The dress we ordered for the “girl next door” role in The Fantasticks… vs the dress that we received!

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Love This Headline: “He took a date to the park where he was gored by a bison, figuring it wouldn’t happen again. He was wrong.”

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The Outrageous Okona (TNG Rewatch, Season 2, Episode 4)

Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation after a 20-year break. A pony-tailed pirate-shirt-wearing pile of charisma steps out of a Renaissance Festival sideshow onto the Enterprise for a silly low-stakes caper. Meanwhile, Data tries stand-up comedy. I cringed when the guest star put the moves on the pretty transporter technician (played by a before-she-was-famous Teri…

My son teaching chess to a young pupil

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Dennis G. Jerz | Associate Professor of English -- New Media Journalism, Seton Hill University | jerz.setonhill.edu Logo

Overwhelmed? Start a new to-do list with “1) Breathe; 2) Make ‘to-do’ list”

Felt momentarily overwhelmed by the day’s tasks. Made the following list:   1) Breathe. 2) Make “to do” list. 3) Post blog entry about “to do” list. 4) Go to lunch. 5) Prioritize to-do list. (Break up the intimidating tasks into smaller steps.) 6) Do first important item on list. (Repeat as necessary.)   I’m…

Evita in Zelionople

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APNews.com Photo Still Says Sam Smith “declared his pronouns ‘they/them'” a Week Later

The Associated Press was widely criticized by readers for publishing a story last week under the headline “Sam Smith announces his pronouns are ‘they’ and ‘them’”. The body of the story also used male pronouns, in passages like “He added that he was ‘very nervous’ about the announcement because he cares to much about what…

Scarecrow, Tin Man, Dorothy, and the Cowardly Lion approach Emerald City in this still from The Wizard of Oz

The Hidden Subversive Messages of [MGM’s Screen Adaptation of] The Wizard of Oz

When I tried teaching The Wizard of Oz in a literature class, I was a little frustrated with myself that I couldn’t bring the class discussion much farther than “how this book is different from the movie” and lists of one-to-one symbolism (“the yellow brick road represents the gold standard,” or  ‘the scarecrow represents agriculture,…

Dennis G. Jerz | Associate Professor of English -- New Media Journalism, Seton Hill University | jerz.setonhill.edu Logo

In September 1999 I was blogging about Tom Stoppard, techno-utopianism, voice-recognition software, and Edgar Rice Burroughs

In September 1999, I was blogging about What makes a play worth seeing twice, according to Tom Stoppard The then-unrealistic expectations of voice-recognition software A critique of the “information wants to be free” mantra A Microsoft exec who predicted that digital publication would eclipse print publication within a decade How marketers are pushing your buttons…