It’s spooktober, and everyone’s doing the scary thing. I’ve been having a hard time getting into the spirit of the holiday—which is too bad, because Halloween has always been my […]

UPDATE: Due to the sharply rising number of COVID-19 cases in Cook County, the city of Chicago is returning to Tier 3 mitigation beginning Friday, November 20th. Details of what […]

It’s far more than a beautifully written mother-daughter conversation. Over the course of an evening at home, a young woman explains to her mother the list of things she will […]

When I was a kid, if I wasn’t playing some sort of first-person shooter, I was playing point and click adventure games.  These games, at the time, were some of […]

“The Dwarves delved too greedily and too deep” is a line that’s always stood out to me from The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring. That single line […]

When I was a kid and games started to feature more destructible objects and terrain, I dreamt of a game with fully reactive environments. I wanted a game where fire […]

“Lovecraft Chicago: History, Horror & Afrofutures” is the theme of Chicago History Museum’s Halloween celebration on Saturday, October 31. Virtual tours and events will focus on the HBO series, “Lovecraft […]

I love a good mystery—I think most people do. But the idea of going into a dead (or dying) person’s thoughts or memories has always made me feel uncomfortable. Memories […]

You may have seen Arthur Miller’s midcentury masterpiece, Death of a Salesman, many times. You may have seen some of the great versions. But even if you saw the 1998 […]

Cooking games are my jam, especially cooperative ones. I’m not talking about Overcooked, either. I’ve found some of the best cooperative cooking games in obscure titles like VR The Diner […]

Reported by Carr Harkrader “Whoever heard of a revolution that came out singing, and not swinging,” Malcolm X asked about the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent civil rights strategy. […]

Sidekicks, comic foils, and other stock and background characters: cinephile and essayist David Lazar loves watching old movie character actors more than the leads. In his latest book, Celeste Holm […]