129 stories from Fragments
The story of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and the story behind the movie are fairly well-known. As many people know, this is the first full-length animated film and the firs…
In a style similar to my previous blog post series “The Films of Pixar” and “The Great ’90s Animated Film Project,” I will be embarking on a new series of blog …
Note: This post contains spoilers for all ten seasons of “Law and Order: Criminal Intent.” There was a point in time when the “Law and Order” dominated NBC’s sc…
Currently the hospitals of Chicago, as well as other cities in Illinois, are seeing such a large amount of flu patients coming in that some are among the 11 hospitals in Illinois that will o…
For the past week-and-a-half I’ve been visiting my mother and sister at their home in the Milwaukee area. This isn’t abnormal at all since I usually visited them during breaks fr…
It’s Thanksgiving in Delta Township, Michigan and the parking lot at Wal-Mart is packed at a little after 9 p.m.. The big box retailer decided to start its Black Friday sales at 8 p.m.…
I love Charles Isherwood’s theater reviews. I don’t always agree with him and there are moments where I do think, “No, Charles. That was not a good move,” but overall…
This is a quick post to answer a question I keep getting in recent days. That question is if Michigan will pass Proposal 2, which would make collective bargaining constitutionally protected …
In the past month, the debate over the old Prentice Women’s Hospital seems to have fired up again. According to Deanna Isaacs of the Chicago Reader, Northwestern University sent out an…
In 1985, Disney would release an animated film based on Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydian. It would get the first PG rating to ever be given to a Walt Disney film and it woul…
Disney has a history of taking stories and books and changing them to make them more family friendly. Cinderella lost the cutting off of body parts and added in talking mice. Robin Hood had …
Previously: Mulan, The Swan Princess, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, The Prince of Egypt, Anastasia, Quest for Camelot, Tarzan, The Iron Giant, The King and I, The Lion K…
In the past six months I’ve had the unfortunate pleasure of watching two colleges in two different states go through a process to eliminate various programs. The two colleges are Colum…
At one point, the Brown Line of the Chicago “L” had numerous ads urging riders to do something to save Bertrand Goldberg’s Prentice Women’s Hospital, which used to be…
Previously: Mulan, The Swan Princess, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, The Prince of Egypt, Anastasia, Quest for Camelot, Tarzan, The Iron Giant The King and I The final po…
Catharsis is what the Greek tragedians wanted at the end of the play. The word in Greek is κάθαÏσις. It means to purge or clean. In this case it means a purging o…
On April 1, I became eligible to upgrade from my then-current phone, an HTC Evo 4G. I had many problems with the Evo, including its battery life, small hard drive space, tendency to put apps…
After I moved back to Iowa in 2010 I got a job working as a sales associate for Younkers, a department store that anchored the local shopping mall. The department I frequently worked in was …
Previously: Mulan, The Swan Princess, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, The Prince of Egypt, Anastasia, Quest for Camelot, Tarzan, The Iron Giant Shall I tell you what I thi…
When I glimpse at the homepage on Facebook, which is currently closed on my browser while I have Reuters, the Tribune and the New York Times open, I tend to see a lot of news-related links t…
For the past two weeks there has been an uproar over Lego’s new line, Lego Friends. The line is targeted towards girls and includes characters that are vetranarians and horse groomers.…
If you aren’t friends with people from Iowa, you may have missed Stephen Bloom’s Atlantic piece on Iowa and the fury it is inciting. The issue is mostly that Bloom, who is a teac…
I realize it might be my ignorance because I stopped seeing four plays a week more than a year-and-a-half ago, but I have no clue what the term “Chicago-style” theater means. I k…
The big Chicago media news today is that the Sun-Times will now be using a “metered method” for views of their articles. Readers will get 20 free views before they will require a…
La Cage Aux Folles, is coming to Chicago at the end of the month for a run from Dec. 20"Jan. 1. I will miss it since I will be in Milwaukee for a much-needed vacation, even though it is one …
