Next week is the second FyreCon art/writing conference — part of what I love is the subject matter, of course, but a large part is also that it’s barely ten minutes from my front door.  None of those 75-minute treks to and from Utah Valley! In case you’re still on the fence about attending, here’s…

I’ve often been puzzled that gun-control advocates so uniformly use the phrase “common sense” to describe their proposals, whereas that phrase practically never shows up in advocacy for other causes with which those advocates are usually bedfellows.  You don’t hear so much about common-sense environmental regulation or common-sense abortion legality or common-sense affirmative action.  (And…

Warning Sign (1985) – A small-town agro-research firm is actually a DoD biowarfare research unit, and when a nasty bug accidentally gets loose inside the facility, the lockdown traps the local sheriff’s wife inside with researchers exposed to a rage-releasing virus. Shot largely in Payson, Utah (I pegged the mountains in the background right off),…

The New Shaolin Boxers (1976) – A good alternate title would probably be No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.  A young kung fu fighter with an overdeveloped sense of justice keeps taking the side of the innocent in fights with hooligans and gangsters; he doesn’t lose any fights, but there’s enough resulting property damage each time…