The Columbo Case Files

This is the second volume of The Columbo Case Files. It’s an episode guide that gathers material from all eight episodes of Season Two, incorporating comment on them, and original essays about the series, and its place in our culture. Good and interesting for long-time fans, and those new to Lt. Columbo and the series.

Recent

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

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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

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He’s the Guy

Those social media posts of ‘this moment in this famous film was totally unscripted!!!’ as if that by itself makes it better miss the point. Moat unscripted material, like most ideas, inventions, ideas, notions, &c … fails — such is the nature of creativity: the best stuff, it is devoutly to be wished, sticks around;

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‘Round Here

Imagine someone, potentially anyone, even you, perhaps, but let us, in any case, say. Yes, you. You pull into the diner – Earl’s, Norm’s, Dinah’s, something like that. A sort-of Googie architecture … but maybe not quite, as if it’d been a little late for the Space Age, and late is the one thing you

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Random

Saving Grace

Don’t ask me for grace. Not because I don’t want you to have it, for I certainly do. But I can’t give it to you. Only God can give you grace, of this I’m becoming certain. Grace is God’s action in our lives to accomplish what we could never do on our own. Dallas Willard which

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The Simple Art of Murder (Excerpt)

Raymond Chandler In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not

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Christ on a Postage Stamp

Got to thinking on postage stamps today bec hadda mail a book to a friend and when you go in you hafta say to the guy, no matter what your actual business is that day, and of course you’re already saying it if you went in for this purpose — ‘What first class stamps d’ya have?’ It’s

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Are You Jackin’ With Me?

The one thing I know about The Dark Knight Rises is that it’s the most boring action movie I’ve seen in years, and yes, I saw The Expendables. But it might not be an action movie. So apart from the surety there, my thoughts remain roundaboutly, which is just, considering the movie itself. And the

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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.

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Tebow

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

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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.

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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

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