I can’t remember after so many years if it was for a book or a movie, or possibly even a TV show, but years I ago I read a review in which the writer began by saying that the best review he could ever imagine sharing would consist of just a single word: “Wow!”

That single word review pretty well sums up my reaction to Win Scott Eckert’s latest addition to the ever-expanding mythology created well over a century ago by my all-time favorite storyteller, Edgar Rice Burroughs. I’ve wri...

(Digital Art by Me!)

Still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Nathaniel Rackham (Smoky Gulch High School Class of 1957 - Go Wombats!) stumbled into the kitchen one Sunday morning after sleeping in late and gave his wife of sixty years a peck on the cheek as she prepared breakfast. 

Allene smiled at her husband in response as she stirred the corned beef hash she was browning in the skillet. But her smile faded as she noticed the unusual expression etched upon Nathaniel’s face.

“Something wron...

(NOTE: On New Year’s Eve, my Facebook friend posted a photograph of Alan Young in the final scene of the classic George Pal adaptation of The Time Machine, and it reminded me of a newspaper column I wrote back in 2019 that was partly inspired by that same scene. A quick check indicated that I apparently never got around to sharing that column here, for whatever reason, and because Arnold reminded me of it in the first place - and because my feelings on the subject haven’t really changed i...

The story you are about to read is true. The names have been changed to protect…

Well, let’s just be upfront and honest about it, shall we? The names have been changed to protect ME. 

I mean, yeah, sure, okay, it all happened a little over four decades ago and roughly 900 miles (give or take) from here - but these people are still around, and they know where to find me. So why take chances?

Anyway...

When I was a teenager in Illinois attending Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High Schoo...

I reckon there are going to be some who won’t much like some of what I have to say this time. Apologies for that in advance; it is never my intention to deliberately offend, even on those occasions when it might actually be justified. (Hey, it happens…)

But one thing I learned from my late parents is that, whether we like it or not, there are times when giving offense simply cannot be avoided - and I suspect this is going to be one of those times. But seeing how this is America and I hav...

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...

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...

To be honest, I’m really not sure what might have prompted it.

It might have been that photograph we ran on the front page of last week’s Johnston County Sentinel of the Stay Golden Inn, the new Airbnb located in the building that had been the home of the Johnston County Capital-Democrat for more than a century. The fact that the historic building has been given both a long-overdue renovation and a new purpose pleases more than I can say, and I wish nothing but success for new owners Car...

Sometimes I just stand there, staring at myself in the mirror and wondering how I keep getting myself into these things...

This past Monday night I was here at the office, scouring the digital landscape in search of a possible topic or two for my column in this week’s issue of the newspaper, when I stumbled upon an online debate over the merits - or, in the minds of some, the perceived lack thereof - of the television sitcom The Big Bang Theory.

Full disclosure before going any further: I w...

(Note: This is a newspaper column that I wrote last year, and which I had fully intended to post here earlier - but things happen, you know?)

I recently had the opportunity to re-watch one of my all-time favorite motion pictures, and was reminded yet again of just how great a film it is.

American Graffiti, George Lucas’ second theatrical film, was one of the first films of its era to prove the value in “word of mouth promotion.“ Dimly viewed by the studio execs at the time - who famousl...

While having dinner out this past Saturday night with my family, I happened to run into my old friend Julian Frye for the first time in what seemed like forever. 

He looked a little green around the gills and wasn’t acting like his usual flamboyant, “I’m the world’s last authentic playboy” self - and as anyone who has known Julian for as long as I have will almost certainly quickly attest, such behavior on his part is always cause for alarm.

“Why so glum, chum?” I asked him. �...

Today would have been Mom and Dad’s 60th wedding anniversary. They were together just short of 55 years when Mom passed away in 2017; Dad joined her a little over a year later, just a few weeks short of their 56th anniversary.

Theirs was a union that weathered many storms - too many of them, I’m afraid, the result of three thoughtless young sons who hadn’t quite figured out yet just what kind of sacrifices their parents were willing to make for them. I would be an adult myself before I ...

Lighthouse At Casco Bay, Portland, Maine (Photo by Yours Truly)

I wanted to. I really did.

There I was, driving along U.S. Highway 22 west on the evening of Aug. 5, through the most torrential downpours that I had seen in many a moon. It was the longest single day we would spend on the road during this year’s summer vacation - a 12-hour, 682-mile trek that began that morning in Maine and would ultimately end at the Doubletree Convention Center in Cranberry, Penn., that night - and to be h...

If there is one thing that each new generation has in common with the one that immediately preceded it, it is the tendency for members of the older generation to rant and rave about how easy the current crop of youngsters has it compared to the days of their own youth. 

We all grew up with the stories about how our fathers had to travel for miles in the snow to get to school and back - walking uphill both directions, naturally. 

Or how their favorite toy one Christmas was a stick that had f...

Recently I was invited to review an advance reader’s copy of a new novel scheduled for release later this year. 

This isn’t the first time I’d been afforded this honor; one of my favorite perks that comes with being a newspaper columnist has been the number of books, fiction and non-fiction alike, that I’ve received over the years from both authors and publishers. 

In this particular instance, however, the invitation held special meaning for Yours Truly, and - being an unapologetic book...

Today's TV History lesson, prompted by a discussion I saw on a Facebook page this morning:

No, Mary Tyler Moore on The Dick Van Dyke Show was not the first woman to wear pants on TV. Yes, Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance both wore them on I Love Lucy. I'm pretty sure you can find some other examples of pre-Petrie panted pulchritude as well, if one wishes to take the time to investigate. Yet it was very much Mary's pants which DID become an issue with some sponsors and network execs.

The reason...

..So I've been reading about this made-for-streaming series reportedly in the works that is a sequel to the George Lucas-Ron Howard film Willow, and I keep wondering if it will make references to the Lucas-Chris Claremont trilogy of follow-up novels. I personally liked those books a great deal, but I suspect they're now going to be shunted off into non-canon like the Star Wars Legends material.

In any event, an online conversation I started on the subject earlier today brought this response ...

Today, March 17, is Saint Patrick's Day. Which means that it is once agan time for my annual holiday-themed public service announcement:

REAL Irish folks don’t care whether or not you wear green on Saint Patrick’s Day, and they don’t go around pinching those who don’t. So stop it!

I don’t have to wear green every year on March 17, or eat a bowl of corned beef and cabbage, to prove that I’m Irish. My maternal grandmother’s maiden name was Murphy; you just don’t get any more Irish...

I’ve been taking part over the past day or so in some interesting discussions on a couple of different FB sites regarding the nature of the Batman character, initiated by an article in which Michael Keaton - in my mind still the BEST cinematic Batman, and that is not a subject which I care to debate - decided he did not want to return for a second sequel after the franchise was turned over to Joel Schumacher. At some point I decided perhaps I might distill my thoughts in those conversations...

December 1995. 

I was not quite six months into my two-year sojourn as News Editor for the Durant (OK) Daily Democrat, commuting back and forth each day from our home near Tishomingo and wondering during the drive each direction what I was going to get my wife for Christmas. Seems I have that problem every year, but this particular year it seemed especially difficult to decide.

Hoping for some guidance, one evening at supper I threw caution to the wind and asked Melissa point-blank: “Is t...

Well, it's that time of year again.

I refer, of course, to the perpetual hullabaloo that has been raging for a number of years now over the use of the phrase “Happy Holidays.” 

To the best of my memory (which I’ll be the first to admit is quite often questionable at best), the brouhaha began when some well-meaning Christians started voicing their displeasure over the use of “Happy Holidays” by retailers during the gift-buying season. 

Their argument, as I understand it, was that ...

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...

Like a lot of other Americans, he gets a lump in his throat every year about this time.

Unlike most of them, however, pride has little to do with it.

He hadn't actually wanted to go into the military in the first place. He rebelled against it for a long time, mainly because it had been his parents' idea at a time when he - like all teenagers - spent most of his time thumbing his nose at his parents' ideas. 

It was his life, by golly, and he was going to live it his way... even if it meant ...

It occurred to me today - as I listened to the one embarrassingly over-politicized moment in an otherwise moving and respectful Veterans Day ceremony here in my community - that the thing that makes America possibly the greatest nation on earth is not the things we have already accomplished. 

And it is certainly NOT the status quo. If the past few years have taught me anything, it is that Peter Tork of the Monkees hit the nail on the head when he questioned the validity of the old saying "my...

I've been a fan of the 1966-67 television version of the Green Hornet and Kato for literally as long as I can remember; some of my earliest memories are of sitting on my father's knee watching the show with Dad during its original ABC-TV run when I was 3 years old in 1966. That being the case, I like to think I know a little bit about the character portrayed by Van Williams, and for that reason have followed Moonstone's series of Hornet tales with great interest. (I even had the great good fo...

Today - Monday, Sept. 27, 2021 - would have been my father’s 83rd birthday.

A little more than three years later, it still feels strange to put it that way: “would have been.” Dad died roughly a month before his 80th birthday, and almost a year and a half after the passing of the woman he promised to love, honor and cherish on a warm August day in 1962. 

He kept that promise, and so did she, and they made doing so look so easy - a fact that I probably took for granted for most of my chi...

Many moons ago - when I was still a young nipper, filled to the brim with optimism and idealism and probably one or two other positive “isms” - my standard answer whenever someone would ask me if I had any pet peeves went something like this: “Oh, good heavens, no. I have no pet peeves; I wouldn’t know what to feed them.”

Later, after I became a husband and the father of two young boys (yes, in that order, even though it wasn’t necessarily the norm at the time), I would typically...

