I never understood the logic behind remaking movies. Oh, I understand it from a financial standpoint. If a movie is popular, then a remake of it has a built-in audience. And there is certainly a history of some great stories being told again and again in Old Hollywood — “Quo Vadis,” “The Four Feathers,” even …
The only way Jack Sawyer could have become more of a legend in Ohio State football would be if the play he made Friday night in the Cotton Bowl had happened against the School Up North. With Texas on the verge of scoring and tying the national semifinal game late in the fourth quarter, Sawyer …
What’s the very best thing about being alive? I’m not sure there is a bigger, more open-ended question than that, but I’m going to make it a little easier by eliminating an entire category. Just as Jean-Paul Sartre said, “Hell is other people,” I’m going to ask the question without including interpersonal relationships. After all, …
So much sadness. I wrote yesterday that I was born in Southern California — San Diego, to be exact — and while I never really lived there as a child, I spent the first half of my life dreaming of returning to California to live someday. I lived there from 1990 to 2010, and the …
If there’s one thing that can be truly heartbreaking, it’s when people don’t even pursue their dreams. It’s one thing to go after something and not get it. It’s far different to decide you probably wouldn’t get it if you tried and then not try at all. I’m not really talking about myself. I got …
I loved living in California. I was born there in the last month of the 1940s, but my parents moved east to Chicago when I was a year old. I knew it was a bad idea and I tried to tell them. Of course I couldn’t get through to them because I didn’t know any …
“He who dies with the most toys, wins.” Why is that? Why do we turn everything into a competition, with winners and losers? Is enough ever enough? And what does it mean anymore to be free, particularly in terms of Americans and their rights? If we start with the Declaration of Independence, we believe that …
Imagine waking up one morning and finding you were all alone. Not just where you live, but everywhere you go. You get into your car and drive through your neighborhood, but you don’t see any other signs of life. You get out onto a main drag, or a freeway, only to see that you are …
From 2014 with minor updates. I was watching two baseball movies — one I’d seen before — and it got me thinking. There are at least six or eight different movies I have heard different people calling the best ever and there are three I’ve had at the top of my own list at one …
“Felix the cat …” What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear those three words? If you are an early baby boomer, you might remember there was a cartoon series by that name that ran from 1958-61. There were 134 episodes, and while I literally have no memory of scenes from any …
