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Muriel isn’t the first animal that greets you when you step onto our porch: Gerard’s an antique that’s supposedly been with the house for as long as it has existed (meaning he’s close to 100 years old). He’s handsomer than modern knockoffs and looks perfect on our door, an arched monstrosity that’s 3.5″ thick and carved […]

Did they ever make The Facts of Life action figures?* As recently mentioned at Cranky, I’m at a loss over how to proceed with the Firefighter review. Since dispatches from the McCheese office are usually only stickied for 24 hours, I’ll catch you up to speed: Firefighter, a Nancy McKeon telefilm from the mid-’80s, was

For the second time in less than a year, I forgot to pay a bill that normally wouldn’t escape my attention. The $13 sum was trivial and the error, like the late mortgage payment, was caught within the grace period. Unlike the utilities (and now the mortgage, too), our credit cards aren’t set to autopay;

It figures something like this happens on a night I can’t watch tennis: the Alcaraz/Zverev match has been suspended due to swarming bees. Is the ghost of Gloria Swanson haunting this year’s BNP Paribas Open? Is Iga Świątek their new queen?* While we’re asking questions, when will I post a new review? There’s a slight

When I fell in my driveway today, I didn’t bother looking to check whether anyone saw; it’s a busy street and if dog-walkers and stroller-pushers somehow missed that special moment, neighboring porch cams might’ve still preserved it for all eternity (or until it’s auto-deleted from the cloud).* Instead I thought “Figures,” because in the seconds

The painted ladies birdhouse is almost complete and only needs a few touch-ups; this is the last photo I’ll share. Not too shabby given the inferior quality of the wood and my general ineptitude. This morning I worked on techniques for achieving an ‘aged’ look with paint. I’d like to make an abandoned mining town

I was tinkering on a post that was going to be published here tonight, about the conclusion of the birdhouse project and the start of the lighthouse keeper’s cottage, when the phone rang. It’s often a circus when my phone rings because I have a tendency to forget about it entirely and wander away from

Earlier this week, at approximately the same time that Crankenstein had a speaking engagement in front of an absurdly large audience, I received a message from someone who’d just read one of my reviews. He told me a bit about himself and wondered if he might recommend other movies for me to cover. His note

Many times over the past few months, I’ve wondered “What if the doctor’s wrong? What if I’m perfectly fine?” Intellectually, I know the neurologist is almost certainly right. It’s more complicated emotionally, as I’ve been reminded lately by some irritating developments. Take this morning, for example. The witching hour seems to start around 4:30 am

Wednesdays are often my time to watch and then write about a TV movie, but much of today was lost to conversations with my sisters. I’d been on the phone with the middle one for 87 minutes — the running time of a typical Lifetime flick — when Crankenstein trudged in late. Earlier there’d been