Sean McDevitt

20 Questions

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 19:00:00 -0500

Inspired by the Proust Questionnaire and the Colbert Questionert, this is a list of 20 questions to have a little fun with and share a bit about myself to the world.

1. What is your favorite word?

I like “Petrichor” quite a bit. It’s also my favorite smell. “Quadrotriticale” is also a fun word. However, I think I have to say, “Yes” is my favorite word.

2. What is your least favorite word?

I think the word I hate the most is “No.”

3. What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Perfect happiness is a moment of stillness where I’m fully present. There’s no weight of the past or worry about the future. Just a quiet sense that right now, this is enough.It feels like about 5:30 in the morning, with a distant thunderstorm on the horizon. It’s crisp, but not cold outside, and the coffee is the right temperature.

4. What is your idea of absolute misery?

Feeling lost in regret about the past or dread about the future. A cacophony of noise, external or internal.

5. What was your first job ever?

Babysitting my brother.

6. What was your worst job ever?

The summer before college, I worked for the park district. We built a sidewalk, planted a ton of evergreen trees, and built a play set. It was basically digging a lot of holes in the sun.

7. What was your best job ever?

Occasionally, on Saturday, Dad would ask me to work with him at the Pharmacy as a tech. We’d have a morning rush of like five customers and then I’d run to get lunch, and we’d spend the rest of the afternoon talking baseball, reading the newspaper, and basically just hang out. Those were great days.

8. What profession other than your own would you like to try?

I think I would have made a pretty good college professor. I was able to do some adjunct work at the community college level, but I never fully tried to become a full-time professor.

9. What is the trait you hate most in yourself?

I procrastinate too much.

10. What is the trait you hate most in others?

Rudeness. A couple of examples that bother me: Looking at your phone while someone is talking to you, talking loudly on the phone in quiet spaces, and bringing your dog into a restaurant or store when it is obviously not a service dog.

11. What’s a piece of advice you’d give to yourself at 23?

Say yes to more things that scare you a little and say no to more things that drain you completely.

12. What is your greatest extravagance?

I subscribe to nearly all the streaming entertainment services.

13. What’s one thing you own that you really should throw out?

I just recently got rid of a ratty, old, sweat stained baseball hat that I did not want to throw out. I own a snowblower that I’ve never used.

14. You have dinner reservations for four, excluding family and close friends, who are the three people (alive, dead or imaginary) you’d invite?

Barack Obama, Robin Williams, and Dave Filoni.

15. What is your baseball walk-up song?

For a long time, I always answered this with “Three-Lock Box” by Sammy Hagar. Now, I kinda like “Bleed It Out” by Linkin Park or “Detroit Rock City” by KISS.

16. Have you ever asked someone for an autograph?

Lots of people. I got Larry Bird’s autograph when he came to a basketball camp I was at while he was playing for Indiana State. Gene Simmons signed my copy of Mike Grell’s Sable novel, which is a weird combination. I’ve got a bootlegged “Six Million Dollar Man” screenplay signed by Kevin Smith (He wrote it). My favorite one is comic book artist, George Perez, who drew a brooding Batman and signed it to me.

17. You get one song to listen to for the rest of your life: what is it?

John Cage’s 4′33". We are so lucky to live in this day and age, where we can just take out our phones and listen to beautiful compositions like this for free.

18. Coffee or Tea?

I drink coffee a lot more than I drink tea, but I love them both.

19. What is something you’re really excited about right now?

Finally completing Captured Ghosts.

20. Describe the rest of your life in five words:

Still figuring it all out.

Be seeing you.

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0500

Josh Whitman Gets Contract Extension

Josh Whitman isn’t going anywhere. Not until 2036, anyway.

The Board of Trustees approved his extension Thursday. It raises his salary to $2.15 million for the 2026-27 season, then adds $100,000 every year after that. Over the full deal, that’s $26.1 million. It’s his fifth extension as athletic director.

You don’t lock someone up for ten years if you think they might walk. You do it when you can’t picture the place without them.

Whitman is 47. He’s run Illinois athletics since 2016, long enough now to be the fifth-longest-tenured AD in the Power Four. He also played football here, back before any of this. So the man in charge once wore its colors on a Saturday. That means something.

Then there’s the record.

The basketball team reached its first Final Four since 2006 this April. The women’s program has made the NCAA tournament in three of the last four years. Football has piled up marquee bowl wins. He hired Brad Underwood. He hired Bret Bielema. He hired Shauna Green. Three swings, three hits. Without question, he’s the best Athletic Director Illinois has had in decades.

Ten years in, the school asked him to do it all again. Same chair. Higher stakes.

