have much of a budget, so there were no …
Dec 01
Sometimes real world locations, built by human sweat with human dollars, can be as fantastic as any of those of fantasy. Take this pyramid at the river’s edge in Memphis, Tennessee, for example. Or these imaginary, yet plausible, places below. (I really beg for someone to name their Los Angeles coffeehouse The Wrecking Brew.) …
Nov 29
I’m aware that the list is very long, as comic book heroes and heroines have been doing their thing in questionable costumes for decades. But 1973’s dystopian gladiator Killraven takes my vote for worst-dressed: black leather boots with over-the-knee epaulets and modified slingshot thong (with lacing.) I feel dirty just by looking at him. Not …
Nov 24
Russian-themed fantasy was the hottest thing in YA in the 2010s, of which Leigh Bardugo’s Grisha books are the best known. At least a dozen others were published following the trend, some fantasy, some contemporary, some historical. It’s hard to tell with COVID still hanging around, but the trend may not be over. Want …
Nov 22
Projected poster art for Jodorowsky’s Dune, the movie that never was. Paul Atreides/Muad’dib is at center. The names of the designers are at lower left, and if you follow their work, you can pinpoint what elements of the illustration they worked on: Foss the spacecraft, Giger the sandworm, Moebius the characters and perhaps that landscape. …
Nov 18
Neural Nets are a great way to improvise some heavy metal lyrics. A few sessions on one produced this masterpiece. Which I can’t really take credit for completely… because the AI did the work. But I was the one who strung it all together and made it make sense. I mean sense enough to sit …
Nov 17
Where did the word “Dixie” as a reference to the southern United States come from? Most likely from the Mason-Dixon line, a demarcation used to separate the states where slavery was legal from those where it wasn’t. But it could also refer to a ten dollar note used in pre-Civil War New Orleans with the …
Nov 15
Illustrations for the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast all seem to highlight the same moment, as portrayed here. The two are seated together, the beast pledging his devotion, while Beauty looks away, pleased but ambivalent. This one, using the palette and style of the 1960s, shows the encounter in slightly abstracted form, with a …
