Man of Steel hits theaters tonight, and Warner Brothers is hoping that it will bring out the inner 40-year-old in all of us, and that the inner 40-year-old will dig deep and fork over the twelve to twenty dollars it will cost to see the film. It’s a tough spot: historically, the Superman franchise is one for five when it comes to good movies, which puts Superman pretty far behind John McClane. The movies make money, sure, but the movies themselves (other than II, of course)? Not so super.

Any fanboy will tell you that the solution to the relative quality of this upcoming reboot of the franchise will [...]

It runs 24 hours a day—a rarity, anywhere in the world—and it moves 1.6 billion riders a year across the five boroughs of New York City. And on Friday (update: the new fare will be going into effect Sunday, March 3), it will become more expensive. After a fare hike five years ago, the base fare of taking the subway (that is with no discounts) will rise a quarter to $2.50 a pop. And although some of the service cuts enacted in 2010 have since been restored, this hike is not attached to any improvements in service—alas. As with other mandated fare hikes, this one was met with [...]

Fort Courage, Kansas. Civil War hero Captain Wilton Parmenter is in command, protecting the Fort, and the neighboring town of the same name, from a tribe of Indians in the area, led by Chief Wild Eagle. With Sergeant O'Rourke and Corporal Agarn rounding out his staff, Captain Parmenter navigates Fort Courage through the dangerous waters of the expansionist latter half of the 19th Century.

Plus also: wackiness.

This is the synopsis of a situation comedy, circa 1965. Not an emphatically successful one, but "F Troop" was still a pristine specimen of what I grew up thinking was the Platonic ideal of sitcoms.

This essay is part of a [...]

Part of a series about monsters and other scary things happening here through Halloween.

I fed myself a steady diet of the paranormal growing up, in between all the comic books and all the television. The enthusiasm does tend to wane the further away from childhood you get, but it never really goes away. I grew up hoping, believing, that the world was weirder than the grown-ups would tell you. And I liked it that way. It helped that I grew up in West Virginia, where you're never too far from the woods or a mountain or a swamp, places for mysterious things to hide and then jump out [...]

The conclusion of a month-long series on terrible trips, great journeys and getting lost.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. It was 1996, and I was still imagining myself to be some sort of actor. I had acted in a play written by a charismatic young playwright and directed by my best friend and roommate the summer previous, a four-hander, as they say. The playwright, also the star of the piece, decided that he was going to take the show on the road. For three weeks. And, on top of that, one of the roles would be recast with my girlfriend at the time, "Erin." [...]

One of the more noteworthy qualities of the martini, the quality that sets it apart from all the other drinks mixed at your local watering hole, is the disproportionate effect it's had in inspiring witticisms. Dorothy Parker, as usual, leads the way, with this bit of light poetry: "I like to have a martini/Two at the very most/Three, I'm under the table/Four, I'm under the host." James Thurber added, "One martini is all right, two is too many, and three is not enough." Winston Churchill has a good one (maybe apocryphally) attributed to him, too: "Martinis are like breasts: One is not enough and three is too many." Sure, whiskey [...]

It was Tuesday night, April 2, 1974, and America and various other parts of the planet were knee-deep in the telecast of the 46th Academy Awards. David Niven (co-hosting with John Huston, Diana Ross and Burt Reynolds) was introducing Elizabeth Taylor, who was to present the Oscar for Best Picture, only to be interrupted by a young man running across the stage behind Niven. The man flashed the peace sign and kept running. He was wearing no clothes. And Niven noticed, and paused to acknowledge the amusement of the audience, and said something Niven-y and withering. And the live broadcast continued. (The Sting won!)

This event is notorious, and often [...]

In honor of Opening Day on Sunday, the first of two essays today on the history of the game.

It's almost impossible to think of baseball without thinking of money. There's no better example than headline-grabbing Alex Rodriguez, third baseman for the New York Yankees. In 2000, he signed an alarming ten-year deal with the Texas Rangers for $252 million (which the Yankees traded for in 2004). This is the deal he opted out of during (like, in the middle of) Game Four of the 2007 World Series, only to sign another ten-year deal with the Yankees, this time for $275 million. Now, with Opening Day days away, [...]

There's a commercial that caught my eye during a recent spate of television watching with relatives, a spot for Prilosec, featuring a stand-up comedian, a veteran of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour. Actually it caught my eye several times because it was airing and then reairing again all through the holidays. It was disquieting. But obviously this was a good time to run a spot for a heartburn drug, during that period from Thanksgiving to the Super Bowl that is technically the Gluttony Season, as what better time to come down with a spot of heartburn? It’s ingrained in the advertising industry as the unintended consequence of the parties and [...]

I don’t get enough advice. Maybe it’s because I spent years actively ignoring it? This year I was hoping for some good advice, and still am! No matter how well you’re doing, there’s always a sense that you’re dogging it, and there’s some bit of wisdom that will push you through the membrane of the day-to-day to untold fabulousness. A foolish thought to carry around with you, but there it is. However, while waiting for my fairy godmother to clobber me with a toaster, calendar 2012 was a year that I kept going back to the greatest advice I ever got: Never open your mouth until you know the shot.

A special after-school installment of Adjusted for Inflation, as part of this series about youth.

You probably haven't been a kid for some years now. Maybe five years, or maybe many more. But whatever your age, there comes the moment of nostalgia sneaking up on you, and you remember that treehouse you had, or that clearing in the woods where all the kids played, which maybe you called something fanciful like Terabithia, or that playground with the monkey bars that served as the spaceship that everyone would compete to captain. Or maybe even bigger ventures, the running away from home, like Claudia and Nick in From The Mixed-Up [...]