Showing Tag: "the" (Show all posts)

THE FLASH: MY REVIEW

Posted by John Allen Small on Thursday, June 22, 2023, In : Review 

Okay. So… The Flash.


Wow…


Just… wow.


All right, let’s be honest: Yes, the film has its faults. And I’ll get to those in just a bit. But for the moment…


When you’ve a guy who spent most of his first sixty revolutions around Ol’ Sol subsisting on a fairly steady diet of superhero comic books and TV shows and movies and related novelizations and tie-ins… when your earliest childhood memories are of sitting on your daddy’s knee at the age of 3 watching episodes of the orig...


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A BIRTHDAY LETTER TO MY GRANDDAUGHTERS

Posted by John Allen Small on Thursday, June 1, 2023, In : Life 

Dear Zoey and Willow:


I realize that you are both too young at the moment to understand most of what I’m about to tell you. Zoey, after all, won’t celebrate her fifth birthday until late October - and Willow is only a couple of months old now as I write this. (Roughly the same age that your Uncle Josh was when we moved here from Illinois all those years ago, now that I think about it.)


Even so, it occurred to me the other day that now was the right time to write this letter to you - and...


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FROM KOOL-AID TOPS TO THE BIG DOGMA: ADIOS, PAPA NEZ

Posted by John Allen Small on Wednesday, December 15, 2021, In : Tribute 
(Micky and Mike: The Final Concert)


Looking back on it now, a little over half a century after the fact, I suppose it does seem a little.. well, okay, silly.


But at the time it made perfect sense to a seven-year-old boy hoping to get even the quickest glimpse of one of my childhood heroes. Because that’s the way a seven-year-old boy’s mind works.


Or, at least, it was the way this seven-year-old boy’s mind worked. Given that I was rarely if ever accompanied by any of my buddies from the...


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HOLY TOO MUCH TIME ON MY HANDS, BATMAN!

Posted by John Allen Small on Friday, August 21, 2020, In : Pop Culture 

A Complete List (I Think) Of All The "Holy" Expletives

Uttered By Burt Ward (a.k.a. Robin, The Boy Wonder)


This is one of those silly little endeavors that grew out of another project I was undertaking at the time...


I was endeavoring to put together a chronological timeline for the 1960s Batman television series - similar to those for certain other pop culture franchises prepared over the years by such friends and colleagues as Win Scott Eckert, Rick Lai and Matthew Baugh - that would incorp...


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A CLASSIC SONG RECONSIDERED...

Posted by John Allen Small on Thursday, September 7, 2017, In : Pop Culture 
“Eleanor Rigby” is one of the most popular of the hundreds of songs written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and recorded by the Beatles. It is also one of the best examples of their growing maturity as lyricists at the time, a song containing poetic qualities not found in such earlier works as “She Loves You” or “I Want To Hold Your Hand.”

Unlike so many of those earlier compositions, which for all their energy were merely variations of the traditional love song, “Eleanor Rigby...

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SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT AWARDS...

Posted by John Allen Small on Wednesday, August 26, 2015, In : Opinion 

One of the big news stories of the past week revolved around James Harrison, the pro football player who launched a national debate when he announced that he had made his young sons return sports participation trophies they had received because he felt they rewarded involvement, as opposed to actual accomplishment.


Harrison got a fair share of “atta boys” from certain corners, but he also caught no small amount of flack from others who apparently felt that his decision fell just short of...


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THE KINGSTON TRIO: A WORLD OF MUSIC

Posted by John Allen Small on Thursday, November 7, 2013, In : Pop Culture 

(Above left: The poster at the entryway of the Kingston Trio traveling exhibit at the American Banjo Museum in Oklahoma City through May of 2014. Above right: KT founding member Bob Shane holding copies of both the paperback and hardback editions of the anthology The Green Hornet: Still At Large, which contains my story "Bad Man's Blunder" in which The Hornet meets Bob, Nick Reynolds, John Stewart and Dean Reilly. Below: Just a few of the great KT albums released over the years.)



Longtime r...


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You Celebrate Your Way,I'll Celebrate Mine...

Posted by John Allen Small on Thursday, January 12, 2012, In : Pop Culture 
(Now here's a Marx Brothers movie I would have liked to see...)


In spite of my best intentions – not to mention repeated vows that I most certainly will never let it happen again – every now and then I find myself inexorably drawn into online debates about topics that are of interest to me


The latest example occurred just after Christmas, when I became the target of ridicule hurled in my direction by  someone I could only assume is too young to remember a time when personal computers were...


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From The Archives: "ELEANOR RIGBY" RECONSIDERED

Posted by John Allen Small on Thursday, June 9, 2011, In : Pop Culture 
(Note: This is a paper I wrote for my Introduction to Poetry class in college back in 1988. The assignment, as I recall, had to do with using what we had learned about delving into the deeper meaning of poems and applying it to popular songs; the professor assigned each of us a different song and, knowing that I was a Beatles fan, he gave me "Eleanor Rigby". He made a point of saying later that he didn't really agree with my interpretation of the piece, but gave me an "A" anyway. I don't know...
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About Me


John Allen Small John A. Small is an award-winning newspaper journalist, columnist and broadcaster whose work has been honored by the Oklahoma Press Association, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press, the National Newspaper Association, and the Oklahoma Education Association. He and his wife Melissa were married in 1986; they have two sons, Joshua Orrin (born 1991) and William Ian (born 1996). Mr. Small is the News Editor and columnist for the Johnston County Capital-Democrat, a weekly newspaper headquartered in Tishomingo, OK. He obtained his nickname, "Bard of the Lesser Boulevards," from a journalism colleague - the late Phil Byrum - in recognition of the success of his popular newspaper column, "Small Talk." (In addition to the many awards the column itself has received over the years, a radio version of "Small Talk" earned an award for "Best Small Market Commentary" from the Society of Professional Journalists in 1998.) John was born in Oklahoma City in 1963; lived in the Bradley-Bourbonnais-Kankakee area of Illinois for most of the next 28 years (with brief sojourns in Texas and Athens, Greece, thrown in to break up the monotony); then returned to his native state in 1991, where he currently resides in the Tishomingo/Ravia area. He graduated from Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High School in 1981, and received his bachelor's degree in journalism from Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais in 1991. The years between high school and college were a period frought with numerous exploits and misadventures, some of which have become the stuff of legend; nobody was hurt along the way, however, which should count for something. In addition to his professional career as a journalist he has published two short story collections: "Days Gone By: Legends And Tales Of Sipokni West" (2007), a collection of western stories; and "Something In The Air" (2011), a more eclectic collection. He was also a contributor to the 2005 Locus Award-nominated science fiction anthology "Myths For The Modern Age: Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton Universe," edited by Win Scott Eckert. In additon he has written a stage play and a self-published cookbook; served as project editor for a book about the JFK assassination entitled "The Men On The Sixth Floor"; and has either published or posted on the Internet a number of essays, stories and poems. He has also won writing awards from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the National Library of Poetry. He is a past president of the Johnston County Chamber of Commerce in Tishomingo; was a charter member and past president of the Johnston County Reading Council, the local literacy advocacy and "friends of the library" organization; served as Johnston County's first-ever Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator in 1994-95; served two terms as chairman of the Johnston County (OK) Democratic Party; and has taught journalism classes for local Boy Scout Merit Badge Fairs. He is a member of the New Wold Newton Meteorics Society.

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