I’d take that bet.

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 09:00:00 -0500

Home Run Derby

I didn’t watch any of it. I kind of forgot it was happening. Then I get a notice that Jordan Walker is in the finals of last night’s MLB Home Run Derby. I still didn’t turn it on. A few moments later, I take a peek at Twitter/X and there it is… Walker won the derby.

I then find out what happened. The hometown hero, Kyle Schwarber, hammered 11 home runs in 15 swings. I watched the clip and as Jordan’s 12th finals home run flew deep into the left field stands, the non-Philly fans cheered. What an ending to the finals.

It’s a reminder of the romance of baseball and I can only hope it is a harbinger of good things for Walker and the Cardinals in the future.

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 18:00:00 -0500

Digger

Digger is a new Tom Cruise movie that popped up on my radar so I had to see what this was all about. I went into this totally cold, so I was not mentally prepared for the trailer, in which we see Cruise playing a dipshit oligarch in what appears to be a Dr. Strangelove-style satire/thriller.

It’s so nice when Tom remembers he can really act when he wants to and this looks like he’s angling for an Oscar.

The logline ain’t bad either:

The most powerful man in the world embarks on a frantic mission to prove he is humanity’s savior before the disaster he’s unleashed destroys everything.

Sun, 12 Jul 2026 12:00:00 -0500

5K

On Sunday, Maria and I decided to walk to this nearby park in a neighborhood or so over. The park had wide sidewalks and nice grounds with wildflowers, alfalfa, and cornflowers. We ended up doing the park loop twice before heading back and we realized as we were approaching the house that we’d ending up walking 3.2 miles, effectively walking a 5K. It was unexpected and fun.

I am kinda tired though.

Sat, 11 Jul 2026 21:00:00 -0500

Overwhelmed

I’m feeling overwhelmed right now. I’m the problem. Me.

I have decided to tackle a bunch of projects that have, at one time or another, got me seriously excited. This is a bad thing.

I wrote a screenplay, Hello Stranger, and I’m pretty proud of it. I finished a pitch deck, but I’m not sure what I’m going to do next.

Also, I have my essays/fiction collection, Captured Ghosts, ready to go to Kindle Direct Publishing so it can show up on Amazon and be bought by, like, three people. I just need to pull the trigger on that one. Sooooo close.

Additionally, I started working on a YA/middle-grade book series that can be described, not quite accurately, as “Harry Potter meets Santa Claus.” I have a full five-book series outlined. It was fun to do. I probably just need to finish the first book.

I started another novel idea inspired by Daisy Jones and Six, but I’ve since abandoned that concept for now.

I had an interesting idea for a science fiction novel set in Door County, WI, and I have a great title for it, but it still needs a lot of work to get off the ground. I really like the concept, though.

Oh, and I also had a fun idea: taking three public-domain novels (The Great Gatsby, The Three Musketeers, and Frankenstein), turning them into modern retellings, each at novella length, and grouping them together in a book.

Plus, I got inspired to fix my website, and now I’ve just added a ton of edits and uploads to make it work.

Where is my mind?

Thank You For Being a Friend

Sat, 11 Jul 2026 06:30:00 -0500

My wife and I go to sleep every night to echoes of The Golden Girls theme song. I have seen every episode at least ten to twenty times now.

That should embarrass me more than it does. A grown man, drifting off to a sitcom about four women in eighties Miami. But the show has become part of the house. It’s the last thing we hear before the lights go out. Thank you for being a friend, and then sleep.

For a long time I thought comfort television worked by asking nothing of you. Then I watched these episodes ten times each, then fifteen, and noticed something. They keep asking.

Take “Old Friends,” the season three premiere. One storyline is pure silliness. Blanche gives away Rose’s beloved teddy bear to a little girl, who promptly holds the bear for ransom. It’s exactly as ridiculous as it sounds, and it’s wonderful. The end with Rose and the girl might be the all-time best Rose moment on the show. The other storyline is not silly at all. Sophia befriends a man named Alvin on the boardwalk, and slowly, without ever announcing it, the show lets you understand he has Alzheimer’s. Estelle Getty plays it so quietly you almost miss how good she is. One episode. One half hour. It made me laugh out loud and then sat on my chest for a while.

The show did that more than people remember. In “An Illegitimate Concern,” the man Blanche is sure is a besotted stalker turns out to be her late husband George’s illegitimate son. It could have curdled into a very special episode. It never does. It plays the whole thing for laughs and for real feeling and never once for sap. Sophia gets the best line after one of Rose’s endless St. Olaf stories, “Hemingway ran out of stories to tell and he shot himself. She just keeps on going.” A season later, in “Mrs. George Devereaux,” George walks back in alive, having faked his own death, and it lands on Blanche like a verdict. Rue McClanahan plays the betrayal for keeps. It’s one of the early “It was all a dream” sitcom plots, but it works perfectly.