Back in 1971, while awaiting the fate of his first feature film - the dystopian science fiction parable THX-1138 - and before being inspired to begin work on what eventually became Star Wars, writer-director George Lucas was challenged by his friend and mentor, Francis Ford Coppola, to write a script that would appeal to the larger, mainstream moviegoing public.

Though reluctant at first, Lucas eventually embraced the idea (no doubt in part an “I’ll show him” response to Coppola) and go...

Today would have been my mother and father’s 59th wedding anniversary. Much love going out to them today.

There’s a backstory to their nuptials - one which I’m certain is most interesting but which, after all these years, I am still only partially aware of. Apparently Mom had been engaged to another fellow at some point, but broke it off; whether she broke it off before meeting Dad, or her decision was in fact the result of meeting Dad, is something I’ve never learned. Ultimately it ...

Sipokni West – the REAL Sipokni West, that is – is located in the small town of Reagan, Oklahoma, approximately two hours south of Oklahoma City and just a few miles north of my hometown of Ravia (the childhood home of Gene Autry). Designed as both tourist attraction and motion picture set, this recreation of an Old West town is the brainchild of a buddy of mine, Reagan resident Johnny Shackleford – sort of a hometown Will Rogers, rarely seen without a twinkle in his eye or a funny stor...

I love road trips. Always have.

I guess that’s one more thing we can blame on my late parents. Many of my happiest memories from childhood revolve around the road trips my family took - not just the traditional summer vacations, but those unplanned, spur-of-the-moment treks we would make whenever Dad got the itch. 

One such voyage in particular stands out in my memory almost as if it happened yesterday. 

It was in the summer of 1969. Mom was still expecting my youngest brother, who would...

A friend and colleague of mine who lives in Texas recently persuaded me to give a listen to the latest studio album by the rock band Styx, entitled Crash Of The Crown.

Now understand that the friend in question is one with whom I have more agreements than disagreements when it comes to such things as music, books, movies, et. al. For the most part our tastes seem to be fairly similar, which for me is always gratifying because my personal tastes in general always seem to run counter to that o...

It’s probably not the sort of thing a lifelong science fiction nerd like Yours Truly ought to be admitting publicly. There are fellow nerds out there who will almost certainly demand that I turn in my old Buck Rogers secret decoder ring and surrender myself for interrogation by Darth Vader’s sinister Death Star probe droid once the news gets out.

I’ll just have to take my chances, I suppose. After all, I’m the guy who years ago got chased out of a Star Tre...

I wish I knew what I thought I knew when I thought I knew everything…

At some point - generally around the time its members hit adolescence - every generation comes to believe that it is smarter, better and/or more “with it” (whatever THAT means) than the generation that preceded it. And all too often, that belief is expressed in a way that leaves members of the previous generation confused, hurt and/or angry.

We’ve all been guilty of it at some time or another, whether or not we want t...

So somebody today on a DC Comics fans page asked fellow members to post their five favorite “DC Events” of all time. And then provided a list of storylines that included Crisis on Infinite Earths and all the post-Crisis usual suspects (Death of Superman, Nightfall, Infinite Crisis, Blackest Night, Final Crisis, et al).

My initial response was to yawn and mutter under my breath, “Not this stuff again.” Then I gave the question some deeper thought and - being the rapidly aging, unapolo...

All his life he’s heard the stories. 

The stories are all he has, to be honest. They are his only link to those long-ago days. He was there, but he doesn’t remember any of it; he was just a babe, after all. The first of a family’s next generation. A generation which, it was supposed, would have the best of everything this nation - this world - might have to offer.

That was the promise. That was the dream. ...

Next Tuesday, June 1, I will observe my 58th birthday.

All right, all together now: “BIIIIIIIIIIIGGG DEAL!”

Well, yeah, for me it actually kind of is a big deal. On a couple of levels.

For one thing, it further puts the lie to a couple of teachers I had back in high school who, for whatever reason, fully expected me to have joined the Choir Invisible long before now. To this day I’m not really sure just why they had me, of all people, pegged for an early demise. But they did.

Maybe it has s...

I was driving back to work after lunch this afternoon and heard a fellow on the radio say that today is National Brothers Day.

There was a time when I would have happily celebrated my relationship with my siblings but, alas, those days are gone...

I am the oldest of three brothers. We were close growing up, but life happens and things change. The middle brother got himself into some pretty serious legal trouble, but seemed on the way to turning his life around when he died of a sudden illnes...

I had the opportunity this past weekend to finally catch a trio of movies I‘d been wanting to see for some time.

First up was the current blockbuster Godzilla Vs. Kong, the fourth (and final, according to some reports) entry in the Warner Brothers “Monster Universe” series that began with 2014’s Godzilla. Like its predecessors, it is a no-holds-barred roller coster ride; not so much a remake as a complete reimagining of the 1962 Japanese film King Kong Vs. Godzilla, the new film makes ...

It occurred to me this past weekend, as I closed the cover of a book I had just completed, that the one good thing that came out of this past year - what with all the quarantining and fighting off the virus and shivering in that recent Arctic blast - was that I had ample opportunity to catch up on my reading.

Even when you’re a lifelong bookworm like myself, there are times when you have little choice but to stifle the urge to curl up with that latest acquisition from Barnes and Noble beca...

People have been going on for years about how Alec Guinness hated Star Wars. 

He didn’t, not really. What he hated was that so many filmgoers who loved his portrayal of Obi-Wan Kenobi seemed to know him only for that role and were unfamiliar with the long, lengthy career he had enjoyed prior to the 1977 classic.

While Guinness noted in several interviews that he did not really understand the film when it was in production (in a letter to a friend after getting the role, he described the s...

(NOTE: The following is a longer version of my “Small Talk” newspaper column published in the print edition of the Johnston County Sentinel’s Feb. 25, 2021, edition. I wrote the column at home over the weekend and found I had written longer than my weekly allotted space allows, so I had to trim it down some to fit. Here is the full-length version, live and in person… or something like that.)

It happened a long, long time ago now. I usually don’t like to talk about it; as a man much...

To be honest, I still haven’t quite decided how I feel about the whole thing.

This proposed “Bigfoot Hunting Season” legislation that’s been filed at the state capitol, I mean. 

For those of you who may have actually missed the news (it seems unlikely, I know; but you’d be surprised, there’s always one or two): Oklahoma House Bill 1648 - filed last week by State Rep. Justin Humphrey (R-Lane) - seeks to establish a Bigfoot hunting season. The bill would direct the Oklahoma Wildlife C...

Jim Graves holding a copy of his 2016 country music CD Corpus Christi, featuring cover art by my son Joshua - one of his first professional gigs as a photographer. (Photo by John A. Small)

It was late 2012 - I can’t remember now the exact date, only that it was a Thursday and I was alone at the old Johnston County Capital-Democrat - the newspaper in Tishomingo, Oklahoma, where I was working at the time - sitting at my desk and trying to dream up an idea for my column for the next week’s is...

[NOTE: This is a new version of a traditional folk song collected from singers in Ireland, Australia, England, Canada and the United States and recorded many times over the years, perhaps most famously in the 1960s by the Irish Rovers as the B-side of their hit single “The Unicorn.” The original version described how a young man was tricked into committing a crime then sentenced for transportation to Australia, a common punishment in the British Empire during the 19th century; this new ve...

It was the Friday that Leslie James, the manager of the Majestic Theatre in Eureka Creek, had been waiting for all summer: opening day for the Harry Potter And Percy Jackson Meet The Hobbits Of Alderaan, and if the size of the crowd that had turned out for the first showing was any indication of the turnout still to come it looked as if the movie would have little trouble making good on its promise of being the biggest blockbuster of the year.

Leslie was standing there in the lobby, smiling at...

(Note: The following was published as Mr. Small's weekly newspaper column in the Nov. 26, 2020, edition of the Johnston County Sentinel in Tishomingo, Oklahoma.)

It occurred to me just now, as I sat down at my computer keyboard and began facing the task of writing a holiday-themed column for our Thanksgiving issue, that if there had ever been a year where I felt less like giving thanks it would have to be this year.

And yet, no sooner had that thought crossed my mind when I heard the voice of m...

(Being an exercise in storytelling, inspired by the memory of a comic book story I read a long LONG time ago - with a tip of the fedora, by the way, to Atom Mudman Bezecny for providing me with the name of my protagonist.)

...Mrs. de Coverlet was pacing about her late husband’s study, trying - without much success - to collect her thoughts, when the butler walked into the room. “Madam, the police detective you sent for has finally arrived,” he announced.

In response, Mrs. de Coverlet look...

It's weird sometimes how the human brain works... 

Some memories seem to forever reside right there on the forefront of your neural circuits, always ready to jump into the spotlight no matter how hard you might try to keep them securely under wraps. Others burrow themselves deep into the rabbit hole of your subconscious and remain hidden for years, patiently biding their time until something suddenly makes them decide to jump out and say, "Hi! Remember me?"

Case in point:

Over the weekend ...

(The following review is based on an advanced readers' copy.)

Now THIS is Tarzan!

A few years back, in a review of one entry in the recent spate of new novels featuring the famed jungle hero that have been authorized by Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. over the past decade or so, I made the following observation: "As a life-long fan, I have long been of the opinion that even lackluster Tarzan tales are ultimately better than no new Tarzan tales at all. (I’ll be the first one to admit that some stori...

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...

It has become something of a tradition, over the past decade or two, to devote this space around this time of year to a topic many of us remember from our grade school days: “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.”

Such accounts over the years have focused on trips to Canada, Louisiana and New York; visits to such varied destinations as the Grand Canyon, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Seattle’s Space Needle and (yes!) the...

