Pure Magic: A Review of Marvel’s “Doctor Strange”

Last updated on: February 28, 2017 at 10:18 am By Mary Pezzulo

Need something to take your mind off the election? I have just the thing. I just got back from watching Marvel’s Doctor Strange. It is the goofiest and most genuinely fun film I have watched in years, the best Marvel movie since Thor. The inimitable Benedict Cumberbatch made his career playing narcissistic yet lovable intelligent skinny men. He’s in his element here as Doctor Stephen Strange, a self-absorbed world-famous brain surgeon who does not know not to text while speeding. The resulting car... Read more

But I’m Just Asking Questions

Last updated on: November 11, 2016 at 8:30 pm By Mary Pezzulo

We’ve got six more days, folks. Six days. Six. The devil’s number. Less than a week left and this hellish, agonizing rusted thumbscrew of an election will be over one way or another… unless the loser refuses to concede, in which case I’ll go mad. I think I already have gone mad. It happened at some point while watching those three spectacular debates. I never knew a grown man could get so furious just by hearing his opponent call him... Read more

A Much-Needed Work of Mercy For Father Louis

Last updated on: November 11, 2016 at 8:32 pm By Mary Pezzulo

Take a look at what happens to my friend Father Louis Merosne’s rectory, in the parish of Anse-a-Veau in Haiti, every time it rains. I can’t embed the video; click on the link. Every time it rains the slightest bit, the whole rectory floods. Right through the ceiling, onto the dining room table, through the floor, they try to slosh the water out of the hall with a broom but it doesn’t exactly work well. And, Haiti is not a dry... Read more

Saints Look Up: A Meditation for All Saints’ Day

Last updated on: November 11, 2016 at 8:31 pm By Mary Pezzulo

When I was a girl, I had several appropriately dull little books telling short hagiographies of saints– name, feast day, what they were patrons of and a few stilted paragraphs describing their lives and deaths on the righthand page; and an appropriately stilted illustration on the left. Say what you will, the Eastern church does unusually posed people with non-lifelike facial expressions much better than the west. These were not icons, just kitschy holy card pictures. It was from these... Read more

Halloween Rundown

Last updated on: October 31, 2016 at 9:11 pm By Mary Pezzulo

(image via Pixabay) Halloween is over for the year, and we are sad to see it go. This year’s award for Most Elaborate House goes to my neighbors, who had an actual cauldron full of burning wood to make nice smoke, a loudspeaker of spooky sound effects, and a lean-to built illegally over the public sidewalk to make a tiny haunted house. There were even two enthusiastic teenagers in costume lurking inside the haunted house to scare people. And... Read more

Yet Another Important Election Update From Steel Magnificat

Last updated on: October 31, 2016 at 1:01 pm By Mary Pezzulo

(image via pixabay) I would like to remind my readers that we’re down to the last eight days. Eight. Ocho. Huit. Double four. Like a circle that’s turned round upon itself. We’re almost there. We’re in the single digits. Just a hair more than a week. If you sat down to watch all six Peter Jackson Commercializes Tolkein films, you’d only have to watch them 9 1/5 times before the election was over. Or just nine times if you didn’t... Read more

Charity Is Our Only Hope

Last updated on: October 29, 2016 at 12:55 pm By Mary Pezzulo

(image via Pixabay) Here’s another update from our friends at The Friendship Room: “the rich should help the poor”……. Yesterday a woman with an unemployed husband and young children used their food stamps to help us with needed items to serve. She had to ride a bus to the store, then wait an hour, catch another bus and bring us the food. Yet another woman suffering through cancer treatments brought clothing for a mom and her young homeless daughter. Today... Read more

Valley of Hell

Last updated on: October 28, 2016 at 3:08 pm By Mary Pezzulo

(image via pixabay) I was walking down a seedy-looking street, carrying a comically large suitcase in one hand and pushing Rose in a stroller in the other. The stroller got entangled in piles of wet autumn leaves and bumped against uneven pavement every so often; the suitcase, which was full to bursting, tugged at my shoulders. I had to stop every minute to switch arms. Rose was crying from the cold. “If I was you,” said a man, coming out onto... Read more

Mall Madness and Halloween Delirium

Last updated on: October 27, 2016 at 2:32 pm By Mary Pezzulo

(Image: “The Scream,” undated drawing by Edward Munch, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.) I dreamed I had pink hair. I dreamed I had pink hair and punk makeup but still was wearing my nerdy Benjamin Franklin spectacles without which I can’t see more than six inches from my face. I dreamed I was wearing them to the mall– a dank little one-story mall without a food court, a Disney store or a book shop. I was walking through the mall with a... Read more

Finally, Some Good News

Last updated on: October 26, 2016 at 2:43 pm By Mary Pezzulo

(image via Pixabay) As I paused to check Facebook in the middle of putting together my homemade dress-up-box cosplay outfit to take Rose to tonight’s indoor Trick-or-Treat, I stumbled across a spark of hope. A bit of good news. Something pleasurable to anticipate on this agonizing home stretch in this hellish campaign season, whatever happens afterward. It’s just been announced that Sherlock is going to return on January 1, 2017. The wait’s already almost over. Hallelujah. Something to look forward to,... Read more