The Columbo Case Files: Seasons One Through Seven

Complete season guide to Seasons One Through Seven, with essay, comment, critique, etc. on the first 44 episodes of the Classic TV show ‘Columbo’ — the NBC years. If you’ve read them individually as ebooks, these are currently largely the same, but collected here for the first time. Just under 400 pages. Two more collections on the way with the 25 remaining ABC episodes and cultural analysis of the show.

Recent

Coyotes and Christians

I am not saying Christians are like coyotes. [For that, some could cut caustically to coyotes are like Christians — tricksters, roaming in the dark, feeding on the dead … ] Simply noticed — somewhat in passing, as it’s said, having attained, apparently … achieved? … some kind of state where nearly anything I hear,

Read More »

And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’

Short answer: he did not. Neither did Prince Myshkin, that we know of. Likely both believed it. Beauty — in the person of Christ — will do so. And clearly D wrote of M in The Idiot to explore art and beauty and ugliness and salvation. But did he say it, and did he believe that

Read More »

What I Recalled Watching Netflix

[Television is educational.]   One Saying the same stuff over and over looks like you have different things to say. Two If you’re ever in a below-average film or streaming series, and you beat the tar out of a guy, in a house, and you gaze down in both some shock as also a certain

Read More »

Seeking the King

A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do

Read More »

Random

Too Old For This

You know the line. Usually spoken by an ersatz Bruce Willis type, it is well past cliché, sliding in safely but awkwardly beyond its years to self-parody, as predictable as the pablum in which it appears. [And note, I like every other Die Hard movie.] And yet, here I am: Too old for this. I

Read More »

Jesus FAIL

They killed him yesterday and it was awful, as you might expect. Crucifixion, like a common criminal — but he wasn’t common, though now he’s a criminal. He broke their laws, which I guess are our laws. No. He confirmed our Law. Justice: fulfill the Law. But the Romans didn’t want justice; they wanted quiet.

Read More »

Take Up Do

In my mid-20s — half an age (mine) and still nearly nil on maturity ago — I noticed a thing that at the time was massive but in retrospect, as such immensities often are after the time, obviously is something millions of others have noticed through all their times. At least one hopes. I noticed

Read More »

Of Love

We like lists. Here’s one. Love is a song Love is the greatest song Love is integral Love is alive Love is gospel Love is power Love is work Love is desire and fulfillment Love is suffering Love is free Love is true to reality Love is accurate Love is simple Love is individual Love

Read More »

Related

Burning and Bleeding

These 21 essays, some quite short, cover everything from truth and love, to our humility and happiness, to celebrating meals and cursing God, to baseball and Johnny Cash. Thanks for reading.

Read More »

Tebow

Can he play? Should he pray? What’s next for Tim Tebow? … This book asks those questions — and answers them. Thanks for reading.

Read More »

Your Mom’s a Hypocrite

What’s so wrong with hypocrisy? Other than it being dishonest and demeaning to all that we are as humans … is it really that bad? Actually it can even be good. So, take a look at this book by a hypocrite for hypocrites. Promise you won’t regret it.

Read More »

Love Every Day

Tim Keller has said that our sinfulness is far worse than we ever could imagine, and that God’s love is far more than we ever dared hope. And Christians for millennia have affirmed no better way to learn these truths – and many others besides – than to love God with all our heart and

Read More »