Author: thatbobmadison_0lq5ty

The Freeze Will Chill You!

Just finished a splendid YA novel by R.D. Stevens. Good science fiction is never really about the future: it is a funhouse mirror to the present. Some writers use this to poke fun at contemporary mores; others, more serious minded, issue warnings. Such is the case with R. D. Stevens’ magisterial The Freeze. Set in […]

Groucho: The Life and Times of Julius Henry Marx by Stefan Kanfer

  Few figures throw a mightier shadow over the 20th Century cultural landscape than Groucho Marx (1890-1977), born Julius Henry Marx to assimilating German Jews in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.  With three of his four brothers – Chico, Harpo and Zeppo – he created several of Hollywood’s greatest comedies, and, as a single […]

American Cornball: A Laffopedic Guide to the Formerly Funny, by Christopher Miller

American Cornball: A Laffopedic Guide to the Formerly Funny, by Christopher Miller came as a delightful surprise. Arranged alphabetically, Miller enumerates the countless tropes so frequent in American comedy circa 1900-1966, and why they were funny and what they tell us about Americans of old. Miller creates an artificial cutoff of 1966, citing anecdotally that […]

Scroll to top