Showing Tag: "tv & movies" (Show all posts)

I'M DREAMING OF A RED PLANET

Posted by John Allen Small on Thursday, December 6, 2012, In : Pop Culture 

(Yes, that's really me in the lower left corner... as I looked back in January of 1982.)


 

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...


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SHADOW OF THE BAT

Posted by John Allen Small on Friday, July 22, 2011, In : Pop Culture 


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 ...


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MORE TREK: THE EUGENICS WARS

Posted by John Allen Small on Friday, June 24, 2011, In : Pop Culture 


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...


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"ALL RIGHT... WHO CALLED ME A TREKKIE?"

Posted by John Allen Small on Thursday, June 23, 2011, In : Pop Culture 


 (Note: The above picture is my son William standing in front of the original model of the USS Enterprise at the Smithsonian Institute's Air and Space Museum during or visit to Washington D.C. in 2009)



 

“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...


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(From The Archives) CROSSOVER CONTEST ENTRY

Posted by John Allen Small on Friday, June 10, 2011, In : Pop Culture 

(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 ...


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About Me


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

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