June 5, 1968...

The first news story that really stands out as an intense personal memory for me was the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. Maybe it was because it happened just a few days after my fifth birthday, I don't know. I do have vague recollections of the assassination of Martin Luther King earlier that same year, and as young as I was at the time I was old enough in that instance to understand that something terrible had happened. But it was Bobby's murder that made me, at such a young ...

We in the Oklahoma journalism community are mourning the loss of one of our own this week.

The Edmond Sun - one of the oldest newspapers in the state, and one of the best - closed its doors this past weekend. The staff - including my friend Mark Codner - was laid off, and the Sun has merged with its sister publication, the Norman Transcript. Meaning that two cities located 36 miles apart by car (following the I-35 north and US-77 north route) will now be sharing a single daily newspaper.

The ...

I have been a fan of Frank Schildiner's tales of Frankenstein's Monster and Napoleon’s Vampire Hunters for some time. Recently I was given the opportunity to read an advance copy of Schildiner's latest novel - an historical novel entitled The Klaus Protocol, and I have to say this this his best work yet.

Opening in 1938 (the year my late father was born, which made the story all the more interesting for me on a personal level) then flashing back to incidents that occurred two years previou...

As a lifelong fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs (I began reading my father's copies of the Ballantine and Ace ERB editions as a third grader in the early 1970s), I have spent much of that life feeling mixed emotions whenever I encounter new adventures of Burroughs' heroes written by authors other than the master himself. Certainly these return voyages into the ERB realm have been uneven at best. On the one hand we have seen the heights of Tarzan and the Valley of Gold, Swords Against the Moon Men a...

And then there was one...

Bernie Sanders has dropped out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. As much as I hate to say it, I kind of saw it coming. That's not a diss of the man; I liked most of what he had to say and was thoroughly prepared to support him had he won the nomination.

But I also had serious doubts that he would earn that nomination, for one reason: the "socialist" label, which unfortunately even some Democrats (especially here in this neck of the woods) view as ...

Looking over a variety of Facebook posts today in the wake of the latest exit from the Democratic race, and the ongoing debate over whether Biden cares about young people or if Sanders is too far left for party moderates, and what I'm seeing is what I stated last week to be my biggest fear: too many people saying "If the candidate I support isn't nominated, then I'm not voting." 

At the risk of sounding like a broken record: We simply CAN'T allow ourselves to respond that way. If we do, we'r...

In recent years I have run across countless articles posted online listing movies the writer believes everyone should see at least once in their lifetimes. Which is alright, but those lists always seem to include the same titles: “Gone With The Wind,” “Citizen Kane,” “Casablanca,” “The Godfather,” “The Wizard of Oz,” et cetera and so on.

At some point it occurred to me that perhaps all these so-called “movie experts” need to broaden their horizons a little bit and tell ...

Most fathers and sons, I’ve been led to believe over the years, bond over such things as sports. My sons and I are obviously cut from very different cloth, indeed…

I can’t remember now exactly how the subject first came up but, during an unexpected mutual lull in our daily responsibilities at the newspaper office recently, my son Josh and I found ourselves talking about crossover fiction. At one point Josh got to talking about how Star Trek has (at least in the comic books) crossed ove...

Most Doc Savage fans know about the 1975 film version of the first book, Doc Savage: The Man Of Bronze, produced by George Pal (Destination Moon, The Time Machine, When Worlds Collide) and starring former TV Tarzan Ron Ely. There's been a lot of debate over the years regarding the merits of that film.

Many decry its camp sensibilities, the changes made to the original story and the lack of faith Warner Brothers seemed to have for the project (the latter foreshadowing Disney's dismal support o...

It’s still a little hard for me to believe, even all these years after the fact, but I actually met Johnny Cash once.

My wife and I were still living in Illinois in early 1990 when Cash gave a concert at the historic old Rialto Theatre in Joliet. It was one of his first concerts after recovering from dental surgery he’d had some months earlier; even from our seats up in the nosebleed section you could tell his face was still a trifle swollen from the surgery, and he admitted right up front...

Not long ago I was fortunate enough to receive a free advance copy of a new book that has just been released, and which I feel is worth your attention.

12 New Testament Passages That Changed the World by Joseph Bentz may well be the best book of its kind since Joseph Campbell’s The Power Of Myth. While writing from a deliberately Christian point of view, Bentz - like Campbell - delves into the deeper meaning behind these stories so many of us learned in Sunday school, and ably demonstrates...

Apologies in advance for the following rant:

In the northern half of Oklahoma, about 42 miles southwest of Tulsa, is the small town of Drumright. (It is the hometown of one of the co-publishers of the newspaper where I work here in Tishomingo.) One of the regular features in their local newspaper, the Drumright Gusher, is a weekly column by a non-apologetic right-wing Trump-supporting Neanderthal by the name of Ed J. Lebeau III. 

Mr. Lebeau devoted one of his recent columns to a tedious com...

In spite of the fact that I was a mere 3 years old when it debuted in 1966, Star Trek is one of a small handful of TV shows that I can actually remember watching while on my daddy’s knee back during their original airings. (The others I remember from that era include Batman, The Green Hornet, Ron Ely’s Tarzan, Get Smart and, believe it or not, Mission: Impossible.) For that reason, I feel I am justified in considering myself to be a first-generation Trek fan; I may not have understood mos...

(Editor’s Note: The following is the text of Mr. Small’s speech upon being presented the 2019 Carter Bradley First Amendment Award by the Oklahoma Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Jounalists on Saturday, May 18, during the annual SPJOK Awards Banquet at the Reed Conference Center in Midwest City.)

I would like to sincerely thank the SPJ Board of Directors for this honor. It means a great deal to me, for reasons that I will try to explain in just a moment, but first a few more “...

Every week on the front page of the newspaper, where I serve as managing editor - the Johnston County Sentinel in Tishomingo, Oklahoma (https://johnstoncosentinel.com) - we run the following famous quote from our third U.S. President and the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson:

“The press is the best instrument for enlightening the mind of man, and improving him as a rational, moral and social being.”

We selected that particular quote as our mission statement, becaus...

One of the unexpected gifts that has come my way as a result of my chosen profession as a journalist and author has been the occasional opportunity to meet one of my childhood heroes.

Over the years I have written in this column about some of those one-on-one encounters with such luminaries as country music legend Johnny Cash; actor Adam “Batman” West; and two who actually became perso...

This year, 2018, marks the 200th anniversary of a novel that not only changed the life of its young author but essentially created an entirely new genre of literature.

Mary was just a wee snip of a girl - merely 18 years old - when she first conceived her tale. It was born from a challenge, issued by a friend while she and her husband visited that friend in Switzerland during the rainy summer of 1816.

As the story has it, the group amused themselves one evening by reading German ghost stories t...

Once upon a time there was an enchanted land where heroes still walked the earth performing wondrous deeds, and where strange and magical things took place on a fairly regular basis. 

It was a place where children could take refuge from the humdrum realities of day-to-day life and be happy. I should know; I visited there a few times myself.

But there came to this happy land a Wicked Witch, who had forgotten what it was like to be young and did not believe in joy and happiness and fun. She looke...

Just another pointless list 

by John Allen Small

So this is how this list came to be…

On Sept. 12, 2018, I posted a picture of the cover of Batman Comics No. 251 and explained how the story - “The Joker’s Five Way Revenge!” - was one of my two favorite Batman stories of all time and shared how I remember getting this issue when it originally came out. I was 10 years old and Mom bought it for me at the old newsstand on Court Street in Kankakee. 

It was my first encounter with the ...

I began my previous entry with the following comment: “My father was, is, and forever shall be my hero.” In trying to prepare my remarks for the memorial service we held for Dad last Friday (August 17), I wanted to find that one particular story that might best illustrate why I have always and will always feel this way. 

It proved to be something of a struggle. The problem was, there are just so many such stories to choose from - and each one would, in its own way, have served the purpose...

My father was, is and shall forever be my hero.

When I was a little boy, I truly believed there was nothing that he could not do. Even with the passage of time, and the adult realization that he was only human after all, Dad was still the person I most wanted to be like. The person I least wanted to disappoint. The person whose opinion always meant the most to me.

It was only when I became old enough to understand such things that I realized just how much of a hero Dad truly was. He overcame...

“What if the democracy we thought we were serving no longer exists, and the Republic has become the very evil we’ve been fighting to destroy?” (Senator Padme Amidala, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith)

The above snippet of dialogue was one of the most thought-provoking to be found in this series of science fantasy films that, for all its success, people all too often tend to dismiss as (in the words of a friend of mine who never has warmed up to the Star Wars movies) “mindless...

NOTE: The following is the text of my newspaper column for July 5, 2018, written in response to last week’s mass shooting in Annapolis.)

Another week, another mass shooting.

That’s America in the 21st century.

“The new normal,” some people are calling it. But there’s nothing normal about it. 

Not one blessed thing.

There’s nothing “normal” about the average American leaving home to go to work, or to school, or church, or a movie or concert or the shopping mall, and wondering as the...

In one of the better-known installments of the Peanuts comic strip, Linus makes the following observation during a conversation with Charlie Brown: “I love mankind—it’s people I can’t stand!!”

I'm starting to feel much the same way with regards to Star Wars. I still love George Lucas' creation - it's the fans and the new distributor I'm learning to hate.

I just read an article stating that Solo: A Star Wars Story may end up being the first Star Wars movie to lose money, and that R...

Hadn't had the time to do this before today, due to deadline pressures at my day job and other obligations, so I’d like to take a moment to share my thoughts regarding  Solo: A Star Wars Story.

