This oddball Christmas special from the 1980s. Many more oddball, lost, and forgotten Christmas specials from decades past. All you ever wanted to know about old Christmas tree lights. Let’s start drooling over the explosion of Betelgeuse when the supernova comes. It might be a new Star of Bethlehem!
I recently came across two foreign editions of The Hobbit I haven’t seen before. First, The Little Gnome. I guess the translator didn’t think the made-up word “hobbit” was understandable to Portuguese audiences? That said, I like the cover design. It’s whimsical if misleading — hobbits had nothing to do with mushrooms, except for eating …
Former Korean actor now lives inside an amusement park he built himself. Sounds like an ideal life, myself! The Rhunic language created for The Rings of Power on Amazon Prime (it’s a lot like Hungarian). Author Diana Paxson pulled into the child sexual abuse reckoning taking place in the SCA, Berkeley, and Marion Zimmer Bradley …
Since I’ve critted books, movies, and shared worlds, why not games? I don’t mean immersive ones like Halo or Dragon Age. These require far too much investment for me. I prefer casual games, the kind players can download on their phone or iPad, try out, and delete if they don’t like them. Casually… just like …
I was going to call this the Art Forgery Edition, but realized that wouldn’t go down too well. My post on the 17th century artist Diego Velázquez made me think. What if I took one of those imaginary lost paintings and used Midjourney to create it, using –sref and –cref parameters? As a plus, he’s …
In 2018 and 2020 I posted lists of randomly generated Halloween costumes and I thought it would be fun this year to see what Midjourney came up with for those prompts. Most were variations on ” [person] dressed as a [randomly generated thing] , homemade costume, candid, casual photo, Halloween setting –c 15″. The –c …
Culinary Class Wars on Netflix aims to popularize Korean cooking with a hyper-competititve, grueling reality show challenge between master chefs. In that vein, what is Bibimbap? Ursula K. LeGuin criticizes J. K. Rowling for using her “Magic School” concept. Well, yeah, more people shoulda said this. And shares her thoughts on gendered writing. The …
The tragic life of 1960s It Girl and trendsetter Alice Ormsby-Gore, and the dickiness of Eric Clapton. John Scalzi on the perils of idol worship. Early puberty in girls linked to a chemical commonly used to scent bath products and perfumes. The downside of Booktok. Do you want to watch a certain show but don’t …
It ended sooner than I wanted. However there is lots of leftover material for next year’s three-month extravaganza! I’ll close with this delicious AI-generated version of The White Witch’s bento box. Made of polished and ornamented silver, it contains plenty of raw fish (tuna and salmon filets), hardboiled eggs, roe, oysters, pickled garlic, and nuts …
The creative world of drag culture offers some unique takes on wintry femme fatales. Here’s some I found. First, drag queen artist Raja Gemini, alluring inside or outside of drag. Pangina Heals in an Asian-based costume. Paul Quin as a Goth White Witch. I like the fur shoulder pads and mirrored crown. Sasha Velour rocking …