And then, thank goodness, there are the episodes that are just funny and unashamed about it. My favorite of the whole run might be “The Actor.” A smooth, handsome actor blows into town for the community theatre and quietly romances all three of them at once, and the farce builds until it topples. Nothing about it is deep. It doesn’t try to be. It’s the ensemble at full stride, and it hands Rose one of her finest bewildered lines, once she works out she’s been played. “I feel so common. So cheap. So used. Blanche, how do you usually deal with that?”

There’s “Ladies of the Evening,” where the girls win tickets to meet Burt Reynolds and, through termites and a hotel that turns out to be a brothel, get arrested as madams. There’s the Valentine’s Day episode, where a trip to the drugstore ends with Dorothy shouting the word “condoms” at Rose four times in a row until the whole store hears her. I know it’s coming, and I laugh every time.

My other favorite comes near the end, when the show was running low on gas. In “The Case of the Libertine Belle,” Blanche stages a murder-mystery weekend to impress her boss. Dorothy solves the fake case in about ninety seconds, and then someone turns up, actually stabbed, with Blanche the prime suspect.

Betty White always said her favorite was “A Little Romance,” the one where Rose dates a man who happens to be a little person. What makes it work is that the show never laughs at him. The humor is all the girls and their own awkwardness. That was the ethic of the whole place. Be as funny as you want, but never punch down.

The company these girls kept was a joy. George Clooney turned up as a rookie cop before he was George Clooney, and it gets me every time. Dick Van Dyke played a big-shot lawyer who wanted to quit the bar and join the circus as a clown. Did you know Quentin Tarantino was an extra playing an Elvis impersonator?

The Golden Girls was a comedy about people the culture had quietly filed away. Widowed or divorced, past whatever age television usually bothered with focusing on. And the whole premise, the beating heart of it, was that they were still funny, still hungry, still falling in love, and, above all, still making friends. Not keeping old ones. Making new ones.

I didn’t understand any of this the first time through. I was watching for the jokes, and the jokes are great. It took repetition to see the rest, the quiet argument under all the farce, that friendship is the thing that holds when everything else has gone. Husbands die. Marriages end. Children grow up and move away. The friends are still at the kitchen table at two in the morning, eating cheesecake, telling the truth.

So my wife and I fall asleep to it. Same theme song, same voices, same four women we’ve now spent hundreds of nights with. It is the least sophisticated thing I do all day, and one of the ones I’d defend the hardest. A show about how much people need each other, playing softly in a dark room, next to the person I need most.

Thank you for being a friend. I mean it about the show, and I mean it about her.

Be seeing you.

Fri, 10 Jul 2026 17:00:00 -0500

Dune Part 3

Here’s the official trailer for Dune 3. I am so looking forward to this. It might be my most anticipated movie of the year. While I’ve only read Dune and haven’t touched the sequels, I generally know how this goes, and it’s not particularly good for Paul in the end. I bet I know the last frame of this movie already.

I probably need to make sure I’m in an IMAX theater to see this in December.

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 17:00:00 -0500

Platner Drops Out

I generally liked what Graham Platner, the politician, was saying and doing. Unfortunately, the non-politician parts were finally too much. Basically, Graham Platner is accused of rape, and that was a line voters in Maine could not cross.

Personally, I wasn’t following that closely to begin with, but I did see that he won the primary. I’m in Illinois, not Maine, and they really seemed to want the guy. For me, the Nazi tattoo was a red flag, but people make dumb decisions.

Well, they picked him, and now they have this alleged rape charge, which has blown the whole thing up. Platner has dropped out, and Maine’s Democrats will replace him in the general election. I’ll be interested to see what the decision is there, but mostly I just want Susan Collins defeated.

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 17:00:00 -0500

Starlog is Back

One of my all-time favorite things growing up is coming back. My Dad will also likely be interested.

Starlog, the science fiction magazine that ended its 33-year run in 2009, will return this fall with a new print edition, a weekly podcast, and a newsletter.

“Fifty years ago, STARLOG went behind the scenes of alternate worlds for the first time. Now it’s back, exploring the visionary sci-fi and cutting-edge science that inspire what comes next. The future will be wild. You’ll be ready for it because you read STARLOG.”

