Bill Bodden's Blog, page 17

What -- And Leave Show Business? (Part One)

When I first moved to Madison, Wisconsin many years ago, I landed a job working in a movie theater. The theater was an "Art house," showing foreign films, documentaries, and basically filling a niche that other theaters had ignored. The theater I worked at was technically part of a chain: Landmark Theatres also managed theaters in Seattle, Minneapolis, and Milwaukee, among other cities. Mostly, they rented existing theater buildings; this became a major issue...

To read the rest of this post, please visit: http://billbodden.com/2017/11/13/what...

A Simple Gesture

For the last two years, I've been using Facebook to spread a little bit of joy. Facebook, for it's MANY faults, does have a few useful features: one that I've found particularly handy is the birthday feature. A line-item on the right side of the page...

To read the rest of this post, please visit: http://billbodden.com/2017/11/10/a-si...

An Unknown Debt

I've been thinking lately about encouragement, and how seldom we as a culture are willing to give encouragement to others. I suspect much of that ties into toxic masculinity: the idea that people without sufficient skills or confidence to succeed deserve...

To read the rest of this post, please visit: http://billbodden.com/2017/10/29/an-u...

FIlms to Inpsire the Halloween Spirit

With halloween only a week away, I'd like to recommend a few films to help inspire the Halloween Spirit. Not all of them are, strictly speaking, scary, but all of them capture aspects of the holiday, and many can be viewed ...

To read the rest of this post, please visit: http://billbodden.com/2017/10/23/film...

Being a Guest of a Convention

As a follow-up to last week's POST about being invited as the Gaming Guest of Honor for next year's Great Falls Gaming Rendezvous , I wanted to talk a little bit about what being a guest of a convention means to me...

To read more of this post, please visit: http://billbodden.com/2017/10/16/bein...

Exciting News For Next Year!

It's been over four months since I've known about this, but haven't been able to say anything until the official announcement was made. That announcement happened last night, so I am now free to spill the beans...

To read the rest of this post, please visit: http://billbodden.com/2017/10/09/exci...

Grief and Moving On

I've been seeing a lot of my Facebook friends writing about the passing of a beloved pet lately. Words are hard to find at a time like that -- good words, anyway -- that will offer real comfort in a time of grief. I have a standard thing I write: "Take comfort that you gave X a good life and a loving home." Sometimes I add "Not all pets are so lucky." It's taken me years to find that, and I'm happy with it. It gives the grief-stricken pet-parent...

To read the rest of this post, please visit: http://billbodden.com/2017/10/02/grie...

Take A Knee

Once upon a time it would’ve amazed me how many white people are up in arms about athletes taking a knee in peaceful protest over police brutality applied selectively against people of color: not any more.

To be succinct:

YOU don’t get to tell someone the “right” way to protest.

YOU don’t get to decide when someone else should or should not be offended.

YOU don’t get to choose which venue is appropriate for their protest.

Innocent people of color are dying because of police brutality. If that doesn’t bother you, you should binge on some Sesame Street or Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood to learn how to be a decent human being.

A flag is a piece of cloth. What’s more important than worshipping a piece of cloth as if it were the holiest of holies is what we, as a nation, actually stand for. Right now, it would appear that Americans stand for silencing dissent and victimizing those with no voice: the weak, the elderly, the sick and infirm, and marginalized people including the LGBT community, people of color, and refugees fleeing certain death in hope of a better life for their families.

Prove me wrong.

The Price of Fame

As a youth, I collected autographs of baseball players the couple of times a year we were able to attend pro baseball games. I managed a few good ones too: Hall of Famer Paul Molitor, Bob Uecker, better known for his Hall of Fame career as a wisecracking baseball announcer than as a player, Cub great Ernie Banks, and former Yankees catcher and Hall of Famer Yogi Berra -- those last two at baseball card shows. More recently, I've collected autographs of Babylon-5 stars, including Jason Carter, Bruce Boxleitner, Peter Jurasik, Claudia Christian, and the late Steven Furst and Jeff Conaway. It's a fun, goofy way to capture the memory of a brief moment, and while I don't actively seek out autographs of the famous any more...

To read the rest of this post, please visit: http://billbodden.com/2017/09/18/the-...

Dressing Up

This is not a post about cosplay or costuming.

I've been thinking about how we dress lately. It occurred to me, after taking my wife to dinner for her birthday on a Friday night, that I was the only person in the restaurant wearing a necktie, or for that matter, a more formal shirt and slacks. I don't often wear ties, but for special occasions I like to look sharp. I grew up with the notion that when you dressed up...

To read the rest of this post, please visit: http://billbodden.com/2017/09/12/dres...