Last week, I posted about a set of FSM CDs (including our super rare out-of-print box sets) that I was making available to collectors. When we did the FSM CDs, I sent a copy of each release to my mom and a copy to my dad. (A follow-up column is here.) As it turns out, most of them just sat in the shrink wrap for the last 10–25 years...so the time has come to get them into the homes of people who are bigger soundtrack fans than my parents! So here’s the deal: I asked people to

Like a lot of people I’m watching closely the midterm election results from yesterday. Crazy! I try not to talk about politics too much because, first of all, I’m just exhausted from it. But I also have a lot of conservative friends and followers, and don’t want them to feel unwelcome or criticized. At the same time, I’ve been open that I’m a liberal Democrat, so people should not feel surprised when I take liberal Democratic positions. This year is different because the atta

I wish people in entertainment would treat their work like a business. Maybe I’m old-fashioned. Or maybe I was conditioned from my earliest work experiences being in customer-service environments (restaurants, supermarkets)? Good grief—please, respond to communications. Be polite. Is this too much to ask? Instead, people seem to combine the worst of business (treating each other like dirt, and thinking The Godfather makes it okay—“It’s nothing personal, strictly business”) wi

HBO has canceled Westworld. This surprised me in that the fourth season seemed pretty “final” to me; I didn’t know the creators wanted to do any more. I don’t want to kick folks when they’re down, but the postmortem from Entertainment Weekly seemed to sum up a lot of my thoughts. I’ll say this: it was truly one of the most spectacular productions of all time. From the cast to the production design to the VFX, it was epic and immense and meticulous and gorgeous. But it seemed

The Kickstarter for Rod Serling’s Night Gallery: An After-Hours Tour finished strong for Creature Features Publishing: $48,161. I was involved with some of the promotion and data management. The book should be in stock sooner than expected and will be available at NightGallery.net. I enjoyed helping out on this project because, although I’ve never seen an episode of Night Gallery (true!), I believe in the book and know it will deliver value for the readers. I know the authors

It’s the final day for Creature Features Publishing’s Kickstarter for Rod Serling’s Night Gallery: An After-Hours Tour. (I wrote about it when it began.) I have been helping out my pal Taylor White with some of the promotion. It ends at 11:59 PDT tonight (Saturday, 11/5/22). Good news: The books will be in stock and shipping earlier than expected! If you’re a fan of this classic ’70 show, this is the definitive book about it, so I hope you check out the Kickstarter—there are

Here’s another one of my stories of crossing paths with a celebrity—but don’t get your hopes up! Some time in 2009 I got a voicemail from Sondra Locke. She was very interested in the soundtrack to The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). I mean, she was very interested. She sounded a lot like one of the fans who have called me over the years: this is my favorite soundtrack and I can’t find it anywhere and can you please help me? Of course, I always try to help, so I called her back

Creature Features Publishing is in the final 72 hours of their Kickstarter for Rod Serling’s Night Gallery: An After-Hours Tour, the be-all and end-all 2nd edition tome about the classic 1970s series. (I’ve been helping out with some of the promotion and management.) One of the book authors, Scott Skelton, has been posting updates at the Facebook group for Night Gallery, and I found this one irresistible: a collection of Rod Serling advertisements, as he became an in-demand p

Yesterday was a shocker: Julie Powell has died at 49, from a heart attack. She was a year ahead of me at Amherst and I didn’t know her personally, but we had a lot of mutual friends so of course I knew who she was. I remember vividly seeing her in a play thinking, wow—that’s the star of the department. (She was Julia Foster, at the time.) Even now, my memory of her is seeing her sitting and laughing with friends in the mess hall, a very ebullient and well-liked presence. She

Police Squad! is one of my all-time favorite shows. Genius! And The Naked Gun, of course, as far as the feature adaptations (though the third film was a bit stale). Police Squad! famously (or infamously) only lasted six episodes on ABC in 1982. So imagine my delight when I discovered the script for an unproduced episode 7 on the website of writer David Misch, who wrote it and was going to direct when the show went down. This one involved a crusty police chief who gets crushed