The magazine returns as Volume 2, Number 1, with the first print issue dated Nov. 13, 2026. It will be published annually and sold in stores. The podcast and newsletter are already up and running; magazine pre-orders begin soon.

Two Hundred and Fifty

Sat, 04 Jul 2026 18:00:00 -0500

My first Fourth of July, I was a few days old, asleep in the bleachers behind a backstop while my Dad played ball. I don’t remember it. My Mom does. She says that’s where I was, swaddled in a blanket on the third-base line, the summer I was born.

For years after that, the Fourth meant baseball. Town-league games in the afternoon, an all-star game when the schedule lined up, and later, once I was old enough to stay up, fireworks at the park where my Dad used to play. Some days, we’d just stay in the car and stay cool with the AC. Other times, we’d spread a blanket past the outfield fence and wait for the dark. Small kids ran around with flags on wooden sticks, while the older ones had Pop-Its or real firecrackers. Somebody’s mother always had sparklers and a warning to go with them. It was warm, inviting, and a little bit nostalgic.

I thought the whole country felt like that each year.

Today, the country turns 250. I figured I’d feel it the way I felt back then, maybe even a little more. A round number like that comes once, maybe twice, in a life, and many of us won’t be here for the next one.

That feeling hasn’t shown up.

There’s a thing on the National Mall right now called the Great American State Fair, a sixteen-day, World’s-Fair-scale celebration of the country’s birthday, and it has been a complete failure. Almost nobody has visited. The pictures and videos show an open lawn where the crowds were supposed to be, a Ferris wheel that quit, and ice cream melting in a food hall that lost power. About a fifth of the states declined to send anything at all. The musicians who were booked walked away once they saw how political it had become, so the president made himself the headliner, then claimed that forty-five thousand people came to hear him, while the cameras caught them filing out during the speech.

You can spend a ludicrous amount of money on a birthday party. You can’t make people come.

A few weeks ago, I wrote the voiceover for a YouTube short for my company, Horizon Hobby. It’s about families crowding into a backyard for the Fourth. Kids, grandparents, hot dogs and drinks, and a radio-controlled truck, plane, or boat somewhere being a part of the festivities

The whole piece is built around 250 summers, the same anniversary the country is marking this week, and there’s a line in it I meant all the way down, “You don’t plan a summer like this. You just show up.”

I found the feeling at my desk in June, writing about other people’s backyard celebrations, and it was real. It just wasn’t anywhere near the National Mall. Washington didn’t misplace the feeling, it just went looking in the wrong yard.

What I felt on that field as a kid was never really about the country. It was about the people on the blanket next to me. There’s a difference between loving a place and applauding whoever happens to be running it, and the difference gets easy to lose in a year this loud. The patriotism I can still find. It’s the kind that isn’t aimed at the man behind the bulletproof glass or the budget for the fair nobody attended. It’s the plain bet that the people in the folding chairs are mostly decent, and that the thing started 250 years ago is worth the work of keeping it. That bet has looked foolish before, but people keep making it.

I won’t pretend the year is fine. We’ve been at war since February. Gas and groceries are more expensive. A lot of people I know are tired in a way that doesn’t yet have a clean name. If you’re not feeling triumphant today, you’re in good company.

But the Fourth of July was never asking me to feel triumphant. It’s asking the quieter thing the holiday has always asked under the noise. Whether I still think this is worth it. Whether I’m still in.

I am. Not because the country earned it this year. Because the people on the blanket usually do.

I won’t be out at a diamond this year watching the fireworks come up over the outfield, but I’ll be thinking about the families on the blankets, and the kids running around with flags on wooden sticks until their arms hurt, at every small park in every town that never needed Washington to tell it how to do this. Nobody had to beg those crowds to show up. They come out on their own, every year, the way they did the summer I slept through my first one in the bleachers.

That’s the country I believe in.

Be seeing you.

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 19:00:00 -0500

The Odyssey

Watching the last trailer, I am oddly underwhelmed by this movie. It will probably be great. I have no idea.

Everything is shot so dark. Can we please have some light?

Also, the line, “My Dad is coming back,” immediately took me out of the story.

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 08:40:00 -0500

Fable 5

Anthropic put out a new AI model called Claude Fable 5, and the name is what stopped me. Fable. A company full of engineers built the most capable thinking machine it’s ever made, then reached back past the software vocabulary and named it after the oldest form we have. Talking animals and a lesson at the end.

I’ve got complicated feelings about these tools, same as every writer I know. But I keep noticing that when the people who build them want to signal that something matters, they borrow from storytelling. Not from math. That tells me the old craft still holds the high ground. The machines are getting better. The name admits what they’re chasing.

