I found this plastic severed hand at a garage sale a few months ago. I think I paid a quarter for it and even before we were back in the car I had already got my money’s worth. I tapped Susan on the shoulder with it multiple times, walked around with with it hanging out of my sleeve and tried shaking people’s hands, and approached several people while holding it and asked them if they needed a hand with anything. Twenty-five cents well spent. The next day, I hid the hand underneath Susan’s pillow in an attempt to scare her.… (read more)

Over the past few weeks I’ve binged the first season of two shows: Fallout, loosely based on the video game of the same name, and The Acolyte, the latest live action Star Wars series. The first season of Fallout, which aired on Amazon Prime, had an estimated budged of $150 million, while The Acolyte had a budget of roughly $180 million. Fallout currently has a 90% audience approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes while The Acolyte has an abysmal 31% approval rating. What did Fallout do so right that The Acolyte failed out? A lot, actually. In science fiction stories authors… (read more)

They say death comes in threes, which means this past weekend we either got one extra, or there are two more to come. This past weekend we lost four great celebrities. Shannon Doherty passed away at the age of 53 on July 13 from breast cancer. Doherty rose to fame as Brenda on the hit show 90210, and found a second home as Prue on the television series Charmed. For Gen Xers, Doherty will be remembered either as Rene, Brody’s girlfriend from Kevin Smith’s Mallrats, or as Heather Duke, one of the many Heathers from the 1988 film, Heathers. Shelley… (read more)

In the middle of Boatfest — a gathering in West Virginia that has everything to do with retrocomputing and nothing at all to do with boats — I heard some commotion coming from the rear of the room. When I arrived there I found John “BoatOfCar” Shawler and Amigo Aaron, hosts of the popular Amigos Podcast, playing football. They were playing on an original Magnavox Odyssey, the first commercial home video game console released back in 1972. The game is so primitive that it requires a third person to serve as the referee, and the field itself is depicted by… (read more)

What do our Visio television, a set of DJI wireless microphones, and a GE washer/dryer combo have in common? Over the past couple of months, all of them have broken. Back in the day I used to think that brand names were really important, and still do to a certain extent. When you spend a little more on name brand items, along with that name comes better quality. The JVC VCR I use to capture VHS tapes is fifteen years old and still working great. I can’t imagine a, you know, Daewoo unit lasting as long. But the problem with… (read more)

It’s been a long time since I attended a pop culture-style convention (think “Comic-Con”), and I was super excited to hear GalaxyCon was coming to Oklahoma City Memorial Day weekend. Susan, I, and the kids all spent some time at GalaxyCon this weekend and boy was there a lot of things to see and do! Like many conventions, GalaxyCon has many events around the country each year and the Oklahoma City event took place at the Oklahoma City Convention Center in the heart of Oklahoma City, just south of the Paycom center and connected to the Omni Hotel. Last year… (read more)