Illustration by Michael DiMilo ★★★☆☆ Starstruck: Review of Opus By Geoff Carter A24 has become synonymous with originality, daring, and independence in the film industry. It is also typically synonymous with quality. With quirky and beautiful productions like Queer, Ghost Story, The Witch, Midsommar, and Oscar winners like Ladybird, Moonlight, and Everything Everywhere All at Once—and dozens more great …
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Kickass and Screens
Photo by Bill Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop, advises the keeper and Phyllis that their constant company of senior citizens can be enriched by an occasional exposure to members of a different age group as represented by the recent visit of Maverick and Holden who demonstrated how the meaning of life is in …
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Kickass and Good Neighbors
Photo by Bill Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper and Phyllis and friends Hester, Larry and Michael in a lunch visit with across-the-street neighbor “The Lussier Community Education Center” and came away well fed and greatly impressed with the broad scope of meaningful services the center’s staff and dedicated volunteers …
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Kickass and Visit of Boo
Photo by Bill Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, gives the floor to the keeper and Phyllis to pass on the verity that sandwiches climb into a rarefied culinary class when they are delivered and prepared by a son and granddaughter—Mike and Sarah who also brought along Boo the aging little schnauzer who …
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Dialogues on Big Bilious Billionaire Boys’ Bill: Profiles in Avarice
Illustration by Michael DiMilo Featuring the Fabulous Dadbots: Dave S., Mark M., Mark O., Dennis C., John K., and Geoff Carter Hey bots, Well, it’s about to become the law of the land. Somehow, Trump and the spineless Republican invertebrates (redundant, I know, but their lack of courage bears repeating) have passed the bilious Billionaire …
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Kickass and “In Our Places”
Attribution: B137, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports the keeper marveling some mornings on how it all fits together with everyone getting to their places and doing whatever it is that needs doing and then retreating at the end of the day to their personal haunts where family and …
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Chinese Finger Trap
Attribution: carol, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons By Geoff Carter Let’s try a reality check: These are only a few—the greatest hits—of the latest conspiracy theories. Of course, we have the golden oldies like the earth is flat, contrails are poisoning people, Area 51 was an alien landing site being concealed by the government, and …
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Kickass and Model T Touring
Photo by Bill Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports the keeper unhappy that he is not up in northern Wisconsin riding around the north woods in a Model T Ford with Phyllis’s son Kevin and his wife Colleen at the annual week-long “Doughty” summer Model T tour originated many years ago by …
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Geoffrey Carter’s New Best Mystery List on Shepherd.com
A great way to find new reads and new authors The Shepherd.com Website: My New Best Mystery List
Kickass and Global Warming
Attribution: NOAA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports the keeper greeting the day by reading a Facebook post written by “John Scheve” and passed along by Tom G that does a deep dive into global warming’s catastrophic weather effects. In a complex explanation of how warming ocean currents …
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Kickass and July 21, 2025
Attribution: Steve Shook from Moscow, Idaho, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper likes to start the week off on a positive note and passes along the information that on July 21, 2025 both he and Phyllis got up, got dressed, got coffee, got into …
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The Pen in Hand Guide to the Movies: The Legacy of John Goodman
Attribution: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Geoff Carter He is not one of your pretty boys. As his character Lewis Fine says in True Stories, “I’m six-foot-three and maintain a very consistent panda bear shape”. John Goodman is a big guy and a huge presence in every film he in which he appears. …
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