Preamble In the movies, when faced with a Vampyr, as in the 1932 Danish knockoff, it comes down to a couple choices. If you want to be the hero, you drive a stake through it's heart. Or kill it in a grain elevator, was it? Just off the
It was a capital afternoon, like so many others before it. At least in recent times, that is. Scruffy Rudolf had been up to his characteristic reindeer games for a couple weeks now. Doing this and that; whatever it is. The silly lil puddin' was playing hide and seek
For four years my family and I lived in the idyllic southern Bavarian village of Irsee, a hamlet with its own brewery and cloister. Bell-bedecked cows marched by our house each morn and eve. A tiny lake at the outskirts featured somewhat hostile swans that battled summertime swimmers. We
i Preface 'Satan's jeweled crown, I've worn it so long' The Louvin Brothers The subhumanization of humanity first and foremost concerns technology's unassailable Mephisto-like domination over basic, that is to say intrinsic, human virtues and values. Like that mezmerizing spectre of
I've known someone I'll call 'S' for about as long as I've lived in this country. Shortly after my family moved to the United States from West Germany in the late-1970s, I began attending American kindergarten. That's where I
'They' say 'you can't go home again'. That is true, in a certain sense, as it pertains to 'outsiders'. That is untrue, in the sense of 'insiders'. But there are just a very few of the latter – the family, a
March 5, 20o5 The culture of Heartland U.S.A. seeped into my consciousness at a tender age. I grew up in a town once known as “Union Station,” owing to it’s status as a granary on the Lancaster - Reading Pennsylvania line, today largely defunct. My American home town
January 14, 2005 Those who know "The City" fairly well know that San Francisco's Tenderloin district can be a pretty dicey place to live. For some whites, it’s even a frightening place to walk through. The knowing looks—or silly middle class expressions of sympathy—
10 May 2005 'What fresh hell is this?' --Dorothy Parker This thing is a vision of hell. It's an honest film – a shard of a shattered place. And yet, although it is strewn, it is interpretable. It could be rather more clear than many imagine. David
September 17th 2002 There are probably three typical reactions to Stanley Kubrick's 1980 fling with modern horror, The Shining. Variously, it's considered a cinematically interesting and suspenseful film or it's "cheesy" and "overdone;" those who dig a little deeper discern
April 28th 2005 As the train rolled through the hills and hamlets of Bohemia south of Prague, a cheapo-vino-enhanced realization came to. The scene: a rolling patchwork of emerald pines, superimposed randomly upon fields of freshly stacked golden hay, and ramshackle farms, through which babbling rivulets meandered. It
A little over three years ago, I first had the pleasure of stumbling upon "Frontier Days" in Willits, California. A burg of 5,000 astride Highway 101, some 180 miles north of San Francisco, this sleepy ranching and agricultural community rightly bills itself the 'Gateway to the