I cannot tell you how excited I am about this one! On Saturday, October 10th, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., I will be at the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago for A Frightful October Afternoon, a very special event celebrating the release of my new book, 40 Years, 40 Horror Films, from Eckhartz Press. There will be a meet and greet, an interactive discussion and Q&A, and I’ll be selling and signing copies of the book afterward. We’ll take pictures, hang out, talk

The movies have really gone to the dogs in 2026. And I mean that as a compliment. With the release of the new Brad Pitt survival adventure Heart of the Beast, featuring a very memorable dog named Odin, it suddenly occurred to me that this has been an unusually strong year for dogs at the movies. I'm talking about actual dogs, CGI dogs, animated dogs, heroic dogs, vicious dogs, funny dogs and, in a couple of cases, dogs that are easily more interesting than most of the human b

To say I am unbelievably excited about what is happening at The Midway Drive-In on Saturday, September 19th is an understatement. This is going to be one hell of a night. We’re talking about an honest-to-God dusk-to-dawn horror movie marathon at one of my favorite places in the world, featuring four of the greatest, funniest, scariest, craziest, and most entertaining horror movies of the 1980s. There will be horror vendors, vintage trailers, old concession ads, merchandise, m

Conan O’Brien is one of my favorite comic voices of all time, and I think at this point we can safely stop referring to him simply as a late-night talk show host. He is certainly one of the greatest late-night hosts ever, but the guy has now been doing this for so long, in so many different forms, that he has become something much bigger than that: a genuine American comedy institution. And the wonderful thing is that he is still really, really funny. With the third season of

I love Anthony Bourdain. I should probably just say that right up front. There are certain people you admire because they're talented, certain people whose work entertains you, and then occasionally there are people who genuinely change the way you look at the world. Anthony Bourdain was one of those people for me. I thought he was funny, brilliant, profane, adventurous, incredibly well-read, brutally honest and completely original. He was a chef, an author, a traveler, a tel

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