WHAT I LIKED: Pretty much everything, despite my initial misgivings about the project. Alden Ehrenreich actually did a pretty fair job of channeling Harrison Ford as the title character (Ford has made similar comments himself in a couple of interviews I’ve read), and Donald Glover made a better Land...

Something occurred to me the other day, as I was trying to wash the bad residue of the day’s national news cycle from my psyche by going back to the stuff I loved as a kid…

George Lucas (or maybe it was Alan Dean Foster) predicted the rise of Donald Trump.

Way back in December of 1976, roughly six months before the movie actually debuted in theaters, Ballantine/Del Rey Books released the novelization of the film Star Wars. The book carried the byline of the film’s writer-director, Geo...

This project grew out of my son Joshua’s stated desire to read the entire run of the authorized Tarzan novels - the original series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and those ERB Inc.-sanctioned novels by Fritz Leiber, Philip José Farmer, Joe Lansdale, Will Murray and Michael S. Sanford - more or less in the order in which they take place. When Josh announced his intent, I decided to compile this chronology for the purpose of helping him and other fans who might be considering a similar reading pr...

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… Me and my mother, Romania Sue Small, circa 1963-64.

I am told that a certain member of my family apparently did not appreciate my sharing the following story at my mother’s funeral last Friday. 

I have to admit to having been somewhat baffled by this response. Certain things being what they are, certain people being who they are, perhaps I shouldn’t have been. I don’t know. 

Everyone else seemed to appreciate the story, and had nothing b...

Faster than a speeding bullet? 

Ha!! Hardly… 

More powerful than a locomotive? 

Nope. Guess again. 

Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound? 

Not even on my best days back when I was young and thin and full of energy – and even if I could, I'd most likely crash on the way back down. So, wrong again - but thanks for playing.

Who am I?

This is not a question which can be answered simply, for I have worn many hats within the space of what seems to have been a relatively short sp...

I have always loved the written word – reading it, writing it, at home or at school or at the office or sitting in the back seat of one of Mom and Dad's old Volkswagens when I was a child – and it has been my great fortune to have been able to turn this love into something resembling an actual career. (Much to the surprise, I'm sure, of a certain fifth grade teacher who once made the mistake of telling me that I would never amount to anything… but that’s a discussion for another day.)...

By this time next week it will all, at long last, be over. The American people will have spoken, and - barring any last-second temper tantrums, court challenges or some other kind of monkey wrench thrown into the works - we will know who the 45th President of the United States will be and, for better or worse, we’ll be getting our first real glimpse into what the next four years may hold for our nation.

But I don’t want to talk about the election or the candidates anymore. It’s just go...

Something rather... disquieting, I think, would be the most appropriate word in this particular instance... occurred to me last Wednesday night as I was in front of the TV watching the latest episode in this sitcom we are rather euphemistically calling the Presidential Campaign of 2016.

I have been alive now for just shy of 53 and a half years... a little more than half a century as the eagle flies. During my lifetime, America has seen one president assassinated, another president resign, a ...

If someone had told me while I was sitting at the breakfast table Thursday morning that I would be spending much of that day defending the decision to award Bob Dylan this year’s Nobel Prize for literature, I suspect I would have done a spit take and blew Raisin Bran all over the room…

Every year when the Nobels are announced, there is always at least one recipient who becomes the subject of some form of controversy. This year that recipient was Mr. Dylan; a lot of people agreed with the...

Believe me, nobody will be more happy than I will to see this current campaign season - with all its circus atmosphere and a cast of characters that makes me wonder sometimes if both major party candidates are being funded by Mad magazine -  finally come to an end.   

People complain about “election fatigue” in pretty much every campaign cycle, but I can’t remember a time when my own sense of fatigue has been so pronounced and, at times, downright painful to bear. More than once in rec...

Okay, so here’s the thing…

Not too very long ago I was talking with a writer friend of mine who told me that he was taking a stab at writing a romance story. When I commented that this was a genre I was not particularly comfortable with, he basically called me a coward and challenged me to give it a try. So just to shut him up I told him I’d think about it and we turned toward a different subject.

Fast forward to this past Tuesday night, after I got home from the newspaper. I was sitt...

Apologies if I’ve looked or acted a little out of it over the past week or so, but it hasn’t been without reason. My mind and body have been in recovery mode, trying to get re-acclimated to the usual day-to-day routine after the whirlwind extravapalooza that was (drumroll, please) Small Family Vacation 2016.

We set out bright and early on the mo...

There is a lyric in the Harry Chapin song “Story Of A Life” that I’ve always found somewhat appropriate for those of us who toil in my particular line of work: 

“Sometimes words can serve me well,

Sometimes words can go to hell

For all that they do...”

As a newspaper columnist, I understand and appreciate the sentiment Chapin was attempting to convey in those lines. Because there are times when, as much as I hate to admit it, words fail me.

I was oh so proud back in 1991 to earn ...

It occurred to me recently that it had been a while since the last time I devoted this space to reviewing a new movie. This seems like as good a time as any to rectify this - and frankly I could not have picked a better movie with which to do so.

Full disclosure: The Legend Of Tarzan was one of those movies I was looking forward to with both great anticipation and, at the same time, a certain degree of dread. Anticipation because, as I have written about many times in the past, Tarzan is a c...

I recently had a… well, I don't know that it actually rises to the level of being an honest-to-Jed Bartlett "epiphany," but it is darn sure something that bears being shared the rest of the world.  (And if it does qualify as an epiphany then I'm just tickled to death, because I don't know...

(NOTE: The following is a longer version of one of my recent newspaper columns.)


Over the past few years I have had the opportunity to become reacquainted with an old friend. A fellow I first met when I was a young boy and who became one of my most faithful companions as I was growing up. A gentleman who taught me about the importance of being observant, and of not allowing emotions to overpower logic - a skill I readily admit I have yet to master, though I continue to strive in that direction...

MEMOIRS OF A BAT-FAN

In case you happened to miss it (you’d be surprised, it seems like there is always a few who somehow manage to not receive the memo), this past Tuesday marked an important milestone in the history of American popular culture. 

Well, it was important to some of us, anyway...

January 12 marked the 50th anniversary of the night that the television series Batman, starring Adam West and Burt Ward, premiered on the ABC television network (WLS-TV, Channel 7 in Chicago if y...

(Note: The following article was originally published in the Johnston County Capital-Democrat, Dec. 24, 1992. We re-published it in this week's issue as a Christmas gift to our readers, and I felt it was appropriate to share it here as well.)

He is one of the most recognized figures...

It occurred to me, as I sat down at my keyboard just now to share the story I am about to tell, that I probably should have done so back in June. That month did, after all, mark the 30th anniversary of when it actually happened.

But for some reason I generally don’t think about it when the anniversary rolls around. The subject only seems to come to mind around this time of year. When I’m counting my blessi...

I had not originally planned on commenting here about the controversy surrounding Kim Davis, the court clerk in Kentucky who was refusing to issue marriage licenses to anyone because she disagreed with the U.S. Supreme Court decision earlier this year legalizing gay marriages. Not because I don’t have an opinion on the subject (come on, you know better than that) but, rather, because I'm actually kind of tired of listening to everyone else talk about it.

There had already been so much disc...

Tomorrow, September 1, marks the 140th anniversary of the birth of my favorite author: Edgar Rice Burroughs, father of Tarzan, chronicler of Barsoom and Pellucidar, and the man whose stories helped teach me to read and made me want to become a writer myself. 

In celebration I thought it might be appropriate to share a poem in tribute to Burroughs that I wrote roughly 20 years ago now…

IN MEMORIAM: ERB

A Poem By John Allen Small

With simple words on paper

He drew a map that led me

On a ...

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...

This past weekend my wife and son Joshua and I went to see the fifth entry in the popular Mission: Impossible film series, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation. 

And just as was the case with the previous four movies, I came away with mixed feelings. 

On the one hand, it was a fun, entertaining, well-made film... probably the best one in the series so far, in fact, strictly in terms of overall entertainment value. Witty and reasonably intelligent, with strong performances all around and a bet...

Every now and then something happens that makes me just sit back, scratch my head and wonder at what point the cosmic axis shifted so violently that I ended up in a world so different from the one I grew up in.

Case in point: 

Just before noon Tuesday, while putting together this week’s issue of the newspaper where I work as News Editor, I took a break long enough to walk across the street to the post office and retrieve my daily mail. One of the items I pulled out of the mailbox happened...

I read an article the other day which reported that the Pez candy company is planning to produce a movie based on their candy dispensers, more or less along the same lines as The Lego Movie.

Hmmm....

Now I stand second to no one in my fondness for Pez. I remember my brothers and I using our Pez dispensers as pseudo-action figures when we were little kids, and often find myself wishing that I still had the Green Hornet Pez Dispenser my parents bought for me (for a mere 33 cents, if I remembe...

Here's something I promised Win Eckert I would post when I got home, following a discussion on the topic that we had at his house during our recent visit... 

During the first wave of Star Wars prose fiction that began with Del Rey’s publication of Alan Dean Foster’s Splinter Of The Mind’s Eye in 1978, L. Neil Smith’s Lando Calrissian trilogy (which takes places prior to Han Solo’s ownership of the Millennium Falcon) represented the earliest chronological adventures in the series; t...

Remember that scene in the film Star Trek III: The Search For Spock in which the Starship Enterprise returns to Earth, and the officers on duty at Spacedock gaze sadly upon the sight of the battle damage that was inflicted by the villainous Khan in the previous movie? 

I thought of that scene this past Saturday as my wife Melissa, son Joshua and I pulled into our driveway at the conclusion of our annual two-week vacation.