Sun, 28 Jun 2026 07:00:00 -0500

Happy Birthday to Me

Birthdays are supposed to be remembered and cherished. On my 16th birthday, I drove to the mall by myself. On my 21st birthday… no idea. Probably at some bar watching a band. On my 30th and 40th birthdays… I do not recall anything special or memorable. Birthdays simply have never been a big deal for me.

When I was growing up, my family would have a nice dinner and a cake, my grandma would come over, and I’d get a card and a present or two. It was always a pretty low-key affair. I don’t recall ever having a birthday party with a bunch of friends at the house.

This birthday coming up is not a milestone or a round number. I don’t feel the actual age I’m turning. I guess I feel younger, but I’m wise enough to know I’m most certainly not younger, nor am I getting any younger.

To celebrate, we will get expensive pizza and key lime pie. I’m looking forward to watching a movie on Netflix and enjoying the evening.

Happy birthday to me.

All About the Shoes

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 06:00:00 -0500

The night before the Clippers picked him fifth, Keaton Wagler was thinking about his shoes.

He’d ordered a pair to go with his suit, and they hadn’t shown up yet. He wasn’t sure they would. So there he was in New York, a day from becoming the highest-drafted Illini in twenty years, and the thing on his mind was footwear. “I got the suit ready,” he said. “Hopefully, the shoes make it.”

It’s a cute story and tells you everything you need to know about Wagler.

A year ago, nobody was ordering Keaton Wagler anything. He showed up in Champaign ranked 261st in his recruiting class. Three stars. He didn’t play on a shoe-themed AAU team. He won a couple of Kansas state titles, but big programs didn’t look twice. All credit goes to Tyler Underwood, who saw him and knew he was the perfect fit for what Illinois needed. That evaluation is going to be the biggest one the younger Underwood will likely ever have in his career.

Over the summer, there was some buzz, but no one dreamed he’d become a top-five pick. A contributor on a good team? Yes. The catalyst to propel Illinois Basketball to its first Final Four in decades? No way.

Then December happened.

Brad Underwood and his staff handed the offense to Wagler, and he became one of the best players in the country. He dropped 46 at Purdue in January, a Big Ten freshman record. He carried Illinois to its first Final Four since 2005. He broke the school’s freshman scoring record by a mile with 663 points, the third-best scoring season anybody has ever had at Illinois. Second Team All-American. Big Ten Freshman of the Year. I’m looking forward to his jersey raising this upcoming season.

And on Tuesday, the Los Angeles Clippers took him at No. 5, ahead of three former five-star guards who’d been on every scout’s radar since they were sixteen.

It blows my mind. He’s the highest pick Illinois has produced since Deron Williams in 2005. One of only three Illini ever taken in the top ten, with Williams and Kendall Gill. Gill went fifth too, back in 1990. The number next to Wagler’s name a year ago was 261. The number next to it now is 5.

In pre-draft workouts, a story emerged. When Wagler worked out for the Clippers, he started cold. Missed a bunch of shots in front of the franchise sitting on a top-five pick. That’s the kind of moment that can wilt a nineteen-year-old. Wagler just kept playing. Once they put live competition in front of him, he hit everything and made every winning play in the gym. Their testing turned up an elite ability to stop on a dime and create space. They liked the game. They loved the kid.

“We were blown away,” Lawrence Frank said, “not just with his game, but with his character.”

That’s the Clippers' president of basketball operations explaining why he passed on the five-stars. Not the jumper. The character. They wanted someone obsessed with winning, and they decided a kid from Kansas was the one.

I think about how easy it is to trust a number. We do it all the time. We rank people, seed them, and slot them where we think they belong, and then we mostly stop looking. The ranking turns into the truth, and the truth turns into the ceiling. Two hundred and sixty-one means role player, on a good day. It does not mean top-five pick. Everyone knew that.

Except a number is a guess. That’s all it ever was. A snapshot of what a teenager could do in one moment, dressed up as a verdict on what he’ll always be. Underwood and his staff looked past the snapshot. So did Frank, out in Los Angeles with the fifth pick and a roster he’s rebuilding around Kawhi Leonard’s last good years. Both of them saw a player the rankings had filed away and forgotten.

The better part of the story is that Wagler never seems to have believed the verdict on himself either. He didn’t arrive at Illinois playing like a 261. He arrived and played, and when the lights got bigger, so did he. The Clippers saw the same thing.

For this Illinois Basketball program, Wagler going fifth runs deeper than one good draft night, and it was a great one. The line coming out of Illinois is three first-rounders in three years. It’s a guard factory in Champaign now, which is the kind of thing you can sell to every recruit who falls asleep dreaming about the “Association.”

