When I was in grade school there was a woman who worked in the lunchroom. She wasn’t a lunch lady in the sense that she didn’t fill the tray compartments with stewed prunes and reconstituted potatoes and processed meatloaf by-product. She sat out in the lunchroom itself and it was her job to break up fights, [...]
Food is a recurring motif in the work of William Sleator. From House of Stairs to Parasite Pig (sequel to Interstellar Pig) where food is central, to The Boy Who Couldn’t Die (in which a young man almost gives away his secret by grabbing a hot dish with his hands), The Last Universe (in which [...]
Dark Horse Comics, publishers of, among others, the Sin City and Hellboy comics, is now republishing a classic comic book called Creepy, one which, ironically, was first published in 1964. That’s ten years after the infamous hearings held by the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency–hearings which were spurred by the “excesses” of 1950’s comic [...]
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Oct
5
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Posted by Christopher Waldrop
October 5, 2009 | 1 Comment
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Supposedly ventriloquist Shari Lewis, who’s best known as the hand behind the puppet Lamb Chop, liked to go to restaurants and order lamb chops just to see the horrified looks on the faces of the waiters. I really want to believe that’s true, but, even if it’s not, she and author Lan O’Kun did [...]
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Sep
17
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Posted by Christopher Waldrop
September 17, 2009 | 1 Comment
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To say I grew up listening to Peter, Paul, And Mary would be an understatement. My mother played their albums on a daily basis. When I got my first tape recorder I had a lot of fun recording my best friend belching, but what I really listened to–in bed before going to sleep almost every [...]
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Sep
12
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Posted by Christopher Waldrop
September 12, 2009 | 2 Comments
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If you were of a certain age, you watched the original The Electric Company. While just as hip (after all it had Morgan Freeman in the cast), if not always as surreal, as Sesame Street, The Electric Company was aimed at a slightly older crowd and focused on spelling and grammar, rather than just learning [...]
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Aug
17
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Posted by Christopher Waldrop
August 17, 2009 | 1 Comment
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Even though I read primarily science fiction and fantasy as a kid, I loved Judy Blume’s books mainly because there was a sense that she got it, that, even though she was an adult, she remembered and understood what it was like to be young. The fact that her books were often assigned to us [...]
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Aug
14
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Posted by Christopher Waldrop
August 14, 2009 | 1 Comment
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A librarian friend recently sent me an article called The First Time. It’s by a librarian who noticed a kid holding Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows. She asked him if he’d read it before. He hadn’t. She asked him if anyone had told him how it ended. No one had. She goes on,
At that [...]
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Jul
6
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Posted by Christopher Waldrop
July 6, 2009 | 1 Comment
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There are a few books that I go back and reread every few years, but there’s only one book I’ve read at least once every single year since I was nine. That book is Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland. I discovered it through a Disney album of songs from the movie along with a very condensed [...]
As a regular watcher of Jeopardy, I’ve always been fascinated by the variety of contestants. I’ve even been told that I should be on Jeopardy by people who, for whatever reason, seem to think I’m much more well-informed than I actually am. And I’ll admit that very frequently when I watch it I’m surprised to find [...]
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