Once upon a time, I didn’t feel like doing schoolwork, so I read Fifty Shades of Grey instead. My girlfriend’s roommate had a copy which I borrowed, and I finished the book in an evening. This was not a terribly difficult enterprise, as you can imagine: E.L. James is not going to become James Joyce any time… Read More Fifty Shades of Grey: A Chance for Bravery
I’m going to commit a minor sin here and basically conflate The Railway Series, twenty-six books by Wilbert Awdry with a few stories apiece in them which feature different engines located on the Island of Sodor, and Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends, the filmed versions of those stories. Since I’m not terribly interested in the differences… Read More The Gender Politics of Thomas the Tank Engine
So thank goodness I watch so much children’s television on Netflix, because otherwise I may never have known that The Magic School Bus streams there. Remember The Magic School Bus? You know, that kids’ show that blended science and fiction: students went on spectacular field trips into the human body or into a volcano…meanwhile, the hardest… Read More Ms. Frizzle’s Sparkling Pedagogy
Here goes another one of my full-movie commentaries. Today, it’s Disney’s Hercules, which was perhaps my favorite movie in elementary school and is certainly responsible for the interest in mythologies which weirded the heck out of my neighbors when I was a seven-year-old. Consider, for example, this paraphrasing of my Halloween experience in 1998: Me: Trick… Read More Hercules (1997)
Seeing Things Secondhand 