Keaton Wagler is just an incredible story. A year ago, he was a name almost nobody could place. Tuesday night, he walked across that stage as the fifth pick in the draft, in the shoes he was most worried about.

Be seeing you.

Fri, 26 Jun 2026 17:00:00 -0500

Hello Stranger Logline

Does this logline make you want to read the actual screenplay?

A comic-shop owner is handed one perfect night with the love he talked himself out of a decade ago — then learns she’s dying and has begged him to stay away, forcing a choice between the months they could still have and the clean goodbye she’s chosen for them both.

Let me know.

I’m working on the pitch deck next.

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 18:00:00 -0500

Rereading The Great Gatsby

I own a wonderful edition of The Great Gatsby. I’ve cracked it open a few times, but I haven’t fully read the novel since high school. I’ve seen several movies, and I rather like the one starring Leo and Tobey.

This essay by Matthew Morgan has made me want to actually read the book again. Tom and Daisy are such careless people…

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 21:00:00 -0500

Be Where Your Feet Are

Alan Stein, a leadership and basketball performance coach who’s worked with players like Kevin Durant and Steph Curry, did a TED talk several years ago on something I need to be better at–time and attention.

In the video, he explains how learning to be where your feet are can help you become more present, productive, and successful.

“Your habits are in fact a choice. You choose your habits and your habits are what dictate your happiness and your success."

His beginning, about what he learned from watching a private workout by Kobe Bryant, is great.

I recognize when someone is present and focused. I admire it in other people. In practice, for myself, I’m terrible at it. Take 10 minutes to watch. I need to watch it about ten more times a day.

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 20:00:00 -0500

$112 Million Man

Extending the Illini in the NBA coverage, ESPN reported Monday night that Ayo Dosunmu will stay with the Minnesota Timberwolves after signing a five-year, $112 million contract.

Minnesota acquired Dosunmu at the trade deadline, and he became one of their best players alongside Anthony Edwards, lifting them to massive moments in the postseason.

Good for him.

What if Star Trek The Next Generation Was a Streaming Show?

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 06:00:00 -0500

Some days my mind wanders. I think about weird things like what my favorite Star Trek episodes are and why streaming shows now feature only 8 to 13 episodes per season.

I then started thinking about whether it was possible to cut each season of Star Trek: The Next Generation down to 13 of the best episodes. Would viewers miss much? I’m thinking they would not.

So, I took it upon myself to whittle down each season’s normal 26 episodes down to 13. At the very least, it makes for a fun exercise (no, not that kind of exercise) and a playlist for a fun binge-watching run.

Season 1

Encounter at Farpoint (101, 102)

Where No One Has Gone Before (106)

The Battle (109)

Hide and Q (110)

Haven (111)

The Big Goodbye (112)

Datalore (113)

11001001 (115)

Symbiosis (122)

Skin of Evil (123)

We’ll Always Have Paris (124)

Conspiracy (125)

The Neutral Zone (126)

The first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation is not good. The writers had no idea what to do with these characters, and there are only two or three episodes worth watching again (the pilot, “Conspiracy,” and “The Neutral Zone”).

Season 2

The Child (201)

Elementary, Dear Data (203)

The Outrageous Okona (204)

A Matter of Honor (208)

The Measure Of A Man (209)

The Dauphin (210)

Contagion (211)

The Icarus Factor (214)

Q Who (216)

Samaritan Snare (217)

Up The Long Ladder (218)

The Emissary (220)

Peak Performance (221)

Also, a lost season of mostly C-level stories. “The Measure Of A Man” is a standout. “Q Who” is scary, but the rest are just okay. It really is quite surprising that the show remained on the air. If it weren’t first-run syndication with the Star Trek name behind it, I doubt it would get a third season.

Season 3

Who Watches The Watchers (304)

The Enemy (307)

The Defector (310)

Deja Q (313)

Yesterday’s Enterprise (315)

The Offspring (316)

Sins of the Father (317)

Allegiance (318)

Captain’s Holiday (319)

Hollow Pursuits (321)

The Most Toys (322)

Sarek (323)

The Best of Both Worlds Part 1 (326)

This season features several impressive episodes, including “The Defector,” “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” “Captain’s Holiday,” “Sarek,” and the kicker, “The Best of Both Worlds.”

