One Wild Ride: Review of One Battle After Another ★★★★ By Geoff Carter Illustration by Michael DiMilo In the cataclysmic first scenes of Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, a group of highly organized militant revolutionaries named French 75 frees a group of Mexican immigrants from a detention center. While the is not explicitly stated, …
Read
Month:January 2026
Kickass and Kidnapped Presidents
Attribution: US Military, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, will be helping the keeper and Phyllis promote their “Corrupt Presidential Kidnap Plan” by which corrupt presidents constantly kidnap each other until they are reduced to melted butter in the manner of the fairy tale beasts that grabbed each other’s …
Read
Kickass and Health Insurance
Attribution: Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, finds the keeper weary of providing brilliant answers to life’s big questions and is confident that he and Phyllis deserve to ask one: How the hell did the insurance gang get such a choke hold on our health scene that the option of dying …
Read
Kickass and Growing Grandchildren
Photo by Bill Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper and Phyllis with a message for all grandchildren, great and otherwise: If you insist on emerging from your cuddly, cute stage to enter a growth cycle that would shame July corn, try to give your old grandparents—great and otherwise, some warning. …
Read
Kickass and Sit and Stay
Photo by Phyllis Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, will be starting the new year by assisting the keeper and Phyllis as they review the true significance of “sit and stay!” in their lives. This old dog-training command obviously goes far beyond its original aim of having the target subject actually “sit and …
Read
Happy New Year from The Pen in Hand Blog!!
Attribution: Rakib Ale, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
A Year to Remember
Attribution: Photo by BoliviaInteligente on Unsplash By Geoff Carter Today is New Year’s Day, typically a time to look back at the events of the past year. This is a time when our triumphs, defeats, gains, and losses are examined, weighed, and measured. In many ways, 2025 might be a year we would not care to remember, but …
Read