If you've spent any time in Chicago this summer, you already know why I felt compelled to put this list together. This has been one brutal stretch of weather. Late June and July have been unbelievably hot, ridiculously humid, and just plain miserable. We've had day after day after day in the 90s, with heat indices climbing into the triple digits. You walk outside and it feels like somebody threw a hot, wet blanket over your head. The humidity is so thick you can practically c

It's time once again for The Flashback Weekend Chicago Horror Convention, and if you've been reading my work or listening to me for any length of time, you already know how much this convention means to me. It isn't just my favorite weekend of the summer. It has become my favorite weekend of the entire year. I look forward to it twelve months in advance, and every year it somehow manages to exceed my already ridiculously high expectations. This year's Flashback Weekend takes

Hey, I have an idea! Let's watch people with way more money, way more fame, and way bigger egos than any of us could ever imagine just absolutely go at each other. I gotta tell you, sometimes I love it. I really do. There’s something endlessly entertaining about rivalries in show business. Always has been. And part of that is because entertainment, at its core, is built on ego. Let’s be honest. You don’t become a movie star or a rock god or a legendary TV personality without

Springtime…man, I gotta tell you, there are few things in life that just immediately lift your mood the way spring does. It really is one of those universal, almost magical transitions that everybody feels, whether you’re a nature person or not. You go from that long, brutal, gray, miserable winter (especially here in Chicago where winter feels like it lasts about eleven and a half months) to that first day where the sun actually feels warm on your face, and suddenly everythi

When you stop and think about it, we’ve been scared of artificial intelligence and robots for a hell of a lot longer than most people realize. Way before ChatGPT , way before OpenAI , and Google DeepMind and Anthropic , way before people started throwing around phrases like “the singularity” and “machine learning” and “algorithmic control," storytellers, novelists, playwrights, filmmakers, scientists, philosophers, and regular everyday people were already asking the same bas

Alright… this one’s personal. And when I say personal, I mean right down to the bone. Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease are brutal, relentless, heartbreaking afflictions. There’s no poetry in them. There’s no “silver lining.” They do enormous damage not only to the person who is suffering, but to everyone orbiting around that person—family, friends, caregivers, loved ones who slowly watch someone they recognize disappear in front of them. I’ve lived this. Dementia runs in my f