My teenage son loves chess, gaming, dungeons and dragons, weight-lifting, and spending a lot of time in his room or in the garage away from the inquisitive eyes of his loving parents. He’s a good kid but he’s still a teenager. We count on seeing him every night for dinner…

A loving tribute to “Reservation Dogs, Season 2”. I just finished watching Season Two of Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi’s excellent series, “Reservation Dogs”, and like many Native Americans, I laughed and cried and felt so good about seeing Natives portrayed as we see ourselves and not through the lens of the dominant white culture. [The irony is…

SONOFABITCH! Lisa Joy and Jonah Nolan had a five-season arc mapped out for “Westworld” and after four of the five seasons, HBO pulls the plug. Grrrr… I guess I’ll throw “Westworld” onto the pyre of my burning resentment along with “Carnivale” and “Deadwood”. Yes, the first two seasons of “Westworld”…

I never thought I’d be a father and I never wanted it. My relationship with my Dad was terrible, mainly because he wasn’t much of a father. He was consumed with being an alcoholic and that’s a full-time job. I married Judith when I was 40 and she was 39…

I stayed up late to binge-watch Danny Boyle’s “Pistol” mini-series. My wife made it through a couple of episodes before bowing out. She was never an angry young man like I was. There was a time in my young life when the Sex Pistols meant a lot to me. Out…

Author’s Note: I binged “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” (loved it) and it struck me, ‘Here I go again. Another voyage in the Star Trek universe.’ I’ve been watching some iteration of Star Trek almost since I was born from the original series until now. I’ve seen all the…

“Flash Gordon” was a movie that nobody wanted and the movie viewing public in 1980 proved it. George Lucas opted out of directing it to make “STAR WARS” instead. Good call, George. The lead actor, Sam J. Jones, walked off the project while the film was still in production over…

Last night, I dreamed I was making a documentary about my late grandfather who was a Cherokee Minister. The picture that goes with this post is one I grabbed from Google Maps this morning showing Papa’s church and the Preacher’s House across the street. It’s shocking to me how little…

Author’s Note: This story is inspired by my years as a tour guide at Weta Workshop, located in the heart of the Miramar peninsula in Wellington, New Zealand. Weta Workshop is most famous for making all the props, costumes, prosthetics, sets, miniatures, and practical effects for Peter Jackson’s “The Lord…