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(Blame SamuraiFrog for this one, folks — he gave me the title! I deny all accountability. Except for the part where I write the following tale. Which I’m doing stream-of-conscious, right off the top of my head. No editing.) Lore has it that there is one, and only one, substance that can stop Superman dead in his tracks. Kryptonite. Irradiated fragments of rock hurled into the deep dark of space when his planet exploded, Kryptonite’s radiation and other qualities unique to its place of origin make it near-lethal whenever Superman comes in contact with it. So, of course, every oneDown the rabbit hole….

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This is a repost of something I wrote some years ago. Back in my BlogSpot days this post was a regular driver of search-engine traffic to my blog; I’m not sure if that’s the case now or not, but it can always bear a repeating! Anyhow, in my Something for Thursday series, I’ve lately posted several Grand Marches from various operas, and now I’m thinking a bit of the wide variety of music that falls under the general category of the “March”. You have Grand Marches, as I’ve noted above, that involve long musical scoring to big set pieces inDown the rabbit hole….

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    Sheila O’Malley has a typically lovely post about Frank Sinatra, whose birthday is today. I started composing a comment on her site, but then I realized that my thoughts were getting away from me, so I decided to bring it over here. Sinatra has been a part of my universe for as long as I can remember; my parents owned a bunch of his records, which were on constant rotation in my childhood. I remember his distinctive sound, sometimes clear and sometimes with just a hint of rasp (depending on what he wanted to express), his sense ofDown the rabbit hole….

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  Sam Seaborn: There are a lot of hungry people in the world, Mal, and none of them are hungry ‘cause we went to the moon. None of them are colder and certainly none of them are dumber ‘cause we went to the moon. Mallory O’Brian: And we went to the moon. Do we really have to go to Mars? Sam Seaborn: Yes. Mallory O’Brian: Why? Sam Seaborn: ‘Cause it’s next. ‘Cause we came out of the cave, and we looked over the hill and we saw fire; and we crossed the ocean and we pioneered the west, and weDown the rabbit hole….

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I first wrote this post in 2008, back in the days of Byzantium’s Shores. I repost it now on the occasion of Harrison Ford’s 80th birthday.   Sheila waxes poetic on one of my favorite movies, Witness. (Yeah, I didn’t rank it highly enough.) Here’s Sheila: Let’s look at how delicately things are set up in this film – so much so that you don’t notice them. John Book has recovered (somewhat) from his wound and Samuel Lapp takes him on a tour of the farm. He shows him the well. (“It goes … it makes … it goes …” soDown the rabbit hole….

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This is a repost, but I’m adding something at the end. I’ve occasionally seen comment that JRR Tolkien’s poetry in The Lord of the Rings is generally weak, but from my perspective, it’s one of my favorite aspects of the book, and I find myself enjoying the verse in LOTR more each time I read it. My favorite poem in the book is almost certainly the “walking song” that is quoted a number of times throughout, and each time has a variation to reflect the events surrounding it and everything that has happened. It begins like this, at the end of TheDown the rabbit hole….

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Sheila O’Malley re-shared her post on the anniversary of Roger Ebert’s passing today, and I thought, why not do the same? Here’s what I posted the day he died. I still miss his writing. There’s something about those Chicago newspaper men…. I was trying to figure out something to write on the passing today of Roger Ebert, but nothing was leaping to mind, so I figured I’d just repost my original thoughts, from January 2012, on his book, Life Itself. I have loved and admired Ebert since I was nine, and his output of thoughtful writing even in the faceDown the rabbit hole….

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A repost, with some revisions and additions throughout, to accompany my review of NO TIME TO DIE, which is coming tomorrow. I wrote this more than ten years ago, and if anything, my esteem for ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE has only increased since then. I rewatched the film on one leg of our recent journey from Buffalo to Honolulu, and the film still holds up. Here we go. Additions to the post’s original text will be in blockquoted offsets. Far up! Far out! Far more!!! Sometimes I change my mind about movies. Sometimes I don’t. Some movies meant aDown the rabbit hole….

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 A few additions to this annual repost!It’s time for my annual repost of Just Some Of The Ways The Wife Has Made Me Happy Over The Years, on the occasion of her birthday! Obviously this past year has been particularly memorable, as we worked to weather the current storm together. I wouldn’t have wanted any other person at my side through all this crap, and even if the past year hasn’t left us with a whole lot of new memories of things we did together, it at least taught me new lessons in how to be together. Also, while we were marriedDown the rabbit hole….

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(A repost from exactly ten years ago, because today is the SIXTIETH anniversary of John Glenn’s flight on Friendship 7! I’ve fixed a bit of wording and removed a dead link.) Sixty years ago today, astronaut John Glenn launched in a spacecraft called Friendship 7 and became the first American to orbit the Earth. Here’s a wonderful documentary, assembled by NASA after the mission’s end, detailing the events of Glenn’s mission, from pre-launch preparations to Glenn’s post-splashdown arrival on the aircraft carrier. I watched this film way back in third grade, when our class was doing a research project onDown the rabbit hole….