Cranial Gunk Blog

Jughead is best when his story stops being THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY and attempts to be Degrassi High…. read more Jughead as Thurber Man attending Degrassi High

We Are Robin…, Volume 2: Jokers by Lee Bermejo WARNING! POTENTIAL SPOILERS! It’s the last story in WE ARE ROBIN… read more 3-2-5 Paragraphs on We Are Robin Volume 2: Jokers

Gotham Academy, Vol. 2: Calamity by Becky Cloonan WARNING! POTENTIAL SPOILERS! Waiting for the next volume of your favorite comic… read more 3-2-5 Paragraphs on Gotham Academy Volume 2

My favorite cover of an Elvis Costello song so far: “The Comedians” by Roy Orbison. Malcolm Gladwell spends the first 10… read more Hallelujah Elvis

The Book of Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafor WARNING POSSIBLE SPOILERS! I think the problem is I read the prequel immediately… read more 3-2-5 Paragraphs on Okorafor’s The Book of Phoenix

Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor This is the third Nnedi Okorafor book I’ve read. The second didn’t really count because it… read more 3-2-5 Paragraphs on Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon

When I was a BOY POET in high school I was in love with Sylvia Plath. I didn’t know at… read more #NPM17: Sylvia Plath

Aleksandar Hemon’s book of essays, The Book of My Lives reminded me that when I moved back home after failing to make… read more Hemon’s Book of Lives

In her introduction to The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction, Tara Masih defines flash fiction using… read more Thad Rutkowski’s Ponderous Pops

The Venture Brothers is my favorite Bowie-Non-Bowie comedy performance. I didn’t lose my virginity to David Bowie like Lori Mattix… read more David Bowie

An 80s song for an 80s story. There are two very enigmatic men in Lyddie’s life: Phelps, her botanist husband,… read more Axel Greece

Where ABC and Fox make you wait a week to see the latest episode (unless you have a cable subscription), The CW understands that it’s commercial TV (not subscription) and that its viewers can’t stop their worlds (no matter how much they want to) to sit and watch their favorite show or, as in my case, take a chance on a new one. … ”The Exterminator” is a good episode in my opinion because it got me wondering if Rob Thomas and Diane Ruggiero-Wright, the show’s creators, would ever make an episode where Liv is frustrated by the stereotypes people have about zombies (like the cavemen in the old GEICO ads ) or write an episode where Liv had to confront own biases towards “Walking Dead” type zombies.

Based on the novel “The Kouga Ninja Scrolls” by Futaro Yamada, “Basilisk” tells a story similar to Romeo and Juliet’s… read more Sequeling Shakespeare

Lorde’s cover of Tears for Fears Everybody Wants to Rule the World. I want to believe M Night Shyamalan was… read more Wayward Night

Kids React to Typewriters In the movie Kung Fu Panda, Po, a well-intentioned but bumbling dreamer, suddenly finds himself recruited… read more Po-gart in The Jade Dodo

Shirley Ellis doing the Name Game. Dear Nick and Elyse (and Lori): I saw your episode of Beyond the Tank…. read more Dear Nick and Elyse

WARNING! SPOILERS! Child of television. When I was told AJ Scudiere’s Under Dark Skies was a “supernatural crime thriller” and… read more Where Angel Should Have Gone

A friend once told me that Hesse’s Steppenwolf was a different book when read at 40 from when it was… read more The Duality and Deconstruction of James Junya Thompson

Admittedly, I should have read the description of Virunga more closely. All I saw on its Netflix banner was “Oscar… read more Virunga Ruined My Sunday

“Jaya Nepal” needs a “Careless Whisper” level indiscretion to make the inclusion of Adriana worthwhile. For the untravelled (like me),… read more Nepali Moksha