Season 4

The Best of Both Worlds Part 2 (401)

Family (402)

Brothers (403)

Legacy (406)

Reunion (407)

Future Imperfect (408)

The Final Mission (409)

Data’s Day (411)

The Wounded (412)

Qpid (420)

The Drumhead (421)

The Mind’s Eye (424)

Redemption Part 1 (426)

Last season’s “The Best of Both Worlds,” the second half of the two-parter here, and “Family” are arguably among the best Star Trek episodes and are especially good when viewed back-to-back-to-back.

Season 5

Redemption Part 1 (501)

Darmok (502)

Ensign Ro (503)

Disaster (505)

The Game (506)

Unification Part 1 (507)

Unification Part 2 (508)

Conundrum (514)

Cause and Effect (518)

The First Duty (519)

I Borg (523)

The Inner Light (525)

Time’s Arrow Part 1 (526)

Here’s where it really gets interesting. From “Darmok” through “The Inner Light,” there isn’t a clunker of an episode. The writing staff is hitting its stride, and the actors have a better understanding of who their characters are at this point. I’m a big fan of “The Inner Light,” but I don’t think it’s the best single episode of TNG.

Season 6

Time’s Arrow Part 2 (601)

Relics (604)

Rascals (607)

A Fistful of Datas (608)

Chain of Command Part 1 (610)

Chain of Command Part 2 (611)

Ship in a Bottle (612)

Face of the Enemy (614)

Tapestry (615)

Starship Mine (618)

Lessons (619)

Timescape (625)

Descent Part 1 (626)

The run of episodes from “Relics” to “Timescape” contains no bad episodes. Seasons 5 and 6 are the high-watermark episodes for me.

Season 7

Descent Part 2 (701)

Gambit Part 1 (704)

Gambit Part 2 (705)

Attached (708)

Force of Nature (709)

Inheritance (710)

Parallels (711)

The Pegasus (712)

Lower Decks (715)

Firstborn (721)

Preemptive Strike (724)

All Good Things… (725, 726)

It’s obvious that by Season 7, the show was getting tired. “Parallels,” “The Pegasus,” and “Lower Decks” make a good three-show arc, but the others aren’t quite as strong. “All Good Things…” is an excellent series ender and wraps up the television side of TNG perfectly.

Be seeing you.

Fri, 19 Jun 2026 18:00:00 -0500

The New Mister Rogers' Neighborhood YouTube Channel

The folks at Fred Rogers Productions have launched a YouTube channel dedicated to Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. They plan to post compilations, clips, and full episodes, some of which haven’t been seen on PBS in years & years. One of the first complete episodes they’ve posted is the one about how crayons are made!

I love this. I have a three-year-old nephew who I think is maybe a touch too young for Mister Rogers, but he won’t be in a few years. I can’t wait to show this to him someday.

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 09:30:00 -0500

Obligations

I wish I could float smoothly from project to project with the ease of self-assurance. I would love to be able to process information like a computer, make quick, insightful decisions, and stand behind them for all eternity. Does that sound even remotely like reality?

I manage a great deal. It’s not the mark of a modern 21st-century person to have managed one’s life as old hat. It isn’t. It just seems that way. We juggle so many things without even pausing to think about why we are doing them or whether they are good uses of our time.

Can you say no to a project given to you by your boss? Most of us would agree that saying no is not an option. Yet self-help gurus constantly bemoan that workers need to better manage their efforts to achieve optimal outcomes. How is that even possible with managers adding work to an already overworked staff? What are the priorities, and can it not be everything?

Obligations. These are the things that have to get done. You have to pay your rent/mortgage and your bills, go to work, make dinner, etc., etc. The question is, do you spend time on your obligations or on the things that you want to do?

Tue, 16 Jun 2026 18:00:00 -0500

Backmasking

I love backmasking. Now with digital music files and home editing software, there’s no more spinning the vinyl record backward on a turntable. Satan, apparently, has gone binary. Enter “backmasking” into Google and nearly 9,000 sites pop up.

The whole stupid Christian coalition making what are really phonetic reversals into messages from Satan just cracks me up. I remember seeing televangelists wail about this crap. Of course, since I was/am a huge fan of KISS, there was the inevitable “Knights in Satan’s Service” tag. Funny enough, though, KISS never had a song that was backmasked either intentionally or not.

Wikipedia has a great collection of information on intended and unintended backmasking. Even more fun is Jeff Milner’s site, which offers many tracks to play forward and backward for your listening pleasure. Most of these are famous backmasking tracks that either I read about or actually heard back in the day.

Hearing “My Sweet Satan” as a phonetic reversal of “Stairway to Heaven” takes me back to high school and guys who were talented enough to splice the cassette tape or record the album and then “hand roll” it backward to try to recreate the sound.

