The exuberant, gruesome poster for the 1981 slasher film, Happy Birthday to Me, depicts a young man about to be impaled in the throat with a shish kebab. Above this image, the words: "John will never eat shish kebab again." You're not buying a ticket to
I have been to a movie theater just for the AC. I have bounced from cafe to bookstore to a second bookstore just for the AC. I have spent entire afternoons working in our bedroom because it's the one room in our place with AC. I have spent
As I write this, there are no reviews on Rotten Tomatoes for Rob Tregenza's latest film, Fast. On Metacritic, there are two. I know it screened for several days at MoMA in New York, one night in Los Angeles with Acropolis, and then a three-day mid-week
There's an October heatwave coming in a couple days and the forecast says it's going last more than a week. These are the meteorological vicissitudes of Los Angeles. I won't be cooking unless it's at 5am for a cold dinner late in
I have a 2000s-era iPod, and it contains exactly 29,804 songs that can never be updated because I have no more iTunes. Everything is inside that little flat box forever. None of it is leaving. It lives on a speaker dock in my kitchen. I wash dishes to
There's a line in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest: “To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” Somehow, I've become very careless in 2026, but not with my parents. Both died quite
Until September 8, right after Labor Day. See you soon.
A mid-1970s newspaper ad for a local movie theater features two programs. In the afternoon there was a children's matinee of a 1956 Margaret O'Brien musical called Glory, and the evening double feature was the X-rated Joys of Georgette and Sweet Taste of Joy.
There's a one-off character that exists in the world of the Peanuts comic strip. Technically, he has no name. He also has no face, as we see him only from behind. He's a kid Charlie Brown meets at summer camp, and his response to everyone
Unmarried people can't have sex, unless it's done on one specific, government-approved, Purge-style night. This is how your script gets on the Black List. Of course, in the confounding, oblivious One Night Only, it is, quite intentionally, never adequately explained how the United States
A Pool Day is different from a Pool Morning. Pool Morning is when I go to the West Hollywood Aquatic Center at 6am for the purpose of exercise. It's a habit but not a pleasure. On Saturday, when it was quite hot, after I had spent the morning
Last week, Alonso, who likes for me to share in the miserable information he finds online, sent me a link to WorseOnPurpose.com It's an addictive and depressing site devoted to brutal facts about corporations that run the planet and how everything you buy is worse than it