No, we didn’t find ourselves in mortal combat with an evil, genetic...

In his tribute essay “Caliban,” one of the several items of supplemental material included in the 2013 deluxe hardcover reissue of Philip José Farmer’s classic fictional biography Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (Meteor House), author and pulp historian Will Murray twice makes statements to the effect that no other writer was as qualified as Farmer to step into the shoes of Edgar Rice Burroughs with regard to the task of telling new tales of Tarzan of the Apes.

Those comments of Murr...

Either we are about to plunge off the precipice into another long national election cycle, or else some people have thrown caution to the wind and are deliberately exceeding their doctors’ recommended daily amount of Goofy Juice.

Or, quite possibly, both. 

How else does one logically explain the increase in the number of just out-and-out bizarre items in the national news that I’ve found myself running across in recent weeks?

One of the most recent came this past Sunday on the CBS News...

Dear Kraft Foods:

I was ALREADY angry with you. I have been ever since you made the bone-headed decision a few years back to discontinue sales of your classic Chicken Noodle Dinner - a move which I still consider to be a personal insult to me and my family. 

That delicious dinner in the little brown box had been an important staple of mealtime in the Small Household for as far back as I could remember. More than merely an easy-to-make side dish that went with almost everything, it was an im...

(* - A Latin term that means "the refutation of a proposition by demonstrating the inevitably absurd conclusion to which it would logically lead.")

You know what? I give up. I surrender. You’ve convinced me. I admit it, I was wrong. White flag. Uncle.

A fellow can take only so much hate mail and so many beatings about the head and shoulders with a proverbial two-by-four before he finally reaches the conclusion that he has engaged himself in a losing battle and capitulates. And so, effect...

I have written a time or 10 in the past about my great childhood love of two great old TV series, Batman and The Green Hornet, both of which originally aired on ABC in the 1960s. Both shows were produced by a gentleman named William Dozier, who - in an effort to garner a larger viewership for The Green Hornet, which wasn’t quite bringing in the ratings of the other show - came up with the idea of having the Green Hornet and his sidekick Kato appear in an episode of Batman.  

Now you have t...

Back in 1994 I self-published a collection of family recipes - some of them dreamed up by my mom and dad, some by me, some by my wife Melissa - and sold it locally at the Johnston County Fourth of July Festival and the Chickasaw Festival. Some of the recipes were silly things I came up with as a kid babysitting my younger brothers during the summer months; others were recipes that a lot of thought had been put into. I published 1,000 copies and sold all but the two that I kept for at home (on...

THE LEGEND OF THE NIGHT ANGEL

(HISTORICAL NOTE: The following is an excerpt from Book 5, Chapter 14, of ...

Jack Ramsey stirred in his hospital bed, opened his eyes and looked up into the face of the beautiful woman who - even though he knew he hadn't deserved it - had promised to love, honor and cherish nearly six decades before. 

It had been a long journey together, and he understood that for him that journey would soon be over. He understood it, but he didn't much like it. It wasn't the leav...

"A STORY A WEEK" NO. 45:

LOOKING FOR ...

"A STORY A WEEK" NO. 42:

A VISIT TO CRIMSON JACK’S

Five years ago, when a fellow named Jackson Talbot first moved into town and opened his Crimson Jack’s Naughty Nighties Emporium over on the west side of town, a few of the women in Jillian’s neighborhood took part in a series of demonstrations organized by a small group of well-meaning litt...

I have been a fan of the late Harry Chapin since the first time I heard his brother Tom singing songs that Harry wrote on the ABC-TV program "Make A Wish" when I was a kid back in the early 1970s. A few years later I heard songs like "Cat's In The Cradle" and "WOLD" on the radio, and I was hooked; I was one of those who unashamedly shed a tear when I heard the news of Harry's death about a month and a half after I graduated from high sch...

From the Sipokni West Dispatch, March 26 2009:

The Brownsberg Town Council has appointed a local resident to help the community overcome what some residents have reportedly described as its “inferiority complex” with regard to nearby larger communities.

Yvonne Gordon, a resident of Brownsberg since 1993, has been named to spearhead a town council initiative aimed at injecting a greater sense of style and sophistication into com...

(From the Eureka Creek (OK) Weekly Pedestrian, May 30, 2014) 

In a move calculated to boost local tourism, industry and retail sales, neighboring Sipokni County may soon be divided into three time zones.

The Sipokni County Board of Commissioners announced the possible convers...

As he watched the oncoming pickup truck veer into the wrong lane and careen into the path of his own Volkswagen, a single unhappy realization popped into Brandon Smith’s mind.

“Man, and I really wanted to see that new Star Wars trilogy,” Brandon thought just before the pickup plowed into his Beetle head-on...

"She is very pretty."

I turned with a start, not having noticed the presence of the gentleman standing there behind me until he had spoken. He seemed a very tall man, with black hair and piercing gray eyes who spoke in a low but strong voice.  He was dressed in a dark suit, and from his appearance and demeanor I thought he might be a minister. 

But there was something odd...

"The General Edge Of Tomorrow's Days Of All My Bold And Beautiful Children's Guiding Life To Live As Another Young And Restless World Turns In Dark Shadows" 

(The saga that asks the musical question: ...

(NOTE:  It's been such a hectic week at work that I almost forgot to post this latest entry in the "Spohn Challenge" project. But here it is, for what it's worth...)

Wasteland.

Empty. Barren. Devoid. A Grand Nothingness. A fitting eulogy to Man, as created by Man himself.

For centuries beyond reckoning, it had been a prosperous world. But now it was nothing more than a gigantic cosmic tombstone, the blues and greens replaced by black and gray. The price of too much prosperity. Armageddon. ...

A butcher was in the habit of sending his son with a small wagon to deliver orders. The lad was a little careless, and one day he knocked over an elderly lady.

A lawsuit followed and the butcher had to pay damages. Shortly afterward, the son was the cause of another accident and another lawsuit, and the payments nearly ruined the butcher.

One day a short time after the second case had been settled, a neighbor rushed into the shop to tell the butcher that his wife had been hit by a motorcar.

�...

"By this time next week I'll be running this city," Bugsy Martell laughed as he wrapped his arm around his rival's girl and pulled her close to him.

"I wouldn't bet on it,"  Nora said as she pulled the knife from her garter and stuck it between Bugsy's ribs.

A few years back, the folks at Archie Comics put a new spin on the age-old question of which of his two girlfriends their teenage hero would ultimately wind up with: spoiled rich girl Veronica Lodge, or down-to-earth “girl next door” Betty Cooper. 

The resulting six-part mini-series, entitled “The Married Life,” had Archie Andrews imagining what his future life might be like under either scenario (with three issues apiece devoted to each would-be bride). The “what if” premise pro...

(From the Eureka Creek (OK) Weekly Pedestrian, April 3, 2014)

The city council campaign, debate over storm sirens and arguments about whether to remove the traffic signal at the intersection of Main and Broadway all took a back seat in the news this past week, as Eureka Creek briefly played host to an emissary from another planet.

Two large spacecraft were spotted hovering over t...

On the morning of April 5, 1986, I was just about as nervous as a fellow could possibly be without having to call a doctor or look for a fresh change of clothing. How I managed to keep from falling into a dead faint is something I still am unable to fully comprehend these 28 years after the fact. 

In a few short hours I would be getting married. That in itself would have been enough to induce the uncontrollable...

Ralph and Gertrude were sitting at the kitchen table drinking their morning coffee listening to the weather report on the radio.  "There will be three to five inches of snow today and a snow emergency has been declared,” the announcer said. “You must park your cars on the odd numbered side of the streets to allow room for snow plows to operate.”

Ralph immediately stood up, grabbed his keys and headed for the door.  “Guess I'd better go do that right now while I'm thinking about it,�...

Back in the early 1990s, while riding together up Interstate 35 en route to represent the Johnston County Capital-Democrat at some Oklahoma Press Association function or another, my then co-worker Jon Parker and I laughingly hammered out what came to be known as the “Small-Parker Treaty of 1992.”

I was standing in line at the store the other day and happened to overhear a couple of women in front of me who were having one of those typical “housewife” chit-chat. Which, as my Uncle Bean once pointed out, is a more polite way of saying that they were standing around bellyaching about utter louses their husbands happened to be.

One of the women, the older of the two, seemed particularly miffed as she waxed angrily about the fact that her husband apparently never wanted to cook dinner...

Old Man Murphy walked into the neighborhood bar one afternoon and spent an hour or so ordering one martini after another. He quickly downed each one, removing the olives from the glasses and placing them in a small jar he'd taken out of his jacket pocket as he did so.

When at last the jar had been filled up with olives and all the drinks consumed, Murphy tipped his hat to the bartender and rose from his stool to leave, carrying the jar the the crook of one arm as he walked toward the door.

Martin Jacobs took his seat at the dining room table and asked in his typically grumpy voice, "Well, Margaret, what's for breakfast?”

His wife placed Martin’s tray before him, adjusted the strap on the bikini top he’d never seen her wear anywhere but at the beach, waved out the window at the fellow sitting in the sports car in their driveway and replied sweetly, “A ham and cheese omelet, bacon strips, biscuits and jelly... and these divorce papers.”

The old man sat on the outside stairway of his dilapidated old apartment building, silently thumbing through the pages of a magazine that looked far older than its February 1977 cover date. The pages were dog-eared, the cover was torn and held tentatively in place by a single staple... the result of so many years of having been repeatedly thumbed through by a lonely old man sitting in front of a run-down apartment building.

The girls in this particular issue were special, though. They remind...

