A Search for the Heroic in Lovecraftian Fiction, Part One Novelist Jonathan Ryan recently wrote an essay, “Meaning to the Madness,” that was largely devoted to exploring the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft. Teeming Brain head honcho Matt Cardin wrote a response. There was then a Teeming Brain podcast (the first ever) about the whole…
Tag: television
Rod Serling on writing, creativity, and the source of ideas
In this brief and brilliant excerpt from a series of talks about writing for television (recorded at Ithaca College circa 1972, according to the FAQ at RodSerling.com), Twilight Zone and Night Gallery creator Rod Serling talks about the source of creative ideas. In doing so, he manages to pack more intellectually and creatively stimulating goodness…
Recommended Reading 19
This week’s recommended links and readings include: a mainstream university economist’s take on why America is economically (and societally) screwed; a classic article/essay about the Rolling Stones and the Altamont tragedy and its defining impact on a generation; a former television writer’s account of what happened when his meeting with Al Franken for a prospective…
Why America is not the greatest country in the world (anymore)
If you want some context and commentary to go with this video excerpt — which does a fine job of achieving maximum power right on its own, in my opinion — read this.
‘The Twilight Zone’ for teachers: ‘Changing of the Guard’
In 1962 The Twilight Zone ran an episode titled “The Changing of the Guard.” It starred Donald Pleasence (in his first American television appearance) as an elderly literature professor who is forced into retirement and decides to kill himself on Christmas Eve when he’s overcome by the sense that his entire life and career have…
New Outer Limits: “Stream of Consciousness”
If you, like me, are feeling more and more haunted in our information-glutted age of universal online connectedness by T.S. Eliot’s famous lines “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” then maybe you’ll find this 1997 episode from Season 3 of The New Outer…
Bad grammar on PBS: The fall of civilization?
Last night my wife and I watched the new National Geographic documentary “Quest for the Lost Maya” on PBS. At one point the narrator uttered this sentence: Though badly decomposed from the acidic soil, Stephanie can still make out the remains of a human skull, and arm and leg bones. The Maya created a great…
Near-death experiences, the “life review,” and — Desperate Housewives?
My wife is a Desperate Housewives fan, and we just finished watching last night’s (March 11) episode, and I’m here to report that I was fairly thunderstruck by the final scene. This is the episode that ends with the beloved character of Mike Delfino being murdered (a development that was revealed/leaked to the public ahead…
Doomer fringe converging on the mainstream (Headlines from the Meltdown)
Cardin comments: You know life on planet earth has gotten weird when conventionally respectable mainstream news sources start running stories that sound like what would have formerly been dismissed as the ravings of a conspiracy nut. But — and this is a crucial point — is anybody really listening? Case in point: an analysis piece…
Planet of the Dead, or Is dehumanization so bad?
One of the most nightmarish things about a dark age is the degradation that it entails for life’s overall tone, not least in the dehumanization that occurs when a people’s intellectual, emotional, moral, spiritual, political, social, and cultural life in general is reduced to a ghastly level of brutishness and ignorance. As is now plainly…