I wish some of the newer metal bands would bring this practice back just to screw with the crazy religious right. I’d have all kinds of intentional backmasking on an album. All of it would be just like Christian rock band Petra’s famous intentional backmask, which says, “What are you looking for the devil for, when you ought to be looking for the Lord?”

Heh. That’d show ‘em.

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 07:00:00 -0500

Hello, Stranger Update

You may not care, but you are reading this, so maybe… I wrote a screenplay based on one of my short stories. The short story was an absolute riff on High Fidelity. It’s set in a comic shop rather than a record store, and it features girlfriends and weird employees. The crux of the prose story remained, but I took that spine and turned it into something completely different. There’s a funny High Fidelity reference, and our male lead does break the fourth wall, but that’s about as close as it gets to Hornby’s book or the movie.

I’m rather proud of it.

I don’t know anyone in the industry. Cold emailing people seems like a bad idea. The next step is probably seeing if I can get it hosted on The Black List.

If you happen to know someone who might be interested, feel free to let me know.

And the Thunder Rolls

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 06:00:00 -0500

My favorite B-movie is called Thunder Alley. I watched it again over the weekend and enjoyed every minute. This movie is so schlocky, it isn’t even out on DVD and I have a nearly worn out VHS copy.

In a time before Behind the Music explained how every band gets started and is torn apart by drugs, we get the story of Richie and Donnie. Donnie (Scott McGinnis, who never quite made it as a Tom Cruise-lookalike) has started a band named, of all things, Magic and wants his friend Richie (Roger Wilson of Porky’s fame… I guess) to join, but the lead singer, Skip (Leif Garrett in full curly blonde hair, pre-Behind the Music special and odd white boy dance moves mode) isn’t too keen on having the hick join his rocking band.

Richie ends up having to sit in with the band while Magic’s current flashy and talent-less guitar player makes nice with the bathroom floor. Soon he’s in the band and they are on their way to local stardom playing clubs all across Nevada and Arizona. Meanwhile, their sleazy manager has been getting Donnie hooked on drugs, and when an overdose kills him, Richie is devastated. He learns who supplied Donnie the drugs, takes a sledgehammer to the sleazy manager’s expensive car and decides to pack in the rock and roll life. The manager tears up Magic’s contract and kicks the band off the bill of a huge festival where all the record company execs will be waiting to sign the next big thing.

Enter Pre-Highlander Clancy Brown.

Before old Donnie boy loses his battle with cocaine and speedballs, the band goes on a club tour with their road manager, Wessel (pronounced “Weasel”), played to perfection by Clancy Brown. He takes a shine to the boys in Magic and thinks there’s something special in their music.

For no apparent reason other than they are both blonde, the sleazy manager thinks he can drop the current lead singer of the Judas Priest rip-off band, Surgical Steel, add Leif Garrett and make a million bucks. This is akin to asking David Lee Roth to be the new frontman in Iron Maiden.

Wessel thinks this is stupid (as does most of the audience) and tries to convince Richie to join the bass player and drummer (Butch and Wolf, for those scoring at home) on stage after the Surgical Steel set at the big festival where, remember, all the record company execs will be waiting to sign the next big thing. Richie says no. The audience says noooooo!

Richie’s girlfriend, played by second rate scream queen of the 80s and general hottie Jill Schoelen, tries to convince him to play. Richie can’t do it. The audience says noooooo!

At the festival, Leif is watching Surgical Steel play. Wessel keeps the amps hot. The lights go down and Butch and Wolf take the stage. The lights come up and they start to play, but without Donnie, Richie or Skip, they got nothing.

They start to get depressed and stop playing. All of a sudden, a screaming guitar can be heard. Richie is at the show and he brought his Les Paul! The festival crowd goes nuts. The members of Magic go nuts. The audience watching the movie goes, “duh… of course he’s gonna show up. It’s a movie!”

The band plays “Heart to Heart” for dearly departed Donnie and the festival crowd is in tears. They go into their up tempo number, “Can’t Look Back,” and Richie asks Skip to join them on stage. The band is back together! Leif dances with his hands in the pockets of his jacket. He is sooooo cool. Clancy Brown smiles and the movie ends.

I love everything about this movie from the cheesy songs, to the sleazy manager doing his best Boss Hogg imitation to the gratuitous nudity, to the ridiculous names (Skip, Butch, Wolf) and to Clancy Brown playing the good guy for once.

It is sorta like Rock Star mixed with Almost Famous and every Behind the Music episode you saw except for the Weird Al Yankovic one. I think I’d pay big money for a DVD copy with the soundtrack.

Anyway, that’s my favorite B-movie. What’s yours?

Be seeing you.