My Dearest Darling Daughter:

I wanted to use what little time I'm sure is left to me to write, since you never seem to find the time anymore to write to me first, and wish you a Merry Christmas. Hopefully things are as well for you as can possibly be expected, considering the fact that you're still with That Thing You Married.

I'm fine, really, considering that I don't seem to be eating or sleeping or getting around much anymore these days. But I don't want you to worry. The important thing...

Much later - sometime in the Third Century, if you’re taking notes - men began commemorating the martyrd...

Even after my parents bought our first color television set when I was a little boy, it seemed that most of the programs I enjoyed watching were those that had been filmed in glorious black and white.

After school every afternoon it was the Three Stooges, the Little Rascals and the original Max Fleischer “Popeye” cartoons on Channel 32. Around dinner time Mom or Dad would flip the switch over to Channel 9 for the nightly reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Andy Griffith Show. Channe...

Many years ago, when I was just a wee nipper growing up on the 400 block of North Michigan Avenue in Bradley, Illinois, there was a very wise man who lived down the street from us named Ferdinand Lobomowicz. He was a very intelligent man, and all of us children looked up to him; he was the only man any of us knew who we believed might actually be smarter than our fathers. Which, in my case at least, was quite the admission.

One day I was playing in the front yard with my two younger brothers...

Sheriff Jess Harper was on his way over to the Flaming Star one Saturday to have some lunch and talk a bit with Wichita Billings when he happened to spy Clem Morrison walking down the middle of the street waring nothing but his boots.

"What the...?"  Harper dashed across into th...

It's a sad, sad story. I know, because I was there and I saw it happen...

There was this fellow I once knew who happened to be the frustrated conductor of an extremely mediocre local symphony orchestra. Few if any of the individual musicians could really be said to be players of professional quality; indeed, the only reason they had been accepted as members of this particular orchestra is because the city fathers wanted a local orchestra and, after all, they had to get their players from som...

Drinnon the Black Knight dropped his sword and ran away screaming as the dragon Loridans vomited a steady stream of fire in the direction of the knight’s retreating backside.

As he watched, Sir Eckert pulled the Princess close to him and said with a triumphant grin, “Well, if you can't stand the heat, don't tickle the dragon.”

Grandpa Charlie was taking a drive with his grandchildren one day when a firetruck zoomed past. Sitting in the front seat of the fire truck, just like you see in all the old movies, was a Dalmatian. Never having seen any of th...

So it’s all come down, at last, to this. 

The end of another year. Another 365 days wadded up and tossed aside like a used gum wrapper. It’s all over. Gone. Past tense.  There it is, in the rear-view mirror…

Ave atque vale, 2013; you were an interesting little year, while you lasted. A few of us may even miss you.

Now we all get to start over. Time to chuck that calendar into the circular file beside your desk and start your headlong rush into another 52 weeks of You Ain’t Seen Not...

It’s a true story. I don’t expect everybody will believe that, of course, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Tommy Harper was only five years old that particular Christmas morning, and he was afraid he might just bust. Because under the tree, with his name on it, was the prettiest red-and-blue striped Christmas gift...

In the city of Eureka Creek (population 16,523), the year 1991 came to be known as “The Year of Miracles.”

The label had first turned up in an editorial in the local paper around mid-year, and in the minds of the townsfolk it was no idle boast. Consider some of the evidence:

• The town’s economy, which had steadily plummeted over the past decade, had suddenly been resuscitated by the simultaneous construction of a shopping mall on the north end of town and a new edible oil plant sev...

The U.S. Congressman who represents my district, Markwayne Mullin (whom I did NOT vote for, nor would I ever), today decided to weigh in on this silly Duck Dynasty "controversy." His statement began thusly:

“America is currently witnessing a contradiction in its core principles. The fundamentals that founded our great nation included the freedom of speech and religion. Unfortunately a man who simply voiced his religious belief, which is protected by our constitution, is now being punished....

“This here town ain’t big enough for the both of us, Sheriff Harper,” Buster McCrae sneered as he settled into his saddle.

“I reckon you’re righ...

"Listen," Little Sally whispered in her baby brother's ear, "I think that's Santa's sleigh I hear."

Just then the roof caved in.

Thanksgiving was fast approaching, and Mrs. and Mrs. Patterson had received a holiday card in the mail from their son and his family, who lived out on the west coast and were planning to spend the holiday this year with his wife’s family. The poem printed inside the card was your typical bit of greeting card drivel, but their son’s handwritten note below that poem told ho...

I was all of five months, 21 days and a handful of hours old on that dark day in November of 1963 when a man was murdered in broad daylight on the streets of Dallas, Texas... and history was changed irrevocably.

Our lifetimes intersected for a period, but I remember nothing about him. Or of that period in the early 1960s Kennedy’s name still evokes in the hearts and minds of so many who do remember him – a time of hope and optimism in America, when we were first looking towards the moon ...

"There, that's got it," Ezekiel Butterfield happily exclaimed to his wife as he slipped the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle into place.

Just then the bombing started...

Horton activated the "help" app on his cell phone and said, "Google, how do I get home?"

"You don't," the digitized voice responded co...

(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...

Seventy-five years ago today America got its first taste of the true power of electronic media, courtesy of what is still considered by many to be the single most famous radio broadcast in the history of the medium. 

The date was Oct. 30, 1938. Fans of the pulp hero Doc Savage were thrilling to his latest adventure in the novel Fortress of Solitude. My father was just a month old. And by the end of the night millions of Americans would be tricked into believing that it was the end of the wor...

I have long maintained that there is a tie for my all-time favorite motion picture: "Star Wars" (the orig...

{Note: This is my fourth entry in the weekly "Spohn Challenge" project. I originally had something else in mind, but was inspired to contribute this one instead after reading something posted by David Gerrold this morning on his Facebook page...)

The doctor grimaced as he studied my DNA chart. 

"Good lord, that CAN'T be right..."

I've heard a lot of people spouting off in recent years about things they as individuals think are “un-American.” As if they as individuals – individuals who, as it happens, weren’t even there in Philadelphia when the Founding Fathers were bickering back and forth putting together the plan that got this country up and running in the first place – are somehow qualified to make a determination for the rest of us as to what is and is not “American.”

Well, a recent incident at home...

Note: This is my third entry in the weekly "Spohn Challenge" project... and there's a bit of a story behind this one.

A number of years ago, when I was still first getting acquainted with the Internet, I ran across a story someone had written about a housewife forced to contend with pesky telemarketers and unwanted visitors while trying to serve her family dinner. It was badly written - as I recall the writer was a horrendous speller who didn't seem to know even the most basic rules of punctu...

(This is my second entry in the weekly project called "The Spohn Challenge," in which the object is to write one short story a week for a year, any length and any subject.)

I looked at her. "Well," I asked, "what do you think?"

"Honestly?"

"Of course"

She smiled. "I don't think it's such a good idea."

That wasn't what I wanted to hear. "Give me one good reason why not."

"Okay," she said as she sat down and poured herself another drink. "Look at what happened to them."

"So what does t...

When it comes to compiling a list of some of the most interesting and eventful years of the last century, there can be little argument that the year 1938 should be placed somewhere very near the top of that list.

Consider some of the noteworthy events of that year:

• Nazi Germany annexed...

It was nice to see Tishomingo resident and fellow writer Tom Morrow stop here at the newspaper office the other day bearing copies of his recently released second novel, Yesterday’s Gone – The Senior Class of ‘61. 

Yesterday’s Gone is a follow-up to Tom’s first novel, Dust In The Wind, which followed the adventures of  17-year-old Dave White as he leaves his home in Oklahoma for a job harvesting wheat in the summer of 1960. The new book begins with Dave returning home, and follows ...

My grandmother was a tough old bird.

Somewhere out there, I’m sure, someone is certain to take offense at that. “What a terrible thing to say,” they’re probably thinking right now.

But, see, here’s the thing. Even though I didn’t get to spend as much time with my grandmother during the final years of her life as I would have...

...So I was sitting at my desk at the office this past Monday morning, reading the previous week’s issue of the newspaper I work for to catch up on what had been happening at home while the family and I were away on a two-week vacation, when I came across a letter to the editor taking our publisher to task for his column about “Facebook journalism” that appeared in our July 11 issue.   

The letter grabbed my attention for two reasons. First, I had both appreciated and agreed with every...

Every family has its "black sheep." Sometimes while researching family history on various occasions over the years, I've often wondered in perhaps my family hasn't had more than it's share. 

But none of them can hold a candle to the man who served as Illinois' Republican governor during the same period that saw Al Capone establish himself as the King of Chicago. Indeed, I often wonder if my familial kinship...

Now let me see if I've got this straight: the five Supreme Court justices who voted on Tuesday to strike down a key part of the Voting Rights Act did so because that provision has been so successful at preventing racial discrimination?

That’s the way Chief Justice John Roberts’ decision read to me. It’s the way it read to dissenting Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, too. In her dissent Ginsburg wrote that throwing out the provision...

(Christopher Reeve... now THAT'S Superman!)


For much of this week I have been watching and participating in an going debate on Variety's website regarding the validity of Chief Film Critic Scott Foundas' review of the new Superman movie Man Of Steel. For those of you who haven't read it Scott didn't give Man Of Steel the most glowing of reviews, stating that its "humorless tone and relentless noisy aesthetics drag down this heavily hyped, brilliantly marketed tentpole attraction."

You could t...

This Saturday – with as little fanfare as possible, in spite of all my best efforts to ignore it, and no doubt very much to the surprise of a few childhood friends who I'm sure never thought I'd make it – I will observe the 50th anniversary of my birth.

