In Philip K. Dick’s short story, “What the Dead Men Say” (1964), businessman Louis Sarapis dies unexpectedly. According to the terms of his ...

Oscar Wilde reportedly said, “Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.” Typical Wildean wit, ...

As is well-known, James Hilton's Lost Horizon (1933) is the origin of Shangri-La, the fictional utopia nestled high in the remote mount...

Depending upon which pop cultural dilettante you choose to read, “Pre-Code Cinema” is confined to the first few years of the sound era, the ...

Filmed in the first half of 1998, released in 1999, The Matrix is now 25 years old. The movie that was once considered the exemplar of avan...

After roughly a decade, Angelique Pettyjohn resumed her career as a supporting actress in the movies. In 1979, for instance, she appeared as...

Unmentioned in any account of her life that I have come across, Angelique Pettyjohn had been married and divorced before she married Otho A....

According to Dr. Flynn, Dorothy Perrins graduated high school early, at age 17, immediately moved to Las Vegas, and immediately became a sho...

They say rock ‘n’ roll will never die. If so, then neither will the myths about it. Among the most persistent myths are those that claim dur...

“Who can take tomorrow / Dip it in a dream / Separate the sorrow / And collect up all the cream?”, asks Bill, the candy store proprietor (pl...

Assay office   [from Wikipedia ]: “Institutions set up to assay (test the purity of) precious metals . . . . often done to protect consumers...

Several years ago, I published a blog post on songs that feature whistling. At the time, I wrote about the many significations of whistling...