Keith B. Darrell's Blog, page 10

Hair - the Age of Aquarius

I was at the barber shop the other day and I ran into a guy who...  what's that? OK, you're right. I admit it: I haven't been to a barber shop since I turned 14 and had my last 50-cent haircut. The Vitalis, greased back wet look was on the way out and the blown-dry "dry look" was in vogue, so with the start of junior high, I convinced my mother to do what all the cool kids at school were doing and have my hair not cut by Sam the barber but instead coiffed by a men's hair stylist.
The...

Why It Matters

I decided to treat myself on my milestone birthday so I bought two books: one by Harlan Ellison and one about him. The first was Harlan’s last book, Can and Can’tankerous, which I noted had an error. The Latin phrase Omne ignotum pro magnifico (“Everything unknown is taken as grand”) was written as Omne ignotum pre magnifico. It was, of course, obviously the publisher’s fault, not Harlan’s. I imagine him turning in his grave, shouting foul epithets at the proofreader for having made the autho...

From Excelsior to ‘Nuff Said

Stan Lee died today. I’ll leave it to others to pen his obituary and enumerate all of his accomplishments during his 95 years of creative fecundity. Not since the death of Walt Disney has the entertainment world lost a true giant whose imagination would excite and entertain successive generations during his lifetime and beyond.
Instead, let me tell you about the Stan Lee I knew. Not the 17-year-old who went to work for his cousin’s husband, Timely Comics comic book publisher Martin Goodman and...

Peeling the Label

Americans love labels. On the food they buy, on their nametags at gatherings, and apply to themselves: it’s all about identification. Labels are designed to answer the question before it’s asked: What’s on the inside? Who are you? I’m a vegetarian; smoker; non-smoker; German; American; Russian; Southerner; Midwesterner; tourist; citizen; Catholic; Jew; Protestant; white; black; Asian; Latino; teacher; longshoreman; doctor; lawyer; hawk; dove; conservative; liberal; Democrat; Republican. Peopl...

Privileges Versus Rights

Shortly after I had posted my previous column, a neighbor walking his dog approached me and we struck up a friendly conversation. He’s a friendly man, an animal lover and, although he just turned 40, he looks 30, having an athletic physique and always being well-dressed. In our conversations I’ve found him to be an articulate and compassionate individual. This day, our conversation turned to the state of our country, specifically the increasing amount of hatred and virulent racism and anti-Se...

The Black Cable

 I spent the afternoon at my mother’s house waiting for the cable guy to arrive. He did. His name was Andre, a polite young man – he later told me he was a mere 20 years old. He had a major rewiring job ahead of him, but before he could begin he needed to locate the cable junction box outside. He asked me where it was and I confessed I was clueless. “It’s not my home,” I averred, joining him as we searched the grounds for the elusive box. After circling the house five times, examining va...

Justice For All

The midterm elections are here and voters are heading to the polls. But Sylvia Likens won’t be among them. When Sylvia was 16, her parents -- itinerant carnival workers -- left her and her younger sister Jenny (crippled by polio) in the care of Gertrude Baniszewski, a woman with seven children of her own to look after. For $20 a week, it must have seemed like a good idea at the time; as it turns out, it was one of the worst decisions any parents have ever made.

Sylvia and Jenny joined Baniszew...

Nosferatu, Inc.

Nosferatu, Inc., the third and final installment of the Fangs & Fur story arc in the Halos & Horns fantasy series, is now available for eBook pre-order (paperback to be published Aug. 31). With the release of Nosferatu, Inc. readers can devour the entire Fangs & Fur story arc in one sitting or even catch up on all seven books (so far) in the Halos & Horns series.

Freedom Isn't Free

The bravest thing I’ve ever seen was when an ordinary citizen in support of democracy and in open defiance of the Communist Chinese government stood up to a tank in Tiananmen Square. Alone and unarmed, in a tense situation in which the government had turned weapons of war on its own citizens to quell dissent, this one man blocked the tank’s path. The military leaders didn’t know what to do. They realized the entire world was watching and they knew what the optics of a 48-ton tank crushing a m...

American Exceptionalism

And now, on this Fourth of July, an appropriate excerpt from my new book, Collected Essays of a Reluctant Blogger :




On this day commemorating the founding of our republic, it is appropriate to take a moment from our barbecues and fireworks displays and reflect on the state of our country and our society. Recently, the Supreme Court, in the Citizens United case, which allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts backing political campaigns and spurred the development of superPACs, effectively...