The year 1933 was an important one for American pop culture. That was the year that saw the debut of not one but two of our country’s most popular and enduring fictional icons, characters who still live in the hearts of millions of fans nearly a century later. 

One was Dr. Clark Savage Jr. - better known to his legion of admirers as Doc Savage, the intrepid adventurer, surgeon and crimefighter who was the lead character in 181 issues of his own pulp fiction magazin...

(Note: This is a recently revised version of an article I originally wrote about 10 years ago. If anyone who reads this is aware of any titles I may have missed, or has additional information that should be included, please let me know so I can make any appropriate changes for a future revision.)

Doc Savage has had a rather spotty history so far as the comics have been concerned. 

In 1936, Lester Dent and pulp illustrator Paul Orban submitted a proposed “Doc Savage” comic strip to vari...

"Best Of The West" Collection

by John Allen Small

(NOTE: The original version of this article was written two years ago, but I've never been able to determine whether it ever actually saw print in the publication for which it was intended. My messages to the publisher were never returned and no confirmation of its publication was ever forwarded to me. So I'm posting a slightly updated version here for those who have the same fond memories of these marvelous ...

I remember my parents telling me when I was younger that people pretty much earn the right to get persnickety ...

I don’t remember where I first read it, but I certainly agree with whoever said it: True love does not need a special day.

Please understand before we proceed any further that I do not mean to denigrate Valentine’s Day. Quite the contrary. It’s an important holiday tradition to a great many folks – and not such a bad one at that, as holiday traditions go. Any holiday that includes chocolate as one of its most important acoutre...

As a lifelong bookworm I always like it when I get the opportunity to read books in order to review them in my weekly newspaper column. Over the Christmas-New Year’s holiday season I had the opportunity to peruse several such recent releases that I felt were worth passing along to our readers. 

It will come as no surprise to longtime readers of this column (or anyone who knows me well at all) that my favorite among this crop of recent material is the long-awaited biography of my all-time f...

Tell you what, if you really hate paying taxes then please refrain from doing any of the following: 

Drive on paved streets or highway; call 911; flush your toilet; call the police or the fire department; mail a letter; expect a Social Security payment; expect Medicare to pay your bills; visit the Washington Monument, the Grand Canyon or public museums; expect the military to defend the country; use city water; expect the street lights on Main Street to work; expect medical research to conti...

“I suppose you’ll be writing about that horrible school shooting just like everybody else,” my old friend Julian Frye commented when I ran into him unexpectedly during a trip to the store last Saturday.

I responded with a gloomy shrug of my shoulders. “To be honest, I really haven’t decided yet,” I said. “I mean, yeah, definitely feel like I should say something, even if it turns out to be nothing more than a catharsis for my own sorrow and anger and frustration. But nothing th...

I was just reading the "Comments" section of an online news article about this fiscal cliff business when some ding-a-ling started ranting about how "you @#$!" liberals don't know anything about Pearl Harbor" and tried to make the argument that liberals are a bunch of military-hating traitors who ought to be rounded up and punished for being traitors to the country.

Setting aside for a moment the fact that I'm still trying to figure out what Pearl Harbor and the fiscal cliff have to do with ...

Perhaps it should have come as no surprise that this week’s report by NASA, regarding the data collected by the Mars rover Curiosity, was do doggone anti-climactic in light of all the Internet buzz and media hoopla that ensued after scientist John Grotzinger announced that the findings were destined “for the history books.” 

It’s hard to live up to that kind of advance publicity. Just ask Kim Kar...

The first man reaches into his pocket and pulls out a cigarette lighter. He ligh...

I cast my early ballot today. I was proud to do so.

I quite deliberately have not written much - either here or in my weekly newspaper column - about the campaigns for president and other political offices to be decided next week, primarily because it seems like that was all everybody else was talking about for so much of this past year and, well, SOMEBODY had to talk about other things.

But with only a few days remaining before the election, I’d like to change that policy just long enoug...

It was the Autumn of 1970. There is no earthly reason why I should remember it so clearly today, seeing as how I was all of 8 years old at the time and I sometimes seem to have trouble these days recalling things that happened just a few minutes ago. But for me that era burns bright in my memory like some eternal sunny summer day, a warm shelter o...

In recent years there’s been a perpetual hullabaloo over use of the phrase “Happy Holidays.” To the best of my memory (which I’ll be the first to admit is sometimes questionable at best), the brouhaha began when some well-meaning Christians starting voic...

Lancelot had his Holy Grail; Indiana Jones, his Lost Ark. And, for many years,  I had The Record.

Not just any record, you understand. The object of my quest was an album entitled Somethin’ Else, recorded by The Kingston Trio and released by Decca Records in November of 1965. 

I’ve been a fan of the Kingston Trio since I was a small boy. Between the two of us, my father and I had managed to collect every album that the Kingston Trio ever recorded… except this one. So I spent close to ...

I received a nasty message earlier today from someone who seemed to take angry exception to my support for President Obama. I'm still not sure why my support of any particular candidate should have engendered such vitriol on the part of someone I have never and likely will never meet. After all, I don't take exception to his supporting his particular candidate of choice; I may not agree with that choice, but neither would I treat him with such venomous disrespect because of it. People CAN dis...

Apologies in advance if today's entry comes across sounding cranky or surly or curmudgeonly. That’s not an impression that I particularly like leaving with others. I much prefer to think of myself as being a cheerful, optimistic, “glass half full” kind of guy, and have spent a lifetime desparately striving to portray myself in such a manner. Not always with success, I’ll grant you, but give me credit for trying. It’s more than some people I’ve met have ever bothered to do.

On the...

A Poem By John Allen Small

With simple words on paper

He drew a map that led me

On a pathway to adventure:

From Africa and Hell's ...

(NOTE: The following tale was originally published as a newspaper column, and later appeared in my 2011 collection "Something In The Air" [available on Amazon.com]. It is being shared here in honor of Lego's 80th Anniversary.)

A buddy of mine stopped by the house a few years back and seemed rather surprised to find me sprawled out on the living room floor playing with my son’s Lego blocks.

Perhaps he might not have been quite as mystified had my three-year-old son been there, playing and ...

No, your eyes aren't playing tricks on you. You read the headline at the top of this column correctly; the Small Family really DID go to Mars during our recently completed summer vacation.

Mars, Pennsylvania, that is.

It was just a brief side trip during the annual family vacation, which this year took us to Niagara Falls, Canada. It was my fourth trip to Canada but my first to the Falls; my wife Melissa had visited there once or twice with her family when she was younger, but my three prev...

There was a graphic floating around on Facebook the day after the horrific theatre shooting in Aurora, Colo., that read as follows: "84,999,989 firearm owners killed no one yesterday." 

To be fair, the observation was true enough. But my response is one firearm owner DID kill 12 and wounded 57 others that terrible day, and that was one too many as far as I'm concerned...

*      *      *

Of all the responses to the Aurora incident I've encountered on the Internet these past few days,...

One of our current county commissioners here where I live has a favorite expression that he voices whenever the discussion turns to the differences between the way things are done now and the way they were done in days gone by:  “We’re not in Mayberry anymore.”

I understand what the gentleman means when he says this, but each time I hear it I find myself fighting back the urge to respond: “We never were living in Mayberry! Mayberry doesn't exist. It’s an entry in the Atlas of Make-...

Shhh... Listen close. 

Can you hear them? Wafting over the American landscape like an echo, ghostly voices urging us to remember who we are and where we've been. 

The Voices of America's Past... 

Turn off the television. Step away from the barbecue for just a moment. Listen hard and you can still hear them; look closely, and perhaps you might even see them. 

Look, over there. Do you see him? It's George Washington, first in the hearts of his countrymen, reciting the words of his Farewell ...

One of my favorite people in the known universe is my former college journalism professor (and still good friend) Joe Bentz – that’s Dr. Joseph Bentz, thank you very much, noted Christian author and currently a teacher of writing and American literature at Azusa Pacific University in Southern California, if you ever want to look him up on the Internet. (You really should; he's an interesting and talented fellow, and as my Uncle Bean used to say a good egg into the bargain.) 

While it wa...

Somebody – it may have been one of my high school English teachers, but I can’t remember at the moment – once told me that a person can’t learn anything valuable from reading science fiction, or from watching it on television or at the movies.

Who says? 

If, indeed, my old college professor Dr. Bill Finger was correct in observing that there are lessons to be learned at every stop we may make along the way in this life, then it stands to reason that popular fiction in general – a...

Recently – and with as little fanfare as possible, thank you very much – I observed the 49th anniversary of my arrival in this world. I say “observed” rather than “celebrate” because... well, because I’ve reached a point in my life in which the latter term seems ever so slightly less appropriate. At least it does to me. At the moment. If I make it another 10 to 20 years I suspect I’ll go back to celebrating because, let’s face it, making it that far is something a little mor...

As difficult as it is for me to acknowledge, it was 35 years ago this week that a trip to one of the local movie houses where I lived had an unexpectedly profound impact upon my imagination – and, indeed, upon my life.

The movie in question had actually opened in other cities a couple of weeks earlier; between that time and the day it finally arrived at the old Town Cinema theatre in Kankakee. Illinois, I had seen a number of news rep...

For much of the past several months I have been devoting much of my free time to helping to promote what is STILL my favorite motion picture of the year thus far: the Disney Studios’ release John Carter. 

As I noted in this space earlier this year, this wonderfully crafted film – based on the first novel in an 11-volume series of science fiction tales penned by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan – was unfairly pegged as a “flop” even ...

Every now and then I find myself in the unusual (and not always desirable) position of championing some cause that seems to fly in the face of mass public opinion. I guess it is not altogether unfair to blame my parents for this tendency; after all, they are the ones who drummed into my mind as a child the importance of standing up for what you believe, and the notion that what is popular is not always what is right.

Sometimes those battles place me on what some would consider to be the wron...

Some time around the start of the new year, while looking at the calendar and making an honest endeavor to plan ahead for certain “special dates” during 2012, I made a point of asking my beloved wife Melissa if there was anything special she wanted me to get her for Valentine’s Day.

“Give me something I don’t really need,” she responded. 

So I gave her the flu.

Okay, that’s not exactly how it happened. I did get the flu last week, and poor Melissa ended up coming down with it...

“It is said that wise men are not affected by women.”

“Then there ain’t no wise men in this ‘appy world!”

*      *      *

Every February 15th, the ancient Romans used to take part in a fertility ritual known as the Lupercalia, so named in honor of some obscure rustic diety known as Lupercus.

Much later - som...

To The Men And Women Of The Congress Of The United States:

You folks always claim to be working for us, the American People, and quite often invite us to contact you if we have something we want to bring to your attention. I sincerely hope you mean that, because I have something I want to say:

Motion Picture Association of America President Chris Dodd - one of your former colleagues, though for the life of me I can't at the moment recall anything worthwhile he ever had anything to do with ...

Hitler burned books, and we here in America were outraged. Such behavior flew in the face of the spirit of freedom which we have always claimed to hold dear. “Thank God such things can't happen here in America,” we said.

But guess what? It HAS happened here – and would no doubt more often, if certain people were to have their way. They claim their motives are different, of course – but what else would you expect from folks who have dedicated their lives to telling us what we can or c...

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...

And yet it always is...

Whether we choose to admit it or not, all of us have experienced moments in our lives when we have felt like loners or believe that we do not fit in with whatever group o...

I'll be the first to admit it's a bit on the tacky side, but this has been one of my favorite Christmas stories since I first heard it on a Kingston Trio concert album a few years back. It goes something like this:

Three men all die on Christmas Eve and meet St. Peter at the Pearly Gates. St, Peter tells them that, since it is Christmas Eve, he can't let them pass through unless they can present some sort of item associated with the holiday.

The first man reaches into his pocket and pulls o...

There are those moments in every man’s life which are destined to live forever in his memory, no matter how hard he may try to forget. For me, the day after Thanksgiving 1995 certainly proved to be such a memory…

I was sitting at my desk th...

There was a news story I ran across today about how competition between pizza restaurants in Lake City, Fla., had gotten out of hand to the point that two managers of the local Domino's had been arrested for burning down a nearby Papa John's location.

Stories like that tend to get my attention anyway, because they so clearly illustrate that my father has been right all these years about stupidity running rampant. In this case, however, what bothered me even more than the story itself was one...

Ran across a thread on www.moviefanfare.com yesterday where guest blogger Peter Eramo, Jr shared his own personal top five celebrity crushes - stars who, to use his own words, "are simply hot, hot, hot!"

It was an interesting list to say the least. Not surprisingly it included three current celebrities - Scarlett Johansson, Jessica Biel and Christina Hendricks - two of which I have to admit have never done much for me. (I'll leave it to others to figure out which two.) I was impressed t find...

One day not too very long ago I was talking with one of my sons (I won’t say which one, so as to try to avoid any undue embarrassment – although he’d probably tell you that ship sailed a long time ago), who in between sips of chocolate milk shared a most interesting hypothesis with me.

“Sometimes,” he said in a voice so earnest I just knew he was pulling my leg, “I get the feeling that the Universe was created by time travel.”

I put down the magazine I was reading and gave him...

Flipping through the television channels some years back, I stumbled upon a television news program which had devoted its entire hour to examining what has apparently one of the most popular religions in modern America.

One segment of the program which particularly fascinated me followed four members of this faith as they travelled about their own personal version of Mecca, pausing at various shrines to pay tribute to the object of their earnest devotion: a statue bearing his likeness, the p...

You know, at the outset it really didn’t seem like all that difficult a task to undertake. After all, all we were trying to do was find our way to a restaurant.

Well, okay, not just any restaurant. We were on the hunt for Tony Packo’s Cafe – renowned throughout the land as the favorite eatery of that legendary American veteran of the Korean War, Maxwell Q. Klinger.

Maybe I’d better start at the be...

Once upon a time - and yet not really all that long ago, if you stop to think about it - all it really took for the boys in the neighborhood to have a good time was an empty lot, the proper equipment, enough fellows to make up two full teams, and one captain willing to let Little Brother Tag-Along p...

When I was a little boy, there were two heroes that I really looked up to.

The first was my father. Well, I suppose that’s typical enough…every little boy I ever knew wanted to grow up and be just like his old man, and all the little girls wanted to be like their mommies. That is, until all those little boys and girls grew into teenagers, and suddenly Mommy and Daddy were somehow transformed (if only for a brief time) into Mother and Father. The Dreaded Enemies.

The other great hero of ...

It was about midway through the day this past Tuesday – our deadline crunch day here at the weekly newspaper where I work – before I realized the day’s date (July 19) and remembered that Tuesday would have been my younger brother Jimmy’s 45th birthday. 

It’s hard to believe that it’s been five and a half years since Jimmy died following a sudden illne...

For better or for worse, it has become second nature in this great country of ours to second guess just about everything. Whether it be the outcome of a sporting event or an election, or the verdict in a criminal trial or civil lawsuit, or even something as comparatively insignificant as the last scene of a book or movie or the final episode of some TV series, Americans seem to take delight in telling everyone who will stop long enough to let them get started why that particular resolution wa...

Recently – and quite unwillingly, I hasten to add – I found myself making my first real, true, honest-to-goodness genuine concession to the unfortunate reality that is the aging process.

I got bifocals.

To be honest, it kind of surprised me that I took this development as hard as I did. After all, I’ve been wearing eyeglasses since the third grade, so it’s not like there was any kind of period of adjustment like I'm sure my father went through when he had to start wearing reading gl...

As long as we're on the subject of "Star Trek," let me begin by stating that there's a story behind the above illustration...

Back in 2000, as much for my own amusement as anything else, I wrote an essay entitled "The Eugenics War Declassified," in which I attempted to explain how the Eugenic Wars first mentioned in a 1966 "Star Trek" episode could have still occurred given what had actually transpired historically during the intervening years. As a fan of Philip José Farmer and his Wold Ne...

“I didn’t know you were a Trekkie, Small.”

The comment was made by my boss one day a number of years ago as he happened to overhear a conversation I was having with a co-worker. We were talking about the film “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country,” which I found (and still find) to...

(Note: The following was my entry in a contest Time magazine held in the late 1990s - I forget the exact year right off - in which the publication asked its readers to submit ideas for an episode of a television series in which characters from another series make an appearance. The winner was some dummy that had Homer SImpson turning up on an episode of "E.R." I still like MY idea better....)

*      *      *

Dear Time:

My name is John Small. I live in Ravia, Oklahoma, and the following is ...

By John Allen Small

On occasion in various regions of the planet Earth during the late 20th and early 21st centuries, there we...

Try as I might not to let it get to me, I've been experiencing the occasional pang of nostalgia this week. I suppose that's only to be expected when you find yourself facing the 20th anniversary of your first child's birth.

Joshua Orrin Small was born on June 1, 1991 - 28 years to the day after I was born, as it happens. I've spent the last 20 years telling people that shared birth date was the product of accident, rather than design; I've never been that good at math, after all. What makes ...

A friend of mine told me that he saw the “D” word in a book once, so he threw it away.

“It couldn’t possibly have any real value if it was written by someone who uses the ‘D’ word,” he told me. “Quite frankly, I just don’t want to have anything to do with any person who says ‘d--’ or ‘d--’, or even ‘d--ed’.”

He then proceeded to explain that the book had challenged his mind. Made him examine his beliefs. But that, you see, made him uncomfortable. And the langu...

The tragic reports coming out of Joplin, Mo., in the wake of the tornado that struck that city last weekend have served as a terrible reminder – as if we needed such in our neck of the woods – of the terrible devastation such storms can produce.

Those reports have been especially difficult for me and my family, as Joplin has been one of our regular stops whenever traveling between here and Illinois to visit family members over the years. Any time there is some kind of personal connection...

“Mythology  n. The collective myths and legends of a particular people, usually describing the exploits of gods and heroes…”

Every era of Mankind’s existence has produced its own unique set of heroes, and the past century has ce...

I have often been accused of not being in step with the rest of the world when it comes to my preferences, beliefs and outlooks on life. Personally I’ve never much cared about such things, and typically when the accusation has been thrown my way my response is that I’m fine and it’s the rest of the world that is out of synch. 

This test was created to determine if I’m really that far off into my own little world, or if there are more of us out there than the masses would care to beli...

I was digging through some old files the other night and ran across something I wrote that suddenly seemed noteworthy again in light of our most recent celebrity controversy... 

It was written in response to a lengthy discussion amongst members of the New Wold Newton Meteorics Society concerning an article in the July 7, 1999 edition of Variety in which it had been announced that former actor, former governor and philandering husband Arnold Schwarzenegger was planning to star as Doc Savage i...

Somebody once told me that I didn’t have any culture.

It happened way back during my college days, but I remember the incident as vividly as if it were yesterday. Some classmates and I took a trip up to Chicago one weekend (apparently it was one of those all-too-rare weekends when none of us had any term papers to write), and while we were there one of our number suggested that we pay a visit to one of the city’s famed art galleries.

I didn’t really want to go. To be honest, I don’t...